Retaining clients in an outcome monitoring evaluation study: HIV prevention efforts in community settings

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention (DHAP) conducted outcome monitoring studies on evidence-based interventions (EBIs) provided by CDC-funded community-based organizations (CBOs). Critical to the success of outcome monitoring was the ability of CBOs to recruit and retain clients in evaluation studies. Two EBIs, Video Opportunities for Innovative Condom Education and Safer Sex (VOICES/VOCES) and Healthy Relationships, were evaluated using repeated measure studies, which require robust follow-up retention rates to increase the validity and usefulness of the findings. The retention rates were high for both VOICES/VOCES CBOs (95.8% at 30 days and 91.1% at 120 days), and Healthy Relationships CBOs (89.5% at 90 days and 83.5% at 180 days). This paper presents an overview of the retention of clients, challenges to follow-up, and strategies developed by CBOs to achieve high retention rates. These strategies and rates are discussed within the context of the CBOs’ target populations and communities.     

近十年来我国青少年艾滋病相关研究综述

通过对近十年来我国青少年艾滋病相关研究的全面回顾,归纳了当前我国青少年艾滋病的流行态势,梳理了青少年艾滋病的相关认知、态度、行为及其需求,并分析了当前我国青少年艾滋病的防治对策。在此基础上,就目前研究存在的问题及其未来研究方向提出了具体的建议。     

‘He wants,I don't’: females' contrasting attitude about fertility intentions for a second child

Thanks to the use of household-level micro-data from the ‘Family and Social Subjects’ survey carried out by the Italian National Statistical Office in 2003, this paper aims at understanding the determinants of a woman's contrasting attitude towards her partner's positive intention for another child considering the bargaining process literature.

The econometric analysis is based on sample selection models that allow the study of this issue considering the probability of recording a couple's disagreement on higher-order fertility. The analysis finds that when within the couple the female partner is more educated, she disagrees less with her partner's positive intention for a second child. If we deal with the job-related features, the probability that the female contrasts her partner's positive fertility intention is higher when she is unemployed, when she is employed but she experiences a lack of provision of child-care, and if she perceives that another child might jeopardize her career.

The findings are coherent with the assumption that a higher consistency between the individual's and the couple's fertility intentions may be achieved; the presence of a rigid labour-market and the lack of public child-care provision and of public policies should contribute to explaining the problems in reconciling family and working life.     

Continuity or rupture? Roma/Gypsy communities in rural and urban environments under post-socialism

The aim of the article is to contribute to existing research and debates on social change associated with the post-socialist transformation in Eastern and Central Europe. It does so by drawing attention to and examining the diversity of ways in which such change has been lived through and reflected upon by members of Roma (Gypsy) communities living in urban and rural environments. Drawing on ethnographic research amongst excluded and segregated Roma in the ‘ghettos’ of Czech cities and in rural ‘Gypsy settlements’ in the Slovak countryside, the author notes a striking difference between how members of these communities, belonging to the same extended families, lived through and reflect upon the post-socialist transformation. While the members of the Roma communities living in Czech cities perceive the post-socialist transformation as one of the most dramatic ruptures in their life trajectories, the rural Roma do not seem to have been affected as deeply and dramatically, and their life trajectories seem to be framed by different events than those directly associated with the market transition. The paper analyses and explains the social and historical conditions that (co)produce the sense of rupture or continuity in the life trajectories of members of Roma communities exposed to urban and rural environments.     

The Color of Neoliberalism: The “Modern Southern Businessman” and Postwar Alabama’s Challenge to Racial Desegregation1

Prior research on the origins and diffusion of the neoliberal project have emphasized the role of elite economists, yet no explanations have been provided as to why neoliberal reforms were attractive to the broader U.S. population. To fill this gap in the literature, this article focuses on the voluntary sector struggles against desegregation and corporate taxation in postwar Alabama. I examine the emergence of a language of privatization that degraded all things public as “black” and inferior and all things private as “white” and superior, which provided the pretext to attract national white support for the neoliberal turn. Empirically, the article focuses on the construction of the modern southern businessman that emerged from struggles to economically modernize the South, and the construction of a publicly financed private school system that emerged from the struggles to fight school desegregation. These two struggles fused under the George Wallace political umbrella, whose regional and national political career diffused the racial language from its origins in 1950s Alabama to the national level in the 1960s and early 1970s.     

