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Text in English / The transition from traditional to non-traditional marital roles was brought about by changes in the political, social and economic spheres. Within this transition, a new family arrangement has emerged in which traditional marital roles of breadwinning husband and care-giving, nurturer-wife are replaced by a breadwinning wife and a care-giving, nurturer-husband, the so-called stay-at-home husband. Various factors contributed and necessitated this change in marital roles, such as, but not limited to, the feminist movement, the economic recession, changes in legislation, retrenchments and so forth. However, making this transition is not easy. These couples, fulfilling non-traditional marital roles, are faced with stigmatisation and negative attitudes that make them want to conceal their marital roles from family, friends, the community and society as a whole. This state of affairs results in a situation where these couples stay in the closet and as consequence the topic is ill-researched and ripe for further investigation. Using a qualitative, phenomenological approach, this study explored and described the challenges, experiences and coping resources of couples fulfilling non-traditional marital roles in order to propose practice guidelines to support these couples from a social work perspective. A total of ten couples participated in the study. Independently, the working wives and stay-at-home husbands provided separate accounts of realities related to fulfilling the non-traditional marital roles within their respective marital relationships. Themes that emerged from the in-depth description of their experiences reflected the benefits accrued, the challenges experienced, their needs and coping resources. From the information provided suggestions were derived for social workers to assist couples in a similar working wife and stay-at-home husband marriage set-up to deal with situations encountered. In consulting extant literature, research on this phenomenon appeared to be totally neglected both internationally and nationally. Hence this study sought to address this lacuna by specifically investigating the situation in South Africa. It also appeared that existing research tended to focus on either the stay-at-home mother or the dual career family. Research on the experiences of stay-at-home husbands was thus severely lacking as were ways in which such couples in these roles could be supported. Therefore, making use of the ecological and role theory perspectives, attention is given to exposing their experiences, challenges and coping resources with a view to developing practice guidelines for helping social work practitioners to adequately support these couples practising non-traditional marital roles. / Social Work / Ph. D. (Social Work)

The transition from traditional to non-traditional marital roles was brought about by changes in the political, social and economic spheres. Within this transition, a new family arrangement has emerged in which traditional marital roles of breadwinning husband and care-giving, nurturer-wife are replaced by a breadwinning wife and a care-giving, nurturer-husband, the so-called stay-at-home husband. Various factors contributed and necessitated this change in marital roles, such as, but not limited to, the feminist movement, the economic recession, changes in legislation, retrenchments and so forth. However, making this transition is not easy. These couples, fulfilling non-traditional marital roles, are faced with stigmatisation and negative attitudes that make them want to conceal their marital roles from family, friends, the community and society as a whole. This state of affairs results in a situation where these couples stay in the closet and as consequence the topic is ill-researched and ripe for further investigation. Using a qualitative, phenomenological approach, this study explored and described the challenges, experiences and coping resources of couples fulfilling non-traditional marital roles in order to propose practice guidelines to support these couples from a social work perspective. A total of ten couples participated in the study. Independently, the working wives and stay-at-home husbands provided separate accounts of realities related to fulfilling the non-traditional marital roles within their respective marital relationships. Themes that emerged from the in-depth description of their experiences reflected the benefits accrued, the challenges experienced, their needs and coping resources. From the information provided suggestions were derived for social workers to assist couples in a similar working wife and stay-at-home husband marriage set-up to deal with situations encountered. In consulting extant literature, research on this phenomenon appeared to be totally neglected both internationally and nationally. Hence this study sought to address this lacuna by specifically investigating the situation in South Africa. It also appeared that existing research tended to focus on either the stay-at-home mother or the dual career family. Research on the experiences of stay-at-home husbands was thus severely lacking as were ways in which such couples in these roles could be supported. Therefore, making use of the ecological and role theory perspectives, attention is given to exposing their experiences, challenges and coping resources with a view to developing practice guidelines for helping social work practitioners to adequately support these couples practising non-traditional marital roles. / Social Work / Ph. D. (Social Work)

