A Little Pain Never Hurt Anyone: Athletic Career Socialization and the Normalization of Sports Injury

How do pain and risk of injury come to be accepted as a normal part of an athlete's role-identity? Through an examination of the career history of Sam, an amateur wrestler, the normalization of injury is seen as a traditional form of role socialization. Sam learned to define pain and injury as a routine part of his sports career by observing and interacting with a variety of significant others. As he progressed into higher levels of competition, he encountered successful athletes and coaches who had endured considerable pain and injury in their own careers. Sam eventually gained acceptance from these elite athletes and became a role model for others through conformity to a demanding sports ethic, but he suffered progressively more serious injuries. Sam's career not only reveals the socialization processes that normalize sports injury, it also demonstrates how sports participation can become a significant health risk.     

‘Family ideology’: identification and exploration

The issue of ‘family ideology’ has been systematically ignored by a majority of ‘family¹ scholars whilst it has been taken for granted by a minority. The following study arises from the author's attempts to explore the issue of alternative theoretical approaches to the analysis of family life’.² Increasing numbers of contemporary researchers concur in recognising the diversity of ‘family forms’ and the inappropriateness of speaking of ‘The Family’.³ Despite these recognitions many researchers find themselves re-adopting the term ‘The Family’ in their discussions and especially in the titles of their work. For example. Segal clearly recognises that the ‘traditional family model’ no longer reflects the reality of our lives (1983, 11) and yet the title of her book is What is to he done about THE FAMILY? (emphasis added). One reason for the re-importation of the idea of ‘The Family’ may be found in the rather limited nature of previous conceptualisations of ‘family ideology’. With the exception of Barrett (1980), recognitions of ‘family ideology’ tend to be conceptualised in terms of sets of partisan beliefs supporting a particular ‘family form’. Thus the concept of ‘The Family’ is rarely regarded as being problematic in itself, rather attention is paid to the presumed virtues or deficiencies of the particular form of ‘The Family’ which is assumed to be prevalent. Notwithstanding the recognition of ‘family diversity’ or the inappropriateness of the term ‘The Family’, nearly all discussion becomes a straightforward attack upon, or defence of. ‘The Family’.⁴ Only very rarely does analysis avoid this trap and question whether ‘The Family’ really exists to be attacked or defended; thus Collier et al. have asked ‘Is there a Family?’ (1982) and the present author has asked ‘Do we really know what “The Family” is?’(Bernardes, 1948a). The objective here is to identify and explore a specific conceptualisation of ‘family ideology’. The aim is to avoid engaging in attacks upon, or defences of, ‘The Family’ but rather to address the ideological context of such debates themselves, especially in respect of the assumed existence of ‘The Family’. It is hoped that this approach will stimulate a much more critical examination of ‘family ideology’ and the concept of ‘The Family’. More generally, the attempt to conceptualise ‘family ideology’ in this much broader sense is seen as a pre-requisite for the development of an alternative theoretical approach to the analysis of ‘family life’.     

Grieving for the loss of the perfect child: Parents of children with handicaps

Family reaction to the diagnosis of a child with a handicap marks the occurrence of a family crisis. The losss experienced by the family at the birth of a handicapped child is explored within a framework for grieving. A wholistic model for the grieving process, which is based on a view that grieving has important biological, intellectual, emotional, behavioral and spiritual aspects is presented. Examples from clinical cases are offered to illustrate this process. Implications are provided for better understanding and facilitating of the grief process for both the family and the helping professional.     

Survey design for detecting patches

In this paper, we are concerned with designing surveys for detecting patches of some exploitable resource, such as a shellfish stock. We take as our objective that, if there is one or more circular patches above some specified size, then the probability of detecting at least one patch should be high. We show how the required sampling intensity can be modified in the light of information about the likely number and size of patches. The results are applied to two surveys for detecting exploitable patches of cockles ( Cerastoderma edule ).     

A Methodology for Grouping Source Terms for Consequence Calculations in Probabilistic Risk Assessments

The individual plant analyses in the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's reassessment of the risk from commercial nuclear power plants (NUREG-1150) consist of four parts: systems analysis, accident-progression analysis, source-term analysis, and consequence analysis. Careful definition of the interfaces between these parts is necessary for both information flow and computational efficiency. This paper describes the procedure used to define the interface between the source-term analysis and the consequence analysis. This interface is accomplished by forming groups of source terms with similar properties and then performing one set of MACCS calculations for each group.     

