Life Goals Over Time Among Homeless Adults in Permanent Supportive Housing

Permanent supportive housing (PSH) is a widely‐accepted solution to the challenge of chronic homelessness. While housing support and retention, physical health, and healthcare continue to be important for formerly homeless persons in PSH, “higher‐order” and humanistic needs such as thriving have received less attention and as a result are less well understood in this population. One important indicator of thriving is the ability to establish and articulate life goals. This study utilizes longitudinal data from 421 formerly homeless adults prior to their move into PSH, and at 3‐, 6‐ and 12‐months after move‐in (369 respondents completed all four interviews), to examine what life goals are articulated by this population and how those goals change over time. Prior to housing, most respondents articulated housing attainment as their primary life goal, whereas at follow‐up interviews health goals, housing relocation, and financial goals became more prevalent. Aspirational goals (e.g., independence, self‐improvement, artistic pursuits) were also common, but demonstrated a decrease over time in housing. Relationship goals remained common and consistent over time. Findings indicate that housing is a necessary, but perhaps not sufficient, step for improving thriving among formerly homeless adults. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.     

Age of acquisition and imageability ratings for a large set of words, including verbs and function words

Age of acquisition and imageability ratings were collected for 2,645 words, including 892 verbs and 213 function words. Words that were ambiguous as to grammatical category were disambiguated: Verbs were shown in their infinitival form, and nouns (where appropriate) were preceded by the indefinite article (such asto crack anda crack). Subjects were speakers of British English selected from a wide age range, so that differences in the responses across age groups could be compared. Within the subset of early acquired noun/verb homonyms, the verb forms were rated as later acquired than the nouns, and the verb homonyms of high-image ability nouns were rated as significantly less imageable than their noun counterparts. A small number of words received significantly earlier or later age of acquisition ratings when the 20–40 years and 50–80 years age groups were compared. These tend to comprise words that have come to be used more frequently in recent years (either through technological advances or social change), or those that have fallen out of common usage. Regression analyses showed that although word length, familiarity, and concreteness make independent contributions to the age of acquisition measure, frequency and imageability are the most important predictors of rated age of acquisition.     

Further Antidotes: a Response to Gundersen

In my 'Dispositions and Antidotes', The Philosophical Quarterly , 48 (1998), I raise an objection to the conditional analysis of dispositions, both in its simple formulation and in a more sophisticated version due to David Lewis, The Philosophical Quarterly , 47 (1997). The objection suggests that a disposition may be continuously present and the appropriate stimulus occur without the manifestation occurring, because some outside influence, an antidote, interferes. Gundersen in The Philosophical Quarterly, 50 (2000), argues that my objection rests on an equivocation about which object possesses the disposition and more particularly on an equivocation about the context in which the events referred to take place, and that when the equivocation is resolved the counter-example disappears. I respond by showing that the counter-example does remain if we take contextual and mereological issues into account, and I conclude by remarking that the difference with Lewisdepends on whether certain features are seen as significant for the semanticsand metaphysics of dispositions or as merely characteristic of the pragmaticsof common usage.     

SEX DIFFERENCES AND DEPRESSION IN PUERTO RICO

Sex differences in rates of depressive disorders and depressive symptomatology, as measured by the Diagnostic Interview Schedule, are examined for an island-wide probability sample of Puerto Rico. Consistent with previous research, depression is significantly more prevalent in Puerto Rican women than men. Risk factors associated with depressive symptomatology are examined from a sex-role perspective. The results of multiple regression analyses show that even after demographic, health and marital and employment status variables are controlled, women continue to be at higher risk of depressive symptomatology than men. These results are interpreted within a cultural and sex-role perspective.     

Parental Division of Household Labour and Sibling Relationship Quality: Family Relationship Mediators

Research examining antecedents to sibling relationship quality have explored factors such as parenting and temperament (Brody, 1998); however, there has been no previous research on the topic of the current study. The present study used a cross‐informant approach to examine parent–child and marital relationships as potential mediators of links between parents' gendered attitudes and behaviours and sibling relationship quality. One hundred and twenty‐four families with older (M = 7.4 years) and younger (M = 5.2 years) siblings were assessed. Parents reported on division of household labour, gender‐role attitudes and marital satisfaction. Each child reported on sibling relationship quality and parental warmth and hostility. Results revealed a link between more egalitarian division of household labour and more positive sibling relationship quality. Furthermore, this association was not mediated by the marital nor parent–child relationship. We conclude that families with a more egalitarian division of household labour may model positive interactions for siblings. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

International Determinants of Subjective Well-Being: Living in a Subjectively Material World

Researchers, policymakers, and the general public increasingly agree on the importance of subjective well-being as an indicator of individual and societal welfare. A vast literature has emerged over the last twenty years documenting the many variables that influence subjective well-being. The purpose of this study is to quantify the relative importance of these determinants in an attempt to synthesize the main strands in the literature and inform policy formulations. We use in our analysis three years’ worth of data from the Gallup World Poll, including 153 countries and ten geopolitical regions. We estimate the relative importance of four major domains of subjective well-being using a basic model with 25 independent variables, and a broader set of seven domains using an extended model with 60 independent variables. Our results show that material well-being is the main determinant of subjective well-being across all ten geopolitical regions. A particularly strong determinant of subjective well-being in our study is feelings about household income, whereas community functioning, governance and altruistic behaviors have a relatively low importance. Our results suggest that subjective material well-being and its objective determinants, including economic growth and income inequality, should remain at the center of the research and policy agenda. Further research is recommended to ascertain the relative importance of social, physical and purpose well-being.     

Neuropsychological Sequelae of PTSD and TBI Following War Deployment among OEF/OIF Veterans

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) are highly prevalent among Veterans of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. These conditions are associated with common and unique neuropsychological and neuroanatomical changes. This review synthesizes neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies for both of these disorders and studies examining their co-occurrence. Recommendations for future research, including use of combined neuropsychological and advanced neuroimaging techniques to study these disorders alone and in concert, are presented. It is clear from the dearth of literature that addiitonal studies are required to examine and understand the impact of specific factors on neurocognitive outcome. Of particular relevance are temporal relationships between PTSD and mTBI, risk and resilience factors associated with both disorders and their co-occurrence, and mTBI-specific factors such as time since injury and severity of injury, utilizing comprehensive, yet targeted cognitive tasks.