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This paper examines the validity standards applied to paper and pencil questionnaires by four social science roles: academic researchers, expert consultants, teachers, and organization development (OD) process consultants. These roles, influenced by their key stakeholders (e.g., clients, reviewers, students), employ different validity standards and socialize firm beliefs about these standards. The resulting divergence of attitudes toward measurement inhibits learning from other roles and slows social science advancement. This paper examines the assumption that each role must apply the same validity standards.

This paper documents the effort of an urban university working collectively with a faith‐based organization, industry partners and the government to better the livelihood of individuals in a community.

Conceptual paper that reviews current literature and applies it to a case study model.

This conceptual writing offers strategies for group success through discussions of goal setting, benefit articulation, necessary infrastructure, curriculum development, and concludes with an outline of a true case study.

Collaborative efforts of higher education, faith‐based organizations, government, and industry can work together to establish programs whose intent is to provide educational and training opportunities to at‐risk populations.

The value of the paper is in the coordination of resources to provide a service deliverable that will benefit the larger community.

In the contemporary US, pregnant women must navigate competing ideas about their bodies, including expectations for weight gain. Given that there are few social spaces where women may gain weight without disapproval, pregnancy represents a period when women are allowed to put on weight. However, gaining weight means doing so within the context of the obesity “epidemic” and increased medical surveillance of the body. To explore how women navigate the medicalization of pregnancy weight, I draw on data from in-depth interviews with 40 pregnant and recently pregnant women. Findings indicate that women reframe the meaning of pregnancy weight as “baby weight,” rather than body weight. This allows them to view it as a temporary condition that is “for the baby,” while holding two concurrent body images – a pregnant and a non-pregnant version of themselves. Women also resist the quantification of their maternity weight, either by not keeping track or not looking at scales in the doctor’s office. Doing so prevented baby weight from turning back into body weight – a concrete and meaningful number on the scale. Such resistance to quantification is often accomplished with the help of doctors and healthcare professionals who do not explicitly discuss weight gain with their patients. These findings suggest that women rely on a variety of strategies to navigate the medicalization of pregnancy weight, and provides another lens through which to understand how and why women may make similar choices about other medicalized aspects of their pregnancy (or pregnancy experiences).

To examine the evolution of health care integration strategies and associated conceptualization and practice through a review and synthesis of over 25 years of international academic research and literature.

A search of the health sciences literature was conducted using PubMed and EMBASE. A total of 114 articles were identified for inclusion and thematically analyzed using a strategy content model for systems-level integration.

Six major, inter-related shifts in integration strategies were identified: (1) from a focus on horizontal integration to an emphasis on vertical integration; (2) from acute care and institution-centered models of integration to a broader focus on community-based health and social services; (3) from economic arguments for integration to an emphasis on improving quality of care and creating value; (4) from evaluations of integration using an organizational perspective to an emerging interest in patient-centered measures; (5) from a focus on modifying organizational and environmental structures to an emphasis on changing ways of working and influencing underlying cultural attitudes and norms; and (6) from integration for all patients within defined regions to a strategic focus on integrating care for specific populations. We propose that underlying many of these shifts is a growing recognition of the value of understanding health care delivery and integration as processes situated in Complex-Adaptive Systems (CAS).

This review builds a descriptive framework against which to assess, compare, and track integration strategies over time.

This paper builds upon a new era of research seeking to understand variability in how desirable outcomes result from engaging rap music as a health enhancing artifact. More specifically, the study explores the music mediated pathways to individual and community well-being. The study emphasizes female music engagement. Quantitative methods are used to examine listening habits and preferences associated with empowering rap music engagement among a female sample of 202 university students using an a priori established path analysis model. Results echo prior research that suggests the functional value of music in helping to define the self independently and articulate one’s social identity within the context of community (Dixon, Zhang, & Conrad, 2009; Hill, 2009; Travis & Bowman, 2012). Specifically, results suggest that among females in this sample, (a) their appropriation of rap music can be empowering, (b) specific factors play a significant role in determining the difference between females that feel more or less empowered from their interactions with rap music, and (c) female listeners were more likely to appropriate rap music for personal and community growth if it was their favorite music type, if they listened often, and if they tended to listen alone more often than with friends. These research findings offer promising routes for more in depth qualitative analysis to help uncover the nuances of preferred engagement strategies and to help define the subjective lived experiences that lead to feeling empowered by music to act toward positive change for oneself and others. Practical results indicate the possibility for gender-specific education, therapeutic or empowerment-based programs that utilize rap music as a rubric.

This chapter discusses the concept of productive ageing in Japan and Poland. Productive ageing is defined as any activity by older people which produces goods or services, whether paid or not. Productive ageing is slightly more narrowly defined than active ageing in so far it is focused on economic activity whereas active ageing covers a broader array of social activities. The chapter discusses activities of governments and employers in these three economies in promoting economic activities. The relative success of the Japanese economy in sustaining relative high levels of older employment is the result of active government interventions both in terms of adjusting pension policies to support working pensioners and intervening in employer practices. In Poland, government has struggled to raise older workers’ participation rates by raising pension ages and promoting older employment. In both countries, governments are recognising the economic impact of ageing demographics on the respective societies, but have had different levels of active involvement in intervening in employer practices. Finally, this chapter initiates a broader discussion of the situation in the discussed area not only in Poland, but in other countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

Life studies are a rich source for further research on the role of the Afro‐American woman in society. They are especially useful to gain a better understanding of the Afro‐American experience and to show the joys, sorrows, needs, and ideals of the Afro‐American woman as she struggles from day to day.

The purpose of this paper was to study the vexing problem of defining financial exploitation. Advocates and practitioners in the field who have been battling financial exploitation are pleased to observe the increased attention that financial exploitation is receiving at all levels of society. With this increased attention, however, there has been a conflation of terms used to describe financial exploitation, resulting in some confusion about what constitutes financial exploitation.

Fully recognizing that definitions serve different functions, this paper identifies three main purposes of a definition and then describes the myriad ways financial exploitation has been defined in the research literature, by organizations, and in civil and criminal statutes.

Financial exploitation has been defined in multiple ways within and across categories. Furthermore, the definition has expanded over time. This paper proposes the need for greater definitional clarity around the concept of financial exploitation, and argues that at a minimum a distinction must be made between financial exploitation and financial fraud.

This is the first paper to comprehensively review the myriad ways in which financial exploitation has been defined in the literature, by organizations and within state civil and criminal statutes.