Transitioning Through College With Diabetes: Themes Found in Online Forums

Abstract

Objective: Content analysis of Internet-based diabetes forum text was used to examine the experiences encountered by students with diabetes transitioning into and through college. Participants: Forum posts (N = 238) regarding attending college with diabetes were collected and analyzed. Methods: Thematic coding was used to identify prominent topics, followed by analysis of theme distribution across college transitional stages. Three students with diabetes were recruited to review results and corroborate findings. Results: Twenty thematic categories were identified. Preparation for college involved efforts to move toward autonomous diabetes management. Transitioning in was marked by adjusting to a college lifestyle, then working to manage issues such as busy schedules and alcohol use as continuing students, and turning attention toward future career options and finances while transitioning out. Conclusions: As they move into and through college, students with diabetes negotiate developmental and diabetes-specific tasks within an environment that presents unique logistical, lifestyle, and psychological challenges.     

The Impact of Fathers’ Work and Family Conflicts on Children’s Self-Esteem: The Hong Kong Case

Work and family conflicts are always viewed as issues of human resource management or occupational health. Insufficient attention has been focused on the impact on child development and quality of parenting, especially regarding the impact of a father’s work. To examine the impact of work and family conflicts on the quality of father–child interactions in Hong Kong, a cross-sectional survey was conducted. In total, 556 pairs of working fathers and their school-aged children participated in the survey. The findings of the survey indicated that fathers’ work-to-family conflicts negatively affected the quality of father–child interactions, which in turn caused harm to children’s self-esteem. In addition to work-family conflicts, a low income level of the fathers, a larger number of children in the family, and the presence in the family of children approaching adolescence were significant risk factors to the quality of father–child interactions. The mothers’ active parental involvement and the complexity of the fathers’ occupation were significant protective factors of the quality of father–child interactions. To facilitate strong family bonding and good quality parenting, possible measures to ensure a healthy work-family balance among working fathers are discussed.     

The Impact of Poverty on Children and Young People’s Use of Services

This article describes a qualitative study exploring the impact of poverty on children’s access to and use of services, which took a comparative approach to gather the views of children from more and less affluent households. Findings suggest affordability and related factors including limited mobility constrained service use for less affluent children, resulting in cumulative missed opportunities. However, extended family, friends and agencies facilitated service access, mitigating the impact of poverty on service use to some extent. Research implications include the importance of listening to and taking account of the views of children from lower income families in service planning.     

Building the S&T Digital Library at the Naval Research Laboratory

Abstract

The Ruth H. Hooker Research Library has been delivering digital information to researchers' desktops at Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) sites across the country for over ten years. This article describes the current and planned efforts at unifying the various journals, databases, reference tools, and linking schemes into a comprehensive and integrated Web-based scientific and technical digital library for the benefit of the NRL and the broader naval research community. Serials Review 2003; 29:76–82.     

The warlord as arbitrageur

This article seeks to generate a more precise understanding of the emergence and perpetuation of warlords. First, it offers a simple, intuitive, and empirically grounded conceptual definition of warlordism. Second, it argues that the primary factor contributing to the success of warlords is the ability to take advantage of price differentials for political, economic, and cultural goods across terrains—in a word, to arbitrage. Third, it illustrates this model with a case study of Khun Sa (1934–2007), the self-proclaimed Shan freedom-fighter and “king” of Burma’s heroin trade. Finally, it suggests that the international community rethink its commitment to the norm of sovereignty in order to combat the proliferation of such non-state violence-wielders.     

Evidence of Managerial Short-termism in the UK

This paper considers an aspect of possible managerial short-termism in the UK. It discusses some potential motivations for that phenomenon and presents evidence which suggests that short-termism exists and is positively associated with managerial perceptions of capital market valuation practices. Two hypotheses were developed and tested using the responses concerning R&D expenditure obtained from a postal questionnaire sent to the finance directors of theTimes 1000companies. These were that many top managers in UK quoted companies behave in a ‘short-termist’ manner; and that the extent to which managers behave as hypothesized above is positively associated with their perceptions of the level of emphasis placed by the capital market on measurements related to short-term reported earnings. The results obtained support the hypotheses. Overall, the evidence of the paper is consistent with the view that many finance directors of large UK companies are short-termist in their perceptions and that such short-termism is positively associated with their beliefs about the level of emphasis placed by the capital market on figures of reported earnings.     

Why Have Children in the 21st Century? Biological Predisposition, Social Coercion, Rational Choice

This review examines arguments and evidence pertaining to the question: why have children in settings where the net economic costs of children are clearly substantial? Thereview is organized around three themes: biologicalpredispositions, environment (social coercion) and rationalchoice. Specifically, we explore the argument that evolution hasproduced sets of genes that predispose persons to childbearing bymaking sex and parenthood pleasurable. We review sociologicalarguments regarding the pronatalism/antinatalism of societalinstitutions. Finally, we discuss arguments that stress therationality of childbearing decisions by appealing to biologicalpredispositions and the economic and non-economic values ofchildren. The authors speculate that while a modern socialstructure and rationale supportive of childbearing could beconstructed, such changes are not inevitable and may be difficultin the face of competing interests. Moreover, future social andtechnological change could alter the context of childbearingsubstantially. This uncertainty complicates policyrecommendations.     

Edward Thompson's contribution to eighteenth‐century studies. The patrician‐plebeian model re‐examined

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