Obesity and hospitalization over the adult life course: does duration of exposure increase use?

Consistent with a new genre of research on life-course analyses of health-service use, this study explores the consequences of long-term exposure to a risk factor. Drawing from cumulative-disadvantage theory, the study examines whether obesity, especially chronic obesity, increases hospitalization admission and length of stay. Analyses make use of hospital records abstracted over 20 years from a national survey of adults 41 to 77 years of age at baseline (n = 4,574). Multiple measures of body weight are used to calculate adult obesity duration. Results reveal that obesity increased hospital admissions and length of stay over the 20 years studied. Among persons obese at any time during the study, years of obesity also led to longer stays. The findings highlight the utility of measures of the duration of risk exposure for both life-course studies of health and tests of cumulative-disadvantage theory.     

Intergenerational class mobility in contemporary Britain: political concerns and empirical findings

In Britain in recent years social mobility has become a topic of central political concern, primarily as a result of the effort made by New Labour to make equality of opportunity rather than equality of condition a focus of policy. Questions of the level, pattern and trend of mobility thus bear directly on the relevance of New Labour's policy analysis, and in turn are likely be crucial to the evaluation of its performance in government. However, politically motivated discussion of social mobility often reveals an inadequate grasp of both empirical and analytical issues. We provide new evidence relevant to the assessment of social mobility - in particular, intergenerational class mobility - in contemporary Britain through cross-cohort analyses based on the NCDS and BCS datasets which we can relate to earlier cross-sectional analyses based on the GHS. We find that, contrary to what seems now widely supposed, there is no evidence that absolute mobility rates are falling; but, for men, the balance of upward and downward movement is becoming less favourable. This is overwhelmingly the result of class structural change. Relative mobility rates, for both men and women, remain essentially constant, although there are possible indications of a declining propensity for long-range mobility. We conclude that under present day structural conditions there can be no return to the generally rising rates of upward mobility that characterized the middle decades of the twentieth century - unless this is achieved through changing relative rates in the direction of greater equality or, that is, of greater fluidity. But this would then produce rising rates of downward mobility to exactly the same extent - an outcome apparently unappreciated by, and unlikely to be congenial to, politicians preoccupied with winning the electoral 'middle ground'.     

Educated Caring: The Emergence of Professional Identity Among Nurses

This article examines the formation of occupational identity in a nursing program. The normative and ideological dimensions of this process are revealed in the program’s goals and the views of educators and students through qualitative data from observations and 30 in-depth interviews. Educators seek to socialize students toward professionalism to raise the occupation’s status by emphasizing the scientific and technical basis of nursing. Yet students uphold a gendered discourse by identifying a normative dimension of caring as central to their occupational identity. The dilemma between professionalism and caring is reconciled as students construct an occupational identity based on “educated caring,” where these two dimensions are equally valuable and significant.

Managing The Lactating Body: The Breast-Feeding Project and Privileged Motherhood

Drawing on interviews with twenty-five mostly white, educated, work-force experienced and class-privileged mothers, this paper explores how these women construct the lactating body as a carefully managed site and breast-feeding as a project—a task to be researched, planned, implemented, and assessed, with reliance on expert knowledge, professional advice, and consumption. The framing of breast-feeding as a project contrasts with the emphases on pleasure, embodied subjectivity, relationality, and empowerment that characterizes much of the recent breast-feeding literature across the humanities and social sciences. I argue that the project frame sheds light on the amount of work and self-discipline involved in compliance with broader middle-class mothering standards set in the consumerist, technological, medicalized, and professionalized contexts that shape parenting in late capitalist America.

Assessing the relevance of higher education courses

The establishment of the European Higher Education Area has involved specifying lists of professional competencies that programs are expected to develop, and with this the need for procedures to measure how every course within a higher education program is aligned with the program's competencies. We propose an instrument for characterizing this alignment, a process that we call assessing the relevance of a course. Using information from the course syllabus (objectives, contents and assessment scheme), our instrument produces indicators for characterizing the syllabus in terms of a competence list and for assessing its coherence. Because assessment involves quality, the results obtained can also be used to revise and improve the course syllabus. We illustrate this process with an example of a methods course from a mathematics teacher education program at a Spanish university.     

