Social Climates Research Articles

Always the Pragmatist

That two laudatory biographies of long-term female political activists, Ellen Chesler's of Margaret Sanger and Blanche Wiesen Cook's first volume on Eleanor Roosevelt, should appear at virtually the same time perhaps reflects how beleaguered feminists felt at that point. They, like liberals, needed heroes after twelve years of conservative administrations, and those tenacious reformers who kept battling even when the political and social climates were inhospitable seemed especially admirable. Given the ongoing backlash against women's reproductive autonomy, Sanger's single-minded fifty-year campaign for widespread access to legal birth control becomes of particular interest. Ellen Chesler, a historian who interrupted her scholarship for eight years to serve as chief of staff to New York City Council President Carol Bellamy, acknowledges that her own practical experience as a woman in the political world informed the way she looked at her subject. While critical of Sanger for many things, her unwillingness to share the leadership of the birth control movement, her total cynicism about the Catholic Church, her willful naivete about the ambiguous lessons of science for fertility control, her neglect of her children, Chesler looks with understanding and approval on Sanger's pragmatic willingness to make compromises and alliances she believed necessary to the success of her cause. In this richly detailed, important study, based on a much wider range of archival and oral history sources than any previous biography of Sanger, she seeks to identify the resources-financial, political, intellectual, and psychological-that allowed her notorious subject to fight for a cause that met so much organized resistance. Her carefully nuanced portrait is also a defense of Sanger from David Kennedy's depiction of her in Birth Control in America: the Career of Margaret Sanger (1970) as an overly emotional reformer who ceded the birth control movement to the forces of social control and from Linda Gordon's denial of her as a

The role of advocacy in influencing government policy on tobacco

There is a time-honoured metaphor in public health about a river, a cliff and people who fall from the cliff into the river. The metaphor describes the expensive ambulances and the heroic rescue and resuscitation services that can be arranged along rivers to retrieve and revive those who are drowning. It acknowledges that those drowning are usually very grateful for these services and conversely, that a lot of politically damaging fuss can be made if innocent or important people are left to drown. As for the cliff, the metaphor points out that safety fences erected at the top might prevent a lot of people from falling in. But it points out that fences can be ugly, that they disrupt views, and that as dull, static and unchanging objects they do not attract the same acumen as bright shiny ambulances or dramatic rescue routines. Above all, a fence does its job when nothing happens, while rescue services are frequently defined as successful when they are merely busy. The opening of a fence provides one photo opportunity for a health minister; dramatic rescues can provide dozens. Despite the obvious message of the parable, there are many unfenced cliffs in tobacco control and many others that topple under the slightest pressure. Yet fences like advertising bans [l], significant increases in excise tax [2] and bans on smoking in workplaces [3] are the most coveted goals in tobacco control policy. Today, I want to explore this metaphor as it applies to global strategies to control the epidemic of tobacco caused disease, paying particular attention to the factors that. best help shape social and political climates that ensure smoking control fences are built with enthusiasm. Before examining some of the more important strategies for framing public and political debate about tobacco, I shall quickly comment on the folly of downstream strategies as efficient public health measures.

Dissonance and the Return of the Self-Concept

vergent perceptions of the causes of behavior. Morristown, NJ: General Learning Press. Kelley, H. H. (1967). Attribution theory in psychology. In D. Levine (Ed.), Nebraska Symposium on Motivation (Vol. 15). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Kiesler, C., Collins, B. E., & Miller, N. (1969). Attitude change: A critical analysis of theoretical approaches. New York: Wiley. Levy, D. A., & Collins, B. E. (1989, August). A working modelfor the latent structure of influence. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Psychological Association, New Orleans. Levy, D. A., & Collins, B. E. (1990, April). Conscious and unconscious processes in interpersonal influence. Paper presented at the meeting of the Western Psychological Association, Los Angeles. Lewin, K., Lippett, R., & White, R. K. (1939). Patterns of aggressive behavior in experimentally created social climates. Journal of Social Psychology, 10, 271-299. Schachter, S. (1951). Deviation, rejection and communication. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 46, 190-207. Scher, S. J., & Cooper, J. (1989). Motivational basis of dissonance: The singular role of behavioral consequences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 899-906. Taylor, S. E. (1981). The interface of cognitive and psychology. In J. Harvey (Ed.), Cognition, behavior, and the environment. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Science, 185, 1124-1131.

