Cross‐Sectional Psychological and Demographic Associations of Zika Knowledge and Conspiracy Beliefs Before and After Local Zika Transmission

Perceptions of infectious diseases are important predictors of whether people engage in disease‐specific preventive behaviors. Having accurate beliefs about a given infectious disease has been found to be a necessary condition for engaging in appropriate preventive behaviors during an infectious disease outbreak, while endorsing conspiracy beliefs can inhibit preventive behaviors. Despite their seemingly opposing natures, knowledge and conspiracy beliefs may share some of the same psychological motivations, including a relationship with perceived risk and self‐efficacy (i.e., control). The 2015–2016 Zika epidemic provided an opportunity to explore this. The current research provides some exploratory tests of this topic derived from two studies with similar measures, but different primary outcomes: one study that included knowledge of Zika as a key outcome and one that included conspiracy beliefs about Zika as a key outcome. Both studies involved cross‐sectional data collections that occurred during the same two periods of the Zika outbreak: one data collection prior to the first cases of local Zika transmission in the United States (March–May 2016) and one just after the first cases of local transmission (July–August). Using ordinal logistic and linear regression analyses of data from two time points in both studies, the authors show an increase in relationship strength between greater perceived risk and self‐efficacy with both increased knowledge and increased conspiracy beliefs after local Zika transmission in the United States. Although these results highlight that similar psychological motivations may lead to Zika knowledge and conspiracy beliefs, there was a divergence in demographic association.     

Country-specific institutional effects on ownership: concentration and performance of continental European firms

This paper examines the effect of country-specific institutional constructs on the relationship between ownership concentration and performance for firms in the eight Continental European countries of Austria, Belgium, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Portugal. Using data from publicly-traded firms owned by other companies (i.e., blocks), measures of the quality of investor and creditor protection and the effectiveness of legal institutions are applied. Employing a hierarchical moderated multiple regression analysis, differential validity is established for the relationship between ownership concentration and performance as measured by return on shareholders’ funds. This differential effect comes from creditor protection regimes and is consistent with a relational corporate governance model based on debt finance and concentrated ownership.     

Evidence‐based Management in Practice: Opening up the Decision Process,Decision‐maker and Context

Evidence‐based management (EBM) has been subject to a number of persuasive critiques in recent years. Concerns have been raised that: EBM over‐privileges rationality as a basis for decision‐making; ‘scientific’ evidence is insufficient and incomplete as a basis for management practice; understanding of how EBM actually plays out in practice is limited; and, although ideas were originally taken from evidence‐based medicine, individual‐situated expertise has been forgotten in the transfer. To address these concerns, the authors adopted an approach of ‘opening up’ the decision process, the decision‐maker and the context (Langley et al. ( 1995 ). ‘Opening up decision making: the view from the black stool’, Organization Science, 6, pp. 260–279). The empirical investigation focuses on an EBM decision process involving an operations management problem in a hospital emergency department in Australia. Based on interview and archival research, it describes how an EBM decision process was enacted by a physician manager. It identifies the role of ‘fit’ between the decision‐maker and the organizational context in enabling an evidence‐based process and develops insights for EBM theory and practice.     

Vulnerable young people and substance misuse: expanding on the risk and protection‐focused approach using social psychology

This paper critically reviews recent research exploring risk and protective factors for the development of problematic substance use in populations of young people. Specific populations of young people who are most vulnerable to developing problematic patterns of use are identified, and alterations to methods of data collection which would improve the ability of local authorities to monitor these populations and more efficiently target them for early preventative interventions are highlighted. It is argued that social‐psychological research techniques and approaches should be used to complement a risk and protection‐focused approach in order to improve the design and evaluation of interventions, and provide decision‐aids for practitioners when assessing the needs of vulnerable young people. Examples are provided to demonstrate the utility of social psychology in this regard, and the paper concludes with specific recommendations for future research and services. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘Befriend them but not be their friend’: Negotiations of youth practice in a digital age

