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The purpose of this paper is to explore the quality of social relationships of older Filipino church members by determining their perceptions of support and non-support in their social network.

A qualitative research approach with semi-structured interviews was utilized. A purposive sample of six Filipino older adults (ages 60-89) were invited and agreed to participate in the study.

The themes found in the study confirmed the types of support outlined in social convoy theory. Several unique nuances in the types of support and non-support between the interactions of older adult Filipinos with people very close to them, somewhat close to them, and merely acquainted with them were identified. The themes of support include instrumental support, emotional care, social connectedness, and companionship during engagement in activities. Themes characterising lack of support include disrespect and lack of understanding, constraining one’s actions, helplessness in responding to the other’s needs, non-dependability and non-reliability, difficulty in maintaining social connections, making it difficult to play a desired or expected role.

The study’s limitations are the small sample size, the quality of support explored only through nominating two members of each level of closeness in the older adults’ social convoy, sample size adequacy to reach data saturation, and the lack of data on support reciprocity that may influence the respondents’ perceptions of support and non-support.

The findings of the paper point to possible interventions to improve social support for the older population. The road map for those interested in developing interventions should also put some emphasis on older adults’ needs in their continued societal engagement. Interventions may involve facilitating role transitions and providing social support systems attuned to the needs of the elderly.

The authors speculate that this lack of support experienced by the older adults relates to the loss of societal roles, especially as this relates to their identity, meaning, and changes in social interactions within their communities. It is therefore important that interventions be planned to provide structures for older adults’ transitions in their re-engagement in society and into the work-force, thereby reducing this sense of role ambiguity and providing them with more positive identities in their communities.

The results suggest another form of support distinct from the emotional and instrumental support elaborated in previous work. This support is identified as companionship from within the social network that allows older adults to sustain engagement in meaningful activities. The study’s results further suggest a lack of clarity in societal roles, i.e. a sense of role ambiguity, which older adults may experience in the transitioning from adulthood to later adulthood.

This chapter focuses on military couples and factors that affect their experiences of work, stress, and health using a life course perspective. An introduction to the definition of military couples is provided followed by a brief review of previous research on marital quality and divorce among military couples. The core of the chapter describes the advantages of using a life course perspective to examine the military life course for couples, and two critical transitions of military life are more fully examined. Specifically, periodic relocation and deployment and their impacts on military couples are reviewed in detail. Future directions for research on military couples are provided, and the use of the Convoy Model of Social Relations as an integrative approach to examine military personnel and family members’ stress and health across the military life course is introduced.

Purpose: The present study examines how relationship status and gender are associated with social network experiences among older adults. Two relationship status groupings were examined: comparisons of (1) marrieds, divorced, and widowed individuals and (2) never marrieds, cohabiters, and daters.

Methodology: Data from the second wave of the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP), a nationally representative dataset, was used. Of the final sample of respondents, 10.3% identified as Black, 6.8% identified as Hispanic, 52.9% identified as female, and the mean age of respondents was 72.54 (SD = 7.52). Linear mixed models were conducted.

Results: Overall, men reported talking less and received less family and friend support than women. For only those who were divorced, widowed, or married, men were less close with their social networks and had less friend support than women. Widows were closer to their social networks than married and divorced individuals. Among women, divorced women were less close to their social network than married or widowed women. Those who were married talked less to their social networks than those who were divorced or widowed and cohabiters talked less than daters. Widows reported receiving greater family support than those who were married. Cohabiters had lower neighborhood social ties than those who were dating. Several significant interaction effects between gender and relationship status also occurred.

