Understanding adolescent type 1 diabetes self-management as an adaptive process: A grounded theory approach

Objective: To develop a conceptual understanding of the process of adapting to the self-management of type 1 diabetes during adolescence.

Design: Participants were recruited from a National Health Service paediatric diabetes service within the south-west of England which runs six countywide diabetes clinics. Thirteen interviews were conducted using a social constructivist grounded theory approach.

Results: The findings illustrate how self-management can be understood in terms of a continuum-based framework, ranging from difficulties with, to successful self-management. Adaptation within the continuum can further be understood by specific transitional phases and process mechanisms, providing further depth to individuals’ experiences of adaptation.

Conclusion: This investigation provides a conceptual understanding of the complex issues adolescents encounter while adapting to and integrating a diabetes self-management regime into their lives. It provides an invaluable framework for exploring psychological mechanisms and contextualising them within a self-management continuum. Implications for healthcare professionals are discussed and further research proposes whether the model could be applicable to other chronic illnesses.     

Prayer,Patronage, and Personal Agency in Nicaraguan Accounts of Receiving International Aid

This article examines how religious beliefs and practices influence the reception of international relief and development aid in impoverished communities. Specifically, I explain how Nicaraguan recipients’ prayers both enhance and constrain their ability to assert themselves as “empowered” actors during aid interactions. Data come from observations and interviews over a two‐year period with 81 Nicaraguans in communities that receive aid from Christian development organizations. Compared to secular constructions of aid interactions, prayers provide space for Nicaraguans to position themselves as influential actors effecting change for themselves or their families. Through prayers, recipients portray themselves as influencing the actions of more powerful parties, including God and potential donors. They also pray for donors’ well‐being, thereby offering spiritual reciprocity for material gifts. However, the same prayers that empower individuals at the interpersonal level constrain their ability to envision transformation of social structures. These findings shape understandings of prayer as aligning actions, of the moral and social dimensions of receiving care from strangers, and of the complex and contradictory ways religious practices influence discourses of empowerment and development.     

Collective Affordances

Abstract

This article develops an ecological framework for understanding collective action. This is contrasted with approaches familiar from the collective intentionality debate, which treat individuals (with collective intentions) as fundamental units of collective action. Instead, we turn to social ecological psychology and dynamical systems theory and argue that they provide a promising framework for understanding collectives as the central unit in collective action. However, we submit that these approaches do not yet appreciate enough the relevance of social identities for collective action. To analyze this aspect, we build on key insights from social identity theory and synthesize it with embodied and ecological accounts of perception and action. This results in the proposal of two new types of affordances. For an individual who enacts her “embodied social identity” of being a member of a particular collective, there can be what we call embodied social identity affordances. Moreover, when several individuals dynamically interact with each other against the background of their embodied social identities, this might lead to the emergence of a collective, which we understand as a dynamically constituted and ecologically situated perception-action system consisting of several individuals enacting relevant embodied social identity affordances. Building on previous work in social ecological psychology, we suggest that there can be genuine collective affordances, that is, affordances whose subject is not an individual, but a collective.     

Revisiting Reciprocity: How Accountability,Proactivity, and Interpersonal Skills Shape Obligations to Reciprocate Citizenship Behavior

Across two studies, we directly test the widely held tenet in the scholarship of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) that individuals choose to engage in OCB as a result of felt obligations to reciprocate. We further examine how obligations to reciprocate operate against a backdrop of relevant contextual factors (accountability) and individual differences (proactive personality and interpersonal skill). Using an experimental method, we find evidence supporting the proposition that reciprocity obligations increase OCB engagement and that these effects are amplified by contexts high in accountability and when individuals possess high levels of proactive personality. In a subsequent field study, we find further corroborating evidence for the effects of reciprocity obligations on OCB and reaffirm the moderating influences of proactive personality and accountability. Overall, the convergent evidence supports the causal relationship between reciprocity obligations and OCB, as well as explicates the conditions under which this foundational effect operates across individuals and varying contexts.

