Urge to Gamble in a Simulated Gambling Environment

Cue reactivity, while increasingly recognized as a central feature of drug and alcohol addiction, is not well studied in gambling. We evaluated the urge to gamble in a simulated casino environment among frequent gamblers who alternated between cycles in which they observed others playing ten hands of Blackjack (first, third and fifth cycle) and cycles in which they played ten hands of Blackjack themselves (second and fourth cycle). The played cycles served as a manipulation for the observed cycles in terms of “priming” (having previously gambled in the environment vs. not) and “anticipation” (expecting more opportunities to gamble in the environment vs. not) and, thus, allowed these conditions: observed cycle 1 = anticipation (+) and prime (−); observed cycle 2 = anticipation (+) and prime (+); and observed cycle 3 = anticipation (−) and prime (+). Subjects’ urge to gamble was greater in the gambling environment than in a neutral setting and both positive anticipation and positive priming increased cue reactivity within the gambling environment. The frequency of gambling outside of the study did not affect cue reactivity. However, a preference for Blackjack (vs. other types of gambling) and observing winning (vs. losing) hands were both associated with stronger cue reactivity in the study. These findings contribute to our understanding of pathological gambling.     

The Influence of Policy Context on Transition Age Foster Youths' Views of Self-Sufficiency

In this exploratory study, focus group methodology was used to examine the potential influence of policy context on informing transition age youth (TAY) views of self-sufficiency upon aging out of foster care. The authors purposively selected two different policy contexts concerning extended foster care: New York City and Los Angeles County. Compared to New York City, Los Angeles has a relatively newer policy concerning extending the age of foster care benefits to 21. Four focus groups were conducted (2 in each location) with TAY recruited from community-based foster care agencies. The total number of participants (aged 18–22) was 21 (13 in Los Angeles and 8 in New York). In both policy contexts, participants defined self-sufficiency mainly as economic independence and planning for success. However, while Los Angeles TAY emphasized a need to “strive through it,” meaning persevere through self-reliance, New York TAY believed that self-sufficiency could be at least partially achieved by leaning on others, including social services. The findings help to illustrate how varying policy landscapes, including those that are in flux, can shape client understandings of core beliefs related to service utilization and client–provider interactions. Implications for child welfare policy and practice are proposed.     

“We have a lot of goodwill, but we still need to eat…”: Valuing Women’s Long Term Voluntarism in Community Development in Lima

This paper focuses on recognizing the contribution made to development by grassroots women working on a voluntary basis in long term development projects. Using the example of healthcare, the paper problematizes the widespread move towards an increased reliance on voluntary and third sector provision. Drawing on literature around women’s community activism, the research considers the extent to which women carrying out health promotion work in Peru have taken on this role as more than “just voluntary work,” highlighting their long term commitment during more than a decade of health promotion activities. The paper develops debates around the professionalization of voluntary work, particularly considering the issue of economic remuneration for health promoters, and emphasizing the gendered nature of their voluntarism; concluding by questioning the sustainability of poor women’s long term, and largely unpaid, involvement as the linchpins of community development projects.

Beyond performative talk: critical observations on the radical critique of reading interview data

ABSTRACT

We centrally consider the question of what interview data can be used to ‘say’ through a dialogue with advocates of the ‘radical critique’ of interview studies. We propose that while the critique has considerable utility in drawing to ‘the social life of interviews’ and the pervasiveness of notions of the ‘romantic subject’, it simultaneously goes too far in its reduction of interviews to narrative performance, and not far enough in its own critical departure from core characteristics of the romantic subject. We show how the critique leaves intact imagery of a seemingly unbridgeable divide between the experienced and the expressed, and involves a related conflation of what can be said at interview with what interviews can be used to say. We explore how the radical critique might productively be built upon via more ‘synthetic’ forms of research engagement, outlining alternative modes of apprehending interview data through a further critical departure from the romantic subject. Accordingly, we advance a move beyond a sole engagement with questions of how data are constructed and produced and towards how such data might otherwise be used to speak about the social world beyond the social nexus that constitutes an interview encounter.     

Young people's gendered interpretations of suicide and attempted suicide

This paper aims to uncover gendered interpretations of various kinds of suicidal behaviour. Its empirical basis is focus group discussions with a range of young people, including users of social work services. In support of Canetto's research, the authors found some of the young people to be associating ‘successful’ suicides with masculinity and ‘failed’ suicide attempts with femininity. These feminized suicide attempts were subject to some fairly pejorative interpretations, such as being motivated by revenge or manipulation. There was no particular pattern of viewpoints in terms of the sex of respondents. The implications of these findings for social work are discussed.     

TOXICITY AND COMPLICITY: Explaining Consensual Community Response to a Chronic Technological Disaster

The absence of citizcn mobilization following the announcement of high levels of dioxin in a New England river, and subsequent Superfund listing, is cxplained in light of previous research that stresses the conflict and controversy that surround community contamination. Interviews with area residents and government officials, observations of public meetings, and content analyses of newspapcr articles, EPA press releases, and other official documents provide three explanations for the absence of citizen mobilization: (1) shared knowledge of the community's industrial history meant the river's contamination did not disrupt taken-for-granted assumptions about the community, (2) the "discovery" of the contamination by a government agency and its subsequent impression management served to defuse the public outrage that would otherwise lead to controversy and confrontation, and (3) elected officials, who were able to get resources to the agencies that could handle the problem, supported the decisions of the agencies rather than criticizing them or accusing them of negligence.     

Urban multiculture and everyday encounters in semi‐public,franchised cafe spaces

This paper engages with an emergent literature on multiculture and concepts such as conviviality and negotiation to explore how increasingly ethnically diverse population routinely share and mix in urban places and social spaces. As part of a wider ESRC funded, two‐year qualitative study of changing social life and everyday multiculture in different geographical areas of contemporary England, this paper draws on participant observation data from three branches of franchised leisure and consumption cafe spaces. We pay particular attention to the ways these spaces work as settings of encounter and shared presence between groups often envisaged as separated by ethnic difference. Our findings suggest that corporate spaces which are more often dismissed as commercial, globalized spaces of soulless homogeneity can be locally inflected spaces whose cultural blandness may generate confident familiarity, ethnic mixity, mundane co‐presence and inattentive forms of conviviality.     

John F. Kennedy Space Center Library

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) John F. Kennedy Space Center Library serves most of the employees who work at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC). The archives are part of the library and contain over four million items pertaining to institutional activities within the KSC. The library collects a wide array of materials that support the work at the center. This is one of ten NASA center libraries in the country, and the focus of the collection is engineering, science, and technology. The purpose of the archives is to document the history of this center. The collection includes planning documents, photographs, and 16 mm film. The library provides its users with monographs, technical reports, databases, and both print and online journals.