What Do Grandmothers Think about Self‐esteem? American and Taiwanese Folk Theories Revisited

The study investigates European American and Taiwanese grandmothers’ folk theories of childrearing and self‐esteem, building on an earlier comparison of mothers from the same families. Adopting methods that privilege local meanings, we bring grandmothers’ voices into the conversation about childrearing, thereby contributing to a deeper understanding of intergenerational nuances in folk theories. In each cultural case, 16 grandmothers of 3‐year‐olds participated in in‐depth interviews that were customized according to local communicative norms. Although self‐esteem emerged as a central organizing concept in the folk theories of European American mothers, grandmothers spoke in two voices, either echoing their daughters or invoking a counter‐discourse of wariness towards self‐esteem. By contrast, Taiwanese mothers and grandmothers resembled one another—but differed from their American counterparts—in treating self‐esteem as peripheral in childrearing. Results contribute to the growing consensus that self‐esteem is a culture‐specific childrearing goal and suggest that the European American tendency to valorize self‐esteem varies by generation.     

Assessing accuracy of a continuous screening test in the presence of verification bias

Summary.  In studies to assess the accuracy of a screening test, often definitive disease assessment is too invasive or expensive to be ascertained on all the study subjects. Although it may be more ethical or cost effective to ascertain the true disease status with a higher rate in study subjects where the screening test or additional information is suggestive of disease, estimates of accuracy can be biased in a study with such a design. This bias is known as verification bias. Verification bias correction methods that accommodate screening tests with binary or ordinal responses have been developed; however, no verification bias correction methods exist for tests with continuous results. We propose and compare imputation and reweighting bias-corrected estimators of true and false positive rates, receiver operating characteristic curves and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve for continuous tests. Distribution theory and simulation studies are used to compare the proposed estimators with respect to bias, relative efficiency and robustness to model misspecification. The bias correction estimators proposed are applied to data from a study of screening tests for neonatal hearing loss.     

Unions,PAC contributions,and the NAFTA vote

Political action committees (PACs), especially those controlled by organized labor and business, have been shown to affect Congressional voting. We explore how PACs influenced the House of Representatives’ vote on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The NAFTA vote is analyzed because organized labor strongly opposed the treaty while business generally supported it and because of the straight-forward voting generated by its fast-track status. Probit analysis of a unique, unpublished data set containing information about PAC and non-PAC contributions to the 1992 House election campaigns demonstrates that Representatives who depended largely on labor PACs tended to oppose NAFTA, while Representatives who derived a large proportion of their campaign contributions from business PACs tended to favor its passage.     

Struggles with Time: the careers of parents with adult sons and daughters with learning disabilities

The experiences of parents with adult offspring with learning disability and the meanings their parental careers have for them, has been the subject of very little empirical research. In this paper we describe and examine some of the features that gave shape and meaning to the day to day lives of parents of 33 co-resident adults with learning disabilities. Their accounts of their situations revealed that 'time' was a factor of some importance. Participants suggested that socialisation into the parental role was one that continued over the life course. In addition, they also felt that the services they received were based upon an inadequate and too narrow an understanding of how they experienced 'time'. The data reveal that both 'over time' and 'in time', parents struggled to maintain a set of aspirations for a typical life. The data show that for many parents there was a slow accommodation to the constraints of service provision and, as a result, their needs for service support became less extensive.     

Health care futures. Part 2: The future of physician executives? Panel discussion

What is the future of health care in America? This is Part 2 of The Physician Executive panel discussion that explores the future of health care in America. To narrow this ambitious focus somewhat, the future is defined as five to 10 years hence. In Part 1, which was published in the May/June issue, Russell C. Coile, Jr., Barbara LeTourneau, MD, MBA, FACPE, James Reinertsen, MD, Uwe Reinhardt, PhD, Marshall Ruffin, MD, MPH, MBA, FACPE, and David Vogel, MS, shared their opinions about what the future holds in managed care, information technology, and biotechnology. In Part 2, Susan Cejka, Barbara LeTourneau, MD, MBA, FACPE, John Henry Pfifferling, PhD, Uwe Reinhardt, PhD, and James Todd, MD, share their views on the future of medical education and physician executives.     

