Facilitating Arts-Based Mindfulness Group Activities with Vulnerable Children: An Example of Nondeliberative Social Group Work Practice

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the process of facilitating arts-based mindfulness group work and activities with vulnerable children age 8 to 12 years who were involved with the child welfare or mental health systems. Specifically, it delineates connections between our group program and Norma Lang’s nondeliberative social group work practice. Importantly, in working with vulnerable children, the authors purposefully fostered the development of mutual aid, creativity, and strengths and recognized that each group had a life of its own.     

Cultural influences on parental bereavement in Chinese families

The purpose of this study was to explore the bereavement experiences of parents who had experienced the death of a child in Chinese families. In-depth interviews were conducted with 10 bereaved parents in Macau, China. Narrative accounts of Chinese parents' experience in the loss of a child were explored to understand how their connection to the deceased child and their worldview were influenced by cultural beliefs and values. Study themes related to parental connections with the deceased child included the use of object linking, memorializing acts, and avoidance of traditional funeral processes, with clear patterns of Chinese cultural influence. Additionally, themes related to impacts on parental worldview included use of the concept of fate as a rationale for child loss and influences on religious orientation. The influence of cultural beliefs and background on Chinese parents as they deal with the issue of a child's death was apparent. Further research is needed and will benefit our understanding of parental bereavement in Chinese families.     

Moral Community of Weisheng: Contesting Hygiene in Republican China

Weisheng, literally “guarding life,” serves as the Chinese translation for the English term “hygiene.” Nevertheless, the respected author of a Chinese textbook on public health from 1934 stated in his preface: “Weisheng is about ‘maintaining health’ and not at all about ‘guarding life.’” When read against the rise of weisheng in Ruth Rogaski's sense of “hygienic modernity” in China during the Republican period, this statement reveals a local and alternative conception of weisheng, linked more closely to traditional Chinese notions of “nurturing life” than to modern practices related to “germ warfare”. Public health advocates, as well as many modern historians, saw little value in this popular discourse and mostly disregarded it. This paper takes this alternative discourse of weisheng seriously, tracing its emergence, articulating its specific features, and exploring its historical significance as an alternative to the notion of hygienic modernity. The central discovery of this article is that Chinese critiques of modern hygiene—personal hygiene, to be specific—did not focus on the actual techniques for preserving health but on their moral implications, i.e., their effects in the context of the dual construction of self-identity and moral community. Drawing on this discovery, this paper explains the curious reasons why political leaders of the Republican period devoted so much energy to the seemingly trivial practices of personal hygiene while leaving untouched the construction of a national system of public health. As the contestation over hygiene became closely connected with larger debates about individualism, nationalism, and modernity, critiques of, resistance to, and local visions of hygiene revealed the development of localized modernities in China, characterized by alternatives in hygiene, self-hood, bodily sensibility, and moral community.     

Peer Groups, Social Identity, and Children's Bullying Behavior

Drawing on social identity theory, this study explored the impact of the peer group on childhood bullying. Participants were 351 students, aged 8 to 13 years. Involvement in bullying, friendship group membership, norms of particular groups, and intra-group positions (prototypical vs. peripheral) were determined using peer reports. Results revealed within-group similarities in bullying behaviors. In addition, bullying was found to be greater when it was endorsed by group norms and when children were prototypical vs. peripheral members of bullying groups. The implications of the findings for the conceptualization of childhood bullying are discussed.     

Institutional Incentives and Trust: Marginalized Groups and the Creation of Trust in Local Government*

Objectives. There is an important theoretical debate concerning whether institutional trust can be created. Since very few governments actually try to promote trust directly, it has been difficult to test this debate empirically. To investigate this debate, we examine an innovative new program in Japan that is specifically designed to promote trust in institutions—community currencies. Methods. We use propensity score matching to determine if community currency program participation in Japan increases institutional trust. Results. We find that participation increases institutional trust. Additionally, we find that supporters of political parties with little political power receive a greater impact from program participation. Conclusions. These results show that institutional trust can be increased by participation in incentive programs of cooperation, and suggest that members of marginalized groups will benefit more from program participation.     

Comparison of older adult performance during the functional-reach and limits-of-stability tests

Despite widespread use of the functional-reach (FR) and limits-of-stability (LOS) tests, comparisons of postural strategies and postural limits for these tests have not been previously reported. The purpose of this study was to compare postural strategies as determined by cross-correlation analyses of trunk and lower leg angular displacements and postural limits as assessed by maximum center-of-gravity (COG) excursions as older adults at low fall risk completed the FR and LOS tests. Fourteen older adults completed three FR and LOS trials while standing on a Balance Master force platform. Results indicated that despite relatively similar instructions to reach or lean as far as possible without losing balance or altering the base of support, their performance differed with regard to postural strategies employed and maximum COG excursions produced. These findings suggest that because of differences in task constraints, FR and LOS tests should not be used interchangeably.     

Feasibility study for collecting alcohol and other drug use data among secondary school students: a web-based survey approach

This study examined the feasibility of using a Web-based survey to collect alcohol and other drug use data from secondary school students in an urban school district in the Midwest. A Web-based survey was self-administered by a random sample of 6th through 11th grade students in the spring of 2002. The final sample consisted of 1,536 secondary school students (781 women and 755 men). The sample was 57% White, 40% African American, and 3% from other racial and ethnic groups. Several indicators of data quality were examined including response rate, absenteeism, refusals, substantive data, and data processing time. The study achieved a response rate of 89.1%. The results of the present study provide evidence that a Web-based survey can be successfully implemented in an economically and racially diverse urban sample of secondary students. While researchers conducting survey research within secondary schools should consider using Web-based survey approaches, additional research is needed to compare Web-based surveys to more traditional approaches to collecting data.     

Evaluating child and youth homelessness

Following a review of approaches taken to generate accurate estimates of the scale of child and youth homelessness in America, this article documents the methods and results of a multipronged count of homeless children and youth in New Haven, Connecticut. The survey used in this count accessed demographics and service needs, and was administered on the streets and in a wide range of service provision settings. A total of 170 homeless families were located, comprised primarily of young, single, African American women and their children. These families included 323 children, suggesting an annual prevalence of 1,688 in this community. This work addresses the paucity of information on homeless children and youth located in small to midsized cities     

Stress and coping among older workers

Age-related changes in physical and cognitive abilities can raise adaptive challenges for older working adults. Older workers exhibit considerable capacity to manage and cope with the stress of job and environmental demands, but at some point, many can become overwhelmed, and find themselves at increased risk for health consequences, injury, disability, and diminished productivity. Older workers are, however, a highly heterogeneous population, and many continue to work safely and successfully. Employers are encouraged to join efforts to provide an optimal person-environment-fit for all of their employees, but with a sensitivity to the increased variability to be expected among older employees.     

Push or Pull? Design of Content Delivery Systems

Advances in information technology, especially the expansion of cellular and WiFi networks, are dramatically changing how people consume digital content. These changes in user access behavior present a challenge of delivering content to a diversified consumer base. This article addresses this challenge by identifying the key factors for the design of content delivery systems (gross value of content, delivery delay, sensitivity to delivery delay, accessing cost, and processing cost) and explicitly modeling their interactions. We investigate two content delivery systems—push and pull systems, and solve for the content provider's optimal push frequency decision and consumers’ push versus pull decisions. We show that the content provider's selection of push frequency plays a critical role determining the segmentation of the consumer market into the push group and the pull group. Our findings suggest that firms should set a relatively high push frequency to cater to high‐type consumers, which leads to two consumer groups with low‐type consumers belonging to the pull group and high‐type consumers belonging to the push group.