Person-Environment Interaction in Nursing Homes for the Elderly

There has been a growing interest in recent years in the study of person-environment interaction in the elderly. Several theoretical models have been proposed in the gerontological literature. Each of these models suffers from one or more limitations, including the restriction of requiring that the person and the environment be measured in the same terms, and the difficulty posed by attempting to empirically test the model. A new model of person-environment interaction in the elderly is proposed here. The model views life satisfaction as the ultimate outcome variable. Feelings of personal control and choice are seen as intervening between life satisfaction and the remaining components of the model. At the level of the environment, the model proposes an interaction between residents\u27 perceptions of the environment,and their evaluations of, or preferences for, the environment\u27s various qualities. These environmental perceptions are in turn influenced by characteristics of the actual environment, residents\u27 health, and personality factors. A total of 44 residents and 121 staff members of three homes for the aged served as subjects for the present study. Assessment instruments used to operationalize the model components included: residents\u27 scores on the Life Satisfaction Index (LSI), residents‘ responses to 10 questions designed to assess feelings of control and choice, residents\u27 scores on Moos\u27 Sheltered Care Environment Scale (SCES; measuring environmental perceptions), resident\u27s responses to seven questions, corresponding to the seven SCES subscales, regarding the ideal nursing home environment (measuring environmental evaluations), staff scores on the SCES (measuring the objective environment), staff ratings of residents on the 15 Murrayan need scales of the Adjective Check List (ACL;, measuring personality factors), and interviewer assessments of residents\u27 functional health. An overall test of the usefulness of the model components in predicting residents\u27 life satisfaction showed that feelings of control and choice, by itself, was a significant predictor of life satisfaction. The addition of the other model components did not improve the prediction of life satisfaction. Further analyses tested the relationships between various components of the model. The results of these analyses confirmed the hypothesized interaction of environmental perceptions and evaluations influencing life satisfaction for four of the seven SCES subscales. Consistency between residents\u27 perceptions and evaluations on the conflict, self-exploration, organization, and physical comfort subscales was related to greater life satisfaction. Analysis of the remaining components showed that resident and staff ratings of the environment were not related, and the differences observed between the two were not associated with health or personality variables. The findings of the study are discussed within the context of methodological considerations as well as theoreti and empirical issues. It is suggested that the formulation of models of person-environment interaction in the elderly may be premature, given the relatively limited amount of research examining relationships among the various possible person, environment and outcome variables which could be considered. The present results support the findings of previous studies of person-environment fit in the elderly. The findings do not, however, provide empirical support for the hypothesized existence of individual difference factors, sud as health and personality variables, which underlie environmental preferences or evaluations. It is concluded that the search for such factors be continued, and suggestions for future research toward this end are proposed

Scared Straight and Other Juvenile Awareness Programs for Preventing Juvenile Delinquency: A Systematic Review

Programs like ‘Scared Straight’ involve organized visits to prison facilities by juvenile delinquents or children at risk for becoming delinquent. The programs are designed to deter participants from future offending by providing first-hand observations of prison life and interaction with adult inmates. Results of this review indicate that not only does it fail to deter crime but it actually leads to more offending behavior. Government officials permitting this program need to adopt rigorous evaluation to ensure that they are not causing more harm to the very citizens they pledge to protect

The effects of custodial vs. non-custodial sentences on re-offending: A systematic review of the state of knowledge

As part of a broad initiative of systematic reviews of experimental or quasiexperimental evaluations of interventions in the field of crime prevention and the treatment of offenders, our work consisted in searching through all available databases for evidence concerning the effects of custodial and non-custodial sanctions on reoffending. For this purpose, we examined more than 3,000 abstracts, and finally 23 studies that met the minimal conditions of the Campbell Review, with only 5 studies based on a controlled or a natural experimental design. These studies allowed, all in all, 27 comparisons. Relatively few studies compare recidivism rates for offenders sentenced to jail or prison with those of offenders given some alternative to incarceration (typically probation). According to the findings, the rate of re-offending after a non-custodial sanction is lower than after a custodial sanction in 11 out of 13 significant comparisons. However, in 14 out of 27 comparisons, no significant difference on re-offending between both sanctions is noted. Two out of 27 comparisons are in favour of custodial sanctions. Finally, experimental evaluations and natural experiments yield results that are less favourable to non-custodial sanctions, than are quasi-experimental studies using softer designs. This is confirmed by the meta-analysis including four controlled and one natural experiment. According to the results, non-custodial sanctions are not beneficial in terms of lower rates of re-offending beyond random effects. Contradictory results reported in the literature are likely due to insufficient control of pre-intervention differences between prisoners and those serving “alternative” sanctions