Putting the Patient Back in Patient Care: Health Decision-Making from the Patient’s Perspective

This research explored health decision-making processes among people recently diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Our analysis suggested that diagnosis with type 2 was followed by a period of intense emotional and cognitive disequilibrium. Subsequently, the informants were observed to proceed to health decision-making which was affected by three separate and interrelated factors: knowledge, self-efficacy, and purpose. Knowledge included cognitive or factual components and emotional elements. Knowledge influenced the degree of upset or disequilibrium the patient experienced, and affected a second category, agency: the informants’ confidence in their ability to enact lifestyle changes. The third factor, purpose, summarized the personal and deeply held reasons people gave as they made decisions concerning their health, eating and exercising. We propose this model, grounded in informant stories, as a heuristic, to guide further inquiry. From these stories, the patient is seen as more active and the interrelated influences of knowledge, agency, and purpose, synergistically interact to explain changes in health behaviors

TRANSformation; Affecting Transgender Prejudice in the Classroom

Social discrimination is a common experience with measurable consequences for those affected. The effects include poorer mental health and poverty, issues which are commonly addressed by human service professionals. People who are transgender are particular targets of discrimination and, as such, find themselves in need of human service assistance at levels disproportionate to the larger population. Research from social psychology suggests that intergroup contact reduces prejudice. This quasi-experiment explored the effect a transgender speaker, followed by informal social interaction, had on measures of transgender prejudice in a sample of college student

iBusy: Research on children, families, and smartphones

Within the past 10 years, mobile devices have been widely adopted by adults and are now present in the lives of almost all U.S. children. While phones are common, our understanding of what effect this technology has upon children\u27s development is lagging. Bioecological theory and attachment theory suggest that this new technology may be disruptive, especially to the degree to which it interferes with the parent-child relationship. This article reflects a National Organization for Human Services conference presentation and shares preliminary results from semi-structured interviews conducted with 18 youth, ages 7 through 11. Only four of eighteen interviewees voiced any negative thoughts concerning their parents’ use of mobile devices. However, those who reported feeling ignored by their parents experienced the negative emotions deeply. Themes that emerged from analysis of transcripts included devices as tools and boundaries

Modern Love: You, Me, and Smartphone Makes Three

Romantic, dyadic relationships arise, in part, from communication, disclosure, and boundaries. Information communication technology (ICT), such as smartphones, has rapidly integrated into our personal lives and affected relationship initiation, maintenance, and dissolution. To this point, models attempting to account for this emerging dynamic center on past theories about relationships. However, counselors and researchers would benefit from understanding contemporary couple dynamics that reflect the ICT-mediated changes to coupling that occurred during the last decade. To address this need, researchers conducted a grounded theory study to explore relationship dynamics, mediated by ICT, based on stories and descriptions provided by 16 participants. Findings showed technology influenced relationships in four domains: access, intimacy, boundaries, and presence