The regulation of family involvement in deinstitutionalization

Conflicting legal, administrative, and professional policies surround family involvement in the deinstitutionalization process. This article addresses these discrepancies and makes recommendations for developing effective and consistent channels of policy among social workers and other helping professionals.     

The responsibility of public welfare in family planning

The primary objective of the paper is the implementation of family planning programs in and by the public sector. Providing health service is the category that family planning falls into within public welfare. Only 700,000 patients are now receiving family planning services from all public and private agencies combined. This is only 13% of the target population. All too many policy statments have been made with little done to implement them. The estimation is that in 1966 and 1967 HEW spent about three million dollars on family planning. Public programs have progressed farther through Office of Economic Opportunity than through HEW. Religious sources are the strongest opposition to welfare involvement in family planning. Social work as a profession has a role in family planning to the extent that it considers its role helping people and enhancing family functioning.     

Outcomes assessment of role-play scenarios for teaching responsible conduct of research

We describe the summative assessment of role-play scenarios that we previously developed to teach central topics in the responsible conduct of research (RCR) to graduate students in science and engineering. Interviews with role-play participants, with participants in a case discussion training session, and with untrained students suggested that role-playing might promote a deeper appreciation of RCR by shifting the focus away from wanting to simply "know the rules." We also present the results of a think-aloud case analysis study and describe the development of a behaviorally-anchored rating scale (BARS) to assess participants' case analysis performance.     

The Development of Urban Neighbourhoods and the Benefit of Indication Systems

The last few years much use is being made ofso-called indication systems to map the development ofneighbourhoods. It is hoped that these systems quicklybring possible livability problems to light, so thatpeople can intervene in accordance with policy.In this article the advantages and pitfalls of such anindication system are gone into. Such a system has totake into account the fact that the development ofneighbourhoods does not have a fixed pattern.Furthermore the much-used objective indicators oftendo not mesh with the subjective perception ofresidents and the appraisal processes ofprofessionals. Also much more consideration will haveto be given to social characteristics, which in ourday have become increasingly more determining for thelivability of neighbourhoods. It is also importantthat the action of managers be part of acharacterization of neighbourhoods. It is being arguedthat an indication system cannot be confined toregistering indicators and other data, for it has todirectly contribute to policy interventions. That iswhy a good indication system takes both facts and creation of an image into account, as well aslivability characteristics and theconsiderations of residents and managers. In a fewbrief concluding observations, the different functionsan indication system can have as a policy instrumentare gone into.     

Feeding Patterns and Emotional Care in Breastfed Infants

A number of studies have suggested breastfed infants have improved bonding and attachment or cognitive development outcomes. However, mechanisms by which these differences might develop are poorly understood. We used maternal time use data to examine whether exclusively breastfeeding mothers spend more time in close interactive behaviors with their infants than mothers who have commenced or completed weaning. Mothers (188) participating in a time use survey recorded infant feeding activities for 24 h over a 7 day period using an electronic device. Tracking was conducted at 3, 6, and 9 months postpartum. Data was collected for maternal activities including infant feeding and time spent in emotional care. The mothers of exclusively breastfed infants aged 3–6 months fed them frequently and total time spent in breastfeeding averaged around 17 h a week. Maternal time spent in emotional care was also substantial, and found to correlate positively with time spent breastfeeding. Exclusively breastfed infants received greatest amounts of emotional care from their mother, and exclusively formula fed infants the least. Mixed fed infants received more emotional care time than formula fed infants, but less than fully breastfed infants. These findings may help explain the differential cognitive developmental outcomes reported in the medical literature for breastfed and non breastfed infants.     

The Incompatibility of Materialism and the Desire for Children: Psychological Insights into the Fertility Discrepancy Among Modern Countries

We examined factors related to attitudes toward marriage and the importance of having children in both the US and Singapore. Path analysis indicated that life dissatisfaction leads to materialism, and both of these factors lead to favorable attitudes toward marriage, which leads to greater desire for children. Further analysis indicated this model was effective in explaining the difference in desire for children between Singaporeans and Americans, whereby Singaporeans have lower life satisfaction, higher materialism, and lower attitudes toward marriage and children. Materialistic standards of success were also related to the emphasis women placed on potential marriage partners’ earning capacity. As Singaporean women had higher materialistic standards, they also placed higher emphasis on potential mates’ earning capacity. Results suggest a consideration of psychological variables such as life satisfaction, materialism, and mate preferences may lead to a better understanding of larger-scale socioeconomic issues, including low fertility rates among developed East Asian countries.     

