Women aged 55 and older have been participating actively in the American work force and recently have been drawing increased attention from researchers in the social sciences (Ashbaugh & Fay, 1987) . This study examines the nature of service work performed by older part-time women workers and their younger women co-workers, and the relationship between the two generations in the workplace. The following research questions guided this exploratory study: Do the older women workers and their younger women co-workers report that there have been changes in the co-workers' work since the older women began working at the job site? What do the older women workers and their younger women co-workers perceive to be the emotional quality of their intergenerational interaction in the workplace? If the co-workers report that the way their work is performed in the setting has changed since the older women began working, is the intergenerational relationship influenced by the perceived change in the distribution of work?

Interviewing eighteen older parents (aged 65 and older) with two or more children for this project established support for the emotional experience of intergenerational ambivalence. Seventy-five parent-child relationships were discussed. Two major themes arose over what healthy, independently living parents feel ambivalent about in their relationships with their midlife children. The first theme focused on how parents simultaneously felt sadness and pride about the busyness of their children's lives. In some respects, parents sensed themselves left out of their children's everyday life, yet they accepted these feelings with a gratified knowledge that their children were functioning adults in society. The second theme of intergenerational ambivalence that surfaced from the interviews was the issue of respecting and negotiating boundaries around spheres of influence. Parents oscillated between positive and negative feelings and thoughts about the appropriateness of offering advice to children. Parents shared conflicted thoughts about stepping back, allowing their children to live their own lives even if they disapproved of certain aspects of it. A few parents shared situations when they felt they did interfere and overstepped their right to comment on their children's life decisions. This theme centered around four issues: financial matters, core beliefs of politics and religion, romantic partnerships, and parenting styles. This study also examined management strategies parents used to sort out and think through complex feelings and thoughts about their midlife children. A contribution this project gives to the emergence of intergenerational ambivalence as a theoretical concept of study in parent-child relations over the lifecourse is the experience of older mothers and fathers. I found no evidence parents experienced qualitatively different emotions because of their gender. Instead, the underlying experience of intergenerational ambivalence was very similar for mothers and fathers. From the results presented in this study, mixed emotions seem to be a natural and normative experience in late life. Older parents experienced ambivalence on a psychological level. Conflicting inner thoughts and mixed emotions resulted from everyday interactions and conversations with midlife children. / Graduation date: 2004

Thesis (M.A. (Pastoral))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2008.

A long-term care resident sits in front of a TV. With the push of a remote control button she instantly sees and visits with her children and grandchildren over 500 miles away. She last saw them on her 80th birthday, four years ago. She and her family are participants in a social action inquiry that explores video conferencing in order to understand the value of technology enhanced face-to-face interaction in a long-term care home. <p>This research, designed as a compassionate response to the serious problems of isolation, loneliness, helplessness, and boredom in long-term care, set out to determine what video conferencing can mean to long-term care residents and to the people they connect with. The study queried possibilities for improving the quality of social interactions of residents in long-term care facilities with family members living at some considerable distance from them. It involved setup of technical equipment, then three residents in a long-term care facility in western Canada were introduced to the practice of video conferencing with their families. Each conferencing event was supported with volunteers for a three-four month exploration period. <p>The research was intended to contribute to knowledge about learning in later life, to promote a way of increasing communication between the elderly and younger generations, and to address issues associated with elderly long-term care residents access to video conferencing technology. <p>Data collected through memory logs, observations, and interviews indicates that all study participants, including residents, family, and volunteers, responded favourably to the video conferencing experience. This study supports the claims that video conferencing can increase the frequency of contact between long-term residents and family members, and that the quality of this contact is enhanced through the visual presence and engagement of participants, through use of video conferencing technology. The video conferencing enabled family members separated by distance and unable to visit frequently to take on a "regular visitor role" and for residents to go visiting. The visually enhanced communication / visits transformed the otherwise limited audio interaction of phone calls or no interaction into socially substantive experiences of connectedness, inclusion about which residents reported feeling excited and connected with something to look forward to. <p>This suggests video conferencing could contribute to a good quality of life for residents. Future communications infrastructures should seriously consider inclusion strategies and availability of effective applications to long-term care residents.

Adverse childhood experiences-including parental and familial factors such as parental substance abuse, parental mental health problems, parental incarceration, parental unemployment and family violence, and personal factors such as physical, sexual, and emotional abuse- have been shown to strongly affect health risk behaviours in adulthood in the general population and are thus important in the health status of an individual. However, studies of people who use injection drugs have generally focused on disease seroprevalence and risk behaviours without considering their psychosocial histories.<p> In the 2000 Regina Seroprevalence and Risk Behaviours Study, 255 people who use injection drugs completed a standardized, confidential, and anonymous interview which included questions on adverse childhood experiences and injection-related and sexual risk behaviours. Associations among and between participants' reported adverse childhood experiences and subsequent risk behaviours were tested. Demographic factors were also considered, and general linear models of factors associated with risk behaviours were developed. <p> The rates of adverse childhood experiences and risk behaviours reported were very high. Several of the adverse childhood experiences studied were related to increased risk behaviours. The factors associated with injection-related risk behaviours were similar to those associated with sexual risk behaviours. The impact of adverse childhood experiences on risk behaviours was found to be cumulative; the more adverse childhood experiences the participants reported, the more risk behaviours they also reported. This information provides a unique opportunity to address these problems in the treatment and prevention of injection drug use. Supplementary research is needed to further elucidate the factors associated with high-risk behaviours in people who use injection drugs.

