Physical Activity,Exercise, and Sedentary Behavior in College Students

Abstract

Objective: This article examines students’ perceptions of individual and institutional responsibility for sexual health so that institutions can better provide for the needs of their students to increase academic success and healthy relationship outcomes. Participants: Students from 2- and 4-year colleges in 1 state (N = 78). Methods: From May through November 2010, the authors used go-along interviews to examine students’ perceptions of resources for sexual health on their campuses. Results: Participants believed that it is the college's responsibility to provide resources and the responsibility of students to access resources. Participants at 2-year schools wanted referrals to resources, whereas participants at 4-year schools expected resources to be available and emphasized the importance of a supportive community. Conclusions: Students at 2- and 4-year colleges have different expectations of their institutions; by making resources and referrals for sexual health available, colleges can better serve their students, which will result in improved health outcomes.     

Essential Data Elements for Reporters of Elder Abuse

Most states' adult or elder protective services and aging agency personnel prepare annual reports about their protective services. These reports vary by state and have different terms for the reporter of abuse. Reviewing annual reports from 46 states and the District of Columbia, 248 different terms were used for the reporter of abuse. To develop essential data elements for reporters of abuse, a literature search, a compilation of state elder abuse annual report list of abuse reporters, and a sorting exercise were conducted. Eleven terms were recommended for the different reporters of abuse, encouraging all state administrators and caseworkers to reach consensus to standardize the language.     

Elder Abuse: What Coroners Know and Need to Know

This article presents findings from a survey examining knowledge of elder abuse among Georgia's coroners. More than half of the 116 respondents indicated that they know “almost nothing” or “a little” about distinguishing signs of physical abuse from signs of aging (54%) and mandatory reporting laws and related elder abuse statutes (63%). When asked the frequency with which older adult cases were referred to the medical examiner, 49% indicated “rarely if ever.” Study findings reveal specific opportunities for enhancing training efforts aimed at coroners, who play a critical role in the identification of elder abuse.     

“Do They Think I Am a Pack Rat?”

This case study presents details of the life of one older man who lived in seclusion and squalor, surrounded by hoarded possessions. This man was one participant of a focused ethnography of eight older adults who received home care. All participants in the original ethnography were identified by their community care coordinators as exhibiting hoarding behaviors. The case study presented here provides rich narrative and photographic detail in order to add strength to what has already been presented in previous research articles about compulsive acquisition. The narratives reveal examples of debilitating dysfunction, distress associated with decision making, broad acquisition of free things, compulsive buying, and ritualistic discarding. Quotes included in the case study stem from the original ethnography.     

Staffing-Related Deficiency Citations in Nursing Homes

There is evidence that staffing characteristics influence quality of care in nursing homes. Federal and state surveyors conduct inspections of homes to assess their compliance with regulatory standards, including requirements related to staffing. Deficiency citations are issued when these standards are not met. This article examines the relationship between operational, facility, and market characteristics and organizational performance measured as staffing-related deficiency citations. Online Survey Certification of Automated Records (OSCAR) data from 2000 through 2007 were used with multinomial logistic regression analyses to identify factors associated with deficiency citations for staffing. Chain members and facilities with poor quality of care were more likely to receive deficiency citations for staffing. Greater bed count and competition between nursing homes were associated with a decreased likelihood of deficiency citations for staffing. Staffing-related deficiencies within nursing homes vary according to various operational, facility, and market characteristics.     

Toddlers Activate Lexical Semantic Knowledge in the Absence of Visual Referents: Evidence from Auditory Priming

Language learners rapidly acquire extensive semantic knowledge, but the development of this knowledge is difficult to study, in part because it is difficult to assess young children's lexical semantic representations. In our studies, we solved this problem by investigating lexical semantic knowledge in 24‐month‐olds using the Head‐turn Preference Procedure. In Experiment 1, looking times to a repeating spoken word stimulus (e.g., kitty‐kitty‐kitty) were shorter for trials preceded by a semantically related word (e.g., dog‐dog‐dog) than trials preceded by an unrelated word (e.g., juice‐juice‐juice). Experiment 2 yielded similar results using a method in which pairs of words were presented on the same trial. The studies provide evidence that young children activate of lexical semantic knowledge, and critically, that they do so in the absence of visual referents or sentence contexts. Auditory lexical priming is a promising technique for studying the development and structure of semantic knowledge in young children.     

Social Support Expectations and Strategic Ambiguity in Parent–Young Adult Child Divorce-Related Stressor Conversations

With communication privacy management and the divorce disclosure model as guiding frameworks, this study identified the stressors postdivorce families discussed as they mature, elucidated the types of social support parents and young adult children expected regarding divorce-related stress, and tested whether motivational and contextual factors prompted parents' use of strategic ambiguity while discussing stressors. By examining parent–child divorce-related stressor conversations in a controlled lab setting, results indicated that a decade after parental divorce, families continued to manage a variety of stressors. Additionally, parents and young adults had strong expectations for nurturant, informational, and tangible support from one another. Yet, social support expectations did not affect parents' self-reported use of strategic ambiguity nor children's perceptions of parents' communication.     

Housing for Families but Not for People: Federal Policy and Normative Family Ideals in Midcentury California

Abstract

Scholars have documented the harmful effects of urban redevelopment in the middle of the twentieth century with a particular focus on “redlining” to achieve racial segregation. This article considers another way that the state influenced social geography. In the middle of the twentieth century, some city planners argued for housing for single people and childless couples, but federal guidelines and funding specified that new housing be for nuclear, heterosexual families with children. Two historical cases demonstrate how planners attempted to create housing for alternative households but were unsuccessful. These two cases show that in addition to the documented effects of shaping the economic and racial landscapes of cities, federal housing policy sent strong signals to people about acceptable family formations by limiting the type and quantity of housing stock available. By examining how planners attempted to move forward with housing for all types of households, this article shows that federal family-oriented policies were not uncontested even if they were usually implemented. These cases highlight the complicated relationship among federal policies, normative culture, and the built environment. This article proposes that we should further investigate the ways in which the built environment has served as a mediator between the state, as exemplified by housing policies, and culture—normative ideals about the family—in a recursive sense; while federal policies both reflected and projected dominant cultural ideology concerning the primacy and importance of nuclear families, urban redevelopment projects presented this relationship in built form when redevelopment took the form of housing for families but not for single people or childless couples.     

Money talks: The role of finance in social work education and practice

Finance is crucial to every aspect of social care, yet has traditionally been neglected in social work training and practice. Despite the overwhelming importance of budgetary issues for the provision of social services, few workers understand how the system works or how their work is financed. The result is that they continue in ignorance, operating without an awareness of the financial context in which they work, lacking the financial skills to move successfully into management positions and failing to challenge a chaotic and anachronistic system which undermines local democracy as a deliberate tool of central control. Against this background, this paper highlights the importance of a financial overview for social work educators and practitioners, exploring the factors which contribute to the widespread inability to engage with financial issues and calling for a greater emphasis on this topic in social work training. In the process, it builds on a recently published introduction to local government finance which is designed specifically to counter the anti-financial tendencies inherent in social work, providing a detailed but easily comprehensible handbook for managers, practitioners and members of the general public alike. To place these issues in context, the paper begins with a personal account of working in a department experiencing financial difficulties.