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PubMed1981

Blaming-a sign of psychosocial tensions in the community: findings from two surveys.

Blame attributions were studied as indicators of tension between a person and his/her psychosocial resources. An eight-item blame scale was constructed to tap the areas of one's life about which a person made causal attributions to explain misfortune. This scale along with other measures was administered through household surveys to two samples of 537 and 185 community residents. Consistent with the predictions of the study, demographic groups with fewer social resources had higher blame scores, and residents reporting more stressful life events were more likely to blame. As expected, blame attributions were positively correlated with three measures of maladjustment and were unrelated to a separate measure of positive well-being. Discontent with social life, followed by financial situation, family life, and life opportunity blame, were consistently related to reports of maladjustment. Self-blame, however, was only marginally associated with poor adjustment. The same findings were obtained for two divergent samples of residents, suggesting that the relationships obtained here have considerable generalizability.

Adult↗
PubMed1982

Factors associated with parent labeling of children referred for conduct problems.

Clinicians have suggested that in some cases normal children have been inappropriately labeled as deviant by their parents and taken to psychological clinics for treatment. Reasons given for such inappropriate labeling have included factors such as the parents' marital distress and intolerance of normal child behavior. This study provided an empirical examination of the appropriateness or inappropriateness of parent labeling of 5--12-year-old children referred by their parents for treatment of conduct problems. The definition of inappropriate labeling derived by the present investigators required that the relationship between the child's actual behavior and the parent's negative label be so imperfect as to raise questions about the justification for the label, and that some identifiable factors other than the child's behavior account for the negative label. Three parent factors evaluated for their contribution to the parent negative label were martial distress, parent negative behavior toward the child, and parent distress about child deviant behavior. The statistical model of hierarchical multiple regression permitted analysis of this definition. The association found between observed child deviant behavior and the parent negative label suggested that parents of this sample perceived their children reasonably accurately. The three parent factors were found to be negligibly related to the parent label. Therefore, the conditions for inappropriate labeling of the children by the parents of this sample were not met.

Child↗
PubMed2005

Maternal negative affect and perceptions of "problem children" in the family.

This study investigates whether depressive tendencies or anger/hostility is associated with an increased propensity for a mother to target a particular child in the family as the "problem child." The 180 participants were drawn from a larger cohort of urban, low-income mothers and young children. Maternal data were gathered from measures of self-reported and observed maternal emotionality. Sibling unfavored status was assessed by maternal verbal comparison of siblings. Results were consistent in showing that neither maternal depressive nor hostile affect is, by itself, predictive of a tendency to single out one child as a "troublemaker." The significance of these results for causal models about differential parental treatment is discussed.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1995

Sewers and scapegoats: spatial metaphors of smallpox in nineteenth century San Francisco.

Medical geography is slowly including more social and cultural theory in its analysis of health issues. Yet there is still room for theoretical growth in the discipline, in areas such as historical inquiry, metaphoric landscapes of disease, and the role of disease and its interpretations in the production of place. With the example of four smallpox epidemics in nineteenth century San Francisco, application of these concepts is illustrated. Each successive epidemic in San Francisco brought stronger association of the disease with Chinatown, until an almost complete metonymy of place and disease had occurred by the last decades of the century. The articulation of biased medical theory onto a landscape of xenophobia engendered this metaphorical transformation of Chinatown into a pustule of contagion threatening to infect the rest of the urban body. A less metaphoric mapping of smallpox focused on the sewer. According to 19th-century miasmatic theories of epidemiology, sewers were the most dangerous urban topographical feature. In an increasingly class-stratified city, they undercut attempts of the upper classes to escape disease by carrying smallpox-causing miasmas across class and ethnic boundaries. A reinvigorated sanitation movement was the result. Both reactions to smallpox epidemics had significant influence in shaping San Francisco's landscape, real and symbolic.

Asian↗
PubMed2005

Representations of mad cow disease.

This paper examines the reporting of the story of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) and its human derivative variant Creutzfeld-Jacob Disease (vCJD) in the British newspapers. Three 'snapshots' of newspaper coverage are sampled and analysed between the period 1986 and 1996 focusing on how representations of the disease evolved over the 10-year period. Social representations theory is used to elucidate how this new disease threat was conceptualised in the newspaper reporting and how it was explained to the UK public. This paper examines who or what was said to be at risk from the new disease, and whether some individuals or groups held to blame for the diseases' putative origins, the appearance of vCJD in human beings, and its spread.

Animal Husbandry↗
PubMed1997

Crocodile talk: attributions of incestuously abused and nonabused sisters.

This study is a qualitative analysis of the attributions of sisters (abused and nonabused sister dyads, n = 10 and abused sister dyads, n = 10) who grew up in an incestuous family. While the sibling subsystem is reported to be the most important and enduring relational environment in the life of the family, little is known about the cognitions and attributions of siblings, regarding incest. This study examines the attributions of participants regarding the general sibling group, victim selection and nonselection, as well as attributions regarding jealousy, protection, and guilt within the sister relationship.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed2002

'The cold hard facts' immunisation and vaccine preventable diseases in Australia's newsprint media 1993-1998.

The news media have the potential to influence public perceptions about childhood vaccination. Research has quantified the extent of positive news reportage on immunisation but no studies have explored the rhetorical nature and the core appeals that characterise positive reportage. To complement our previous research on the rhetorical nature of anti-immunisation reportage, this paper reviews positive coverage of immunisation in over four and a half years of Australian newsprint media. Three core topics dominated the reportage; the problem of vaccine preventable diseases and low immunisation rates, notions of who is responsible and the implied solutions. The threat of vaccine preventable diseases was conveyed using panic language, disease personification, quantification rhetoric, stories of personal tragedies and portentous tales from yesteryear. Attribution for low immunisation rates ranged from blaming parents to blaming lack of government coordination. However, most blame framed individuals as responsible. The most popular spokespersons were representatives of professional medical bodies who tended to be cast as voices of authority, castigating the ignorance and apathy of parents. Urging of compulsory vaccination, pleas for parents to immunise their children and the provision of information about vaccine preventable diseases were the most frequently occurring implied solutions. Immunisation was promoted as a modern medical miracle, health professionals were portrayed as soldiers in the fight against killer diseases and urges to immunise were usually conveyed through the use of stern directives. Understanding how immunisation messages are framed in the media and the core values to which those messages appeal highlights opportunities for media advocates to enhance desired messages and reframe those which are considered antipathetic to the goals of public health advocacy.

Attitude to Health↗