     

Social anxiety and related social impairment are linked to self‐efficacy and dysfunctional coping

Thomasson, P. & Psouni, E. (2010). Social anxiety and related social impairment are linked to self‐efficacy and dysfunctional coping. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 51, 171–178. This study investigated relationships between severity of social anxiety as well as related experiences of social impairment and self‐efficacy, social control and coping strategies. Social anxiety was regarded as a continuum ranging from mild social discomfort to totally inhibiting anxiety. Participants (N = 113, ages 19–60 years), recruited from a forum for individuals with social phobia and among university students, responded to a self‐administered questionnaire. Besides the expected association between a low sense of social control and more severe social anxiety and related social impairment, we found severity of social anxiety and related impairment to be associated with low self‐efficacy. This relationship was partly mediated by dysfunctional coping strategies. We suggest that low self‐efficacy may increase an individual’s tendency to rely on dysfunctional coping strategies for dealing with anxiety experienced in social situations. In turn, using dysfunctional coping strategies appears to exacerbate the experience of impairment from social anxiety.     

The Social Constitution of Perceiver-Environment Reciprocity

Although animal—environment reciprocity is central to ecological psychology, one facet of this viewpoint remains underappreciated: organisms alter environments so as to better function in them. In many species this activity of “niche construction” includes coordinated actions by individuals jointly working toward common ends. Mounting paleontological and archeological evidence indicates that human evolution should be viewed in the light of such social considerations. The environment of our immediate human ancestors was marked by, among other things, group settlements, manufactured stone tools, and extensive migration. An emerging species such as ours, whose distinctive psychological qualities offered a selective advantage relative to these conditions, would flourish particularly if it could preserve the gains of prior generations even as its members continued to transform econiche features in functionally significant ways. This evolutionary perspective, with its due recognition of sociocultural processes, highlights 3 factors of importance for ecological psychology: (1) the history of person-environment reciprocity results in human environments whose natural and sociocultural factors are inextricably intertwined. (2) developing individuals enter human environments not as solitary explorers but through the guidance of more experienced persons with the result that much development takes shape through social mediation; and (3) a distinguishing and ubiquitous feature of human environments that is a product of collective human actions is places. Nearly all human activity, including most psychological research, occurs in places, and owing to their psychological significance, it would seem impossible to disentangle psychological and social processes. These 3 factors illuminate that a fully-realized ecological psychology will be one that includes recognition of the constitutive role played by social processes.     

Effects of opportunity to reciprocate and self-esteem on help-seeking behavior

The present investigation explored the link between an individual's self-esteem and willingness to seek help under conditions in which future reciprocity is, or is not, expected Based on past research on (a) the effects of perceived opportunity to reciprocate on help seeking, and (b) the effects of self-esteem on help-seeking and receiving, it was expected that relative to low self-esteem individuals, high self-esteem individuals would be more committed to the norm of reciprocity in interpersonal helping, and be more reluctant to seek help which cannot be reciprocated Two studies were conducted In the first it was observed that the higher the level of self-esteem the more the expressed commitment to the norm of reciprocity as measured by scores on an especially designed scale The second study assessed actual help-seeking behavior, and found that least help was sought by high self-esteem individuals who did not foresee an opportunity for future reciprocity The conceptual and applied implications of these findings are discussed     

Promising reciprocity: When proposing a favor for a request increases compliance even if the favor is not accepted

ABSTRACT

Research has reported that reciprocity is an important social norm in relationships. In previous studies on reciprocity, participants’ behavior was examined after receiving a favor from someone. In a series of field studies, we examined the effect of a statement that proved that a solicitor was someone who respected this principle. Confederates solicited participants for money or a cigarette in exchange for stamps or money, respectively. It was found that the participants complied more readily with the request in the promised favor condition, but most of them refused to take the promised favor. We conclude that individuals were led to help those who respected the putative norm of reciprocity in their social interaction.     

Schools as Health Service Delivery Sites: Current Status and Future Directions

Summary

The health of our nation is inextricably linked with the health of our children. While families and professionals alike have recognized this truth for decades, current social reform movements in education and health services have provided an unprecedented opportunity for schools to become equal partners in addressing the needs of children, families, and communities in a wholistic, boundary-free, and collaborative manner. Since schools are the one social institution with which every child has contact, they offer a natural environment for assessment, services, and follow-up to promote the convergent education and health agendas articulated in Goals 2000 and Healthy People 2000. This article examines the components of education and health care reform with particular attention to a recon-ceptualization of health care services in schools. Within this framework, special services professionals are highlighted as leaders in service coordination and delivery for students, staff, and the community at large.     

