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Agreement among readers on what is relevant in self-help psychology books.

It was hypothesized that text marking in self-help psychology books would indicate that readers agree on which pages and lines contain relevant information. Previously owned copies of two self-help book titles (n=48, n=38), all with marked text, were collected from second-hand book stores and scored for line and page marking. Chi-squares for goodness-of-fit yielded significant differences between observed and chance agreement in marking behavior. Intraclass and KR-20 correlations were significantly different from zero, suggesting that readers agreed on what information was relevant and irrelevant. Actual users of self-help books may have similar standards because of cultural values, social group relations, or common problem experiences.

Adult↗

[The specificity of hygienic behavior of virtually healthy population].

An analysis of the results of a sociological study showed that both men and women aged around 50 and noting subjectively no chronic pathology regard health as a life value. Social hardships reliably worsen the preventive activity and limit its variability. An essential share of population (above 30%), while taking care of its health, does not give up such harmful habits as smoking and abuse of alcohol. The described data denote the need in not so much propagating the healthy mode of life as in motivating it. The disturbing trend towards ignoring the motivations targeted at health promotion deserves special attention; the above trend is observed in absence of age-related chronic pathologies and against the background of an improving social status especially in men.

Adult↗

A national study of factors influencing the career choice of osteopathic and allopathic family physicians.

This study examines the differences between osteopathic and allopathic physicians regarding those factors influencing their career choice of family practice. A total of 256 osteopathic physicians and 717 allopathic family physicians were surveyed. The surveyed physicians graduated in 1983 and 1984. Comparisons were made on 19 variables that influenced the physicians' decisions to enter family practice as well as on the six factor scores derived from these 19 variables. Osteopathic physicians' decisions to choose family practice was more influenced by financial obligations, medical school experiences, and family values, whereas the allopathic physicians were more influenced by personal social value. Overall, medical school experience and personal social value were two important factors that explained the largest variances of the 19 predictors influencing physicians' decisions to enter family practice. Those allopathic medical schools whose mission emphasizes the production of generalist physicians may be able to model some approaches already in place at osteopathic medical schools. Because of the influence of the personal social value factor in medical students' choosing family practice medicine, this factor warrants further study.

Career Choice↗

Adolescents' health-related behaviors in the light of their value orientations.

This study examines the relationship between adolescents' health behaviors and their value orientations. Data were collected among a sample of Hungarian urban high school students (n = 602, aged 14-19; 52.8% males and 47.2% females) in 2001. Factor analysis revealed fitness-oriented, health and social value oriented, and accomplishment/career oriented value factors. Health and social values were more common among girls, while accomplishment-oriented values were more common among boys. The fitness-oriented value orientation was related to physical activity and diet control, health and social value orientation showed significant association with diet control and the lack of smoking, alcohol and drug use, accomplishment oriented values were related to higher levels of substance use.

Adolescent↗

Social work values, professional unity, and the South African context.

As a subsystem of society, the profession of social work reflects the conflicting value systems at play in the broader social context. In South Africa a spectrum of social work associations have in the past and continue in the present to mirror the different value positions evident in wider South African society. The present period of social transition has stimulated debate among South African social workers concerning this divergence and subsequent lack of unity within the profession. However, such debate has failed to pay adequate attention to the effect on professional unity of the interplay among historical and sociopolitical forces, different value dimensions, and the broader social context. This article highlights this interrelationship and the complexities of forging professional unity among social workers in South Africa.

Cross-Cultural Comparison↗

Conflict in the preceptorship or field experience: a rippling tide of silence.

