Measures Of Social Participation Research Articles

Social Capital Influence in Illicit Drug Use Among Racial/Ethnic Groups in the United States

Data from the 2003 National Survey on Drug Use and Health was utilized to elucidate the relationship between individual-level social capital and illicit drug use among racial/ethnic groups. Analysis of variance indicated that Whites had different perceptions of social capital compared to other groups, in measures of social participation, neighborhood cohesion, trust, and norms of reciprocity. Logistic regression analysis showed that individual-level social capital, measured by trust and norms of reciprocity, was weakly associated with illicit drug use. However, individuals with higher social participation were less likely to have used illicit drugs ever or during the month prior to the interview. The association between social capital and illicit drug use is discussed, as well as the role of social participation in illicit drug use. Rather than an individual-level measure of social capital, future research should employ a neighborhood-level measure of social capital that aggregates neighborhood cohesion, trust, norms of reciprocity, and social participation.

When adolescents with special health care needs become adults

Children and adolescents with chronic illnesses are living longer, and the transition of adolescents to adult care has become an important issue for many subspecialties. Adolescents with congenital heart disease, cystic fibrosis, congenital renal diseases, and spina bifida are just a few examples of such diseases in which many internal medicine physicians have limited experience in providing the complex care required. In this issue of The Journal, Liptak et al report that certain factors appear to be associated with improved measures of social participation in their cohort of patients with spina bifida. Factors associated with reduced social participation included difficulties with communications, learning disabilities, and being Latino. The accompanying editorial by Payne and Valentine emphasizes the additional work that needs to be done to successfully transition adolescents to adult care. They stress that focus on mental health issues and importantly the development of high quality transition teams will be essential. Although substantial progress has been made, much work needs to be done to promote successful transitional of children to adult independence. Article page 584 ▸ Editorial page 524 ▸ Youth with Spina Bifida and Transitions: Health and Social Participation in a Nationally Represented SampleThe Journal of PediatricsVol. 157Issue 4PreviewTo describe outcomes and identify factors that affect social participation in youth and young adults with spina bifida. Full-Text PDF Putting Adolescent Health at the Heart of PediatricsThe Journal of PediatricsVol. 157Issue 4PreviewAt the 2010 World Congress of Internal Medicine in Melbourne, Russell Viner, one of the leading advocates of adolescent medicine in the United Kingdom, delivered a keynote address titled “Adolescent Health—The New Paediatrics.” Dr Viner described the shifts that have occurred in the balance of infant, child, and adolescent health in recent years and challenged his audience to acknowledge and embrace these changes by putting adolescent health at the heart of pediatrics. Full-Text PDF

Performance Challenges for Children and Adolescents With Difficulty Processing and Integrating Sensory Information: A Systematic Review

A systematic review of the literature related to performance difficulties for children and adolescents with difficulty processing and integrating sensory information was completed as part of the Evidence-Based Literature Review Project of the American Occupational Therapy Association. The review focused on functional performance difficulties that these children may exhibit in areas of occupation including play and leisure, social participation, activities of daily living, instrumental activities of daily living, rest and sleep, education, and work. The results suggest that children and adolescents with difficulty processing and integrating sensory information do exhibit functional performance difficulties in key areas of occupation. However, further descriptive studies are needed to tie these difficulties to their specific sensory and motor issues. Researchers are encouraged to include functional performance measures and measures of social participation in their studies to further elucidate these relationships.

Preference-based measure of social participation from the Handicap Scale for Children

Objective: To establish a model that estimates a preference-based measure (valuation) of social participation for children between 8 and 18 years of age from the Handicap Scale for Children (HSC), a validated questionnaire for children with a chronic illness. Methods: Vignettes of the HSC classification system were valued by a representative sample of 249 persons aged 18 years onwards. Linear and nominal scale (mixed-effects) models were used to analyze the valuations of the vignettes. Results: We established a model that performed better than a model that simply sums up the levels of each dimension. Conclusion: We obtained a measure that can be used for assessing need, for quality assurance and for evaluating interventions on a group level aiming to increase social participation in children with chronic illnesses.