The History of Malariotherapy for Neurosyphilis

THE ACQUIRED immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) epidemic and the attempt to deregulate drug approval with the goal of hastening a cure have parallels with another sexually transmitted disease and the search for its cure. Syphilis and one of its dread consequences, neurosyphilis, was a disease that consumed much public health concern, and whose putative "cure," malariotherapy, earned the 1927 Nobel Prize in Medicine for the Austrian psychiatrist Julius Wagner-Jauregg. In reviewing the history of syphilis, the true benefits of malariotherapy are unknown because of the research methods used at the time. Was malariotherapy efficacious? This historical question is relevant to the present debate over drug regulations and AIDS, because abandonment of drug evaluation protocols could return us to the methodologic environment of Wagner-Jauregg's day. It seems worthwhile to review the similarities and differences between the two diseases, social climates, and searches for cures. In Europe and the United States at the

A Typology of Social Climates in Group Residential Facilities for Older People

A typology of the social climates of group residential facilities for older people was developed by a cluster analysis of seven social climate attributes obtained on a national sample of 235 nursing homes, residential care facilities, and congregate apartments. The analysis yielded six distinct types of social climate: Supportive, Self-Directed; Supportive, Well-Organized; Open Conflict; Suppressed Conflict; Emergent-Positive; and Unresponsive. Facility and resident characteristics were related to social climate type. In addition, the type of social climate was related to resident adaptation. Supportive, Self-Directed and Supportive, Well-Organized facilities had residents who rated higher in well-being and levels of self-initiated activities and who used fewer health services. A configural approach to describing social climates and their determinants and effects may help to develop more humanistic residential facilities and to better match individual residents to appropriate housing placements.

Ownership and quality of care in residential facilities for the elderly.

The quality of care older people receive in a residential facility is related to its ownership. Nonprofit facilities (N = 44) provided a more comfortable physical environment, more cohesive relationships, and more resident control than proprietary settings (N = 44) matched for size and resident functioning. Veterans facilities (N = 44) offered more services and a more diverse staff, but their policies permitted less resident autonomy and their social climates were less cohesive than community facilities of comparable size and resident functioning.