A major component of the educative process in the professional disciplines is the field education/preceptorship experience in which students are afforded opportunities to develop professional competence under the tutelage of a practising professional and/or a university instructor. During this time students are exposed to competing discourses about what it means to think and act as nurses, teachers, doctors and social workers. Frequently, field teaching is characterized by conflictual situations involving students, field instructors and university faculty. Such conflict is poorly understood as indicated by the lack of literature available in the professional disciplines. The purpose of this study was to explore the phenomenon of conflict within the context of field teaching in professional education. Pivotal to this study was the issue of making sense of the conflict that prospective nurses, teachers, social workers and doctors experience in professional education within the practice realm and how such discourses shape their professional identities, practices and ultimate social values. At issue is the social construction of meaning that takes place within professional education. This study was conducted from the perspective of four professional programs including education, medicine, nursing and social work. The researchers focused on the final year of each program at a time when students were engaged in a major field/preceptorship experience in hospitals, schools, communities and social agencies. The experiences derived from the nursing data are presented in this paper.

Conflict, Psychological↗

Medical students' personal values and their career choices a quarter-century later.

A longitudinal study of 391 physicians tested two hypotheses regarding personal values and career choices: that higher preference for social values would be associated with physicians' being more interested in "people-oriented" rather than "technology-oriented" specialties and that higher preference for economic values would be associated with expectations of high income. The physicians (344 men, 47 women) were graduates of Jefferson Medical College in 1974 and 1975 who completed the Allport-Vernon-Lindzey Study of Values during medical school. Analysis showed that physicians currently in the "people-oriented" specialties scored significantly higher on the Social Value scale than their peers in "technology-oriented" specialties. A moderate but statistically significant correlation was found between scores on the Economic Value scale and expectations of higher income. The findings suggest that physicians' personal values are relevant to their career decisions such as specialty choice and expectations of income. The findings have implications with regard to two major issues in the evolving health care system, namely, the distribution of physicians by specialty and cost containment.

Adult↗

QALY maximisation and people's preferences: a methodological review of the literature.

In cost-utility analysis, the numbers of quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) gained are aggregated according to the sum-ranking (or QALY maximisation) rule. This requires that the social value from health improvements is a simple product of gains in quality of life, length of life and the number of persons treated. The results from a systematic review of the literature suggest that QALY maximisation is descriptively flawed. Rather than being linear in quality and length of life, it would seem that social value diminishes in marginal increments of both. And rather than being neutral to the characteristics of people other than their propensity to generate QALYs, the social value of a health improvement seems to be higher if the person has worse lifetime health prospects and higher if that person has dependents. In addition, there is a desire to reduce inequalities in health. However, there are some uncertainties surrounding the results, particularly in relation to what might be affecting the responses, and there is the need for more studies of the general public that attempt to highlight the relative importance of various key factors.

Age Factors↗

Smoking prevention programs for adolescents: the value of social psychological approaches.

Factors relating to smoking onset are enumerated and the literature bearing on the strategies designed to deal with these issues is described. Research arising from social psychological approaches to smoking prevention programs is critically assessed with a view to developing a conceptual model for understanding smoking behavior. The value of social psychological approaches for smoking prevention among adolescents is discussed.

Adolescent↗

Valuing biodiversity: reality or mirage?

The objective of this paper was to consider the social value of biological diversity and explore if this value could be expressed in terms of a unidimensional metric in money. Economics distinguishes between use-values and non-use-values, which are critically evaluated for valuing biodiversity. It is shown that these utility-based valuations have severe limitations as they treat species in isolation from their ecological contexts. In contrast, ecosystem ecology regards ecosystems as an integrated non-linear and nonconvex system in which ecosystem functions can be understood as a four-component cycle; exploitation, accumulation of biomass, creative destruction and renewal. Within such a cycle, ecosystems can be seen to have two properties: stability and resilience. A good proxy for resilience is the probability of extinction of species, and social value of biodiversity can be expressed as a partial ordering with this probability as an index. This approach is consistent with decision theory, of which social choice is an important component, pioneered by Arrow.

Animals↗

The person-trade-off approach to valuing health care programs.