Long-term Stability of Social Participation

The long-term stability of social participation was investigated in a representative urban population of 415 men and 579 women who had taken part in the nationwide Mini-Finland Health Survey in the years 1978–1980 and were re-examined 20 years later. Stability was assessed by means of the following tracking coefficients: kappa, proportion of stability, Spearman correlation, and stability coefficient (odds ratio) for engagement in clubs and voluntary societies, cultural and sports attendance, congregational activity, outdoor and productive activity, cultural interests, and hobby activity. The tracking results showed fair to moderate stability for the above measures of social participation, varying from the highest weighted kappa (0.43) for congregational activity in women to the lowest weighted kappa (0.22) for cultural and sports attendance in men. Migration from rural to urban community did not affect the stability of social participation. The underlying latent construct ‘social participation’ based on a two-wave multi-variable model showed good stability (r = 0.65). We conclude that social participation rests on a fairly stable foundation making it a useful tool for long-term epidemiological studies.

Ceremonies of the whole

The aim of this research was to test whether social participation is associated with improvements in mood and well-being, and in particular to test whether social participation might moderate the chronic distress associated with high levels of neuroticism (N). A rural Australian sample of 394 adults (54.3% female) completed questionnaires and participated in follow-up interviews. Social participation was indexed by community group membership, and operationalised for analysis in two forms: extent (number of group memberships) and presence (zero vs. one or more memberships). Mood was measured as Positive Affect (PA) and Negative Affect (NA) as rated on the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule and well-being was measured with Diener's Satisfaction with Life (SWL) questionnaire. Items from Goldberg's International Personality Item Pool were used to measure N. The extent of social participation was significantly associated with all three mood/well-being variables in bivariate analyses, and remained as a significant net predictor of PA and NA (beta = 0.11, P < 0.05, beta = -0.13, P < 0.05) when modeled with age, gender and income. In parallel, categorical social participation was found to be significantly associated with PA, NA and SWL in bivariate analyses and in multivariate analyses controlling for age, gender and income (beta = 0.11, P < 0.05, beta = -0.15, P < 0.01 and beta = 0.11, P < 0.05, respectively). The interaction term N*Social interaction was significantly correlated with NA in bivariate analyses involving both continuous (r = -0.14, P < 0.01) and categorical (r = -0.13, P < 0.01) measures of social participation, and in its continuous form remained a significant net predictor of NA after controlling for the main effects of N and Social participation (beta = -0.09, P < 0.05). The present findings extend upon existing evidence that social participation tends to be positively associated with mental health by demonstrating the predicted effect across a comprehensive set of mood/well-being variables. Preliminary evidence was also obtained that social participation may serve as a moderator of the chronic distress associated with N. It is concluded that further research seeking to confirm the causal direction of the identified pathways is warranted.

Social capital and substance use among Swedish adolescents—an explorative study

Cross-sectional survey data on Swedish adolescents aged 12–18 was used to estimate the link between individual social capital and smoking, illicit drug use and binge drinking. Major conclusions drawn were (1) that social capital, indicated by measures of social participation and trust, was negatively correlated with the probability of smoking and illicit drug use, but (2) that social capital showed no statistically significant correlation with the probability of binge drinking.

Participation as an Outcome of Traumatic Brain Injury Rehabilitation

Participation in meaningful life situations is an important aspect of functioning after traumatic brain injury (TBI). However, to date, few studies have included measures of social participation or community integration as outcome measures after TBI rehabilitation. This paper is a selective review of the literature that examines the effects of TBI rehabilitation on measures of participation or community integration. It also addresses the related questions of clinically significant improvements in community integration, variability in patterns of community functioning, and the relationship of participation and quality of life after TBI. Literature review. A small number of studies suggest that postacute TBI rehabilitation can produce improvements in participation and community integration. However, a considerable amount of variability in rehabilitation outcomes may be apparent. Analysis of clinically significant changes in individual's functioning suggests that rehabilitation may exert its benefits not only by facilitating improvements, but also by preventing declines in community functioning. Subjective well-being and quality of life have generally been ignored as TBI rehabilitation outcomes. There is considerable evidence that participation and subjective well-being represent distinct and dissociable outcomes after TBI, which may reflect the importance of patients' preferences and values in evaluating the effectiveness of rehabilitation.