Semi-structured interview protocol for constructing logic models

This paper details a semi-structured interview protocol that evaluators can use to develop a logic model of a program's services and outcomes. The protocol presents a series of questions, which evaluators can ask of specific program informants, that are designed to: (1) identify key informants basic background and contextual information, (2) generate logic model elements, (3) model program inputs, activities, outputs, and outcomes, (4) build a rational theory, (5) develop a program theory, (6) prioritize logic model elements, and (7) build a graphical or tabular logic model. The paper will also provide an example of how this approach was used to develop a logic model for a youth mentoring program. It is our hope and belief that with this interview protocol, novice evaluators will be able to generate comprehensive logic models like seasoned professional evaluators.     

Myths of Women and Their Reflection in a Therapy Group

One essential dilemma for modern clinical social work involves the relationship between the processes taking place inside the self and the social, cultural, and political developments affecting a person from the outside. The group-analysis approach focuses on four levels of relationships and communication within the group, among others a primordial level of shared myths, archetypical images, and the collective unconscious as an important component of psychotherapy. This article describes group-analysis therapy with women, analyzing a therapeutic process that used social myths to explore the formative institutionalization processes participants had undergone, thereby expanding themselves, growing, and changing.

Passing Encounters East and West: Comparing Japanese and American Pedestrian Interactions

This study examined the microinteractions of pedestrians in Japan and in the United States as they walked past a confederate. Specifically, the effects of culture, condition (avoid, look-only, and look plus smile) and sex of confederate on glances, smiles, nods, and greetings by passing pedestrians were examined in a field study on over 1000 participants. The hypotheses of (1) lower responsiveness in Japanese pedestrians than in American pedestrians and (2) increased responsiveness as a function of condition were supported in a series of log-linear analyses of pedestrian glances, smiles, nods, and greetings. Both of these main effects were, however, qualified by Culture X Condition interactions on smiles, nods, and greetings, with the large condition effects present in the American pedestrians, but absent in the Japanese pedestrians. The results are discussed in terms of the functions of glances, smiles, nods, and greetings in these brief encounters and how differing cultural norms affect Japanese and American responsiveness. Finally, the limitations of this study and the broader utility of this research paradigm are discussed.

Injunctive Norms and Problem Gambling among College Students

Two studies examined the relationships among injunctive norms and college student gambling. In study 1 we evaluated the accuracy of perceptions of other students’ approval of gambling and the relationship between perceived approval and gambling behavior. In study 2 we evaluated gambling behavior as a function of perceptions of approval of other students, friends, and family. In study 1, which included 2524 college students, perceptions of other students’ approval of gambling were found to be overestimated and were negatively associated with gambling behavior. The results of study 2, which included 565 college students, replicated the findings of study 1 and revealed positive associations between gambling behavior and perceived approval of friends and family. Results highlight the complexity of injunctive norms and the importance of considering the reference group (e.g., peers, friends, family members) in their evaluation. Results also encourage caution in considering the incorporation of injunctive norms in prevention and intervention approaches.     

Lessons from the Grey Area: A Closer Inspection of At-risk Gamblers

The study takes a closer look at at-risk gamblers, with the objective to see how they differ from no-risk gamblers. The data comes from a national gambling survey in 2002, and the age group is 15–74 years. The sample consists of 4188 current gamblers with no current gambling problems or pathology. The analysis includes cross-tabulations and a logistic regression. The results show that at-risk gamblers differed substantially from no-risk gamblers in terms of demographic characteristics, gambling behaviour and the presence of other assumed risk factors. Demographic segments with a higher risk of falling into the at-risk group are men, young people, divorced or single people, and non-western immigrants. Furthermore, gambling problems in the family, beginners luck and misconceptions about winning chances significantly increased the odds for at-risk gambling. The study concludes that at-risk gamblers deserve more attention from research, that their similarity with problem gamblers increases the likelihood that many of them will eventually develop a gambling problem, and that their tendency to be superstitious about winning chances might be exploited in preventive work.