PURPOSE: The main aim of this study was to systematically assess women’s maternal health care seeking behaviour and its determinants in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. DESIGN: A quantitative and cross-sectional community based study was the selected methodology for this study. METHOD: Data was collected using structured questionnaire administered to 903 women aged 15-49 years through a stratified two-stage cluster sampling technique. Binary and multinomial logistic regression models were employed to identify predictors of adequacy of antenatal care and delivery care. RESULTS: Most of the women (97.9%) visited health care facilities at least once for antenatal care follow up. About 86.5% of them had at least four visits during their last pregnancy; and only 51.1% started their first antenatal visit early. Further, only about one out of five of the antenatal care attendees received sufficient content of antenatal care services. Consequently, only about one out of ten women received overall adequate antenatal care mainly due to inadequate use of the basic components of antenatal services. Most of the women delivered in public health care institutions (76.3%) despite the general doubts about the quality of services in these facilities. Women of better socioeconomic status preferred to give birth at private health care facilities. Caesarean section delivery rate in Addis Ababa (19.1%) is higher than the maximum WHO recommended rate (15.0%); particularly among the non-slum residents (27.2%); clients of private health care facilities (41.1%); currently married women (20.6%); women with secondary (22.2%) and tertiary (33.6%) level of education; and women who belong to the highest wealth quintile (28.2%). The majority (65.8%) of the caesarean section clients were not informed about the consequences of caesarean section delivery and about 9.0% of the caesarean section births had no medical indication. CONCLUSION: Disparities in maternal health care utilisation between the socio-economic groups was evident, requiring urgent attention from policy makers and other stakeholders to enable Ethiopia to meet its millennium development goal 5. Improving the quality of antenatal care in public health facilities which are the main provider of health care services to the majority of the Ethiopian population is urgent. The increase in the rate of caesarean section beyond the World Health Organization recommended upper limit has to be taken seriously. / Health Studies / D. Litt.. et Phil. (Health Studies)

This thesis is about the construction of 'satire' as an exclusive practice among the Cefalonian and hence proposes the term satiricity (satirikotita). It explores the construction of the category of the Cefalonian "madman" by means of dialogics between performance and evaluation. It is observed that the relation depends on three principles that obtain among audience members and a performer: conditioning the performance, participation in and observation of the performance and evaluation of it. Being one of the few anthropological studies on the Ionian islands of Greece, this thesis aims to contribute to the anthropology of the Ionian islands and of Cefalonia in particular. It looks at the relation between a town and a village on the ground of teasing events and refutes the argument of satire as an urban phenomenon only. It sets the elementary principles towards anthropology of satire and emphasizes the importance of studying everyday teasing events. It also contributes to understanding a 'native' researcher's presence in different ways. Satiricity is seen as a 'par excellence' feature that Cefalonians have. No matter if Cefalonia is a part of the Greek nation-state and people follow 'modern Greek culture', they still employ satiricity as a way of distancing themselves from Greeks. 'Distance' is forged on the basis of absolute exclusion of Greeks from having, practising and understanding satiricity in the way that Cefalonians do. The Conclusions leave the ground open for more investigation on teasing events and application of such viewpoints around other areas of the island, and of the Ionian islands or other Greek islands. I also point to studies looking at island and mainland teasing events and potential differences. After all, we need to examine not only how people construct the claim on the exclusivity of 'satire'. We need to examine how such a claim is applied, supported or contrasted and possibly rejected when Cefalonians engage with other Greeks away from the island.

PURPOSE: The main aim of this study was to systematically assess women’s maternal health care seeking behaviour and its determinants in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. DESIGN: A quantitative and cross-sectional community based study was the selected methodology for this study. METHOD: Data was collected using structured questionnaire administered to 903 women aged 15-49 years through a stratified two-stage cluster sampling technique. Binary and multinomial logistic regression models were employed to identify predictors of adequacy of antenatal care and delivery care. RESULTS: Most of the women (97.9%) visited health care facilities at least once for antenatal care follow up. About 86.5% of them had at least four visits during their last pregnancy; and only 51.1% started their first antenatal visit early. Further, only about one out of five of the antenatal care attendees received sufficient content of antenatal care services. Consequently, only about one out of ten women received overall adequate antenatal care mainly due to inadequate use of the basic components of antenatal services. Most of the women delivered in public health care institutions (76.3%) despite the general doubts about the quality of services in these facilities. Women of better socioeconomic status preferred to give birth at private health care facilities. Caesarean section delivery rate in Addis Ababa (19.1%) is higher than the maximum WHO recommended rate (15.0%); particularly among the non-slum residents (27.2%); clients of private health care facilities (41.1%); currently married women (20.6%); women with secondary (22.2%) and tertiary (33.6%) level of education; and women who belong to the highest wealth quintile (28.2%). The majority (65.8%) of the caesarean section clients were not informed about the consequences of caesarean section delivery and about 9.0% of the caesarean section births had no medical indication. CONCLUSION: Disparities in maternal health care utilisation between the socio-economic groups was evident, requiring urgent attention from policy makers and other stakeholders to enable Ethiopia to meet its millennium development goal 5. Improving the quality of antenatal care in public health facilities which are the main provider of health care services to the majority of the Ethiopian population is urgent. The increase in the rate of caesarean section beyond the World Health Organization recommended upper limit has to be taken seriously. / Health Studies / D. Litt. et Phil. (Health Studies)