Adverse childhood experiences-including parental and familial factors such as parental substance abuse, parental mental health problems, parental incarceration, parental unemployment and family violence, and personal factors such as physical, sexual, and emotional abuse- have been shown to strongly affect health risk behaviours in adulthood in the general population and are thus important in the health status of an individual. However, studies of people who use injection drugs have generally focused on disease seroprevalence and risk behaviours without considering their psychosocial histories.<p> In the 2000 Regina Seroprevalence and Risk Behaviours Study, 255 people who use injection drugs completed a standardized, confidential, and anonymous interview which included questions on adverse childhood experiences and injection-related and sexual risk behaviours. Associations among and between participants' reported adverse childhood experiences and subsequent risk behaviours were tested. Demographic factors were also considered, and general linear models of factors associated with risk behaviours were developed. <p> The rates of adverse childhood experiences and risk behaviours reported were very high. Several of the adverse childhood experiences studied were related to increased risk behaviours. The factors associated with injection-related risk behaviours were similar to those associated with sexual risk behaviours. The impact of adverse childhood experiences on risk behaviours was found to be cumulative; the more adverse childhood experiences the participants reported, the more risk behaviours they also reported. This information provides a unique opportunity to address these problems in the treatment and prevention of injection drug use. Supplementary research is needed to further elucidate the factors associated with high-risk behaviours in people who use injection drugs.

A long-term care resident sits in front of a TV. With the push of a remote control button she instantly sees and visits with her children and grandchildren over 500 miles away. She last saw them on her 80th birthday, four years ago. She and her family are participants in a social action inquiry that explores video conferencing in order to understand the value of technology enhanced face-to-face interaction in a long-term care home. <p>This research, designed as a compassionate response to the serious problems of isolation, loneliness, helplessness, and boredom in long-term care, set out to determine what video conferencing can mean to long-term care residents and to the people they connect with. The study queried possibilities for improving the quality of social interactions of residents in long-term care facilities with family members living at some considerable distance from them. It involved setup of technical equipment, then three residents in a long-term care facility in western Canada were introduced to the practice of video conferencing with their families. Each conferencing event was supported with volunteers for a three-four month exploration period. <p>The research was intended to contribute to knowledge about learning in later life, to promote a way of increasing communication between the elderly and younger generations, and to address issues associated with elderly long-term care residents access to video conferencing technology. <p>Data collected through memory logs, observations, and interviews indicates that all study participants, including residents, family, and volunteers, responded favourably to the video conferencing experience. This study supports the claims that video conferencing can increase the frequency of contact between long-term residents and family members, and that the quality of this contact is enhanced through the visual presence and engagement of participants, through use of video conferencing technology. The video conferencing enabled family members separated by distance and unable to visit frequently to take on a "regular visitor role" and for residents to go visiting. The visually enhanced communication / visits transformed the otherwise limited audio interaction of phone calls or no interaction into socially substantive experiences of connectedness, inclusion about which residents reported feeling excited and connected with something to look forward to. <p>This suggests video conferencing could contribute to a good quality of life for residents. Future communications infrastructures should seriously consider inclusion strategies and availability of effective applications to long-term care residents.

<p>This dissertation investigates the economic behavior of families in developing settings. Utilizing uniquely rich, longitudinal survey data from Indonesia, it demonstrates the complexity of market environments facing rural households, as well as the importance of extended family networks in determining the health and well-being of young children. These essays serve as an illustration of advances in development economics that are possible when fundamental models are revisited and examined with new longitudinal data. The results of these exercises are important not only for updating economic models of behavior, but for what they reveal about the complexities of decision making, and for the effective design and evaluation of development policy around the world.</p> / Dissertation

A number of theories and studies in sociology and psychology have asserted that self-efficacy is both the consequence and cause of our everyday life experiences. However, there is little empirical evidence to support the existence of intergenerational parallelism of self-efficacy between generations. And if it exists, then the processes by which self-efficacy is transmitted from parents to children is rarely documented in the literature. In addition, it is noteworthy to examine whether such intergenerational transmission of self-efficacy exists among different types of families, genders, or racial groups. In my dissertation, I intend to answer these inquiries by utilizing a longitudinal data set that incorporates information of three generations (grandparents, parents, and grandchildren) reporting their individual age, educational attainment, self-esteem, and self-efficacy, with both parent generation's self-efficacy and child generation's self-efficacy having been collected in the same developmental stage (early adolescence). In addition, parents also reported several aspects of their adulthood conditions and behaviors, including their occupation, substance use, parenting behaviors, educational expectation upon their children, and their self-efficacy in adulthood, which I introduce as mediating mechanisms of the intergenerational transmission of self-efficacy. Finally, I analyzed this model separately in terms of family structure (dual- or single-parent families), child's gender, parent-child gender dyads, and race/ethnicity. The results suggest that there exists intergenerational parallelism of self-efficacy, and parent generation's self-efficacy (in adolescence) is associated with parents' choices of conventional pathways towards adulthood. These conventional pathways that self-efficacious parents choose in turn exhibit a strong influence on the development of the child's self-efficacy. These findings are independent of other influences, e.g. the family's social economic status, race/ethnicity, ages of both generations, and family structure. The implications and contributions of this research are discussed in the last chapter.

Thesis (D.Min.)--Abilene Christian University, 2007. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 98-101).