Helping the medicine go down. Nurses' and patients' perceptions about medication compliance

The issue of medication compliance is a multidimensional phenomenon that rests not only with the patient, but also with the interactions of caregivers. Study results revealed that nurses and patients generally perceive estimated frequency of medication compliance to be similar, although increased length of time as a psychiatric nurse was associated with nurses perceiving patients as being less compliant. Reasons given by patients and nurses for medication noncompliance differed. Patients' responses were characterized by being more concrete and varied in nature than those of the nurse.     

Time diary and questionnaire assessment of factors associated with academic and personal success among university undergraduates

OBJECTIVE AND PARTICIPANTS: A sample of 231 students attending a private liberal arts university in central Alberta, Canada, completed a 5-day time diary and a 71-item questionnaire assessing the influence of personal, cognitive, and attitudinal factors on success. METHODS: The authors used 3 success measures: cumulative grade point average (GPA), Personal Success--each participant's rating of congruence between stated goals and progress toward those goals--and Total Success--a measure that weighted GPA and Personal Success equally. RESULTS: The greatest predictors of GPA were time-management skills, intelligence, time spent studying, computer ownership, less time spent in passive leisure, and a healthy diet. Predictors of Personal Success scores were clearly defined goals, overall health, personal spirituality, and time-management skills. Predictors of Total Success scores were clearly defined goals, time-management skills, less time spent in passive leisure, healthy diet, waking up early, computer ownership, and less time spent sleeping. CONCLUSIONS: Results suggest alternatives to traditional predictors of academic success.     

Christian faith and recovery from substance abuse,guilt, and shame

Although guilt and shame, on one hand, and spirituality, on the other, are known to relate to recovery from substance abuse, the connectedness of these emotions, spirituality, and recovery has hardly been touched in research. This study, drawing from rich qualitative data consisting of the interviews of 21 former substance abusers, each interviewed twice, targets this relationship and analyses how spirituality, in this case more precisely Christian faith, relates to guilt and shame during the process of recovery. Since self-conscious emotions are at least in part socioculturally constructed, Christian faith is seen as a cultural tool that is influencing the ways how to define and cope with guilt and shame in recovery. Both academic and practical conclusions are drawn from the data.     

Identifying Themes Regarding the Benefits and Limitations of Caregiver Support Group Conversations

Support groups continue to be one of the most needed and desired forms of help for family caregivers to persons with dementia. Though the effects of caregiver support group participation have been examined, the benefits and limitations of the dynamics of support group conversations have been neglected. This study focuses on the perceived consequences of group dynamics. Three themes—balance, sameness, and individuality—emerged through analysis of open-ended interviews with support group members following observations of their meetings. The consequences of these themes are illustrated with a case study and the implications of these themes for practitioners are discussed.     

Seasonality and Return Periods of Landfalling Atlantic Basin Hurricanes

This paper studies the annual arrival cycle and return period properties of landfalling Atlantic Basin hurricanes. A non-homogeneous Poisson process with a periodic intensity function is used to model the annual cycle of hurricane arrival times. Wind speed and central pressure return periods and non-encounter probabilities are estimated by combining the Poisson arrival model with extreme value peaks-over-threshold methods. The data used in this study contain all Atlantic Basin hurricanes that have made landfall in the contiguous United States during the years 1935–98 inclusive.     

State social benefits in South Africa

The growth of South African state-provided social security is traced from its origins in British colonialism, through the consolidation under apartheid of racially discriminatory benefits mainly to protect white interests, to the present time of political change when there is a rapid move towards racial parity. It is a difficult system to understand, because of the fragmentation created by apartheid: benefits are delivered through 17 separate “governments”, geographically different from each other, using different information systems and, until recently, characterized by secrecy regarding information. This paper is based on interviews conducted in all administrations in 1991, and it focuses on the state social pensions and grants for elderly people, disabled people, child and family care, and poor relief. Major problems with the system are those of access, racial discrimination, inefficiency, corruption, and the way in which the means test is implemented. Does the social security system have a role to play in addressing the inequality and poverty produced by apartheid? In rural areas most beneficiaries live in three-generational families, and the benefit is consumed by the household. It is suggested that its potential is greatly underestimated, and rather than being seen as an expensive burden, the social security system should be enthusiastically embraced. It is already in place; it can relatively easily be made more efficient.     

An Agenda for Welfare Pluralism in Housing

During the 1980s the concepts of “welfare pluralism” and a “mixed economy of welfare” were developed by academics writing from the perspective of the social democratic centre of British politics as a response to the criticisms of state welfare put forward by the New Right and the New Left in the 1970s. Whereas the New Right gave little critical attention to such concepts regarding them as useful supports to an anti-state stance the New Left claims that they were an attempt to allow the Fabian-style managers of the old consensus to have some role in the restructuring of welfare to be carried out by the political wing of the New Right. It is argued that the claim of the New Left has limited validity but a more certain case can be made for the contention that the lack of a detailed specification of a social and economic context for welfare pluralism has given credibility to the accusation that welfare pluralism has provided a smokescreen for the introduction of market principles into welfare. Housing policy is here utilized to illustrate the argument and the ingredients of a socio-economic context for welfare pluralism in housing policy are set out in the hope that similar frameworks will be provided for other domains of welfare.     

Democratic Values and Civic Engagement of Local Voluntary Associations

In this study I investigate whether and to what extent local voluntary associations in Sweden maintain values of democratic governance. The study is based upon a survey of about 400 local voluntary associations within four local communities. The results show that a vast majority of these associations are supportive of member influence and governance through internal democracy. These values can also explain civic engagement of these local voluntary associations. The results indicate that if these values would change radically it would probably have an impact on civic engagement of these organizations, but at present the support remains solid.