ABSTRACT

‘You’ve gotta befriend them but not be their friend’ is how one youth worker thoughtfully described the secret to successful youth practice. This paper draws on experiences of youth workers in the United Kingdom to consider how the growth of digital technologies comes to be negotiated and articulated in professional practice. Situating these experiences alongside young people’s accounts, this article highlights a distinction between young people’s relationship with the digital and adult perceptions of youth and technology. The aim of this paper is to consider what factors contribute towards this divide and where adult perceptions come from, if not from the experiences of young people themselves. The article then goes on to discuss the potential consequences of the presence of technology and discourses surrounding the digital for youth worker’s engagements with young people in professional practice. Overall, this article argues for the enduring relevance of youth workers and physical youth centres in a digital age and joins several scholars in critiquing the chronic under-investment in youth workers and provision in the UK and beyond.     

Aging in Timorese Exile: (Im)mobilities of Care and Intergenerational Relationships

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses transnational care and border regimes in the context of the East Timorese exile in rural Indonesia. Drawing from multi-sited ethnographic research, it explores the ways older people cope with family separation and life in exile, their aspirations, when and how transnational care becomes “on hold”, and how they deal with the impossibility of meeting intergenerational and cultural obligations. Analyzing care using the lens of “circulation”, the paper attends to the asymmetries entailed in intergenerational relationships as well as to how uneven power relations of border regimes shape transnational care exchanges. In the context of “aging in exile”, the paper underlines the importance of understanding older persons’ narratives as they are linked with the ambivalences of other family members across generations. The paper argues that the forms of immobility withholding or limiting caregiving can transcend physical boundaries. They can include the social and emotional borders conflict-divided communities build against one another over time. These “imaginary” borders require us to think about the additional asymmetries entailed in precarious familial relations and how this affects the multiple meanings of care in the context of contemporary border regimes and amid enduring legacies of violence.     

Aids mortality and the mobility of children in Kwazulu Natal,South Africa

This paper examines the effect of parental death on the mobility of 39,163 children aged 0-17 in rural KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, in 2000 and 2001. Parental mortality from all causes prior to and during follow-up increased the risk of a child moving by nearly two times after we controlled for the age and gender of the child and household characteristics. However, in the follow-up period, child mobility following maternal deaths from AIDS was lower than child mobility following maternal deaths from other causes. Younger children, boys, and children whose mothers or fathers were resident members of the children's households were also less likely to move.     

Distress among Children whose Separated or Divorced Parents cannot Agree Arrangements for Them

Correspondence to Ann Buchanan, Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of Oxford, Barnett House, Wellington Square, Oxford OX1 2ER, UK. E-mail: ann.buchanan{at}socres.ox.ac.uk Summary This paper, based on a larger study of children and their parentswho were subjects of a welfare report for the court followingparental separation and divorce, highlights the very high levelsof distress amongst the children involved. As measured by theStrength and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), 52 per cent ofboys and 48 per cent of girls had significant adjustment problemsimmediately after the proceedings and a year later, 62 per centof boys and 32 per cent of girls were still maladjusted. Childrenwere more likely to have problems where parents were also distressedand where there was domestic violence. These findings suggestthat these children should be considered ‘children inneed’ under the 1989 Children Act. and that preventiveservices need to be developed to help parents resolve the arrangementsfor the children without going to court.     

Occupational Cultures and the Embodiment of Masculinity: Hairdressing,Estate Agency and Firefighting

Drawing on data from an Economic and Social Research Council‐funded project, this article explores the implications of different occupational cultures for men's masculine identity. With a focus on embodiment and individual agency, it explores the argument that it is within ‘scenes of constraint’ that gendered identities are both ‘done’ and ‘undone’. In this article we examine embodied experience in occupational cultures commonly stereotyped as ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ (hairdressing, estate agency and firefighting), showing how men conform to, draw upon and resist the gendered stereotypes associated with these occupations. What we argue is that gendered conceptions of ‘the body’ need to be differentiated from individual men's embodiment. Instead, processes of identification can be shown to emerge via embodied experiences of particular kinds of gendered body, and in the ways in which men negotiate the perception of these bodies in different occupational contexts.