Spirit of aging rising: cross-cutting thematic modules to enrich foundation graduate social work courses

To enrich an urban generalist MSW program serving a diverse aging community, an innovative approach was initiated. A team of students, faculty and a field instructor collaborated in creating and evaluating 3 sets of cross-cutting thematic modules. An overview of the thematic modules (addressing elder abuse, family caregiving, and mental health), integrated across multiple curriculum areas (Human Behavior and the Social Environment, Macro/Policy, Practice and Research), is presented along with results of a faculty focus group evaluating the process of coordinating module content for one full week of class per foundation area (one topic per quarter).     

Relocation stress syndrome in older adults transitioning from home to a long-term care facility: myth or reality?

Relocation stress syndrome is a nursing diagnosis characterized by symptoms such as anxiety, confusion, hopelessness, and loneliness. It usually occurs in older adults shortly after moving from a private residence to a nursing home or assisted-living facility. The primary purpose of this study was to validate the symptoms of relocation stress syndrome. Eight nursing home residents and 8 assisted-living facility residents were interviewed 2 to 10 weeks after admission, when symptoms of relocation stress syndrome are most likely to appear. Results of this study indicate that the incidence of relocation stress syndrome may be overestimated. More accurate diagnosis and treatment of depression in older adults is needed.     

Roads to American Empire: U.S. Military Public Works and Capitalist Transitions, 1898–1934.

Between 1898 and 1934, in synchronous and successive U.S. military interventions and occupations in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, American soldiers made public works, and especially roads, into a global technology of imperial power. This essay examines infrastructure as a factor in state formation and capitalist transition in these five different imperial spaces as a way to study U.S. empire, and its effects on foreign societies, through a comparative, global, and intra‐imperial approach often precluded by the methodological nationalism of historical and sociological literatures. Despite significant differences between these sites of U.S. war and occupation, both prior to American interventions and during them, U.S. military public works expressed and advanced a common political‐economic logic of state centralization and capital accumulation. Colonial and post‐colonial political institutions and political economies, the strength of central governments, the extent of plantation agriculture and rural proletarianization, world commodity markets, and geography and natural events varied, but determined U.S. imperial infrastructure's outcomes. By the 1930s, the U.S. military had elevated infrastructural improvement to a key repertoire of American imperial power in the world, and one which persisted as the United States turned away from formal colonialism in the era of the Cold War and decolonization.     

Juggling Between Parental and School Expectations: The Development of Domain‐Specific Acculturation Orientations in Early Adolescence

We examined how perceived acculturation expectations from parents and school, and ethnic discrimination predicted early adolescents’ heritage and mainstream acculturation orientations at home (private domain) and in school (public domain) one year later. We surveyed 263 early adolescents of immigrant background in Germany (M_age = 10.44 years, 60% female). Multigroup path analyses revealed that perceived acculturation expectations and ethnic discrimination were more strongly related to adolescents’ private than public acculturation orientations. Parental heritage expectations were the strongest predictor of adolescents’ acculturation orientations. Boys were more susceptible than girls to ethnic discrimination and acculturation expectations in school, which affected their private and public acculturation orientations. Results highlight the importance of integrating domain‐specific and gendered experiences when analyzing adolescents’ acculturative development.     

The Social Bases of Rural‐Urban Political Divides: Social Status,Work, and Sociocultural Beliefs

The rural‐urban political divide has sparked media and social science concern. Yet national studies of rural and urban voters have largely failed to draw from the distinct conceptual literatures produced by rural sociologists. We take a new look at individuals’ voting choices, building from two rural sociological literatures, research on spatial inequality and on the rural‐urban continuum, to identify the social bases anteceding Republican voting in presidential elections. We analyze three social bases along which rural‐urban populations vary: social structural statuses, work and employment, and sociocultural values and beliefs. We question the degree to which rural‐urban differences can be accounted for by these factors. Data are from approximately 9,000 respondents to the General Social Surveys for election years 2000–2012. Our findings demonstrate that the literatures produced by rural sociologists provide a strong conceptual foundation for explaining rural‐urban voting differences. Rural and urban residents’ differential social statuses account for the greatest variation in their voting choices. Sociocultural values and beliefs, particularly attitudes toward domestic social issues, are also important. Findings add significant insight into the variety of factors that differentiate rural‐urban individuals’ voting choices as well as illuminate the need for greater emphasis on exurban voters.     

Public sector managers: the decision to leave or remain in a job

The public sector faces a grave problem as far as managerial retention as the result of the increasing number of retirements and of voluntary resignations. Despite the vital interest in managerial turnover in the public sector, research is scarce. This study, which increases our understanding of why public sector managers leave their positions, takes a qualitative and narrative research approach in examining voluntary turnover. Interviews were conducted with operations managers (in education, social care, and technical activities) at three Swedish municipalities. We identify a multitude of environment push and pull factors with a focus on administrative support, supervisory support and illegitimate tasks. The narratives of managerial turnover reveal the complexity of the decision to leave or remain in a job, containing a mixture of push and pull factors, negative feelings, unmet expectations and extraordinary events. Three possible HRD actions to decrease undesirable managerial turnover are identified: re-work organizational structures; re-model job characteristics; and re-examine managerial turnover decisions as a long and complex process. Our hope is that the findings are used for ultimately create healthy organizations.     

Evaluating the effect of a campus-wide social norms marketing intervention on alcohol-use perceptions,consumption, and blackouts

Objective: To evaluate the effect of a campus-wide social norms marketing intervention on alcohol-use perceptions, consumption, and blackouts at a large, urban, public university. Participants: 4,172 college students (1,208 freshmen, 1,159 sophomores, 953 juniors, and 852 seniors) who completed surveys in Spring 2015 for the Spit for Science Study, a longitudinal study of students' substance use and emotional health. Methods: Participants were e-mailed an online survey that queried campaign readership, perception of peer alcohol use, alcohol consumption, frequency of consumption, and frequency of blackouts. Associations between variables were evaluated using path analysis. Results: We found that campaign readership was associated with more accurate perceptions of peer alcohol use, which, in turn, was associated with self-reported lower number of drinks per sitting and experiencing fewer blackouts. Conclusions: This evaluation supports the use of social norms marketing as a population-level intervention to correct alcohol-use misperceptions and reduce blackouts.     

Using Bayesian graphical models to model biases in observational studies and to combine multiple sources of data: application to low birth weight and water disinfection by-products

Summary.  Data in the social, behavioural and health sciences frequently come from observational studies instead of controlled experiments. In addition to random errors, observational data typically contain additional sources of uncertainty such as missing values, unmeasured confounders and selection biases. Also, the research question is often different from that which a particular source of data was designed to answer, and so not all relevant variables are measured. As a result, multiple sources of data are often necessary to identify the biases and to inform about different aspects of the research question. Bayesian graphical models provide a coherent way to connect a series of local submodels, based on different data sets, into a global unified analysis. We present a unified modelling framework that will account for multiple biases simultaneously and give more accurate parameter estimates than standard approaches. We illustrate our approach by analysing data from a study of water disinfection by-products and adverse birth outcomes in the UK.