This study used the Health Belief Model to examine the predictors of AIDS preventive behavior. The independent variables were the variables of individual perception, modifying factors (psychological variables), and likelihood variables. The respondents, the Taiwanese students of the University of North Texas, were influenced both by Chinese sexuality and Western values in their AIDS-risk behavior. The results revealed that 90% of the respondents were misinformed on the availability of AIDS vaccine. In addition, a majority of the students were either abstaining from sex or practicing monogamy. Using Pearson's correlation coefficient and multiple regression analysis, this study found that the psychological variables rather than cognitive variables significantly influenced the respondents' AIDS preventive behavior. Finally, suggestions were made for future research on AIDS, and for AIDS preventive behavior campaigns.

This paper examines some causes of strain and frustration among police officers. Previous research suggests that police officers sufferfromthe lack of communication and support from their community. The failure of communication has caused turmoil in the past between communities and their police. A possible solution is community policing. Community policing is supposed to establish communication between the public and the police. Causes of strain and frustration among the police are discussed along with the possible benefits of community policing. Research has shown that community police officers suffer less strain and frustration than their brethren. On this premise a quantitative examination a police force in Northumbria, England was conducted. The quantitative analysis focuses on two groups; community police officers and police officers not involved in community policing.

I interviewed twenty-four International students from the following countries: Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Peru, Colombia, Brazil, Puerto Rico and Spain. Hereafter I shall refer to the respondents as Hispanic International students. My primary interest was to learn the way in which Hispanic International students defined themselves in view of ethnic definitions imposed on them by the administrative system in the U.S. First, Hispanic International students defined themselves primarily by their nationality. The second finding dealt with the usage of language. The Hispanic International students spoke Spanish with relatives and friends. They spoke English when a non-Spanish speaker joined the conversation. The third finding was related to the problems and adaptations encountered by Hispanic International students.

This study investigates changes in rates of property crime in the United States from 1958 to 1993. Predictor variables include changes in rates of economic factors (inflation, technological/cyclical/frictional unemployment), arrest rates for property crimes disaggregated by race (ARPCDR), interaction of ARPCDR and technological unemployment, alcohol offenses, interaction of alcohol offenses and poverty, drug abuse violations, and interaction of drug abuse violations and poverty. Changes in poverty, population growth, and police presence are employed as control variables. The Beach-McKinnon Full Maximum- Likelihood EGLS AR1 Method (accompanied by residual analysis) is used to test seven hypotheses. Significant positive effects upon changes in aggregate property crime rates are found for five predictors: (a) inflation, (b) cyclical unemployment, (c) frictional unemployment, (d) the interaction of white arrest rates and technological unemployment, and (e) the interaction of rates of alcohol offenses and poverty. To explain changes in property crime rates, further research should decompose aggregate rates particularly those pertaining to the economy. Also, the relationship between the interaction of poverty and drug abuse violations, at the aggregate level, and changes in property crime rates should be clarified. This research has important policy implications related to the impact of social, economic, and educational issues on mainstream …

The study is a contextual analysis of flood victimization. Victimization is defined as the social, psychological, and physiological aftermath experienced by victims of a disaster. Disaster researchers concentrate on the victims' characteristics to explain the varying degrees of their victimization, providing only ambiguous results. Theorists such as Kreps, Wildavsky, and Douglas contend that the outcomes of disasters are contingent upon social structure. This analysis treats victimization as one such outcome. The condition and behavior of individuals can be explained by the presence of disaster and the conditions of social organization. A model explains victimization based on individual's attributes (individual resources), his social environment, and the disaster characteristics. This study uses the 1984 Mingo Creek Flood Victims Survey data to test the model. The data contain information measuring victimization. The survey data are linked with 1980 Census tract data. The tract data provide indicators of the social networks. This tract information, the contextual variables, taps the social conditions, including poverty, unemployment, geographic mobility, and family patterns. This study uses factor analysis to identify the dimensions of victimization. Regression tests the relationship between the contextual variables, the individual resource variables, the disaster characteristic variables, and victimization. The results of the analysis show …

As the need for community care increases, complete and up-to-date information about organizational structure is crucial to making appropriate decisions about the expansion of adult day services. The absence of uniform national policies results in states and communities being relegated to balancing limited funds with the demand for adult day services, and in many areas, the lack of adult day care centers altogether. This study provides an overview of the types of state reimbursement, the availability of different funding sources, and the utilization of the sources in various states.

