The mental health of the never-married

Although the interaction between mental health and marital status has been the object of much social scientific research, little is known about the mental health of never-married people. This article reviews research relevant to mental health and marital status as it pertains to never-marrieds. Methodological problems and current gaps in such research are pointed out. The mental health of never-marrieds is examined from three popular models of mental health—the social protection, social reaction, and social selection models. Each model offers competing explanations for differences in rates between married and unmarried people and between unmarried men and women. Suggestions are offered for improvement in researching the mental health of this neglected group.     

The time it takes to identify facial expressions: Effects of age,gender of subject,sex of sender,and type of expression

Subjects were presented with 35 mm slides of faces and required to indicate the type of expression (pleasant or unpleasant) by a switch movement. Latency and accuracy were recorded. The variables of the study were age (early or late adolescence), gender of subject, sex of sender, and type of expression. The most important results were as follows: There was no age effect when the latencies were adjusted by a covariate to take account of age-related differences in general perceptual-motor skills. There was a strong interaction in which the female pleasant slides produced substantially lower latencies than the other three combinations of sex of sender and type of expression. A weaker interaction indicated faster identification for the female sender, female subject condition than the other three combinations of sex of sender and gender of subject. Overall, the facial identification process was found to be very rapid (about a quarter of a second slower than identification of a simple geometric form) and accurate (.078 error rate).     

The Efficacy of a Program Promoting Rice Self‐Sufficiency in Ghana during a Period of Neoliberalism*

The number of the world's food insecure rose at the end of the first decade of the twenty‐first century. Despite these negative developments, however, a 2010 United Nations report argues that food security could be improved if development efforts are supported by government programs that target smallholder farmers. This report is significant because it challenges the neoliberal perspective, which tends to promote a private‐enterprise market system and favor large‐scale producers. These competing visions for agricultural development frame our evaluation of the impact of the Africa Rice Center's (AfricaRice) efforts to promote new rice varieties among smallholder farmers to narrow the rice consumption‐production gap in Ghana. We begin by distinguishing the outreach efforts to help farmers increase production and the political‐economic conditions that limit the longevity of that outreach effort. We reviewed program documents revealing expenditures and yields among the smallholder farmers, and we conducted intensive interviews with the farmers. Although we find that the program succeeded in mobilizing farmers to increase rice production, we question the sustainability of the program's impact because state funding for the program has ended.     

Does Gender Matter?

In this article we explore gender differences in opinion regarding controversial social issues. The issues we selected are: attitudes toward African Americans, Jews, Muslims, Affirmative Action, abortion, and gays and lesbians. This selection is based on the importance of these issues in public debate and electoral politics. A number of these issues, mainly those related to opinions toward religious and racial groups, reflect the development of the American society and draw lines of possible disagreements and social cleavages. Our purpose is to draw attention to an important factor in determining public opinion toward these issues. We aim to explore issues where gender makes a clear difference, where it does not only hold an important role as other factors such as race and political affiliation, and where considerations of gender need to be combined with other personal attributes in order to understand their real impact. These highlights are intended to shed light on the role of gender in social issues as well as understanding these issues from a perspective that includes gender as a dimension in opinion making.     

The client as learner and the clinician as teacher: Working with an educational lens

This article highlights the social worker's role as educator and how that role relates to clinical practice. The educational component of practice is not grounded in a substantial theoretical, research, or practice literature, and yet teaching is a nascent role for most clinicians. For the most part, the educational aspects of clinical practice have languished, at least from a theoretical perspective, in the shadow of therapy. In this paper we advocate for developing and articulating the clinician/teacher role in order to support effective use of the learning relationship as a dynamic and necessary means for assisting clients in managing life transitions, developmental challenges, and adversity. We propose the use of an educational lens derived from the fields of education, developmental psychology, and cognitive science, to provide perspective from which the client is viewed as learner, and the client‐work relationship is seen as an educational transaction. We highlight the transformative power of educational transactions that we think are as significant as primary caregiving, and also provide a working definition of education as it is used in clinical teaching‐learning relationships. And finally, we elaborate on the range of purposes education may serve in social work practice.