Value: The present study found that both gender and relationship status plays a role in how social network experiences and lends some support to marriage and cohabitation serving as “greedy” institutions.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic condition with variable physical, cognitive, and quality of life impacts. Little research has investigated how MS outcomes vary by social identity (race, gender, disability, age, sexual orientation, and nationality) and social location (place within systems of power and privilege). However, emerging evidence points to racial and ethnic group disparities in MS outcomes. This chapter integrates core concepts from the life course perspective and an intersectional feminist disability framework to interrogate the role of diagnosis pathways in determining differential MS outcomes. MS diagnosis pathways (the time from symptom onset to the point of diagnosis) are a logical place to begin this work given the varying nature of symptom onset and the importance of a quick diagnosis for optimal MS outcomes. Whereas the life course perspective provides a framework for understanding disability transitions and pathways across the life span, an intersectional feminist disability framework centers disability within an axis of overlapping social identities and locations. The combination of both frameworks provides an approach capable of examining how MS disparities and inequities emerge in different contexts over time. The chapter begins with an overview of MS and current knowledge on disparities (mainly racial) in MS prevalence, diagnosis, and outcomes. The chapter proceeds to describe the utility of key concepts of both the life course perspective and intersectional frameworks when researching health disparities. Finally, the chapter ends with a theoretical application of an intersectional feminist disability life course perspective to investigate disparities in MS diagnosis pathways.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the supportive capacity of social networks of older lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual (LGBT) and heterosexual adults using data from Understanding Society. The principal research objective is to discern whether the companionship and community networks of older LGBT adults compensate for weaker kinship networks.

Understanding Society has data on the frequency of interaction with and proximity to family, friends and the wider community to quantify supportive capacity. Bivariate analyses reveal similarities and differences in network supportive capacity between older LGBT and heterosexual adults.

The study finds that older LGBT adults have significantly weaker kinship networks than do older heterosexual adults. Further to this, the companionship and community networks of older LGBT adults do not compensate for weaker kinship networks.

In essence, this means that many older LGBT adults have weak social networks which increases the likelihood of receiving little or no social contact and informal support which may have implications for their physical and mental well-being. This could be especially problematic for individuals who have care needs where in the context of England, the provision of state funded social care is patchy.

This study contributes evidence to an under researched area of social network analysis. Little research has explored the social networks of older LGBT adults compared with older heterosexual adults; specifically the supportive network capacity of different types of network.

With little empirical attention devoted to the consequences of loneliness in the workplace, the present study investigated the effect of workplace loneliness on creative performance, organizational citizenship behaviors and work-family family conflict. Furthermore, psychological capital was examined as a moderator of these relationships.

The proposed model was tested in two different studies on a sample of employees from manufacturing (Sample 1: n = 379) and service (Sample 2: n = 559) organizations in India. Data were collected using self-administered questionnaires at two different points in time. Confirmatory factor analysis and multiple hierarchical regressions were used to test the hypothesized model.

While workplace loneliness was found to negatively affect creative performance and organizational citizenship behavior, its impact on work-family conflict was positive. Results revealed a significant moderating effect of psychological capital on these relationships. Psychological capital buffered the impact of loneliness in a way that the detrimental effect of loneliness on performance behaviors was less severe for the individuals with high psychological capital.

The study makes an original and noteworthy contribution to the loneliness and negative emotions literature by advancing the understanding around the consequences and boundary conditions of loneliness in the workplace. It carries important implications for managing loneliness in the organizations by identifying psychological capital as an important personal resource for mitigating the effects of workplace loneliness on creativity and extra-role behaviors.

This study describes the history and present conditions of the accounting profession in Japan. In particular, the crises of the 1990s have highlighted the fact that Japanese CPAs operate under quite different institutional arrangements from their Anglo‐American counterparts. In addition, there are no equivalent Japanese bodies to the British Chartered Public Finance Accountants and Chartered Management Accountants for public sector or management accountants. This paper identifies factors behind such differences. We discuss three points at issue: currently existing problems with auditing in the private sector, the long absence of external auditors in the public sector and the reason why the accounting profession has not been formed in a management accounting field. Finally, we point out issues involving the Japanese accounting profession that might be tackled in the future.