Gift narration: dynamic themes of reciprocity,debt, and social relations in Theravāda Buddhist Myanmar

ABSTRACT

Scholarly studies of Buddhist gift-giving have explored the many ways in which gifts are or are not reciprocal. This topic is revisited in this article by the author drawing greater attention to the practice of narration. Instead of understanding Buddhist words about dāna as representing religious doctrines or the experience of its social practice, the author considers how Buddhists narrate dāna as a means of maintaining relationships with self and others. Examining narratives of one monastic gift-recipient, meanings of dāna and moral principles of gift-giving are shown to vary alongside shifting relations between givers and receivers. This case suggests that themes of reciprocity are most salient when narrators grapple with interpersonal threats. Offering possible interpretations of this correlation, the author argues how reciprocal forces could be external social conditions to which narratives respond as well as created ex nihilo through the practice of narration as a strategy of ordering interpersonal conflicts potentially unrelated to reciprocity.     

Applying the approach/avoidance framework to understand the relationships between social courage,workplace outcomes,and well-being outcomes

ABSTRACT

The current article heeds three prior calls to advance the study of courage. First, we replicate prior findings regarding the relationship of social courage and work outcomes, but we also investigate, for the first time, the relationship between social courage and well-being outcomes. Second, we apply the approach/avoidance framework to understand how social courage influences these outcomes. Third, approach and avoidance motivations are tested as mediators of the relationships of social courage with outcomes while controlling for established aspects of personality, conscientiousness and neuroticism. Two longitudinal studies show that approach motivation is a robust mediator between courage and both workplace and well-being outcomes, suggesting that courageous individuals achieve positive outcomes because they particularly value the benefits in such actions. Avoidance motivation was a less consistent mediator. Implications are discussed, but it should be emphasized that broader relationships of social courage can now be identified by applying the approach/avoidance framework.     

The gender affirmative lifespan approach (GALA): A framework for competent clinical care with nonbinary clients

Abstract

Background: The limited research on nonbinary individuals suggests that this community experiences significant health disparities. Compared to binary transgender individuals, research suggests that nonbinary individuals are at elevated risk for discrimination and negative mental health outcomes, including depression, anxiety, traumatic stress, and suicidality. Even mental health providers who work with binary transgender individuals often lack knowledge of and training to work competently with nonbinary individuals.

Methods: The authors of this conceptual article present the Gender Affirmative Lifespan Approach (GALA), a psychotherapy framework based in health disparities theory and research, which asserts that therapeutic interventions combating internalized oppression have the potential to improve mental health symptomatology resulting in improved overall health and well-being for gender diverse clients. GALA’s therapeutic interventions are designed to promote positive gender identity development through five core components: (1) building resiliency; (2) developing gender literacy; (3) moving beyond the binary; 4) promoting positive sexuality; and (5) facilitating empowering connections to medical interventions (if desired).

Results: The core components of the GALA model are individualized to each client’s unique needs, while taking into consideration age and acknowledging developmental shifts in, or fluidity of, gender across the lifespan. This model represents an inclusive, trans-affirmative approach to competent clinical care with nonbinary individuals.

Discussion: Application of the GALA model with nonbinary clients is discussed, including one clinical case vignette.     

应用发展科学 ——一门研究人与社会发展的新兴学科

20世纪以来,社会、经济和地缘政治的变化使得科学与服务以及知识的研发与应用之间的矛盾进一步加剧。顺应社会发展的要求,发展心理学融合诸多相关学科而逐渐形成了一门新兴学科——应用发展科学（Applied Developmental Science）。与传统发展心理学相比,应用发展科学更强调生态化研究、发展性研究、积极干预和发展知识的普及。它力图实现多学科间知识的融合增效以及深入社会的知识研发和应用,从而更好地以问题为中心来解决影响个体发展的社会问题。应用发展科学能够为有关人类发展的科学研究和实践应用提供新的知识经验,同时,它又通过直接参与和影响社会政策的制定与实施来促进社会的积极发展     

Engaging Clients,Families, and Communities as Partners in Mental Health

Counselors are being called on to reach beyond the office and clinic to partner with clients, their families, and communities to address mental health and social problems. Counselors need models of collaboration that guide them in building transformative client‐family‐community partnerships. W. J. Doherty and T. J. Mendenhall (2006) presented a model of community‐based collaboration in their article Citizen Health Care: A Model for Engaging Patients, Families, and Communities as Co‐Producers of Health. After reviewing their article, an analysis of a university‐community partnership is used to frame the discussion of the model's implications for counselors and counselor education programs.     