Η αντιμετώπιση των χρόνιων ασθενών αποτελεί σήμερα για τα συστήματα υγείας και κοινωνικής φροντίδας ένα από τα πιο δύσκολα προβλήματα διεθνώς, τόσο από ιατρικής όσο και από κοινωνικό-οικονομικής πλευράς. Για το λόγο αυτό, τα αντίστοιχα συστήματα στις ΗΠΑ και ΕΕ έχουν αποδυθεί τα τελευταία χρόνια σε ένα εντατικό αγώνα για την αναδόμηση (reengineering) της συνολικής αντιμετώπισής τους, με στόχο τη βελτιστοποίηση των παρεχομένων υπηρεσιών και τον εξορθολογισμό του κόστους. Στρατηγικό εργαλείο για τη παροχή των νέων υπηρεσιών αποτελούν οι νέες Τεχνολογίες Πληροφορικής και Επικοινωνιών (ΤΠΕ). Στο πλαίσιο της παρούσας ερευνητικής εργασίας εξετάζεται η αξιοποίηση σύγχρονων και ευρέως διαθέσιμων τεχνολογιών επικοινωνιών (ευρυζωνικότητα, δίκτυα κινητής τηλεφωνίας κ.ά.), σε συνδυασμό με τη χρήση καινοτόμων προϊόντων, όπως αυτά των «ηλεκτρονικών» υφασμάτων (e-Textiles) για την παροχή καινοτόμων υπηρεσιών παρακολούθησης από απόσταση. Η παρούσα διπλωματική είχε σαν στόχο την εφαρμογή και αξιολόγηση ενός προγράμματος πρώιμης εξόδου από νοσοκομείο και κατ’ οίκον νοσηλείας σε χρόνιους αναπνευστικούς ασθενείς στο Νοσοκομείο «Η Σωτηρία» και διεξήχθη στο πλαίσιο του Ευρωπαϊκού Ερευνητικού Προγράμματος ‘HealthWear’. Η μεθοδολογική προσέγγιση έγινε αφενός με την ευρεία βιβλιογραφική ανασκόπηση αναλόγων παρεμβάσεων και αφετέρου με την αξιολόγηση ενός προγράμματος κλινικής εφαρμογής του σε πραγματικές συνθήκες. Στο πρόγραμμα συμμετείχαν 48 ασθενείς με Χρόνια Αποφρακτική Πνευμονοπάθεια, διαχωρισμένοι τυχαία σε ομάδα ελέγχου (ενδονοσοκομειακή φροντίδα), και ομάδα παρέμβασης (πρώιμη έξοδος και παρακολούθηση με τη χρήση φορετών και φορητών, μη επεμβατικών συσκευών). Παρουσιάζονται αναλυτικά ο σχεδιασμός του συστήματος και της υπηρεσίας, η μεθοδολογία και ο τρόπος παρακολούθησης των ασθενών της ομάδας παρέμβασης καθώς και τα αποτελέσματα της αξιολόγησης. Η εφαρμογή του προγράμματος στην καθ’ ημέρα κλινική πράξη κατέδειξε τη χρήση φορητών και φορετών συστημάτων ως αξιόπιστη εναλλακτική μέθοδο για την πρώιμη έξοδο και συνέχεια της φροντίδας των ασθενών με Χ.Α.Π. Παράλληλα διερευνήθηκαν μελλοντικές προοπτικές εφαρμογών για την εξ αποστάσεως παρακολούθηση κατά τη διάρκεια του ύπνου ή ταυτόχρονα με εκτέλεση άσκησης σε εξωτερικούς χώρους. / Treatment of chronic patients is currently one of the most difficult international issues that health and social care systems need to address, both medically and by socio-economic terms. For this reason, the corresponding systems in the U.S. and EU have engaged the last years a lot of effort, in an intense struggle, for the restructuring (reengineering) of the total care management process, in order to optimize service and streamline costs. Strategic tool for providing new services is Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). In the current study, the usage of modern and widely available communication technologies (broadband internet, mobile telephony, etc.), combined with innovative products, such as the 'electronic' fabrics (e-Textiles), in order to provide advanced remote monitoring services, were thoroughly examined. This thesis aimed to implement and evaluate a program of early hospital discharge, followed by a home hospitalization program, in chronic respiratory patients of ‘Sotiria’ Hospital in the region of Attica - Greece, conducted within the framework of a European Research Project named 'HealthWear'. The methodological approach followed was first to establish an in-depth background for this type of interventions, through a broad, thorough systematic literature review, and secondly to evaluate a clinical trial, in the real everyday life of a public hospital. The program involved 48 patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), separated randomly into control group (traditional care) and intervention group (early discharge and follow up by using wearable, portable, non-invasive devices). A comprehensive presentation of the ICT system used, the clinical protocol of the service and the methodology for the remote monitoring the intervention group patients, are followed by the assessment results of the trial. Our experience from this trial allows the prediction that wearable and wireless systems can be proved as new era’s tools in patients’ remote follow up and personalized care, especially valuable in early discharge, as well as in home based monitoring during sleep and outdoor activities.