Twentieth-Century Women Writers from the English-Speaking Caribbean

Twentieth-Century Women Writers from the English-Speaking Caribbean Laura Niesen de Abruña (bio) "Alienation Within Alienation"—political and social—this, in Kenneth Ramchand's phrase (Novel 231), is the inchoate pain of the women writers from the English-speaking Caribbean. That they are writing fine poetry and fiction is a simple statement but one we do not hear often. Until the late Seventies little was written about these authors while the critics' attention focused on the male writers Wilson Harris, George Lamming, Edgard Mittelholzer, V. S. Naipaul, and Edward Brathwaite. As late as 1979, the popular critical text West Indian Literature, edited by Bruce King, mentions only Jean Rhys among the many women writers from this area. As Judith Fetterley has taught us, we must resist rather than assent to this reading of West Indian literature because the story that is missing here is the woman's story, and the omission is so acceptable that it is not even noticed (Davidson 43). Twentieth-century women writers from the English-speaking Caribbean—those who were born or grew up in the former British colonies in the West Indies—live in societies of extreme diversity and grave fragmentation of both European and African cultures. The insecurity in human relationships within tense social and political climates—particularly between woman and woman, man and woman, or mother and daughter—as [End Page 85] well as the uneasiness about personal identity are the most common concerns of the prominent women writers: Phyllis Shand Allfrey (Dominica), Zee Edgell (Belize), Merle Hodge (Trinidad), Jamaica Kincaid (Antigua), Paule Marshall (Barbados), Jean Rhys (Dominica), and Sylvia Wynter (Jamaica). Despite significant differences, these women writers have two things in common: the imbalance of power between men and women in their societies and the problems of identity and inequality in relation to male dominance (Brown 12). And, in many of these novels, the women characters best able to survive form a bond, a type of "mirroring" relationship with other women. The critics Leota Lawrence, Merle Hodge, and Hermione McKenzie have all pointed to several features of women's lives in the West Indies that have become part of literary discussion. The preponderance of the matriarchal family is, according to Lawrence, "the result of a synthesis of an African cultural survival with the realities of slavery in the area" (4). In many cases, the women live in a society in which sexual and emotional relationships have been destroyed by demoralizing and alienating economic manipulations in colonial and neocolonial societies (McKenzie ix). The single female head of household can be "among the most powerless of the society, the absence of a spouse often implying the absence of a stable family income" (Mathurin 5-6). Lucille Mathurin points out that this economically depressed condition makes the woman as "sexually vulnerable as she was in the darker days of her history" (6). Countering the myth of the self-sufficient black matriarchal figures, Hodge points out in a special edition of Savacou that the ultimate vocation of all women in the West Indies is to marry and/or become mothers (41). Lawrence goes further: It is a fact that many a young woman in the Caribbean has deliberately stifled any pretensions to a career, lest in doing so she outshine her male counterpart and thereby end up an "old maid." Thus, with very few exceptions there are no women writers; with very few exceptions there are no women calypsonians. The portrait of women that is revealed to the world in the written and oral literature is that given them by men. (4-5) Despite Lawrence's assertion that there are no women writers, there are many Caribbean women writing, although, as she admits, sometimes with great anxiety because their models are usually male writers and their societies emphasize the vocation of all women as nurturing their relationships with men and as bearing and raising children. Overcoming these obstacles, women writers have created characters who are self-supporting and who have great strength and endurance. They struggle and survive because of their basic respect for life; they depend on a strong bonding between and among women in their communities in the fight for basic survival...

The social climates of peer group and other residential programs

Some presumed strengths and weaknesses of peer group approaches are discussed as the basis for this study, in which students' and staff members' perceptions of social climates in two peer-group and two non-peer-group residential treatment agencies were compared. Students from the peer group agencies sampled reported significantly greater satisfaction with their social climates than their non-peer-group contemporaries, and staff/student perceptions were more congruent in the peer group agencies than in the non-peer-group agencies. The results suggested that peer group programs can provide healthy, responsible therapeutic communities, and other implications are discussed as well.

Person-environment congruence: A response to the Moos perspective

Moos' influential conceptual framework describes how perceptions of collective human environments (social climates) influence behavior. Congruence is achieved when individuals adapt their preferences in selecting environments. This view generally underemphasizes the role of individual variables and the actual environment. Progress in person-environment theory and research will result from continual analysis of the reciprocal influences of the person, the perceived environment, the actual environment, and behavior.

Maternal‐Child Health in Brazil

An overview of the social and economic climates and the healthcare delivery systems of Brazil is presented. The Brazilian healthcare system is discussed, with particular attention directed to the status of nursing and to the perinatal health-care delivery system. Examples of Brazilian perinatal health-care practices are provided.

Educational Social Climates and Delinquency in Iceland: An Integrated Perspective

This study tests the viability of an educational social climate model in explaining delinquency in Iceland. The model represents an integration of the conceptual ideas found in the educational environment literature and the literature on delinquency and the schools. The model specifies the relationships among perceptions of the school's social climate, school out comes, association with delinquent peers (differential association) and four types of delinquency. Using survey data from a sample (N = 578) of adolescents in Reykjavik, Iceland, the path analysis findings from this study offer modest support for the model School outcomes and differential association have the strongest direct effect on all types of delinquency. Perceptions of the school's social climate mainly have an effect on delin quency through their relationship with school outcomes and differential association.

Factors Influencing the Development of Political Science in Canada: A Case and a Model

Based on a literature review, this study provides an overview of the factors influencing the development of political science in Canada. Inevitably, this approach has a chronological bias, but it has been widened to take account of different perspectives and factors normally considered external to the discipline. The analysis points to episodic rather than linear development and takes account of the interrelationships and variable weights of the social, intellectual, academic, international and economic climates at different times. A model of development is presented which, while limited by its one-country focus, assembles pertinent variables to be tested against experience in other countries and certain considerations relevant to the nurturing of disciplines.

