Do you see me? The complex experiences of women of color MSW students

Universities have increased the number of female students of color. However, inconsistency remains in terms of the number of women of color in positions of power and privilege. This discussion attempts to forward the dialogue about the challenges as well as the resilience of female students of color based on the experiences of four female African-American students in a graduate social work program at a predominantly white institution (PWI). Participants shared their daily experience of isolation and exclusion in their graduate programs compared to their experience in Historically Black College or Universities (HBCUs). Participants also discussed the divide that exists in institutions, as well as the sustaining forces and implications for education and research.     

A bivariate space-time downscaler under space and time misalignment

Ozone and particulate matter PM(2.5) are co-pollutants that have long been associated with increased public health risks. Information on concentration levels for both pollutants come from two sources: monitoring sites and output from complex numerical models that produce concentration surfaces over large spatial regions. In this paper, we offer a fully-model based approach for fusing these two sources of information for the pair of co-pollutants which is computationally feasible over large spatial regions and long periods of time. Due to the association between concentration levels of the two environmental contaminants, it is expected that information regarding one will help to improve prediction of the other. Misalignment is an obvious issue since the monitoring networks for the two contaminants only partly intersect and because the collection rate for PM(2.5) is typically less frequent than that for ozone.Extending previous work in Berrocal et al. (2009), we introduce a bivariate downscaler that provides a flexible class of bivariate space-time assimilation models. We discuss computational issues for model fitting and analyze a dataset for ozone and PM(2.5) for the ozone season during year 2002. We show a modest improvement in predictive performance, not surprising in a setting where we can anticipate only a small gain.     

Marketing Strategies and Market Prospects for Environmentally-Friendly Consumer Products1

Recent evidence suggests that the extent of consumer adoption of ‘green’ products is much less than would be indicated by the enthusiastic opinion poll evidence concerning public attitudes towards environmentally-friendly consumption. This paper reports on an empirical analysis of firms' marketing strategies and their influence on consumer demand for green products. In twenty 2–3 hour interviews with senior managers, four representative groups of markets were analysed household detergents, paper (recycled), petrol (unleaded) and automobile technology (focusing on catalytic converters). According to managers, firms' marketing strategies influenced consumer demand by making green technologies available in the fwst instance. However, barriers to supplying green products that show panty with, or better performance than, conventional technologies constrain pricing and communication efforts Managers stressed that, in the absence of clarity of green products' environmental benefits, product performance and other attributes, not green benefits, remain the main determinants of product preference and choice. Promotions focused much more on consumers than distribution channels, yet channel acceptance and support of green innovations are paramount in facilitating sales. Firms see the costs of generating and promoting desirable green technologies as barriers to diffusion in the immediate future. Legislation and/or economic incentives may help, but manufacturers are not optimistic that future green consumption rates will accelerate. The results also highlight several propositions concerning the discrepancy between consumer environmental concerns and purchasing actions which warrant further testing: there is mis-specification of green products in relation to consumers'needs; there are barriers to perceptions of green products' environmental impact and consumers' free ride due to individual self-interest.     

Intimate Partner Violence in Young Adult Dating,Cohabitating, and Married Drinking Partnerships

Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this study examined intimate partner violence (IPV) and drinking partnerships in 741 young adults in male‐female dating, cohabitating, and married relationships. Cluster analyses revealed four similar kinds of drinking partnerships: (a) congruent light and infrequent, (b) discrepant male heavy and frequent, (c) discrepant female heavy and infrequent, and (d) congruent moderate/heavy‐frequent drinkers. Overall, there were no significant main effect differences across relationship type and clusters. The type of relationship and the type of drinking partnership interacted with contexts examined (i.e., type of violence severity, gender, and whether the violence was perpetration or victimization). Given the severity of IPV in couple relationships, additional empirical attention to drinking partnerships is warranted.     

