This research portrays a paradigm for the assessment of aging services to support populations aging in place. The dissertation was designed to establish a model to identify and evaluate senior ready communities. Area specific social programs and services are identified. In order to meet the growing needs of aging populations, the dynamic representation of existing services and the need for services that could be developed in certain communities require reevaluation in current planning, restructuring, and/or community development.

From 1970 to 1980 nonadjacent counties in Texas experienced an increase in net migration of 9.4 percent, significantly different from the 11.8 percent decrease experienced the previous decade. This study utilized the ecological perspective to study this redistribution pattern in Texas' nonadjacent counties between 1970 and 1980. Sustenance organization, defined as sustenance differentiation (the functional organization of sustenance activities and the dispersion of workers across these functional categories) and the mode of sustenance organization (the combinations of various sustenance activities) was identified as the primary independent variable. In addition, three secondary independent variables were included in the analysis (population per square mile, metropolitan dominance, and the percent who work outside the county of residence).

This dissertation fills a conspicuous gap in the literature on the U.S. woman suffrage movement by developing and testing a model of state woman suffrage success. This model is based on a version of the resource mobilization perspective on social movements which emphasizes the importance of social movement organizations (such as the National American Woman Suffrage Association) as resource-gathering agencies which can exploit the structure of organized politics by mobilizing their own resources and neutralizing those of opponents. Accordingly, this model taps four alternative types of variables used by woman suffrage scholars to explain state success: state political structure, NAWSA mobilization, and liquor and allied interests (opponents of woman suffrage) as well as demographic characteristics.

This research sought to identify the determinants of nonuse and high use of physician services and assess whether or not patterns of nonuse and high use changed over time. The population of interest was a group of elderly unmarried women who participated in the Longitudinal Retirement History Survey from 1969 to 1979. Andersen and Newman's (2) health care services utilization model served as the conceptual framework for this research. Of specific interest was the relationship between age strata and health care behavior. Age proved to be a stratifying variable within the health care delivery system. Over the ten year survey period, the health care behavior of preretirement and postretirement nonusers and high users differed significantly. A decline in nonuse was also associated with the transition years. This finding could be attributed to the "near poor" becoming eligible for Medicare. In any event, these data show that utilization of physician services is likely to increase among some unmarried women in their middle 60's.

The problem of the investigation was to ascertain the contributions of various sociological theorists to a sociology of emotions. Emphasis was to be placed on the symbolic interactionist school. The method employed was that of a literature review, with an evaluative analysis of each of a number of writers as each contributed to a sociology of emotions. The study had the purpose of remedying the long-standing neglect of emotions by sociologists. This purpose was accomplished by indicating the distinctive contributions of each theorist and areas of convergence among theorists. The investigation was organized according to groups of theorists. Each theorist was examined for conceptions of human nature and of the relationship between the individual and society. Chapter I discussed the problem in general; the remaining chapters analyzed the theorists. Chapter II discussed the classical theorists Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Georg Simmel, and Talcott Parsons. Chapter III presented the views of the symbolic interactionists George Herbert Mead, Charles Cooley, Herbert Blumer, Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills, and Erving Goffman. Chapter IV treated contemporary theorists: Arlie Hochschild, Theodore Kemper, Susan Shott, and Norman Denzin.

Paper examines the impact of social environments on the development of self-identity in young African American women.

Paper examines the distribution of Superfund and municipal solid waste sites within neighborhoods differing on social, demographic, and economic characteristics of the inhabitants in Tarrant County, Texas.

Paper examines the relationship of interfaith dating age, education, and economic status.

Papers explores the ways in which Texas agritourism operators value their land and construct their relationships with the natural environment.

Paper explores how the motivations of participants shape the meaning and significance of flash mobs.

Paper examines the flaws in the capitalist development paradigm for impoverished nations, and argues that this view of human development inherently encourages inequality, exploitation, environmental destruction, and sociocultural degradation.

Paper explores the evolution of mass local protests in China and the factors that contribute to the likelihood of mass protest in a province.

Paper examines customer and vendor relations and generational transmission of ethnomedicine in a multicultural aspect focusing on the immigrant spectrum of traditional medicine from the angle of the Mexican American community.