Promoting child and family wellness: priorities for psychological and social interventions

In order to foster the well‐being of children and families we propose a shift in the priorities of psychological and social interventions. Following a brief discussion of the concept of wellness, we present a framework for interventions to promote child and family wellness. Psychological and social intervention strategies to promote child and family wellness are then reviewed and interpreted in terms of the framework. Recommendations for changing priorities for programmes and policies are based on the framework and a review of the effectiveness of existing interventions. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Interaction between Pentecostals and local authorities in Russia: challenging secularity from below

Certain researchers have maintained that the resurgence of religion in the Russian Federation is part of a process of desecularisation ‘from above’, following years of forced secularisation. This article postulates that, despite their status as members of what is considered a nontraditional religion, foreign to the Russian soil, Russian Pentecostal churches are actively engaged in a challenge to secularity but ‘from below’. I explore this hypothesis through the examination of three Pentecostal modes of action: social partnership, political partnership and global networking. Based on a qualitative, empirical study, this paper finds that the Pentecostal movement has forged close ties on a local and regional level with public authorities and that, through necessity and mutually overlapping interests, a certain cooperation and even complicity has developed between these local authorities and the organisations linked to the churches, thus facilitating the integration of specifically Pentecostal discourse into certain public structures. The study further shows that local and regional authorities have adopted globalised social work praxes territorialised by Pentecostals in an attempt to associate the current authoritarian regime with perceived forms of global modernity. At the same time I argue that the participation of the Pentecostal movement in a process of desecularisation is not an intentional outcome projected by the Russian regime but rather the consequence of economic and social urgency against a backdrop of a policy of New Public Management. I conclude that, due to the constantly shifting and often-arbitrary legal framework in which Pentecostals must operate in Russia today, the partnerships cultivated by the Pentecostal movement may prove to be unsustainable in the long term.     

The Ecology of Intimate Partner Violence: Theorized Impacts on Women's Use of Violence

The aim of this paper is to describe the multiple factors associated with intimate partner violence (IPV) using the social-ecological framework developed by Heise (1998). This framework is used to categorize research findings from multiple disciplines according to the level of social organization at which they operate. Evidence-based strategies are then reviewed according to the sphere of influence in the social ecological model, as well as their place on the prevention continuum. Along the way, possible effects on women's use of IPV, and battered women's use of violence in particular, will be noted.     

The Grouping Process Across Cultural Change

Based on their extensive experience working with individuals, families, groups and organizations in Greece, the authors describe therapeutic techniques for helping individuals understand and work through the acculturation process. Tasks and procedures employed at various social levels--dyads, triads, small groups of four to six members, and large groups of 18-25--are catalysts for the exploration and clarification of the ways in which old norms and roles are being modified, weakened, or distorted by cultural change, and for the redefinition of values and expectations.     

The structure and function of social support networks in families with handicapped children

Three structural characteristics of social support networks (size, density, and boundary density) and two relationship characteristics (reciprocity and dimensionality) were assessed in a sample of 56 families with a child with spina bifida and 53 matched comparison families. The results indicate that social networks of families with handicapped children tended to be smaller than the networks of comparison families, particularly with regard to mothers' total and friendship networks. The networks of families with handicapped children were more dense as well. As predicted, there was greater boundary density in spousal networks in families with handicapped children. Differences in network reciprocity were inconclusive while the results indicate that families with handicapped children tended to rely more heavily upon multidimensional network contacts than did comparison families. The results are discussed in light of our understanding of stress, social support, and the social ecological context of families.     

Toward a relational perspective of the psychology of careers and working: A social constructionist analysis

This article explores the contributions of social constructionist thought to the development of a relational approach to careers. In this article, the term “careers” is defined as encompassing the working lives of all individuals. Using a social constructionist perspective to critique existing assumptions about careers, work, and relationships, the authors develop a conceptual framework that expands the theoretical opportunities inherent in a relational approach to the study of careers. The article concludes by highlighting implications of a social constructionist analysis of a relational approach to careers for theory development, research, practice, and public policy,