Experiential versus rational training: a comparison of student attitudes toward homosexuality

Based on Epstein's (1994a) cognitive-experiential self-theory, two new training interventions were designed to teach students about gay, lesbian and bisexual issues. The efficacy of these theoretically based interventions was assessed in a short-term (7-week, three occasion) longitudinal study. Fifty undergraduate psychology students were randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups: Rational Training, Experiential Training, or Control Group. A residualized change score procedure was used to analyze change in levels of sexual prejudice and affect across the three types of measurement (pre-test, post-test, and follow-up). A 3 (Rational Training, Experiential Training, Control Group) x 2 (Low Sexual Prejudice, High Sexual Prejudice) MANOVA revealed that after the training, participants in the Experiential Group (affective training) had more accepting attitudes toward homosexuality compared to the Control Group. In addition, participants in the Experiential Group experienced more positive affect compared to the Rational and Control Groups and experienced more negative affect compared to the Rational Group. Findings are discussed and suggestions for future research are provided.     

Mental disorder, subsistence strategies, and victimization among gay, lesbian, and bisexual homeless and runaway adolescents

This study compares participation in deviant subsistence strategies, street victimization, and lifetime prevalence of five mental disorders (conduct disorder, major depressive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, alcohol abuse, and drug abuse) among heterosexual males and females (n = 366) and gay, lesbian, and bisexual (n = 63) homeless and runaway adolescents from the first wave of a longitudinal study of homeless youth in four Midwestern states. The results indicate that gay, lesbian, and bisexual adolescents were more likely to have been physically and sexually abused by caretakers, we more likely to engage in risky survival strategies when on their own (including survival sex), were more likely to be physically and sexually victimized when on the streets, and were more likely to meet criteria for mental disorder than were their heterosexual counterparts.     

Money management,patient safety and customer service among top concerns for physician executives. Interview by Barbara Linney

Find out what's happening today and what the future may be like for physician executives. Seasoned physician executives and well-known physician executive recruiters share their insights on the profession.     

Cohabitation Transitions Among Low-income Parents: A Qualitative Investigation of Economic and Relational Motivations

At the intersection of the cohabitation and residential mobility literatures is an opportunity to better understand the factors that shape cohabitation choices for low-income couples. By investigating push and pull factors associated with cohabitation, this study aimed to identify linkages between cohabitation transitions and the broader socioeconomic context within which they occur. Collecting data from both members of low-income couples and carefully tracking all residential and cohabitation transitions made it possible to identify a wide range of push and pull factors that motivate couples to move. The findings suggest that cohabitation transitions were often motivated by economic necessity. Romantic partnerships, while important, were less frequently mentioned than other factors (i.e., interpersonal negotiations, finances, housing quality) in determining a couple’s living arrangements. These findings have important implications for understanding the complex relationship between economic and non-economic factors that shape romantic relationships.     

They tell us “we don’t belong in the world and we shouldn’t take up a place”: HIV discourse within two-spirit communities

Objectives: We investigated how HIV discourse is negotiated and given meaning in the lives of young, male two-spirit leaders, when considering their communities’ and their own health and wellness. These men are also unique in that they have always lived under the specter and dominant discourse of HIV; that is, they are part of a second generation since the time of HIV/AIDS. Methods: We conducted a discourse analysis of six qualitative interviews from the HONOR Project, a multi-site, mixed-methods study of the two-spirit community across the United States, foregrounding the relationships among trauma, coping, and health. Results: HIV functions discursively in four ways: as a shadow presence, professionalized identity, health sub-/priority, and vehicle for belonging and (re)claiming. Conclusions: This study is important to social work as well as HIV prevention and care as it affords voice to two-spirit men, a highly marginalized community and one often silenced in scientific discourse. And, it centralizes language and context, complicating social epidemiological characterizations of HIV/AIDS, risk, and historically traumatized populations.     

Unmarried Coparenting in the Context of Poverty: Understanding the Relationship Between Stress,Family Resource Management,and Resilience

Due to rising rates of non-marital birth in the United States, unmarried families have been the subject of extensive research and the target of government funded interventions over the last 15 years. Despite a growing literature on this population, few studies have addressed how unmarried couples coparent in the context of poverty. In the present study we used in-depth interviews with paired mothers and fathers to explore resilience processes in unmarried coparenting. We found that unmarried couples aspired to be good coparents, but the stress of living in poverty and the challenges of parenting young children led some to experience family strain or crisis. Using family stress theory as a framework for organizing the findings, we concluded that family resource management distinguished couples that adapted successfully to the task of coparenting from those that struggled to do so. Implications for theory, future research, and practice are discussed.     

Qualitative Evaluation Methods in Ethics Education: A Systematic Review and Analysis of Best Practices

Although qualitative research offers some unique advantages over quantitative research, qualitative methods are rarely employed in the evaluation of ethics education programs and are often criticized for a lack of rigor. This systematic review investigated the use of qualitative methods in studies of ethics education. Following a review of the literature in which 24 studies were identified, each study was coded based on 16 best practices characteristics in qualitative research. General thematic analysis and grounded theory were found to be the dominant approaches used. Researchers are effectively executing a number of best practices, such as using direct data sources, structured data collection instruments, non-leading questioning, and expert raters. However, other best practices were rarely present in the courses reviewed, such as collecting data using multiple sources, methods, raters, and timepoints, evaluating reliability, and employing triangulation analyses to assess convergence. Recommendations are presented for improving future qualitative research studies in ethics education.     

The suburban paradox of conviviality and racism in postcolonial Britain

Taking my cue from work on relations of interethnic conviviality in super-diverse cities across the globe, this paper examines the ways in which conviviality co-exists with racism as found in a suburban British town. My argument is that ethnographic attention to the proximity of interethnic relations of conviviality to racism is necessary to guard against overly celebratory accounts of conviviality that downplay everyday manifestations of racism. By situating my study of conviviality in a suburban town, my account begins to unpack the characteristics of convivial relations formed in suburban neighbourhoods as opposed to super-diverse cities often studied by ethnographers in this area of inquiry. I examine manifestations of interethnic relations between British Asian Muslims and white British residents of this town. In contrast to the mainstream images that depict British Asian Muslims as a potential threat to neighbourhood stability and national security, some white and British Asian Muslim residents formed neighbourly relationships of trust, care and mutual recognition with each other across ethnic, racial, religious, gender, class and generational differences. Yet, my analysis of these convivial relations reveals some paradoxical ways in which individuals’ experiences of interethnic relations co-exist with their xenophobic, racist and Islamophobic attitudes.     

Beyond attribution: Building new measures to explain the reputation threat posed by crisis

Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) suggests attributed responsibility is the key factor explaining the reputation threat posed by crisis situations. However, studies on SCCT have found using its prescribed responses has a small effect. This research uses image repair theory’s conception of crisis to suggest that offensiveness is another factor that should be measured in order to explain the reputation threat posed by crisis. Using the literature of moral foundations theory, interviews with 20 people with expertise in public relations, and 338 participants from mTurk in a 2 (attributed responsibility)?×?10 (crisis offensiveness) experiment, this research develops valid, reliable measures of attributed responsibility for crisis offensiveness, and mitigating virtuousness, that explain 73.7% of the reputation threat posed by crisis in the sample, as opposed to 24.8% explained by attributed responsibility alone in the same sample. Implications for public relations scholars and practitioners are discussed.