Using questionnaire survey generated data from the DWI Probation Program in Dallas County. This study investigated the factors related to the perceived effectiveness of that program from the probationers perspectives. The findings in this study indicate that the perceived effectiveness of the DWI program by the probationers is an area that calls for more research and investigations. The findings have shown that factors related to the perceived effectiveness of the program by the probationers have a profound effect on the efficiency of the program as a whole in order to achieve its stated objectives.

This research tested the hypothesis that militarization of societies, as defined by the percent of national budgets spent on military expenditures, has adverse effects on women's economic status relative to men's. This study also examined other predictor variables known to affect women's status. Data from sixty different nations were analyzed by means of multiple regression techniques. Results show that the militarization variable increased women's share of agriculture, which suggests that as men are mobilized into military activities, women are left to produce food for the country, a situation which can have contradictory effects on women's economic status. What is more important than militarization in predicting women's economic status relative to men's are high birth rates and sex ratios, which clearly depress women's economic opportunities.

Research on the ordination of women has focused on the effect in the church and on aspects of the personality of the women choosing the priesthood but not on effects on the families of ordained women. Using personal interviews, the Dyadic Adjustment Scale and the Bem Sex Role Inventory, spouses in 12 families which contain ordained women from Episcopalian, Methodist, Unity and The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints churches were analyzed to determine the effects of ordination on the families. Couples containing an ordained female were found to have slightly higher marital adjustment and significantly higher levels of androgyny than a standardized sample. Androgyny and marital adjustment were significantly correlated. The more androgenous, the greater the marital adjustment.

Data from the National Survey of Households and Families were used to study the factors previous research identified as affecting post-divorce child adjustment. Responses from 358 divorced parents with custody of children under age 12 were analyzed. Special attention was paid to the effect of family financial status. The strongest predictor of problem behavior for both preschool children and school-aged boys was the amount of parent/child activity time. Older boys were also particularly sensitive to interparental conflict. Elementary-aged girls, however, were most affected by the presence of parental depression, which was found to be significantly associated with a decline in post-divorce family financial status. Only girls' problems showed a direct relationship with family income.

This thesis examines access to managerial jobs in the Australian labor market by immigrant women and men from five continents and five individual countries. Comparisons were not made only among both continent and country groups, but also between the women and men within each group, as a measure of occupational gender inequality. An index of managerial representation in the Australian labor market (MORI) was computed and nine independent variables were applied to measure immigrant representation in managerial occupations. Rank order correlates were used to calculate relationships between variables. Results indicate that women (with the exception of Vietnamese) from all countries were disproportionately underrepresented in managerial jobs and that the more dissimilar immigrant men are to native born Australians, the less likely they are to hold managerial jobs.

It has been widely believed that modernity is a byproduct of a nuclear family system, a highly urbanized society, and a secular way of life. As such, developing countries are characterized as modern insofar as their social and cultural structures are able to correspond to these criteria. To examine the validity of these propositions, data on two randomly-selected generations--daughters and mothers in the United Arab Emirates--were generated.

The primary question addressed was, "What effect does educational attainment and acquired knowledge of ageing have on negative ageism?" Subsidiary questions are, "What effect does; age, sex, and positive/negative experiences with aged individuals, have on ageism?"

