Sociocultural Context (sociocultural + context)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Australian Indigenous adolescents with chronic conditions: Sociocultural context

JOURNAL OF PAEDIATRICS AND CHILD HEALTH, Issue 11 2009
Heather McDonald
Abstract Scant information is available in the health literature on Australian Indigenous adolescents with chronic conditions and disabilities. Little is known about how Indigenous adolescence differs from mainstream adolescence, or how Indigenous adolescents manage chronic conditions. Health services are encouraged to engage in information sharing with Indigenous clients and to develop a collaborative approach to chronic condition management as a way to improve outcomes. [source]


Sociocultural contexts of learning among adults with disabilities

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR ADULT & CONTINUING EDUCATION, Issue 96 2002
Jovita M. Ross-Gordon
The sociocultural constructs of race, class, and gender combine with the effects of disability to create powerful influences on the educational and work history of adults with disabilities. [source]


Structured Looseness: Everyday Social Order at an Israeli Kindergarten

ETHOS, Issue 3 2006
Deborah Golden
In this article, I address notions of social order as these are conveyed to young children in an early education setting. On the basis of an ethnographic account of an Israeli kindergarten, I describe the routine structuring of everyday life at the kindergarten, as well as the ways in which this routine structuring was consistently undermined, primarily by the teacher herself. Specifically, the study shows how the relatively enfeebled routine structuring of daily life facilitated the emergence of alternative models of social order, namely, collective order and personal order embodied by the teacher. The interplay of structure and looseness discerned at the kindergarten is addressed in terms of the institutional distinctiveness of early education settings, as well as with reference to the Israeli sociocultural context. It is suggested that the study of the organization of daily life in early education settings may enrich our understanding of socialization into enduring perceptions of social order and of the sources of its legitimacy. [education, classroom ethnography, children, Israel, kindergarten] [source]


Dialogue and Power: A Critical Analysis of Power in Dialogical Therapy

FAMILY PROCESS, Issue 3 2003
MICHAEL GUILFOYLE M.A.
This article explores the relationship between dialogue and power in the practice of dialogue-oriented, "not-knowing" forms of therapy. It is argued that power of a dynamic and reversible kind infuses much ordinary social dialogue, and that the joint processes of power and resistance work together to render an interaction dialogical. In contrast, in dialogical therapy, overt exercises of power threaten the interaction's dialogical status, and power is deferred and denied by the therapist through not-knowing practices. A case study of Harlene Anderson's (1997) is used to illustrate that it is precisely power's presence that informs the practices of not-knowing and uncertainty that characterize dialogical therapies. It is suggested that the not-knowing therapist withholds aspects of his or her voice as a condition for dialogicity. Instead, special speaking arrangements are required, in which the therapist's not-knowing is continuously communicated to the client, for the therapeutic, conversation to remain dialogical. Without these speaking arrangements, I argue that therapy moves toward monologue. Therapists inherit powerful speaking positions from the institutional and sociocultural context, and the rejection of power within therapy serves only to conceal this aspect of power, which nevertheless pervades the therapeutic relationship. Finally, it is suggested that power is a "common factor",shared by all therapies,and that our status as "inheritors" of power needs to be included in our understanding of the therapeutic process. This expanded view of therapy requires the re-theorization of dialogue, such that it includes, rather than excludes, considerations of power. [source]


The Galicia study of mental health of the Elderly I: general description of methodology

