Retirement migration and transnational grandparental support: a Spanish case study

People who migrate in retirement often do so to join younger generations who have already migrated, and to help with grandchildren. But what about those retirees who migrate away from their families? Do they still provide grandparental support? To address this question, we examine retirement migrants who reside permanently in their new country, Spain. We find that they are aware of grandparental support expectations, and that their migration decision sometimes creates conflict with their offspring. At the same time, these retirement migrants reshape the meaning of grandparental support. Care considerations influence their destination and housing choices, and they continue to provide care. They feel that their familial relationships are now of a higher quality, despite the distance. At the same time, gender still emerges as a key dimension of grandparental support. The grandparenting of these retirement migrants challenges facile depictions of their motivations and of the equation of quantity and quality of contacts.     

Women and the illness role: rethinking feminist theory

Une femme adopte le rôle de malade. Comment analyser ce phénomène? Je propose dans les pages qui suivent une théorie féministe de L'adoption du rôle de malade qui met L'accent sur des formes culturelles et phénoménologiques d'investigation. Diverses auteures féministes ont récemment traité ce problème en soulignant comment le contrôle social patriarcal sur les femmes peut s'exercer par la définition même des maladies. Mais les études produites dans ce cadre ont tendance à négliger la façon dont les femmes vivent les maladies ainsi définies. Ces études sont alors incapables de comprendre pourquoi certains types de maladies - le syndrome pré-menstruel, par exemple - acquièrent une crédibilité certaine, alors que d'autres dont 1'étiologie et la symptomatologie sont similaires demeurent dans I'ombre. Un paradigme plus étoffé du comportement de malade, comme celui proposé ici, examinerait de plus près la relation entre structure sociale et expérience sociale de la maladie, ainsi qu'entre idéologie et biographie. En dernière analyse, je propose un paradigme qui explore la désignation des maladies à trois niveaux d'analyse: 1/les activités productrices des groupes dominants qui ont un intérêt politique ou commercial dans la désignation médicale; 2/ les activités productrices de celles et ceux qui adoptent la désignation; et 3/ les trajets ou déterminants culturels qui prédisposent L'adoption collective de certains types de maladies à L'exclusion de certaines autres. This paper advances a feminist theory of women and illness behaviour which places a stronger emphasis on cultural and phenomenological forms of investigation. Current theoretical treatments of this topic by feminist scholars focus on how definitions of illness may be viewed as patriarchal forms of social control of women. Rarely do such studies investigate the personal experience of women adopting the illness role. As a result, such approaches fail to articulate how it is that some categories of illness, such as the premenstrual syndrome, come to be credited with plausibility, while others similar in aetiology and symptomatology, are ignored. A more comprehensive paradigm of illness behaviour as suggested by this paper would explore, more fully, the relationship between social structure and the social experience of illness; between ideology and personal biography. Ultimately, the paradigm suggested here explores illness labelling at three levels of investigation: 1/ the productional activities of dominant groups with commercial and/or political self-interests in medical labelling; 2/ the productional activities of those adopting the label; and 3/ the cultural pathways or determinants which predispose the collective adoption of some illness categories, and not others.     

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION AND THE UTILIZATION OF MINORITY‐ AND WOMEN‐OWNED BUSINESSES IN HIGHWAY PROCUREMENT

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) mandates states' use of affirmative action when awarding federally funded road construction projects. Here I document the effectiveness of this program in increasing purchases from disadvantaged business enterprises (DBEs). Higher goals for the utilization of DBEs, both across states over time and across projects within California, is associated with a greater share of contract dollars awarded to DBEs. This effect is concentrated among minority‐owned firms and is stronger when goals are more likely to be binding and in states with an apparently stricter enforcement regime. (JEL J15, H57)     

The medical implications of Cleveland

SUMMARY. This article sets the ‘discovery’ of child sexual abuse in context and reviews the key issues for doctors now that the Inquiry Report has been published. In particular the author focuses on the controversy over diagnosis and ‘screening’ Not only is there a need for clarity on these issues, but also a need to restore basic trust between doctors, parents and children. She also urges development of multi-disciplinary training and working and explores the proposed ‘special assessment teams’, hut concludes that resources will he a major constraint     

The Scientific Misconduct Questionnaire—Revised (SMQ-R): Validation and Psychometric Testing

Purpose: The overall purposes of this article are to report the development of a survey instrument, Scientific Misconduct Questionnaire-Revised (SMQ-R) that elicits the perceptions of research coordinators managing clinical trials about the various aspects of scientific misconduct and to present the psychometric analyses for the SMQ-R.

Methods: A panel of five researchers and research coordinators reviewed the original SMQ (Rankin and Esteeves, 1997 Rankin, M. and Esteves, M. 1997. Perceptions of scientific misconduct in nursing. Nursing Research, 46(5): 270–276. [PUBMED][CSA][CROSSREF][Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) and suggested an additional 42 items based on the review of the literature and their own experiences in research. The SMQ-Revised (SMQ-R) consists of 68 closed-choice items in six sections and one section with 12 open-ended questions. The SMQ-R was sent to 5302 persons who were members of the Association for Clinical Research Professionals (ACRP) or subscribers to Research Practitioner, published by the Center for Clinical Research Practice (CCRP).

Findings: Internal consistency of subscales was assessed with Cronbach's alpha and ranged from .83 to .84. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to test construct validity of the instrument subscales. The factor structure was assessed with the principal factors method, using the squared multiple correlations as initial communality estimates followed by varimax (orthogonal) or biquartimax (oblique) rotations. Analyses revealed five distinct factors among three subscales. Construct validity for the SMQ-R was also assessed by testing hypothesized relationships using the known groups approach.

Conclusion: The current effort demonstrated the usefulness of the SMQ-R in obtaining information from a national sample of experienced research coordinators about their perceptions of the prevalence of different types of scientific misconduct and of factors that influence the occurrence of misconduct. The psychometric evaluation of the SMQ-R suggests good internal consistency for most subscales and suggests adequate construct validity of the instrument as a whole. The analyses also suggest that further refinement of the instrument for future studies is warranted.