Paternalism modernised.

The practice of paternalism has changed along with developments in medicine, philosophy, law, sociology and psychology. Physicians have learned that a patient's values are a factor in determining what is best for that patient. Modern paternalism continues to be guided by the principle that the physician decides what is best for the patient and pursues that course of action, taking into account the values and interests of the patient. In the autonomy model of the doctor-patient relationship, patient values are decisive. In the paternalistic model, they are but one among several factors the physician must consider in making a medical decision. Although difficult to practise because of limitations in empathising with another person, modern paternalism remains a way to achieve maximum patient benefit.

The Integration of Handicapped and Nonhandicapped Children in Elementary Physical Education

This paper describes physical education research completed in a university-based laboratory over a 2-year period. The purpose of various laboratory projects was to study the complexities associated when integrating handicapped with nonhandicapped children. All of the work was focused on children in the kindgerten through third grades. Variables studied were motor performance, self-concept, teacher expectations, student effort (how hard a student tried during class), age, and social climates (competitive and noncompetitive atmospheres). Implications for teachers of physical education are drawn from investigation results.

The Paper Chase Myth

This is a report of a study that examined the social and academic climates of two American law schools, concluding that the environment in which legal education takes place is not conducive to significant socialization. The diminution after 7 months of law school of the expectations of first-year students to work as professionals after graduation in attaining justice and establishing social reforms was due largely to rational cognitive processes, inasmuch as there were no significant changes in basic motives and attitudes. The study supports adult socialization theory that holds that adult individual rationality is a powerful inhibitor of attempts to bring about fundamental affective changes.

Making Desegregation Work: How Schools Create Social Climates.

Making Desegregation Work: How Schools Create Social Climates.

Making Desegregation Work: How Schools Create Social Climates. By Robert L. Crain, Rita E. Mahard, and Ruth E. Narot. Cambridge: Ballinger, 1982. 286 pp. $22.50

Making Desegregation Work: How Schools Create Social Climates. By Robert L. Crain, Rita E. Mahard, and Ruth E. Narot. Cambridge: Ballinger, 1982. 286 pp. $22.50

Keynote address

The Commercial Transport Aircraft Industry, in common with most other industries, is gradually but continually changing its form and methods of operation to match the changing social, economic and technological climates of the world. It must be the concern of those responsible for Airworthiness within the industry to ensure that the present high levels of Airworthiness achieved are maintained and improved despite the changing circumstances.

Social ecological assessment of mental health treatment environments: toward self-evaluation.

Two instruments derived from the field of social ecology—the Ward Atmosphere Scale (WAS) and the Community Oriented Programs Environment Scale (COPES)—were employed in the present project as “self-evaluation” tools. Assessing inpatient and day treatment “social climates,” the WAS and COPES are presented in this paper as linking process and outcome measures in mental health program evaluation. The project focused on patient-staff discrepancies in environmental perceptions as guiding and catalyzing programmatic changes. That these brief scales do not require highly trained evaluators makes them highly suited for incorporation into routine program evaluation.

The measurement of rehabilitation centre social climates

It is often claimed that medical and vocational rehabilitation facilities generate psychosocial atmospheres appropriate to their respective rehabilitative functions. But such claims have rarely been formally examined. This study set out to develop scales to measure Employment Rehabilitation Centre (ERC) social climates, and to use those scales to evaluate the extent to which the officially proclaimed aim of creating in ERCs social climates comprising an amalgam of ‘industrial’ and ‘therapeutic’ elements is achieved in practice. This article describes the development of five scales for this purpose from inverse association analysis of an item pool administered to client samples in five centres. It also reports assessments of the psychometric properties of the scales and presents comparisons between ERCs. It concludes that work to date has produced a means of measuring ERC social climates and that application of the scales shows that ERCs vary in the extent to which the broad policy aim of creating environments comprising both ‘industrial’ and ‘therapeutic’ elements is achieved.