Personal concepts of stability in the second half of life

The study contributes to the conceptualization of stability in the development of later life by answering four questions: Are there certain concepts of no-change in the population of aging adults? What are the issues that people combine with the idea of no-change? Are the issues of different importance for different groups? What kind of time perspective is expressed in their expectations of no-change?Stability expectations were investigated within a representative sample of about 2934 Germans aged 40–85 who live independently in the community. By means of a sentence completion instrument subjects provided spontaneous statements about self and life conceptions.Content analysis indicated clearly two different concepts of stability among the respondents in the second half of life: One concerns the continuation of gains, the other the maintenance of the status quo. One third of the expectations deals with further gains. Two thirds of the statements, however, refers to the maintenance of the status quo. Expected maintenance of the status quo showed a strong association with older age. In terms of Raynor's [Raynor, J. O. (1982). A theory of personal functioning and change. In J. O. Raynor & E. Entin (Eds.), Motivation, career striving and aging (pp. 249-302). Washington: Hemisphere Publishing Corporation] theory of the time-bound sense of self, the concept ‘continuation of gains’ reflects a future sense of self, while the concept ‘maintenance of the status quo’ refers to a more present sense of self.     

His,hers, or ours? Work-to-family spillover,crossover, and family cohesion

Using the contagion model of spillover and crossover, this study examines gender differences in the effects of workplace characteristics (e.g., hours worked in the paid-labor force, job satisfaction, work flexibility, perception of partner's work–family spillover) on family cohesion among a random sample of dual-earner couples. Important gender differences were found among respondents: the crossover effect is stronger among men, while women's perceptions of family cohesion are more strongly influenced by work and job characteristics. Work–family policy implications are examined.     

Probability of marriage and fertility of women suffering from schizophrenia or affective disorders

Abstract Schizophrenia and affective disorders are the main forms of severe mental illness among women of childbearing age; earlier this century European and American studies showed that the fertility of these patients was reduced. Since the second world war the development of community-orientated psychiatry appears to have resulted in a lessening of differentials between patients and normal women. The present study was designed to estimate probability of marriage and fertility of such patients in London followingthese developments in psychiatry. Over 1,000women aged 16-50 were selected from 1955-63 admissions to a London hospital, and data were collected from medical records. Owing to the demographic heterogeneity of the sample, the analysis of maximum discriminative power was to compare each patient with a normal woman of corresponding age, observed during identical calendar periods, as derived from Registrar General's estimates. The fertility of each patient was compared with that of a normal woman, controlled for age at and duration of marriage, and an assessment was made of the effect of hospital stay on fertility. Before admission, probability of marriage of schizophrenics was just under three-quarters of that of normal women, and after admission this was greatly reduced to just over one-third of normal; women with affective disorders were very similar to normal women as regards probability of marriage, and also fertility. The fertility of schizophrenics was reduced both before and after admission, and much of the latter reduction depended on the effect of hospital stay; however, this fertility differential was too small to be clinically or socially important. The relevance of these results to the population genetics of schizophrenia is noted. Affective disorders are primarily disorders of mood, usually involving a depression, but in a smaller group of patients periods of excitement or elation involving marked overactivity of thought and behaviour. The patient may return to normal between these periods of illness, and although delusions and hallucinations sometimes occur they are usually less prominent than in schizophrenia. Affective disorders generally become evident later in life than schizophrenia, and they often require shorter periods of in-patient treatment, and the medical prognosis is often more hopeful. The expectation of affective psychoses (the most severe forms of the disorder) for a member of the general population varies between 0·3 and 1% from country to country. Milder conditions have also been included in this study, and the expectation of all these affective disorders is likely to be much higher.     

Collaboration and competition in a children's health initiative coalition: a network analysis

Activating communities to achieve public health change and initiate policy reform usually requires collective action from many entities. This case study analyzes inter-organizational networks among members of a coalition created to expand health insurance coverage to uninsured children in a large metropolitan area. Six networks were measured: collaboration, competition, formal agreements, receive funding from, send funding to, and greater communication. The response rate was 65.8% (50 of the 76 active members). Positive network questions such as “who do you collaborate with” elicited many network choices whereas negative ones such as “who do you compete with” elicited few. The collaboration network had a core–periphery structure and analysis showed that a large network can be reduced to a small set of core organizations one-sixth the size of the whole. Centrality (out- and in-degree) was associated with perceived organizational function and perceived barriers to success. For example, organizations that received many choices as collaboration partners were more likely to perceive the coalition functioned well than those who received few choices. The study suggests that perceptions of organizational performance are associated with position in the network, central members are more likely to perceive the organization performs well than those on the periphery.     

Using Social Network Analysis to Enhance Nonprofit Organizational Research Capacity: A Case Study

As donor agencies become more specific in funding requirements, research that can demonstrate the collaborative efforts of a nonprofit agency with its organizational neighbors and how those efforts pay off in terms of capacity and provision of services is highly useful. Recognizing these benefits, a local funding agency in Virginia commissioned a study to look at the ways in which social network analysis (SNA) can enhance the data resources available to nonprofits for funding and grant requests. In this article, we present a case study of a network of 52 nonprofit organizations to illustrate the viability of SNA in terms of funding and research needs specific to nonprofit organizations. We discuss the outcomes of the case study in terms of how the visual and metric outputs of SNA can be used by nonprofits to enhance the accomplishment of their organizational missions and strengthen their grant requests.     

How Changes in Sending Countries Influenced Patterns of Interracial Families Through Intercountry Adoption

The racial characteristics of children adopted from abroad by American parents have fluctuated sharply over time in response to changing legislation and attitudes toward intercountry adoptions in the United States and the sending countries. This study investigates how the likelihood of parents adopting a White versus non-White child varies by the characteristics of the adopted child, the parents, and the household. Our analyses, using the 2008–2012 American Community Survey, show that parents consider the child's age, sex, and health; the presence of adopted and biologically related children in the household; and shifts in the availability of children across major sending countries.     

Involving Service Users in the Teaching and Learning of Social Work Students: Reflections on Experience

This article describes and reflects on a project to develop service user involvement in the teaching and learning of students on one social work degree course. It includes the perspectives of a service user who took a lead role in the project and a part‐time academic member of staff given a specific contract to develop the work. The aspects of the project discussed are: getting started; bringing people together; student learning from individual voices; and student learning from collective experiences. Achievements and obstacles are discussed and key points of learning noted.     

K-medoids inverse regression

Abstract

K-means inverse regression was developed as an easy-to-use dimension reduction procedure for multivariate regression. This approach is similar to the original sliced inverse regression method, with the exception that the slices are explicitly produced by a K-means clustering of the response vectors. In this article, we propose K-medoids clustering as an alternative clustering approach for slicing and compare its performance to K-means in a simulation study. Although the two methods often produce comparable results, K-medoids tends to yield better performance in the presence of outliers. In addition to isolation of outliers, K-medoids clustering also has the advantage of accommodating a broader range of dissimilarity measures, which could prove useful in other graphical regression applications where slicing is required.