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF METHODS IN PSYCHIATRIC RESEARCH, Issue 4 2000
Professor R. Mateos
Abstract Reports of epidemiological surveys do not always adequately provide a careful description of the methodology used and the sociocultural context involved. The objective of this paper is to describe the methodology used in a survey whose aim was to study the prevalence of the wide range of psychiatric disorders that were present in a population aged 60 and above who were living at home. The Galicia Community Study of Mental Health of the Elderly was designed in two phases. In the first, a random sample of 3,580 people over 60 years of age, representative of each of the nine public health authority areas, was interviewed at home. The 60-item version of Goldberg's General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) was the screening instrument. In the second phase, all the traced subjects with high GHQ scores (N = 532) and a representative sample (N = 149) of people below the cut-off point, were interviewed at home using the Diagnostic Interview Schedule (DIS-III). This paper analyses the sociodemographic context of Galicia (a natural region in south-western Europe with a population of 2.7 million inhabitants), the sampling method, the sociodemographic makeup of the sample, the fieldwork, and the method for obtaining the estimate of prevalence. Copyright © 2000 Whurr Publishers Ltd. [source]


The Galicia study of mental health of the Elderly II: the use of the Galician DIS

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF METHODS IN PSYCHIATRIC RESEARCH, Issue 4 2000
Professor R. Mateos
Abstract Reports of epidemiological surveys do not always provide adequate careful descriptions of the methodology used and the sociocultural context involved. Galicia, a natural region in south-west Europe, possesses certain characteristics that differ from those in other communities within the Spanish state. Galician is a Romance language, which is, in fact, closer to Portuguese than it is to Spanish. The population (2.7 million inhabitants) is widely dispersed, with two-thirds of them living in the countryside. More than 18% are older than 65, and the educational level of this elderly population is low. A total of 681 persons over 60 years of age were interviewed in their homes using the DIS-III as the main diagnostic instrument during the second phase of the Galicia Study of Mental Health of the Elderly. This paper analyses some methodological implications of this epidemiological study, focusing on the translation of the DIS into Galician and its performance and acceptability in this community. The possible cultural bias that can affect the rates of prevalence in some specific disorders, the limitations of lifetime prevalence and the advantages of using six-month prevalence rates is discussed. Besides some interesting anecdotes, which are described in the article, the main result is the very high acceptance of DIS-III in this elderly population. Copyright © 2000 Whurr Publishers Ltd. [source]


Daughters-in-law in Korean caregiving families

JOURNAL OF ADVANCED NURSING, Issue 3 2001
Jin-Sun Kim PhD RN
Daughters-in-law in Korean caregiving families Aim.,The aim of this study was to examine the emotional and physical health and experiences of daughter-in-law (DIL) caregivers compared with daughter caregivers who care for cognitively and/or functionally impaired older people in Korea. Background.,In Korea, DILs are the predominant caregivers of impaired older people, but little is known about DIL caregivers. A study which explores the emotional and physical health outcomes of DIL caregivers who care for impaired parents-in-law in the sociocultural context of Korea is necessary. Method.,A cross-sectional descriptive correlational study was conducted to examine the emotional and physical health of 93 DIL caregivers compared with 27 daughter caregivers who care for the cognitively and/or functionally impaired older people in Korea. This study hypothesized that DIL caregivers would have poorer emotional and physical health than daughter caregivers and that the type of relationship with the care-recipient is an important predictor of caregivers' health outcomes. t -tests, chi-square and hierarchical regression analyses were used for hypotheses testing. Results.,Contrary to expectations, this study found that caregivers' health outcomes were very similar for DILs and daughters in Korean families. The type of relationship was not an important predictor of caregivers' health outcomes, and neither was the quality of intergenerational relationship. However, Korean DIL and daughter caregivers reported relatively poor emotional and physical health compared to those of Western caregivers in previous studies. Conclusions.,Daughter-in-laws caregivers were not at greater risk group of negative health outcomes than daughter caregivers. However, DIL and daughter caregivers in Korea were a vulnerable group regardless of their relationship with the care-recipient. The cultural norms and social expectations regarding family-centred caregiving in Korea may cause negative health outcomes for Korean caregivers. Further family caregiving studies in the Korean context are recommended. [source]