Adult Exploration of Attachment Interview in Family Therapy

The Adult Exploration of Attachment Interview (AEAI) is a therapeutic interview developed by the author to assist adults to understand themselves and their relationships with others, especially with a partner, co‐parent and/or children. It is suitable for individuals and couples struggling to overcome repeated patterns of relating, helping to improve their intimate or parenting relationships through greater self and other understanding. The AEAI explores an adult's early relational learning, especially in regard to attachment needs, in order to allow change. The interview uses specific externalising language to help persons tolerate difficult memories, reduce guilt and shame and integrate their thoughts and feelings. It applies key implications of attachment theory and the approach is illustrated by examples from therapy.     

Chilling out in ‘cosmopolitan country’: Urban/rural hybridity and the construction of Daylesford as a ‘lesbian and gay rural idyll’

This paper advances scholarship on ‘lesbian and gay rural idylls’. A growing literature examines how ‘lesbian and gay rural idylls’ are not only produced in opposition to the urban, but are themselves urban constructs. We extend these contentions by exploring the processes of idyllisation suffusing lesbian and gay festival tourism in Daylesford, a town in non-metropolitan Victoria, Australia. We find that Daylesford’s idyllisation by the lesbian and gay tourism industry blurs the urban/rural binary, and instead hybridises rurality and urbanity in the tourism images and practices of ‘cosmopolitan country’ associated with the town. Research findings from Daylesford are analysed to examine how the dynamics of tourism marketing and festival attendance help produce and articulate this hybrid variant of the ‘lesbian and gay rural idyll’. We utilise two sets of mostly qualitative data for this inquiry: travel commentaries in the news media, and a survey conducted in Daylesford at the 2006 ChillOut Festival, Australia’s largest lesbian and gay rural festival.     

Organizing Identities: Immigrant New Yorkers Negotiating Latinidad1

Across the United States, immigrants’ rights protests, marches, and demonstrations captured the attention of the public and of lawmakers in the spring of 2006. Much of the rhetoric that emerged from these mobilizations included an assertion of Latino/a immigrant identity. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews conducted in New York City in 2006 and 2007, this article argues that, confronted with a strong and clear organizational discourse of pan‐ethnic Latino/a unity, Latin American immigrants articulated a variety of identities. I found no clear link between self‐identification as Latino/a and participation in political mobilizations for immigration reform; this is in contrast to previous studies of Latino/a political activity. Examining the interactions, perspectives, and practices of Latin American immigrants involved with one community‐based organization, this study attempts to address the lack of micro‐level studies of immigrants’ everyday lives.     

Who runs the mill? The distribution of power in Swedish social service agencies

The aim of the article is to describe how significant actors in Swedish social service agencies perceive their own and other groups' influence over central areas of their agencies, and also to investigate the correspondence between these actors' perceptions of influence and what is said about the distribution of influence in the legislation and in the literature on social service organisations. The investigation is based on a questionnaire sent to politicians, managers and social workers in Swedish municipalities.

The analysis shows a concordance between the actors' own perceptions of their influence, and the ‘real’ distribution of influence, as perceived by the same actor groups. The general picture is that the politicians feel they have a strong influence on policy, delegation and, partly, also on organisational issues, but it is noteworthy that the top managers feel they have a stronger influence over all these areas. Social workers' influence is limited to the choice of working methods and operational procedures. The results indicate that some core elements of the New Public Management (NPM) model of governance exist in Swedish municipalities and seem to be generally accepted among significant actors. However, the results raise important questions about who should be held accountable for neglect and mismanagement and for failure in implementation of reforms in the social services.     

Dilemmas between law and ethics in Czech social work

In many situations social workers face the necessity of making a decision. One of the most frequent scenarios of making a choice is the dilemma of whether to intervene or not. The choice itself is conditioned on the one hand by the obligation to comply with the relevant legal requirements and on the other by the necessity of respecting ethical values, rules and principles. One often encounters a situation when the legal requirements and ethical conduct appear in mutual contradiction. This essay will deal with the possible concept of the relationship between law and ethics giving examples of dilemmas between ‘confidentiality’ and the ′informing or reporting obligation′ in the context of Czech social work.