A visual narrative analysis of children’s baby loss remembrance drawings

Children experiencing the death of baby brother or sister have reported individual, familial, and communicative challenges. Siblings also have indicated that the loss of a baby in their family enriched their lives despite their pain. The present study extends this work by focusing not only on siblings but also other children enmeshed in the family system. Additionally, we heed the call for the use of arts-based methods in family communication by performing a visual narrative analysis of children’s baby loss remembrance drawings. This analysis of 131 drawings completed by children ages zero to 18 yielded three main themes, including narration of identity, narration of life and death, and narration of growing sense-making. Two continua capture these themes, including the subject of narrativization and the mode of narrativization. In presenting these findings, we provide a unique (means of) understanding children’s experience of baby loss in the family.     

Quality Assessment of the Oncology Health Service in a Public Hospital

Quality assessment is a crucial issue in the strategic management of the public health sector. The objective of this study is to investigate the patients’ perception of the health system quality and explore the relationships between doctors and long-term cancer patients. The data under study have been collected during a survey conducted with long-term cancer patients who follow an oncological therapy in a Public Hospital. In the study, exploratory factorial analysis is developed and two structural equation models are proposed. The first model describes the service quality as perceived by the patients, which is influenced by four important factors, namely tangible aspects, reliability, empathy (doctor–patient human relations) and hospital organization. The second model describes the relationship between doctors and long-term cancer patients, which is influenced by three factors, that is reliability, empathy and hospital organization. The discussion highlights the contribution that the results of the study may make to the investigation of the possible strategies for improving health care service quality.

     

“I want to move once I have got things straight”: Voluntary sector chief executives' career accounts

This article reports investigation into chief executives' career perceptions, experiences, and aspirations in small and mediumsized organizations in England, using career history and biographical narrative techniques. Career accounts from sixty chief executives—twenty‐seven women and thirty‐three men—were gathered and analyzed, drawing on career theory and typologies of career characterization. A typology for voluntary sector chief executives' career stances was developed: the Paid Philanthropists, the Careerists, and the Nonaligned. Within this typology, women chief executives appeared as predominantly Careerists, outnumbering male chief executives by two to one. Implications for developing career theory in voluntary sector contexts is discussed and directions for future research suggested.     

Closing the Circle: Social Workers' Responses to Multi-Agency Procedures on Older Age Abuse

Correspondence to Professor Michael Preston-Shoot, School of Law and Applied Social Studies, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, L7 4DN, UK. E-mail: m.prestonshoot{at}livjm.ac.uk Summary This paper reports findings from a project which examined howinter-agency procedures on older age abuse in domestic settingswere used in one local authority. Observations about the useof procedures and about practice with older people who had beenabused are placed in the context of national policy developmentsand are reviewed alongside the available literature. The researchquestions the extent to which guidance is effective in providingdirection for practitioners who encounter older age abuse, andhow well guidance and practice combine to protect victims.     

Modeling material stress using integrated Gaussian Markov random fields

The equations of a physical constitutive model for material stress within tantalum grains were solved numerically using a tetrahedrally meshed volume. The resulting output included a scalar vonMises stress for each of the more than 94,000 tetrahedra within the finite element discretization. In this paper, we define an intricate statistical model for the spatial field of vonMises stress which uses the given grain geometry in a fundamental way. Our model relates the three-dimensional field to integrals of latent stochastic processes defined on the vertices of the one- and two-dimensional grain boundaries. An intuitive neighborhood structure of the said boundary nodes suggested the use of a latent Gaussian Markov random field (GMRF). However, despite the potential for computational gains afforded by GMRFs, the integral nature of our model and the sheer number of data points pose substantial challenges for a full Bayesian analysis. To overcome these problems and encourage efficient exploration of the posterior distribution, a number of techniques are now combined: parallel computing, sparse matrix methods, and a modification of a block update strategy within the sampling routine. In addition, we use an auxiliary variables approach to accommodate the presence of outliers in the data.