From Modernism to McDonald's

JOURNAL OF ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION, Issue 2 2007
Controversy, Ideology, the Movement to Preserve the Recent Past
Following successful 1970s efforts to save Miami Beach's Art Deco district, a preservation movement focusing on the recent past has grown nationally,championing everything from suburban subdivisions to civil rights sites. This article explores that controversial movement's efforts,including its (and its opposition's) motivations and ideologies. Proponents use broader definitions of history and significance than preservationists used previously,with age, aesthetics, and pedigree no longer crucial, instead emphasizing sociocultural context. As they fight traditional conceptualizations, deal with divisive sites, and often work without benefiting from (age-specific) preservation laws, activists face strong resistance. Nonetheless, the movement has increased in size, strength, and successes. [source]


Understanding families in their own context: schizophrenia and structural family therapy in Beijing

JOURNAL OF FAMILY THERAPY, Issue 3 2002
Lawrence Hsin Yang
Evidence from a number of family intervention strategies demonstrates a beneficial impact on the course of schizophrenia. It appears that different family interventions have generic features that aid the patient to avoid relapse and improve functioning. A significant challenge for researchers is to modify these generic strategies to be sensitive to different cultural groups in order to ensure their effectiveness. Chinese culture, with its distinct cultural norms governing family interaction and intense stigma towards the mentally ill, would seem to raise a particular challenge. This paper offers an account of an eclectic model of structural family therapy that incorporates psychoeducation and behavioural treatments for schizophrenia as a theoretical guide to working in a cross,cultural context. A Beijing family, consisting of parents and their daughter with schizophrenia, were seen for sixteen months during a trial of family intervention in China. Through structural family concepts, China's sociocultural context of treatment resource constraints, population policy and stigma are examined and the impact of the illness on family organization is explored. [source]


Factors influencing olive oil brand choice in Spain: an empirical analysis using scanner data

AGRIBUSINESS : AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL, Issue 1 2009
Juan C. Gázquez-Abad
Olive oil consumption is growing all around the world as a consequence of the extension of the Mediterranean diet. Because of limited production, pricing, promotions, and consumer-related variables are essential to explain olive oil consumer behavior. As a consequence of this increasing consumption, it is fundamental to analyze the main factors influencing consumers' olive oil choices for both brands and retailers to be able to compete more efficiently and satisfy consumer needs more closely. But, few such studies are concerned with olive oil (although a great many works in the literature analyze the influence of these factors in other product categories). In a sociocultural context like the Spanish market, in which brand awareness is strong and the use of the product is very high, these factors are even more important. Thus, the main objective of this article is to determine and assess how different marketing variables, such as price, price discounts, use of store flyers and loyalty, explain olive oil brand choice. [Econlit citations: M310, Q130]. © 2009 wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source]


ORIGINAL ARTICLE: Lessons from families and communities about interpersonal violence, victimization, and seeking help

JOURNAL OF FORENSIC NURSING, Issue 3 2010
Angela Frederick Amar PhD
Abstract Despite significant incidence and physical and mental health consequences, most college-age women do not tell anyone about experiences of interpersonal violence. Limited research explores the sociocultural context of seeking help related to violence in young women. The overall purpose of this research was to understand socially and culturally relevant factors associated with violence help seeking in college women. Eight focus groups were held with 64 participants. Narrative analysis was the primary method of analysis. Four qualitative categories emerged from the data: "Learning from one's mother"; "We're strong women; we fight"; "We didn't talk about it"; and "Where I'm from." Findings suggest that help seeking is influenced by the messages from and experiences of mothers and extended family members. An understanding of familial and cultural determinants of help seeking is essential for relevant and effective prevention efforts. [source]


Everyday objects of learning about health and healing and implications for science education

JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN SCIENCE TEACHING, Issue 2 2006
Wanja Gitari
The role of science education in rural development is of great interest to science educators. In this study I investigated how residents of rural Kirumi, Kenya, approach health and healing, through discussions and semistructured and in-depth interviews with 150 residents, 3 local herbalists, and 2 medical researchers over a period of 6 months. I constructed objects of learning by looking for similarities and differences within interpretive themes. Objects of learning found comprise four types of personal learning tools, three types of relational learning tools, three genres of moral obligation, and five genres of knowledge guarding. Findings show that rural people use (among other learning tools) inner sensing to engage thought processes that lead to health and healing knowledge. The sociocultural context is also an important component in learning. Inner sensing and residents' sociocultural context are not presently emphasized in Kenyan science teaching. I discuss the potential use of rural objects of learning in school science, with specific reference to a health topic in the Kenyan science curriculum. In addition, the findings add to the literature in the Science, Technology, Society, and Environment (STSE) approach to science education, and cross-cultural and global science education. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 43: 172,193, 2006 [source]


On the cultural validity of science assessments

JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN SCIENCE TEACHING, Issue 5 2001
Guillermo Solano-Flores
We propose the concept of cultural validity as a form of test validity in science assessment. The conceptual relevance of cultural validity is supported by evidence that culture and society shape an individual's mind and thinking. To attain cultural validity, the process of assessment development must consider how the sociocultural context in which students live influences the ways in which they make sense of science items and the ways in which they solve them. These sociocultural influences include the values, beliefs, experiences, communication patterns, teaching and learning styles, and epistemologies inherent in the students' cultural backgrounds, as well as the socioeconomic conditions prevailing in their cultural groups. We contend that current approaches to handling student diversity in assessment (e.g., adapting or translating tests, providing assessment accommodations, estimating test cultural bias) are limited and lack sociocultural perspective. We find that attaining cultural validity may conflict with current basic principles and assumptions in testing, such as item independence and standardization. We discuss the ways in which adopting cultural validity as a criterion for test validity makes it necessary to shift assessment paradigms and adopt new procedures for assessment development. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 38: 553,573, 2001 [source]


The social mind-body: Anthropological contributions to the study of the self

NURSING & HEALTH SCIENCES, Issue 1 2005
Denize Saint Arnault phd
Self is formed because of the interaction between the body and the society. Culture defines the range of options for being a human within a certain time, place and group. The self is developed within the sociocultural context, which tells us what we should be, how we should interact with society, what we should feel and what those feelings mean, as well as how our body should look, be used and be cared for. This multidimensional model of culture allows us to define the dimensions of the self, and explain how the culturally derived self understands, reacts to and acts upon the individual body within a social context. The view of the self posited here allows us to research the experiential connection between the mind, the body and the society. [source]


New-immigrant women in urban Canada: insights into occupation and sociocultural context

OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY INTERNATIONAL, Issue 4 2007
Vanessa Martins
Abstract Recent statistics have shown that women from South Asia comprise one of the largest sub-groups of immigrants to enter Canada. The majority of this population has settled in the city of Toronto. As immigrants adapt to new physical, social, political, and economic environments in a new country, they are also subject to changes in occupational roles and expectations. Little research has been conducted with new immigrant women from South Asia from an occupational adjustment perspective in Canada. This qualitative study sought to understand the adjustment experiences of immigrant women from South Asia regarding the influence of a Canadian urban environment on their occupations. Twelve recently immigrated women from South Asia to Canada were interviewed about their experiences of living in the city of Toronto with respect to their adjustment to a new environment and engagement in new daily occupations. Using a modified grounded theory approach to analysis, results from the study revealed many challenges these women face and the major factors that aid in the adjustment process. A framework for understanding occupational adjustment in new immigrants is discussed with implications for occupational therapy theory and practice. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Identifying marks of Latin American psychoanalysis Towards the defi nition of a River Plate model,

