Staying safe while consuming alcohol: a qualitative study of the protective strategies and informational needs of college freshmen

OBJECTIVE: In this qualitative study, the authors examined how students attempt to minimize harm to themselves and others when drinking. PARTICIPANTS: The authors recruited freshmen at a large, mid-Atlantic US public university during the fall semester of 2005 to participate in 8 focus groups. METHODS: The moderator's guide was developed through an iterative process that included input from experts and pilot testing. The researchers audiotaped focus group conversations, transcribed them, and subjected them to an interrater reliability check. Analysis was based on the framework of Information-Motivation-Behavioral Skills Model and a phenomenological approach. RESULTS: College students have a repertoire of coping strategies they use in an attempt to safeguard themselves and their friends from harm when drinking. Strategies encompass planning a safe context for drinking, using safety measures to minimize harm when drinking, and taking care of someone who has consumed too much alcohol. CONCLUSIONS: A harm-reduction focus that acknowledges and builds on existing protective strategies may be a promising avenue for alcohol interventions.     

Dilemmas of Environmental Planning in Post‐Urban New Jersey*

Objective. New Jersey's state land‐use plan, designed to preserve open space by directing growth to urban centers, rests on the assumption that nature (the “environment”) and the urban constitute separate objective spheres, such that nature can be preserved as an end in itself. Through a spatial transformation that de‐populated the cities and suburbanized the countryside, however, the urban and the environmental have become overlapping discursive categories, each expressing the absence of the other, and raising serious dilemmas for environmental planning. Methods. This article uses Census data to document the extent of New Jersey's urban and racial transformation over more than half a century, and examines county and municipal reviews of the state's proposed land‐use plan to document the resulting contradictory interpretations of nature articulated in political debate over state‐plan implementation. Results. The attempt to forge a statewide consensus on environmental and open‐space preservation has been stymied by the contradictory perspectives of urban and suburban constituencies, whose responses focus on the urban rather than the environmental implications of proposed land‐use controls. State planners seeking political support for environmental protection find themselves embroiled in often vitriolic debates about urban and suburban lifestyles, with implicit racial subtexts, and about the legitimacy of state intervention perceived as supporting antithetical values. Conclusions. Contrary to the state's attempt to separate the urban and the environmental, the route to environmental protection in New Jersey may lie through urban revitalization.     

Citizens' Anti-highway Revolt in Post-Pinochet Chile: Catalyzing Innovation in Transport Planning

During the last third of the 20th century, citizens throughout North America and Europe organized protests against urban highway projects, influencing urban transport planning in ways that shape its evolution to this day. With the globalization of car-centred urban planning models, some similar movements have emerged in developing countries. What, if anything, can they tell us about citizens' role in innovation to achieve more socially just, good and livable cities? Using a multidisciplinary approach grounded in planning theory and a local adaptation of participatory action research methods, this study explores lessons from an anti-highway movement in Santiago, Chile (1997). This study contributes citizens' perspective on crucial issues within the philosophy and history of city planning, examining shifts in governance that can significantly influence the potential for change in planning and city systems, even under adverse conditions. Is improving participation just a matter of ‘getting the process right’? This experience indicates that it requires re-formulating frameworks to encompass democratization, fostering multi-scalar, self-generating civil society organizations, and focusing on the role of organized citizens, rather than individuals, as they act on policy ecologies. The evidence from this Santiago case supports Portugali's argument that planning is both a profession, exercised by especially trained ‘experts’, and a skill exercised by citizens working from their everyday expertise. This example explores the mechanisms through which, even in a relatively hostile environment, self-generated citizen organizations may play a significant role in contesting business-as-usual debates and achieving innovative policies favouring greater equality and sustainability.     

Integrative module-based family therapy: a model for training and treatment in a multidisciplinary mental health setting

Thirty years ago, leaders in psychiatry expressed hope for more interdisciplinary collaboration with family therapy. Since then marriage and family therapy (MFT) has entered the mainstream of clinical practice in psychiatry and psychology. It is mandated for training in psychiatry and psychology. We propose a model for collaboration, training, and treatment in interdisciplinary mental health settings that strives to integrate empirical bodies of knowledge in MFT, psychiatry, and psychology and to provide a usable and testable clinical approach to treatment. It can be taught to trainees with various or limited training in MFT This model delineates nine critical domains that guide treatment. Flexibility is central to this model, focusing on techniques and clinical methods based on empirically supported treatments, when available, and best-practice standards.     

Exploring the Nature of Same-Sex Relationships

This study explored the relationship structure and experiences of 145 people in the United States, aged 50 and above, in long-term, same-sex relationships. A survey assessed relationship satisfaction and roles, caregiving, shared assets, and relationship protection and support. The ENRICH couple scales revealed high scores in communication, conflict resolution, and couple satisfaction. Most participants had taken steps to protect shared assets and assign legal authority to their partners. Participants expressed differing views regarding marriage. This study reveals distinctions based on gender and age that will inform practice with this population.     

FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS AS DYNAMIC FARSIGHTED NETWORKS

In the presence of multilateral negotiations, are Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) necessary for, or will they prevent, global free trade? I answer this question using a dynamic farsighted model of network formation among asymmetric countries. Ultimately, FTAs prevent global free trade when there are two larger countries and one smaller country but FTAs can be necessary for global free trade when there are two smaller countries and one larger country. The model provides insights into the dynamics of recent real‐world negotiations and recent results in the literature on the empirical determinants of trade agreements. (JEL C71, F12, F13)     

Building Affordable Rental Housing for Seniors: Policy Insights From Canada

ABSTRACT

In the context of healthy aging, we explore newly constructed, unassisted affordable rental housing with respect to design, location, and the involvement of seniors in decision making. We do so from the perspectives of seniors and project sponsors. Overall, the themes that emerged from these two groups of participants diverge. Seniors spoke about the importance of shared space, design-related barriers to aging in place, and problems accessing transportation. They also expressed a range of views regarding participation in decision making, from conveying it was not necessary to requesting resident involvement. Project sponsors spoke about cost, feasibility, and, in certain cases, learning how to build housing; they also evinced disparate views about the nature of the housing they were providing and the importance of seniors' involvement. Recommendations include linking housing to health and social policy, implementing guidelines for sponsors related to design and location, and providing increased funding to offset new costs.     

A Mixed Methods Examination of Adolescents' Reports of the Values Emphasized in Their Families

Building on value socialization and personal values theories, this study examined adolescents' open‐ended reports of the values their families emphasize. Based on open‐ended reports of an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse sample of adolescents, we described adolescent‐reported familial values using qualitative and cluster analysis techniques. Adolescents' open‐ended responses about the values held by their families were coded using a prominent circumplex value model, and values largely, but not completely, aligned with this model. Using person‐oriented cluster analysis on the coded data, seven distinct value clusters were identified that captured various sets of values that adolescents hear from families. Several demographic differences emerged among the clusters, and mean differences by familial value cluster were found for adolescents' close‐ended reports of values of helping others and religiosity. Results suggest that adolescents are able to articulate values emphasized in their families in ways that fit a universal structure of values; these values are related in meaningful ways to the values that they themselves want to live by.