Is Valuing Equality Enough? Equality Values, Allophilia, and Social Policy Support for Multiracial Individuals

We conducted a field study to investigate positive intergroup attitudes (i.e., allophilia) and equality values as potential antecedents of social policy support for multiracial individuals. Participants (N = 97) reported their social policy support for multiracial individuals in two ways—support for the recognition of "multiracial" as a distinct racial category (recognition) and support for multiracial individuals' access to programs and policies (assistance). Results revealed that allophilia motivated those who held equality beliefs to support social policies for multiracial individuals. Implications of these findings for theories of positive intergroup relations, as well as the processes that may underlie progress for multiracial individuals, are discussed.     

Four criteria to evaluate providers' service-delivery response to new contraceptive introduction

This article presents an evaluation framework developed to assess the first-level effects of introducing the Standard Days Method (SDM) in Peru Ministry of Health clinics. Four questions are asked: 1) To what extent do providers routinely achieve SDM service delivery standards? 2) Is the time invested in SDM delivery consistent with program norms? 3) How does SDM delivery compare with delivery of established methods? and 4) How does SDM introduction affect delivery of established methods? A study at 62 clinics demonstrated the framework's usefulness. The Standard Days Method introduction had positive overall effects on the quality of care but provider training needed adjustments.     

#BlackLivesMatter: Innovative Black Resistance

Since 2013, extrajudicial police killings of black people have captured the attention of U.S. and international media, substantially because of the work of leaders in the Black Lives Matter (#BLM) movement. #BLM is simultaneously a group of localized organizations and a broad online social movement. In this article, we examine the #BLM movement in detail, with particular emphasis on the following aspects of the movement: (1) its innovative organizational practices and social media use; (2) its accent on black perspectives (counterframing) of systemic racial oppression, heteronormativity, and capitalism; and (3) its broad emphasis on oppressed Americans, including black women and LGBTQ people. We also situate the #BLM movement within the surrounding system of racial oppression, including the historical role of racialized policing in maintaining social control of blacks. We detail the long tradition of black social movements, especially black feminist organizing, against systemic racial oppression. In doing so, we intend to contribute social movement theorizing that more fully considers powerful counterframed perspectives of black activists in U.S. social movements. Although the #BLM movement reflects black feminism and past civil rights movement struggles, it is a uniquely twenty‐first‐century social movement that uses new technologies for innovative social protest.     

Media and Families: Looking Ahead

Digital natives and digital immigrants live and grow together navigating a world of media devices and inventing new media practices. As such, it is increasingly important to know about the role of media in the lives of families. Although much is known about the impact of media on children as individuals, far less attention has been given to the impact of media on the family as a whole. A great deal of the research on the family and media focuses on parent-child interactions, relationships, and media practices. While parenting is a key element in family life, other members of the family contribute to family practices and interactions, particularly siblings. This article proposes future directions for research about media and families, turning attention to expanding parenting research beyond media mediation, employment of more observational and ethnographic studies of families and media, and exploring media uses with siblings which continues to be an area of limited focus within the field. Moreover, future research should examine families with different lived experiences both in how their media practices and how they are portrayed within the media. Through research, scholars can serve families as media mentors—supporting families in their media practices in an informed way. We have the ability to be excellent media mentors to families and a key component of that is to continue to find answers to questions for families through research.     

Inequality and demographic response to short-term economic stress in North Orkney,Scotland, 1855–1910: Sector differences

We examine economic inequality and social differences in infant and child mortality, and fertility responses to food price changes in North Orkney, 1855–1910, using linked vital records. This small population featured a diverse occupational structure, limited land resources, and geographic isolation from mainland Scotland. Segments of Orkney’s non-agricultural working population were living so close to the margin of subsistence in normal years that an increase in food prices in bad years cost the lives of their children. Delayed childbearing, in addition to increased labour intensity, occupational diversification, and poor relief, failed to mitigate the negative effects of unfavourable prices in this group. While previous studies for Western Europe show a strong social gradient in mortality responses to food prices, and for Eastern Asia a strong household gradient, this study shows a strong sectoral gradient, indicating low standards of living for the non-agricultural working population well into the twentieth century.