Community integration and satisfaction with functioning after intensive cognitive rehabilitation for traumatic brain injury

Cicerone KD, Mott T, Azulay J, Friel JC. Community integration and satisfaction with functioning after intensive cognitive rehabilitation for traumatic brain injury. Arch Phys Med Rehabil 2004;85:943–50. Objective To evaluate the effectiveness of an intensive cognitive rehabilitation program (ICRP) compared with standard neurorehabilitation (SRP) for persons with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Design Nonrandomized controlled intervention trial. Setting Community-based, postacute outpatient brain injury rehabilitation program. Participants Fifty-six persons with TBI. Interventions Participants in ICRP (n=27) received an intensive, highly structured program of integrated cognitive and psychosocial interventions based on principles of holistic neuropsychologic rehabilitation. Participants in SRP (n=29) received comprehensive neurorehabilitation consisting primarily of physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, and neuropsychologic treatment. Duration of treatment was approximately 4 months for both interventions. Main outcome measures Community Integration Questionnaire (CIQ); and Quality of Community Integration Questionnaire assessing satisfaction with community functioning and satisfaction with cognitive functioning. Neuropsychologic functioning was evaluated for the ICRP participants. Results Both groups showed significant improvement on the CIQ, with the ICRP group exhibiting a significant treatment effect compared with the SRP group. Analysis of clinically significant improvement indicated that ICRP participants were over twice as likely to show clinical benefit on the CIQ (odds ratio=2.41; 95% confidence interval, 0.8–7.2). ICRP participants showed significant improvement in overall neuropsychologic functioning; participants with clinically significant improvement on the CIQ also showed greater improvement of neuropsychologic functioning. Satisfaction with community functioning was not related to community integration after treatment. Satisfaction with cognitive functioning made a significant contribution to posttreatment community integration; this finding may reflect the mediating effects of perceived self-efficacy on functional outcome. Conclusions Intensive, holistic, cognitive rehabilitation is an effective form of rehabilitation, particularly for persons with TBI who have previously been unable to resume community functioning. Perceived self-efficacy may have significant impact on functional outcomes after TBI rehabilitation. Measures of social participation and subjective well-being appear to represent distinct and separable rehabilitation outcomes after TBI.

Social participation and cognitive functioning in older adults

AbstractThe association between aspects of social participation and components of cognitive functioning and the ability of these aspects to predict cognitive performance was studied in an age and gender stratified sample of 116 individuals aged 55‐89 years in the Netherlands. Measures of social participation included questionnaires on societal participation, sociocultural activities and media use. Cognitive functioning was measured by tests of fluid intelligence, processing speed, word learning and recall, and everyday memory. All aspects of social participation showed significant bivariate correlations with all components of cognitive functioning. Independent of age, gender, education and functional limitations, societal participation and sociocultural activities contributed significantly to the prediction of processing speed and of delayed recall. Tendencies of independent association were apparent between both societal participation and sociocultural activities and word learning. No aspect of social participation independently predicted fluid intelligence or everyday memory. The evidence suggests independent associations between social participation characterized by an organizational setting and high level of activity, and basic components of cognitive functioning, such as information‐processing speed and measures of learning and delayed recall. Further research needs to clarify the process underlying the causal relation between cognitive functioning and forms of participation.