The person-trade-off technique is a way of estimating the social values of different health care interventions. Basically it consists in asking people how many outcomes of one kind they consider equivalent in social value to X outcomes of another kind. The paper outlines a number of the author's previous studies using the technique. The studies suggest that while the technique is theoretically appealing for resource-allocation purposes, it is in practice quite demanding. It needs to be applied in fairly large groups of subjects to keep random measurement error at an acceptable level. Possible framing effects include the effects of argument presentation and the choice of start points in numerical exercises. To control for these effects, it seems important to take subjects through a multistep procedure, in which they are induced to carefully consider the various arguments that might be relevant in each exercise and to reconsider initial responses in the light of their implications. The investigator must also think through which decision context he or she wishes to study and make his or her choice of context very clear when reporting the results. In spite of these problems, the person-trade-off technique deserves greater attention in the field of cost-utility analysis.

Bias↗

[Family socialization and values].

Occupying a fundamental place among the intra-family interaction processes are those whose objective is to socialize children in a determined system of values, norms and beliefs; in other words, parents attempt to configure a determined type of person in their children. These socialization processes are some of the most widely known functions in a family; around these, family roles are distributed and the limits of parent-child expectations and behavior patterns are set; perhaps socialization is the fundamental axle in family life. These processes are also one of the main dimensions to articulate intra-family interactions and the socio-cultural context in which the family as an institution is inscribed. For this reason, most literature regarding family interaction -if not the lion's share- deals with describing the relevant variables related to the aforementioned socialization processes.

Family↗

Evolutionary history versus current causal role in the definition of disorder: reply to McNally.

The harmful dysfunction (HD) analysis (Wakefield, American Psychologist 47 (1992a) 373) asserts that "disorder" means "harmful dysfunction", where "harm" is a value concept anchored in social values and "dysfunction" is a factual concept referring to failure of a mechanism to perform a natural function. Additionally, the HD analysis claims that a mechanism's natural functions are its naturally selected effects. McNally (Behaviour Research and Therapy (2000) pp. 309-314) argues to the contrary that "dysfunction" is a value concept referring to negative failures of function, that "function" refers to current causal roles and not evolutionarily designed causal roles, and that "disorder" consequently means "harmful failure of a mechanism to perform a valued current causal role." I reply by showing that McNally's proposals lack the HD analysis's power to explain common judgments about function, dysfunction, and disorder. "Dysfunction" cannot be a negative value concept because many dysfunctions are positive or neutral; "function" cannot refer to current causal roles because many current causal roles are not functions and some functions are not current causal roles; and "disorder" cannot refer to harmful failures of current causal roles because that definition allows almost any negative condition whatever to be a disorder and thus fails to explain the distinctions we make between disorder and non-disorder.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

What students bring to medical school: attitudes toward health promotion and prevention.

INTRODUCTION: Health care providers' positive attitudes toward prevention and health promotion are important in achieving national health care goals. Limited studies of incoming medical students have been conducted that measure predictors of positive attitudes toward health promotion and prevention. METHODS: Data were obtained from a 1993 curriculum evaluation survey of first-year students at five different medical schools in California. Attitudes toward health promotion and prevention were measured using a nine-question Prevention Attitude Scale (PAS). We developed 2 multivariate linear regression models using demographics, education choices, and personal social values and beliefs to predict PAS scores. We also performed bivariate analysis. RESULTS: Five hundred ninety-nine completed surveys were analyzed, with a response rate of 95%. Mean PAS score was 36.47 +/- 3.7 on a 0 to 44 scale. Female gender, Democratic party preference, and a planned specialty choice in preventive medicine or primary care predicted the highest PAS scores on bivariate analysis (p < 0.002). Significant correlation ( p < 0. 001) was shown between PAS scores and 2 additional scales regarding beliefs in associations of social factors and illness and in the importance of caring for the poor. Linear regression model using personal social values and beliefs explained 34% of the variance, as opposed to the demographic model that explained only 9% of the variance. CONCLUSIONS: In the schools studied, participating first-year medical students had moderately positive attitudes toward health promotion and prevention, as measured by PAS scores. In designing curriculum to improve medical students' attitudes toward health promotion and prevention, medical educators may need to consider other personal and social values held by medical students and to address the "political" aspects of health promotion and prevention. Future studies are needed to longitudinally follow medical student attitudes.

Adolescent↗