Fertility studies have often focused on the behavioral and attitudinal attributes of women with regard to fertility. Until recently, the role of men in fertility studies have often been ignored within much of the literature concerning fertility decisions. The focus of this study will examine if differences exist between husbands and wives with regard to the following four aspects of fertility decisions: spacing of children, methods of family planning, sex preference, and desired family size. The data were collected from 125 households in Kitwe, Zambia. Identical questionnaires were submitted to the husbands and wives during separate interviews. Content analysis was used to analyze the data. Overall, no significant differences exist among husbands and wives with regard to the four aspects of fertility decisions being researched.

This descriptive case study of the transformation in medical care at the community level was carried out with a triangulation approach. Data from documents and surveys using both semi-structured and unstructured interviews were gathered to evaluate and explain how medical care delivery changed from a primarily public system to one predominantly private.

This investigation explored the relationship between married individuals' self-reports of their expectations, interaction, spousal bonding, and marital quality. From two universities, two hundred and thirty-seven currently enrolled and married students volunteered to provide the information on these factors via a semistructured self-administered questionnaire. The typical respondent was a female between 31 and 35 years old who had been married 8 years to her first spouse, had one child at home; and was a senior in college. Of the ten independent variables examined three variables contributed the most to individuals' self-reported evaluation of their marital quality. These were the time spent each week with their spouse, satisfaction with the quality of time spent with their spouse, and when the greatest level of bonding experiences occurred. Five significant findings emerged from the study. First, respondents' greater satisfaction with the quality of time spent with their spouse was consistently the strongest predictor of higher marital quality. Second, respondents who bonded more with their spouse after marriage or equally before and after marriage reported higher marital quality than those who bonded more before marriage. Third, the amount of time spouses spent together influenced respondents' reported marital quality. Fourth, spousal bonding has a very strong …

The aim of this study was to identify the characteristics of non-traditional female students and their perceived reasons for university studies.

Teenage pregnancy rates in the U.S. are among the highest in the world for industrialized countries. The generally accepted reason is not that American teenagers are more sexually active but that they contracept less than do teenagers in other industrialized countries. This dissertation reports on a study that was undertaken for two purposes. One purpose was to develop and test two models of contraceptive choice among American teenagers: a "likelihood-of-use" model to predict the likelihood of sexually active teenagers' using contraception, and a "medical-or-nonmedical" model to predict whether teenagers who use contraception are likely to use medical or nonmedical methods. The second purpose was to explore the level of support for the two models among black and white teenagers separately. The theoretical underpinning of the models is value-expectancy theory. The models' exogenous variables are based on the prevailing strategy for preventing teenage pregnancy among American teenagers, a strategy initially advocated by Joy G. Dryfoos. The strategy involves the use of access-to-contraception programs, educational programs, and life options programs. The data used in the study were on 449 subjects drawn from the 1979 National Survey of Young Women, a probability-sample survey of women in the U.S. aged 15-19. The subjects were …

This study explored the relationship between characteristics of children's families and their social adjustment and how extra-familial connections affect this relationship. According to human ecological theory, children who are in jeopardy through higher-risk family systems and other social forces were expected to be protected from sociocultural risks by social connections in such settings as school, church, kin groups, and neighborhood.

This study tested a model to predict the likelihood of spring break travel among university students. The data were obtained from a 1996 survey sample of 303 university students.

Battered women's perceptions of gender roles within the family were studied. Twenty white, working-class women who were victims of domestic violence were interviewed. It was determined that battered women have very traditional views of gender roles in the family and these views affected the choices that they made within their relationships and their ability to escape these abusive relationships.

This study examines the influence of family background and structure on academic achievement. The research focuses on the 11th- and 12th-grade population in the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science (TAMS) at the University of North Texas, Denton. The study examines the variables in family background and family structure that contribute to the students' high academic achievement. Twelve hypotheses related to parents, home environment, family structure and interaction, family roles, and family values are proposed. The multivariate analysis shows that the variables being read to, reading independently, fathers' education, mothers' education, and ethnicity are significant in impacting academic achievement. The study underlines the fact that multiple factors in family structure and background have an influence on academic achievement.