Public Attitudes Toward Suicide Demographic and Ideological Correlates

Despite long-standing research interest in the social correlates of suicide, public attitudes toward have received comparatively little attention. Using data from NORC's General Social Survey, this study examines popular support for a person's right to commit when s/he is tired of living or faced with an incurable disease, bankruptcy, or family dishonor. Survey responses to these four items conform to a unidimensional Guttman-type scale. Opposition to suicide, as measured by this scale, varies along a number of sociodemographic lines. Prolife beliefs and civil libertarianism are strongly related to a person's attitudes toward and explain at least part of every sociodemographic relationship examined. By contrast, life satisfaction, anomia, and social participation measures show no significant associations with attitudes. Suicide, as a social phenomenon, has gained increased notoriety in recent years with widely publicized accounts of the suicide crisis among America's teens and heightened concern over right-to-die issues in the United States as well as abroad. The seeming failure to reach consensus on proposed strategies of intervention reflects the highly variegated nature of the problem and the growing ambivalence about what has traditionally been portrayed as a socially DARWIN SAWYER iS Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. JEFFERY SOBAL is Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 1985 annual meetings of the American Sociological Association and the American Association for Public Opinion Research. The authors wish to thank the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research for making the data for this study available. The data for the Spring 1982 General Social Survey, National Data Program for the Social Sciences, were originally collected by James A. Davis and Tom W. Smith of the National Opinion Research Center. Public Opinion Quarterly Volume 51:92-101 ? by the American Association for Public Opinion Research Published by The University of Chicago Press / 0033-362X/87/0051-01/$2.50 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.144 on Wed, 07 Sep 2016 05:20:36 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Public Attitudes Toward Suicide 93 deviant act. Interest in the normative bases of suicidal behavior dates at least as far back as Durkheim (1951), yet except for a handful of widely scattered and narrowly focused studies (Ansel and McGee, 1971; Domino, Gibson, Polling, and Westlake, 1980; Domino, Cohen, and Gonzalez, 1981; Domino, Moore, Westlake, and Gibson, 1982; Ginsburg, 1971; Hood, 1973; Kalish, 1963; Kalish, Reynolds, and Farberow, 1974; Shneidman, 1971), little evidence has been produced to support this popular conception of public attitudes toward suicide. Even less evidence is available showing whether such attitudes vary within the population, and if so, why. While opinion polls continue to show substantial public disapproval (Gallup, 1978), survey studies were reporting significant support for the rights of victims as early as 1970 (Beswick, 1970).1 In a more recent survey (Domino et al., 1980), 12% of the respondents felt that society had no right to interfere with the wishes of victims. Approval levels as high as 48% have been found in cases of terminal illness (NORC, 1983), and while clearly a less compelling justification, fully 20% of the population approves of even when one is simply a burden on his or her family (Gallup, 1978).

Sociometric Awareness, Social Participation, and Perceived Popularity in Preschool Children

KRAN-Z, MURRAY. Sociometric Awareness, Social Participation, and Perceived Popularity in Preschool Children. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1982, 53, 376-379. This study focused on the relationships between social status, social interaction, and knowledge of social relationships in preschool children. 47 middle-class preschoolers were assessed on a sociometric test of popularity, an observational measure of social participation, a measure of referential communication, and an emotion-attribution task. An additional sociometric procedure was designed to assess the children's ability to accurately portray the sociometry of their same-sexed peer group (sociometric awareness) and to generate a measure of perceived popularity. Statistical analysis revealed a pattern of covariation among the measures of social participation, sociometric awareness, and perceived popularity. Children who were relatively high in social participation were more aware of the friendship pattern of their peers and were perceived as more popular by their peers. Conventional measures of referential communication and emotion attribution were not related to social involvement in this age group.

Measures of Social Participation

Measures of Social Participation

Measures of Social Participation

Measures of Social Participation

Manifest and Latent Participators in a Rural Community Action Program

C OMMUNITY development programs differ to some extent from other types of organizations in that (1) their membership is determined on the basis of the boundaries, and (2) all persons residing within these boundaries are theoretically members of the organization. The often quoted statement that community development is everybody's business implies that it is a concern of all residents and, ideally, each resident assists in attaining the group-determined goals and is, in turn, the recipient of the ensuing products. While this may represent the aspirations of many persons in organized communities, their organizations are not unlike other formally organized groups in terms of the unequal levels of participation. Many members may make no contribution to the goals of the and others may participate at varying levels, and, similarly, neither do all share equally in the accrued benefits. Various measures of social participation have been employed by a number of researchers. Mangus and Cottam, for example, state that formal social participation refers to the part taken in organized groups and includes not only attendance at meetings but also membership maintained, financial contributions made, committee work done and offices held.1 Other studies have emphasized not only the activity element but also the idea of value commitment2 the ego-involvement3 of participants, variations in degrees of identification4 of the individual with the group, and the . . sharing in a culture through a media of communication.5 The objective of the present study was to determine the relationships between varying levels of participation in a development program6 and the following three sets of variables: (1) social and economic characteristics of the residents, (2) their knowledge and understanding of the structure and function of the organization, and (3) their attitudes toward the program. The first set of variables includes such items as sex, age, education, socio economic status, years in the community, and family participation; these items constitute what Beal terms static variables.7 They are so termed because they can not be readily changed by the members of the group, by leaders or by professional workers. The latter variables, dealing with knowledge and attitudes, were designated dynamic variables since they are more amenable to change through group action. Manifest and latent participation. Participation in voluntary associations can better be understood by considering it as being composed of two formsmanifest and latent. Analyzing manifest, overt participation in a development program, or in other groups, for that matter,8 is not wholly adequate for ascertaining the solidarity or success of a particular group. The attitudes of