A Translation and Validation Study of the Life Orientation Test Revised in the Greek Speaking Population of Nurses among Three Hospitals in Athens and Ioannina

The life orientation test-revised (LOT-R) (Scheier et al. in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 67:1063–1078, 1994) is a brief measure for assessing dispositional optimism. The aim of this study was to develop a Greek language version of the LOT-R and to assess the instrument’s psychometric properties. The LOT-R was translated and culturally adopted in Greek language, and the final version was administered, along with a questionnaire consisting socioeconomic characteristics and a single item measuring optimism, to 276 Greek speaking, hospital nurses (222 female, 54 male), aged 22–65 years (mean 37.8, SD 8.3). Results showed that the LOT-R has good internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = .71 and item total correlation coefficients from .27 to .73, a unitary structure, and stability over a 3-months period (r = .66). Moreover, the Greek version of the scale exhibited good convergent validity with single-item optimism scale (r = .73). Principal components analysis revealed a two-factor structure representing the constructs of optimism and pessimism. The Greek life orientation test revised appears to be a valid tool in assessing dispositional optimism in Greek speaking people and is expected to facilitate the examination of optimism in Greek speaking populations.     

Katrina in historical context: environment and migration in the U.S.

The massive publicity surrounding the exodus of residents from New Orleans spurred by Hurricane Katrina has encouraged interest in the ways that past migration in the U.S. has been shaped by environmental factors. So has Timothy Egan’s exciting book, The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of those who survived the Great American Dust Bowl. This article places those dramatic stories into a much less exciting context, demonstrating that the kinds of environmental factors exemplified by Katrina and the Dust Bowl are dwarfed in importance and frequency by the other ways that environment has both impeded and assisted the forces of migration. We accomplish this goal by enumerating four types of environmental influence on migration in the U.S.: (1) environmental calamities, including floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, and tornadoes, (2) environmental hardships and their obverse, short-term environmental benefits, including both drought and short periods of favorable weather, (3) environmental amenities, including warmth, sun, and proximity to water or mountains, and (4) environmental barriers and their management, including heat, air conditioning, flood control, drainage, and irrigation. In U.S. history, all four of these have driven migration flows in one direction or another. Placing Katrina into this historical context is an important task, both because the environmental calamities of which Katrina is an example are relatively rare and have not had a wide impact, and because focusing on them defers interest from the other kinds of environmental impacts, whose effect on migration may have been stronger and more persistent, though less dramatic.     

Sex,Arts and Verbal Abilities: Three Further Indicators of How American Life is not Improving

Despite clear evidence that Americans’ economic standard of living has improved over the last half-century in terms of income, ownership of technology and housing among other indicators, there is scant evidence from non-economic quality-of-life (QOL) indicators of improved life quality to parallel these economic gains. The present article adds to this list in showing little if any progress in three QOL indicators (the first two about time and activity) that have received less or no attention in the social indicators literature, namely (1) frequency of the highly enjoyable activity of sex, (2) participation in various serious arts activities and (3) scores of verbal ability. The data on sexual activity and verbal ability come from the 1974–2008 General Social Surveys (GSS) from the University of Chicago, and for the arts from the 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA) conducted by the US Census Bureau for the National Endowment for the Arts since 1982. All three surveys interviewed nationally representative samples, with over 70% response rates and sample sizes of more than 15,000 adults. The GSS data on sexual frequency show no significant increase in estimated frequency of sex since 1989, despite its strong appeal and the availability of new societal conveniences. This held both before and after adjustment for the age, marital status and education in the population; contrary to expectation, working long hours was associated with increased sex both before and after adjustment for these other demographic predictors. The SPPA trend data on arts participation actually showed a decline in participation, especially after adjustment for its major predictor of years of education; again no decreased participation was found among those working long hours. While scores on verbal ability in the GSS have stayed rather steady since 1974, they have decreased after MCA adjustment for the increased college education in more recent years, as documented by Nie et al. (2009). Thus, contrary to expectations, increases in public education have not been accompanied by improvements on these three indicators.