THE DIFFUSION OF MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY: SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS AND POLICY RESEARCH

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how social network analysis can be used to provide information for policy decisions pertaining to physicians' adoption and utilization of new medical technology. Interviews and hospital records were used to obtain data on refenals, consultations, discussions, and on-call coverage; utilization of a computer-based hospital information system; and personal and practice characteristics from 24 physicians who belong to a private group practice. The results of a block-model analysis suggest that the physician's relative position in the network is an important determinant of his/her participation in the diffusion process. A number of policy implications related to the introduction of new medical technology into practice settings are discussed.     

Moments of the sampled autocovariances and autocorrelations for a Gaussian white-noise process

Cumulants, moments about zero, and central moments are obtained for the mean-corrected serial covariances and serial correlations for series realizations of length n from a white-noise Gaussian process. All first and second moments (and some third, fourth, and higher moments) are given explicitly for the serial covariances; and the corresponding moments for the serial correlations are derived either explicitly or implicitly.     

Individual Differences in Women's Salivary Testosterone and Estradiol Following Sexual Activity in a Nonlaboratory Setting

Objectives: The current study evaluated women's salivary testosterone and estradiol levels before and after exposure to sexual stimuli in a U.S. sex club. Methods: Behavioral data and salivary samples were collected from 19 women during semistructured interviews. Results: Findings demonstrate substantial individual differences in the magnitude and direction of women's hormonal changes following sexual activity. Conclusions: In an age of individualized medicine, these findings highlight the need to better understand factors shaping variation in physiological responses to sexual activity. Findings contribute to a relatively small and contradictory literature on women's hormonal responses to sexual stimuli.     

Johnson's Differentiation Theory: Is It Really Empirically Supported?

Michael Johnson's differentiation of “types” of domestic violence has had a significant impact on courts and providers, in part because of its claim to an empirical basis. Unfortunately, the label “situational couple violence” has already been used by judges and evaluators to minimize abuse claims in custody cases. Johnson's repeated assertion that SCV is the most common form of domestic violence reinforces the marginalizing of domestic violence. But what do his data actually show? Here Professor Meier takes a close look at the research Johnson relies on and finds that it fails to prove his thesis. Rather, the data suggest that Johnson has it exactly backward: Control-based abuse is probably far more common than “situational” domestic violence.     

Life Domain Satisfactions as Predictors of Overall Life Satisfaction Among Workers: Evidence from Chile

This article examines the subjective antecedents of life satisfaction of workers. Adopting a ‘bottom-up’ perspective, we assessed the unique influence that satisfaction with multiple life domains have on evaluative judgments of overall life satisfaction. Based on a nationwide sample of 530 Chilean workers, we simultaneously tested the effects of seven life domain satisfactions that have been consistently included in extant models of life satisfaction and subjective well-being. These were satisfaction with health, financial situation, social relationships, one’s self-worth, leisure-time, family, and work. Having controlled for age and gender, results showed that satisfaction with one’s financial situation was the dominant predictor of overall life satisfaction of workers, with a weight of .36. Satisfaction with family, work, and health had effects of .25, .14, and .14, respectively. Interestingly, satisfaction with one’s self-worth, leisure-time, and social relationships did not have statistically significant effects on life satisfaction, although the first two showed t values near the critical value.     

Social Work: Gender, Care and Justice

Correspondence to: Joan Orme, Department of Social Policy and Social Work, Lilybank House, Bute Gardens, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8RT, UK. Summary This article, in examining gender and justice, seeks to examinethe relationship between feminist theory and social work. Specificallyit reviews writings on social work ethics and suggests thatlittle attention has been paid to feminist scholarship thatresonates with social work practice. Focusing primarily on communitycare, it demonstrates how debates within feminism have becomemore complex and have problematized understandings of both careand justice. It argues that for social work it is unhelpfulto dichotomize justice and care; we should aspire to just socialwork practice.     

Belonging and Wanting: Meanings of Social Class Background for Women's Constructions of their College Experiences

Data from 193 women who attended Smith College in the 1960s show that the women retrospectively represented college quite differently depending on their class background. Themes of both social segregation and academic unpreparedness were evident among the women from working- and middle-class families, while themes of a continuation of family tradition were evident among women from upper-class families. Interview data from seven women who graduated from Radcliffe in 1964 suggested that a sense of who belonged and who did not was keenly felt even by women from middle-class backgrounds, and was also noticed by women from upper-class backgrounds. It is noted that class plays a large role in constructing the markers that define "belongingness" on elite college campuses .