acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu

Among the range of social and economic problems known to disproportionately affect homeless persons, research has repeatedly confirmed that homeless populations are substantially more likely to indicate problems with substance abuse than are evidenced in housed populations. Those considering the potential causal implications associated with this correlation have frequently implicated drug abuse as a key precipitant of downward mobility among the substance abusive homeless, emphasizing its acknowledged potential for undermining work or family or other social ties. Cued by such logic, the past decade has witnessed the development of numerous remedial endeavors geared primarily toward aiding homeless abusers to alter their drug behaviors. These programs have continually encountered limited success, as high rates of program attrition and relapse subsequent to treatment have continually conspired to frustrate the ambitions of administrators. This dissertation considers the crucial question of why such outcomes have been so common Explored in this project are the presumably crucial roles played by motivational factors in promoting 'recovery.' Using data from one treatment agenda that targeted the drug problems of adult homeless substance abusers, connections between the drug using habits of program clients and a range of alternative social or economic problems known to affect homeless populations are systematically examined. Analyses reveal that clients facing the most severe employment- and family-related handicaps were the least likely to report improvements with respect to drug consumption, consistent with the premise that incentives to retire these habits are significantly less among those indicating the least to gain, economically or socially, from retention of sobriety. Insofar as findings reinforce the conclusion that drug usage is likely as much an effect as a source of other hardships to which homeless abusers are associated, they bear relevance for treatment providers. These data suggest that, unless future programs are equipped to deal with other economic and social problems of homeless abusers, success rates will continue to be discouraging / acase@tulane.edu

The fight to establish victim rights in Florida began with a handful of dedicated practitioners, victims and survivors. They battled burnout, apathy, rejection and less than adequate funding. Power struggles arose between personalities, egos, the institutionalized governmental agencies, and funding sources. This dissertation chronicles the creation of the Florida Network of Victim Witness Services (FNVWS) as an agent of social reform, and documents the organization's evolution. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 52-08, Section: A, page: 3084. / Major Professor: Leroy C. Gould. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1991.

An increasingly challenging phenomenon for both developing and advanced economies, the negative consequences of long-lasting youth unemployment both at the individual and the societal level are well established. The volatility of local economies in an era of recurrent global economic crisis may have solidified the disadvantaged status of young people within the larger economies. Understanding youth labor outcomes in developing countries may offer new perspectives for policy makers as well as help to unmask chronic problems in our economic systems and give direction to further studies concerning the youth labor market. / One might expect that declines in the size of the youth cohort observed in the past two decades would have contributed positively to labor outcomes of youth in developing countries. Panel fixed-effects regression analyses covering a span of the last 22 years in 18 economically advanced and 23 developing countries were conducted to test the impact of changes in the size of the youth cohort on youth employment and unemployment controlling for macroeconomic conditions. A second question this study focused on concerns the impact of individual supply factors on youth outcomes in Turkey. The roles of human capital factors such as education and of family factors such as parent and sibling characteristics related to social capital were tested using micro data from the Turkish Household Labor Force Survey and hierarchical modeling. The study also tested the impact of the structural characteristics of regions. / Analysis of time series data across countries illustrated that relative cohort size had no impact on youth labor market outcomes controlling for other factors, in contrast to the findings of earlier studies. Results of the micro-level analysis illustrated the varying impact of education, the significance of the role of both parents and siblings and the distinct nature of family dynamics in rural versus urban contexts and across genders. Both micro and macro analysis indicated that with the structural changes taking place in developing economies today coupled with their context-specific features, youth unemployment is both a problem in its own right and signifies a problem larger than itself.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Counseling Psychology, 2007. / Title from dissertation home page (viewed Sept. 25, 2008). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-02, Section: A, page: 0519. Adviser: Michael L. Tracy.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, San Francisco, 2009. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-06, Section: A, page: . Advisers: Charlene Harrington; Craig R. Cohen.

<p> The role of grievances in drawing public concern and activist support is a surprisingly understudied topic in modern social movement literature. This research is the first to parse grievances into core components to understand whether some grievances are more successful than others in evoking mobilizing, affective and cognitive reactions that can ultimately benefit social movements. I find that not all grievances are created equal when it comes to concern, support and interest in activism, and that the content of grievances can be studied in systematic ways to identify the types of grievances likely to be more powerful injustice events. </p><p> This dissertation bridges social psychology and social movements by applying concepts from Affect Control Theory (such as evaluation ratings and deflection) to grievance evaluations. To understand the differential effects of grievances, I break grievances into three basic building blocks&mdash;a Perpetrator (Actor), the act itself (Behavior), and the victim (Object). I then use measures of cultural perceptions of the goodness or badness of behaviors and identities to investigate how people react to different configurations of good or bad perpetrators, behavior and victims in injustice events. I posit that two mechanisms&mdash;concern about the wellbeing of others and desire for consistency in meanings about the world&mdash;drive reactions to the goodness or badness of elements in a grievance. I test hypotheses using an experimental design, specifically a vignette study. </p><p> I find strong support, across outcomes, that bad behavior, particularly when directed toward good victims, constitutes a form of grievance that promotes strong mobilizing, affective and cognitive reactions. I also find that the perpetrator matters for many outcomes, but that the effect of perpetrator is weaker than the effect of behavior and its target, tends to be insignificant for measures specific to behavioral activism, and largely disappears in cases of bad behavior toward good victims. In general, bad perpetrators produce higher levels of concern and emotion than do good perpetrators. The results also show that while concerns about the wellbeing of others dominate grievance evaluations, expectations about how the world should be (and deflection from those expectations) are useful for understanding reactions to perpetrators and to injustice events involving good behavior. </p><p> The conclusions from this dissertation contribute to a number of social movement arenas, including participation, movement outcomes, framing and emotions. Further, it has the real world implications of suggesting how well particular social issues might fare in attracting public concern and activist attention. This provides insights into both the types of movements more likely to be successful as well as the types of social problems less likely to draw public attention, increasing the chances that such problems persist.</p>

<p><!-- Fragment document type declaration subset: ArborText, Inc., 1988-1999, v.4002 --> <formattedtext>The Experience of Sacred Breathwork&trade;: Healing Through Non-Ordinary States of Consciousness</formattedtext>