Search results

The purpose of this chapter is to advance the medical sociology literature on the relationship between social cohesion and SRHS on an individual level. There is little information about how neighborhood social characteristics affect seniors’ SRHS. Guided by tenets of the collective efficacy theory, this chapter hypothesized that older individuals who perceived that their neighborhood has high levels of social cohesion around elderly issues will have better SRHS. A secondary hypothesis investigates whether the relationship was attenuated once their neighbors’ actual, self-reported attitudes toward seniors were taken into account.

Data come from a telephone survey of Indianapolis, Indiana residents, court data, and census information.

Logistic regression analyses indicated that both social cohesion and low income are statistically significant predictors of poor self-rated health status. Although both are statistically significant, the protective association between cohesion and poor SRHS (−0.69 log odds) is of similar magnitude to the risky association between income and poor health (−0.64 log odds).

Consistent with the classic work of Durkheim who found that individuals who were more socially integrated with society had lower rates of suicide, our study found a significant association between social cohesion and SRHS.

Future research is needed to target other health status outcomes in other geographical locations. Even though the body of research exploring the predictors of SRHS among older individuals is quite robust, this chapter adds to a more recent growing body of research, which has articulated the importance of the social environment in which an individual lives, especially community-dwelling older adults, is associated with their health status.

Improvements to supportive services targeting pregnant and parenting adolescents can enhance maternal and child outcomes (e.g., repeat pregnancy and child well-being). The purpose of this chapter is to advance the medical sociological literature by implementing multifaceted approaches including developing evidence-based media messaging device modalities as a forum to engage pregnant and parenting adolescents in social normative communication, self-reflection, and self-expression so that they can develop a tailored health prototype service model to accommodate their health and social needs.

We utilized a purposeful sample of pregnant adolescents or parenting adolescents (of an infant or toddler) ages 15–19 in a large Metropolitan Area in the Midwest. We employed a qualitative research design using two focus groups (n = 15) and participant observation (n = 8) to identify themes. Content analysis was performed to better understand the study participants’ experiences and perceptions.

Based on the focus group results, the custom journal was found to be the most popular outlet to offer self-expression and social support. Four main themes emerged from the data, including teen pregnancy overall is a problem, but having their own baby was not; strong desire for more health information and health education; perceived stigma from their teachers and parents; and frustration with the existing service programs.

The implications of the chapter are that the teen pregnancy norms fostered stigma and “social disgrace” that the pregnant and parenting adolescents experienced and ultimately thwarted their perceived and actual receipt of services. Future research should better understand the potential influences of internal and external pressures brought on by stigmatization as a contributing barrier to communicating social and health needs by pregnant and parenting adolescents.

This chapter developed, implemented, and evaluated media communication and found that it could structure social relations between pregnant and parenting adolescents and service providers. This chapter also extends development communication techniques, with its intellectual roots in rural sociology, by focusing on communication-oriented solutions and the development of new technologies to provide medical information with greater social equality and integrated support services for pregnant and parenting adolescents.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of shame in entrepreneurship. Extant research in relation to the entrepreneurial process has tended to concentrate upon the entrepreneur as hero and other positive aspects of the process. Consequently, the darker sides of the entrepreneurial personality and enterprise culture such as the role of shame remain a relatively under researched facet of entrepreneurship theory. Despite this dearth of actual empirical studies, the negative aspects of entrepreneurial behaviour associated with the “flawed hero model of entrepreneurship” are implicitly understood. These negative aspects include hubris, tragedy, narcissism, over‐stretching, hedonism, personality disorders, status anxiety, self‐centeredness, destructive relationships, alcoholism, suicide and the most heinous of all, business failure.

The paper considers the deeply social phenomenon of shame on the entrepreneur and his or her world by developing a conceptual model of shame. The social script of shame is analysed as found in novels and as found in real life newspaper reports of such epic tragedies, using a chosen methodology of narrative analysis.

The world portrayed in narrative is very much a “man's world” in which shame is a personal construct, a penance to be endured or ended and in the process a narrative script is developed. Shame is a deeply personal cognitive emotion easier to study in narrative than in person. From the stories of flawed heroes we construct a holistic model of possible entrepreneurial trajectories that take cognisance of wellbeing issues and cover the unspoken events that occur after a fall from grace. But why should we expect the story to end with the entrepreneur in crisis staring into the abyss?

Little previous work has been undertaken to explore entrepreneurial shame using both the entrepreneurship literature and narrative analysis.