With the quality of our South African public education system internationally in question we need to look into supplemental ways to improve the education of our country’s children. Numerous studies have shown that parental involvement has a positive effect on student academic achievement. This study aimed to quantitatively determine the current extent and types of parental involvement in the education of their school-going children, in single-parent/guardian and two-parent/guardian households in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal. This included General Education and Training (GET) and Further Education and Training (FET) levels. The method of time-space sampling was used to administer a researcher-created questionnaire ‒ based on Epstein’s (2009) framework of six types of involvement ‒ pertaining to parents/guardians in the Durban CBD. The findings of the study resulted in recommendations pertaining to: the aspects of parental involvement that elicited low levels of involvement such as significant numbers of parents from single-parent households indicating that they would attend parent days at school if they were given a choice of possible attendance days; the need to identify and support parents that are unable to participate as much as they would like to by offering transportation for school meetings or activities, including school governing body and budget meetings; and the requests from parents/guardians regarding the use of technology in the form of sms communication in helping them to stay more informed regarding the progress etc. of their child at school. / ABET and Youth Development / M. Ed. (Adult Education)

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Il ballo sociale di coppia è una forma di svago che è tornata ad essere praticata da giovani e adulti soprattutto dagli anni Novanta. Questa ricerca sociologica ha per oggetto gli eventi di ballo sociale di coppia che hanno luogo attualmente a Milano in spazi pubblici, soprattutto nel centro città, senza autorizzazioni formali e privi di finalità di lucro. L’ipotesi di base è che questi eventi, organizzati da gruppi di ballerini attraverso reti sociali online, siano parte di un fenomeno sociale unico. I tipi di ballo coinvolti sono il tango argentino, la mazurka francese neotrad, lo swing e i balli del sud Italia. Questo lavoro, attraverso l’osservazione partecipante in situazione e interviste in parte semistrutturate e in parte biografiche, mira ad individuare i significati specifici che distinguono tale pratica urbana dal ballo di coppia in luoghi istituzionali e quale sia il ruolo giocato dello spazio pubblico nel differenziare i due oggetti. Nell’analisi delle interviste, l’ambito di significato relativo alla socialità collettiva si è distinto rispetto agli altri per corposità e complessità, è stato perciò scelto come chiave interpretativa del fenomeno. Questa pratica si rivela, infine, una forma di socievolezza e un ambiente sociale in cui esperire un’intimità di gruppo generata da interazioni estemporanee tra conoscenti, e trova negli spazi pubblici della città il suo teatro di espressione privilegiato. / In Western culture, social partner dances have re-emerged as a leisure activity for young and adults since the 90’s. This sociological research concerns social partner dancing events taking place in public spaces in Milan nowadays, especially in the city centre. They are organized through online social networks by groups of dancers who occupy the public space without any formal license and any profit-mindedness; Argentinian tango, French mazurka, swing, and Southern Italian dances are the types of dances involved. The underlying assumption is that these street events are part of a unique social phenomenon. By means of an at home perspective to participant observation, semistructured, and in-depth interviews, this work aims, firstly, to find specific meanings to this practice by comparing it to partner dances performed in institutional places; and secondly, to identify the role of public space in this framework. The collective sociality dimension of meaning has been chosen as a key to interpretation, since it stood out for complexity and relevance. This urban practice turns out to be a kind of simmelian sociability and an environment to experience a group intimacy produced by extemporary interactions of acquaintances; of which urban public spaces, furthermore, prove to be a perfect theatre to its full expression.