Prospects for Examining Perceived Choice and Control Among Older Adults Living With Family

This review aims to advance the field of aging research by examining coresidence with family, race, and other characteristics as potential determinants of choice and control in older adults. Living with family likely impacts perceived choice and control, as household members often work together to make decisions about care. Race may also influence choice and control, as an accumulation of challenges and opportunities create unique life experiences. This review considers human agency in its examination of choice and control. Suggestions for future research will be discussed.     

Men's Identities and Sociolinguistic Variation: The Case of Fraternity Men

The variation patterns of the variable (ING) in an American college fraternity are explained by analyzing individual men's contextualized discourse. While most of the fraternity men predictably use a lower rate of the 'vernacular' variant in weekly meetings, several men use a higher rate. I argue that all of the men index alignment roles associated with power, but that these alignment roles are powerful in different, specifiable ways. Qualitative discourse analysis shows that the men with high rates of the vernacular variant use (ING) to index working-class cultural models and confrontational stances, as part of identity displays based on physical, rather than structural, power. Thus, the variable has several potential abstract social meanings, but specific interactional meanings can only be constructed in contextualized practice.     

Measuring the quality of ambulatory care

The challenge of the 1990s is measuring the quality of medical care. The author has developed a comprehensive matrix to measure the quality of medical care in an ambulatory setting. This matrix was designed with both patient-consumer and physician input. While the matrix has not been field-tested, it should be able to identify areas of weakness and strength and guide corrective actions. The author is now seeking funding for the testing that will be needed to make the matrix operational.     

Using real-time simulations to make medical technology decisions

Study how one health care organization evaluated various vendors of evidence-based content for making clinical decisions.