Reliability and Validity of the Pathological Gambling Adaptation of the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (PG-YBOCS)

The Yale Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale adapted for Pathological Gambling (PG-YBOCS) was developed to measure the severity and change in severity of pathological gambling symptoms. The PG-YBOCS is a 10-item clinician-administered questionnaire that measures the severity of PG over a recent time interval (usually within the past one/two week(s)). In order to assess and validate the scale, it was administered to 337 subjects: 188 pathological gamblers and 149 healthy controls. Internal consistency and correlations between individual items and total score were assessed for various permutations of the sample. Other scales were administered to assess convergent, discriminant and content validity. Sensitivity to change was evaluated in treatment studies with fluovoxamine, lithium, and valproate. Each item was frequently endorsed across a range of severity. Good inter-rater reliability and internal consistency were obtained. The PG-YBOCS showed high validity and reliability for total score, item-total correlations, and for each subscale (Thoughts/Urges and Behavior). PG-YBOCS scores correlated with global severity and South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS) scores. The scale was also sensitive to change in pathological gambling severity. PG-YBOCS thus appears to be a reliable and valid measure of pathological gambling severity, and can be regarded as an important tool for clinicians and researchers treating pathological gamblers.     

Comparing the Quality of Data Obtained by Minimally Balanced and Fully Balanced Attitude Questions

When measuring attitudes with questions that offer dichotomous,mutually exclusive response options, researchers can ask "fullybalanced" questions (which fully state both competing pointsof view) or "minimally balanced" questions (which fully stateone viewpoint and only briefly acknowledge the second viewpoint).The two studies reported here investigated whether the greaterefficiency of the latter approach brought with it reductionsin the quality of the data obtained. Two experiments embeddedin national sample surveys showed that minimally balanced andfully balanced attitude questions yielded similar distributionsof responses and that responses to the two question forms wereequivalent in terms of concurrent validity. These studies suggestthat greater efficiency can be achieved via minimal balancingat no cost in terms of data quality.     

After Atos Healthcare: is the Employment and Support Allowance fit for purpose and does the Work Capability Assessment have a future?

In June 2014 the BBC reported that it had seen a number of UK Department for Work and Pensions documents relating to the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). These documents, which included six memos written by civil servants and government advisers, tell us very little that we did not know already; namely that the ESA is in crisis, and that waiting lists for assessment and appeals are unacceptable. However, what is significant is that these concerns are being raised within the Department for Work and Pensions itself. The underlying drift is that the question of whether the current model of ESA and Work Capability Assessment is sustainable is now firmly on the UK government’s radar.     

Disability,social groups,and political citizenship

The problem raised in this article is whether disabled people can and should be considered as a social group with respect to political representation. The question is first discussed on the basis of theories of social and status groups. Next, the article examines how the topic is reflected empirically at the local political level in Norway, expressed by party political leaders and elected disabled representatives. The authors suggest that disabled people can and should be considered as a social group in relation to political representation. Not doing so, they argue, will in effect delay the process towards full recognition and active political citizenship.     

Status,gender and life cycle in the consumption practices of the English elite. The case of Mary Leigh, 1736–1806

The consumption practices of the elite have received a great deal of attention from historians over the years. The role of women (and gender) is mostly considered in the context of married couples, and therefore at a particular stage in the life cycle, with emphasis placed on the complementary role of husband and wife in the household economy. We know less about the consumption behaviour of single women, especially the ways in which this developed over their life course, singleness being seen as a passing stage rather than a long-term condition for many elite women. This article takes a case-study approach to explore in detail how consumption and shopping behaviour were shaped by gender, status and family, and how the relative importance of these changed over the life course of the individual. It focuses in particular on what was bought from whom and the factors shaping the choice of supplier, and argues that single status gave women freedom to act, but that this was framed by the obligations of status and the constraints of family. Landownership, of course, brought responsibilities as well as opportunities that shaped spending; but family as lineage was especially important in shaping patterns and geographies of spending.