Correlates of Geriatric Loneliness in Philippine Nursing Homes: A Multiple Regression Model

Numerous studies have been conducted worldwide about loneliness in older adults living in nursing homes and the factors associated with it. However, only a few studies have focused on social factors that may predispose these older adults to experience loneliness. The purpose of this study was to examine the interplay between and among loneliness, social isolation, social engagement, and life satisfaction among Filipino elderly (n = 180) recruited from government and nongovernment nursing homes in the Philippines. A multiaspect questionnaire, which included the UCLA Loneliness Scale, Revised Index for Social Engagement, Friendship Scale, and Life Satisfaction for the Third Age-Short Form was used to gather the needed data and information. Results of single and multiple regression analyses indicate an effect of the three factors (social isolation, social engagement, and life satisfaction) on loneliness with social isolation having the greatest impact on loneliness. Notably, increased social isolation, inadequate social engagement and decreased life satisfaction consequently aggravate loneliness. Social engagement produced a positive effect to both social isolation and life satisfaction in a way that a decrease in social engagement will decrease life satisfaction and increase social isolation. On the whole, loneliness in geriatric nursing homes is evident, and it is shaped by social isolation, social engagement and life satisfaction. Impliedly, interventions and measures to minimize loneliness are necessary, and further research is needed to explore other variables contributing to loneliness in geriatric nursing homes.     

Video as Digital Object: Production and Distribution of Video Content in the Internet Media Ecosystem

The media industry is undergoing comprehensive change due to the shifting audience and consumption patterns fostered by the diffusion of the Internet. This article describes how these changes shape established practices of video production and redefine the cultural categories of video and broadcasting. Drawing on an empirical case study of the practices within the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the we show the production of video content to be increasingly unbundled and broken down into several smaller processes, which make it possible to manage and recompose in a variety of ways that transcend established institutional divisions and cultural perceptions. At the same time and as a means of accommodating multiplatform content delivery, video distribution is acquiring flexible and mutating formats that further destabilize the perception of video as a self-sufficient cultural form. In this context, video metadata rises to be an important coordinative medium that provides the cognitive resources for identifying and managing video content within and across particular settings and the link through which the operations of media organizations become entangled with the technical landscape of the Internet.     

Professional higher education institutions as organizational actors

Organizational actorhood is a term that has gained prominence in literature about higher education as a way to describe some of the key global change processes with emphasis on organizational accountability, formalization of structure, focus on goal definition and managerialism. At the same time, there is less knowledge about how organizational actorhood is constructed in professional higher education institutions. Based on over 100 interviews and document studies of two case institutions, this article argues that professional higher education institutions show many characteristics of aiming to construct organizational actorhood, while their understanding of accountability is broader than would be in traditional comprehensive universities.     

Studying the effects of early child care experiences on the development of children of color in the United States: toward a more inclusive research agenda

Evidence is presented of the different cultural and ecological contexts affecting early child care for families of color. It is argued that improvements on previous research require a fundamental shift in how race, ethnicity, and culture as psychological variables are examined. Furthermore, to avoid the pitfalls and failures of previous research, new research must incorporate expanded models of child care and development in childhood. The integrative model of development for children of color proposed by Garcia Coll et al. (1996) is presented as a basis for developing more specific ecological models relevant to addressing child care issues in ethnic minority families. Finally, priority areas for future research are recommended to stimulate and enable child care researchers to adopt a more inclusive view of child care and its effects.     

Development of moral emotions and decision-making from childhood to young adulthood

This study investigated the development of moral decision-making and moral emotion attributions in antisocial behavior and peer relationship dilemma scenarios. Participants were 540 school- and college-aged students, who were asked to explain their moral decision-making, subsequent emotions, and reasoning in regard to the scenarios. We combined moral decision-making (morally appropriate or morally inappropriate) and emotion (positive or negative) to create the four reaction patterns of happy victimizer (HV), unhappy victimizer (UHV), happy moralist (HM), and unhappy moralist (UHM). Across all four scenarios and age groups, there were very few HM reactions, and HV responses were more common among adolescents and adults than among children in jaywalking and peer exclusion scenarios. In contrast, there were no age differences in reaction patterns in shoplifting and broken-promise scenarios; however, more moral considerations in reasoning were revealed among older age groups. The role of peer relationship in emotion attribution is discussed.     

The play is the thing wherein we’ll catch the conscience…

This article is a piece of ‘fiction written under oath’. It reports two key findings of a doctoral research project, which investigated English teachers’ reactions to the abolition of Year 9 SATs in England and in Wales. The research showed that in both countries, English teachers’ pedagogical repertoires have widened as a result of the removal of SATs. However, in Wales, in the absence of external testing, teachers are coming under pressure to inflate assessments. The piece also engages with the theme of professional empowerment via doctoral level work and asks questions about the conventions of academic writing.