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PSYCHOANALYSIS, Issue 6 2005
ANA MARÍA VIÑOLY BECEIRO
The author considers the infl uences that different psychoanalytic trends have had on the thought processes of psychoanalysts in the River Plate region. She begins by giving a history of the way in which these trends were shaped by the sociocultural context of the region, and of how the dialectical relationship between these two factors produced the River Plate region's (Argentina and Uruguay) own theoretical model. The author includes a study-albeit incomplete-of major local developments, and attempts to defi ne the characteristics of a regional model. The model is based on the following parameters: the fundamental rules of evenly suspended attention and free association; the technical frame; links between theory and clinical practice such as transference-countertransference, resistance, identifi cation, the analytic fi eld; the concept of psychic change and its indicators; and the interpretive instrument. The author considers the past and present infl uence of Lacanian thought on this model. She concludes by reviewing some of these theoretical and clinical concepts. [source]


Mother,Infant Interaction During the First 3 Months: The Emergence of Culture-Specific Contingency Patterns

CHILD DEVELOPMENT, Issue 2 2010
Joscha Kärtner
This study analyzed German and Nso mothers' auditory, proximal, and visual contingent responses to their infants' nondistress vocalizations in postnatal Weeks 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12. Visual contingency scores increased whereas proximal contingency scores decreased over time for the independent (German urban middle-class, N = 20) but not the interdependent sociocultural context (rural Nso farmers, N = 24). It seems, therefore, that culture-specific differences in the modal patterns of contingent responsiveness emerge during the 2nd and 3rd months of life. This differential development was interpreted as the result of the interplay between maturational processes associated with the 2-month shift that are selectively integrated and reinforced in culture-specific mother,infant interaction. [source]


Addiction as excessive appetite

ADDICTION, Issue 1 2001
Jim Orford
The excessive appetite model of addiction is summarized. The paper begins by considering the forms of excessive appetite which a comprehensive model should account for: principally, excessive drinking, smoking, gambling, eating, sex and a diverse range of drugs including at least heroin, cocaine and cannabis. The model rests, therefore, upon a broader concept of what constitutes addiction than the traditional, more restricted, and arguably misleading definition. The core elements of the model include: very skewed consumption distribution curves; restraint, control or deterrence; positive incentive learning mechanisms which highlight varied forms of rapid emotional change as rewards, and wide cue conditioning; complex memory schemata; secondary, acquired emotional regulation cycles, of which 'chasing', 'the abstinence violation effect' and neuroadaptation are examples; and the consequences of conflict. These primary and secondary processes, occurring within diverse sociocultural contexts, are sufficient to account for the development of a strong attachment to an appetitive activity, such that self-control is diminished, and behaviour may appear to be disease-like. Giving up excess is a natural consequence of conflict arising from strong and troublesome appetite. There is much supportive evidence that change occurs outside expert treatment, and that when it occurs within treatment the change processes are more basic and universal than those espoused by fashionable expert theories. [source]


Sociocultural Perceptions and Patterns of Cigarette and Alcohol Use among College Students in Vietnam

ASIAN SOCIAL WORK AND POLICY REVIEW, Issue 3 2008
Paul DuongTran
This empirical study was conducted in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam to investigate cross-sectionally the influences of sociocultural contexts on the patterns of addictive substance use cigarette, alcohol, and illicit drugs. A sample of 202 monolingual adults who were enrolled in college courses at the University of Hanoi in Vietnam responded to a self-reported questionnaire in their native language on the frequency, quantity, and occasions of addictive behavior. The project staff were fluent in English and Vietnamese. The questionnaire was critically reviewed for its face validity and cultural appropriateness before being translated into Vietnamese. In addition to patterns of use, this research explored the central role of drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes in peer socialization among college adults. Vietnam, like other Asian cultures, emphasizes initiation and conformity to social traditions and norms. The empirical findings provide invaluable knowledge of the complex roles of cigarette and alcohol in the social processes and relationship-building among college adults in Vietnam. Further knowledge will assist in identifying intervention approaches and health prevention that is more focused and congruent with cultural and social beliefs about this behavior and these substances. Its implications for research into culturally appropriate intervention and prevention are also discussed. [source]