The role of support person for Ngaanyatjarra women during pregnancy and birth

BackgroundThis study took place in a remote community on the Ngaanyatjarra Lands, Western Australia. Ngaanyatjarra women's cultural practices have been subject to erosion during the past 70 years. Women are now expected to birth hundreds of kilometres from home and, due to financial barriers, without family support. Older women lament their lack of input into, and control of, contemporary birthing services.Research questionIn order to provide culturally appropriate maternity services we asked: What issues would the Ngaanyatjarra women of the community like to see resolved in the area of antenatal and birthing services?Participants and methodsEligible participants were any Ngaanyatjarra women of the study community who had birthed at least once. We utilised a participatory research methodology. 36 women were interviewed.FindingsThis paper discusses one finding related to support for child-bearing women. The role is important in many ways. Ngaanyatjarra women did not traditionally have their support persons with them during labour and birth, nor do they necessarily expect them to be present in current times. Most women do, however, wish to have a support person with them during antenatal checkups and when they travel to town to await birth.ConclusionAboriginal women from remote communities should be able to have a support person with them when they access regional birthing services, but the nature of this role must not be assumed. A culturally appropriate service has input from the community, provides options and respects choices.     

A Simplified Indicator of Social Well-Being in the United States: Examining the Ecological Impact of Family Formation within a County Level Framework

In 1995, a study entitled ??Does Marriage Matter??? was published by Linda Waite in the journal of Demography, which was concerned with the direction of such causal relationships. While Waite??s examination of the causal relationships associated with marriage, and most other analyses of this type, is primarily concerned with the individual level effects of marriage on a variety of outcomes, little is understood concerning the ecological effect of community marriage rates on levels of aggregate well-being. This study aims to contribute to this gap through the implementation of a recent conceptualization of social well-being as a multi-dimensional measure incorporating both biological, operationalized as average life expectancy, and social phenomena, operationalized as, community level crime rates (Raphael, Making the links: what do health promotion, crime prevention, and social development have in common? in 2004). It is important to understand such aggregate level effects in the face of the existing literature, which relies heavily on relational associations which could be subject to ecological fallacy. Analytic techniques incorporate Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis and spatial regression techniques, due to the high existence of spatial autocorrelation often evident in census data, as a way of understanding the effect of the aggregate level marriage rate on the constructed social well being indicator.     

Auditory status and experiences of abuse among college students

Studies that explore experiences of abuse among deaf or hard of hearing college students are sparse and usually focus on lifetime experiences rather than the college years. A random sample of more than 1,000 college students at a campus in Upstate New York provided the data for this study. An institute for the deaf or hard of hearing was one of the colleges at the university and provided a unique opportunity to explore experiences among this demographic. Victimization rates and experiences by auditory status--deaf and hard of hearing or hearing--were examined. Binomial regression analyses were employed and findings indicated a significant association with being deaf or hard of hearing and physical and psychological abuse at the hands of a partner. Implications for policy and future research are discussed.     

How do sex ratios in China influence marriage decisions and intra-household resource allocation?

This article examines how imbalanced sex ratios influence marriage decisions and household bargaining. Using data from the 1982 Chinese census, the traditional “availability ratio” is modified to reflect the degree to which men tend to marry women from different cohorts. This ratio reflects the average tendency of men to prefer women who are close in age to women who are several years younger than them by weighting cohort sizes using the proportion of people in the population who marry someone born in a different cohort. Given that men generally marry younger women, this ratio varies independently of the size of one’s own birth cohort. Yet, the ratio fluctuates considerably across individuals, as the sizes of birth cohorts in China vary across time and regions. This enables us to examine how variability in such ratios may influence marriage decisions and household bargaining. The findings suggest that women exercise greater bargaining power once married. Results indicate that as women become scarcer in the marriage market, they have healthier sons. Men also delay marriage, and consume less tobacco and alcohol. This paper also highlights how sensitive findings may be to using this modified weighted availability ratio rather than a traditional unweighted availability ratio.     

Compassion Satisfaction Among Social Work Practitioners: The Role of Work–Life Balance

Abstract

Previous research has established that social work practitioners are especially vulnerable to work-related psychological distress and burnout due to the high-stress nature of the profession, yet less research has focused on examining factors are associated with social worker retention. Emerging research on compassion satisfaction suggests that this factor could mitigate professional burnout, yet there is a gap in research focusing explicitly on examining compassion satisfaction among social workers. To address this gap in knowledge, this quantitative study collected survey data on practicing social workers who were alumni from a large southeastern university (n?=?120) to examine individual and organizational factors associated with compassion satisfaction. Multiple regression analyses revealed that higher levels of emotional intelligence, perceived work autonomy, and perceived work–life balance were associated with an increase in compassion satisfaction among experienced, licensed social work practitioners. Findings have implications for how social work employers can promote compassion satisfaction through cultivating emotional intelligence among practitioners, allowing social workers autonomy in decision making, and providing supportive work environments. Recommended directions for future research include longitudinal studies with large sample sizes that expound research on compassion satisfaction by examining the role of additional factors, such as client population, job role characteristics, and supervisor support.     

An Experiment in Overseas Field Instruction

This paper reports on a study that examined the knowledge needed for practice in community mental health and the primary source for this knowledge. Differences were found in knowledge areas needed for practice in community mental health settings when contrasted with practice in more traditional mental health agencies. The most frequently indicated source of knowledge for social work roles in community mental health was on-the-job experience. Courses in social work schools were not a primary source of knowledge for the many nonclinical roles undertaken by social workers in community mental health.     

Suicide intervention training for college staff: Program evaluation and intervention skill measurement

Objective: Suicide remains a pressing issue for college communities. Consequently, gatekeeper trainings are often provided for staff. This study examines the effect of one such program, Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST). Participants: 51 college employees received ASIST in August of 2014 and were compared to 30 wait-list control participants. Methods: Repeated Measures ANOVA were used to analyze pre- and post-training: (a) skills at responding to students-at-risk; (b) attitudes toward suicide; (c) knowledge about suicide; and (d) comfort/competence/confidence at helping a student-at-risk. Results: Significant positive training effects were observed for ASIST on self-report measures and also for objectively assessed skill at responding, after adjusting for a potential scoring limitation of the Suicide Intervention Response Inventory, Revised (SIRI-2). Conclusions: ASIST improved the self-perception of college staff at working with students-at-risk of suicide and also their skills at performing an intervention. Further, analysis of SIRI-2 data provides support for a potential instrument revision.     

Estimating the costs of preventive interventions

The goal of this article is to improve the practice and reporting of cost estimates of prevention programs. It reviews the steps in estimating the costs of an intervention and the principles that should guide estimation. The authors then review prior efforts to estimate intervention costs using a sample of well-known but diverse studies. Finally, the authors illustrate the principles with an example, the Family Bereavement Program. They conclude that example by discussing whether and how the costs of the intervention might differ when implemented in a real-world setting.     

Mixed-Mode Contacts In Web Surveys: Paper is Not Necessarily Better

This paper investigates the impact of paper and email contactson web survey response rates. We use six combinations of paperand email prenotifications and reminders to test the impactof mixed-mode contacts. In addition, we use two survey samplesthat differ in their relationship with the sponsoring institutionto test if the impact of contact mode is conditional on relationshipbetween respondents and the survey researchers. Contrary toprevious research, we find little differences in response ratesacross experimental groups.