Aging Well in the Digital Age: Technology in Processes of Selective Optimization with Compensation.

OBJECTIVES: Studies show that using information and communication technology (ICT) contributes significantly to elders' subjective well-being (SWB). Drawing on the Selective Optimization with Compensation (SOC) model, this study aims at exploring the mechanism by which ICT use helps older adults remain engaged in valued life activities and maintain their SWB. METHOD: Involving teams from seven countries (Canada, Colombia, Israel, Italy, Peru, Romania, Spain), 27 focus groups were conducted with a total of 184 grandmothers aged 65 years and older who use ICT. RESULTS: Analysis led to identification of a series of strategies related to ICT use that may be described in SOC terms. "Intentional limited use" and "Selective timing,", for example, are clearly associated with selection. In addition, numerous optimizing strategies were found to be applied in "Instrumental" and "Leisure" activities, whereas some ICT uses offered compensation for "Aging-related" and "General" challenging circumstances. DISCUSSION: The study suggests that ICT is used in all three SOC processes and that its effective application facilitates adjustment and enhances SWB. It should therefore be regarded as a resource that supports existing personal and social resources and life management strategies, and even as a Quality of Life Technology that maintains or enhances functioning in older adulthood.

Identifying social participation subgroups of individuals with severe mental illnesses: a latent class analysis.

PURPOSE: To investigate factors that influence participation in and needs for work and other daytime activities among individuals with severe mental illnesses (SMI). METHODS: A latent class analysis using routine outcome monitoring data from 1069 patients was conducted to investigate whether subgroups of individuals with SMI can be distinguished based on participation in work or other daytime activities, needs for care in these areas, and the differences between these subgroups. RESULTS: Four subgroups could be distinguished: (1) an inactive group without daytime activities or paid employment and many needs for care in these areas; (2) a moderately active group with some daytime activities, no paid employment, and few needs for care; (3) an active group with more daytime activities, no paid employment, and mainly met needs for care; and (4) a group engaged in paid employment without needs for care in this area. Groups differed significantly from each other in age, duration in MHC, living situation, educational level, having a life partner or not, needs for care regarding social contacts, quality of life, psychosocial functioning, and psychiatric symptoms. Differences were not found for clinical diagnosis or gender. CONCLUSIONS: Among individuals with SMI, different subgroups can be distinguished based on employment situation, daytime activities, and needs for care in these areas. Subgroups differ from each other on patient characteristics and each subgroup poses specific challenges, underlining the need for tailored rehabilitation interventions. Special attention is needed for individuals who are involuntarily inactive, with severe psychiatric symptoms and problems in psychosocial functioning.

Developmental Pathways from Parental Socioeconomic Status to Adolescent Substance Use: Alternative and Complementary Reinforcement.

Although lower socioeconomic status has been linked to increased youth substance use, much less research has determined potential mechanisms explaining the association. The current longitudinal study tested whether alternative (i.e., pleasure gained from activities without any concurrent use of substances) and complementary (i.e., pleasure gained from activities in tandem with substance use) reinforcement mediate the link between lower socioeconomic status and youth substance use. Further, we tested whether alternative and complementary reinforcement and youth substance use gradually unfold over time and then intersect with one another in a cascading manner. Potential sex differences are also examined. Data were drawn from a longitudinal survey of substance use and mental health among high school students in Los Angeles. Data collection involved four semiannual assessment waves beginning in fall 2013 (N = 3395; M baseline age = 14.1; 47% Hispanic, 16.2% Asian, 16.1% multiethnic, 15.7% White, and 5% Black; 53.4% female). The results from a negative binomial path model suggested that lower parental socioeconomic status (i.e., lower parental education) was significantly related to an increased number of substances used by youth. The final path model revealed that the inverse association was statistically mediated by adolescents' diminished engagement in pleasurable substance-free activities (i.e., alternative reinforcers) and elevated engagement in pleasurable activities paired with substance use (i.e., complementary reinforcers). The direct effect of lower parental education on adolescent substance use was not statistically significant after accounting for the hypothesized mediating mechanisms. No sex differences were detected. Increasing access to and engagement in pleasant activities of high quality that do not need a reinforcement enhancer, such as substances, may be useful in interrupting the link between lower parental socioeconomic status and youth substance use.

The assessment of work productivity and activity impairment in Behçet's disease.

BACKGROUND/AIM: The aim of this study was to assess the relationships between the course of Behçet's disease (BD), disease-specific fears, and work productivity and activity impairment. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In this cross-sectional study, 110 consecutive BD patients were included. The Work Productivity and Activity Impairment questionnaire was used. RESULTS: In the group of employed patients, 30.41% had missed work during the previous week. The mean percentages of daily activity impairment were higher in patients with musculoskeletal involvement (39.81 ± 33.61%) compared to those without (23.48 ± 32.45%) (P = 0.008). A greater decrease in working hours was observed in patients with eye involvement (45.52 ± 15.29 h) compared to those without (54.15 ± 15.29 h) (P = 0.007). More of the male patients (67.8%) were afraid of losing their jobs compared to females (30%) (P = 0.000). CONCLUSION: The highest levels of lost productivity and the most severe effects on daily life are consequences of eye and musculoskeletal involvement in the study population. More effective therapeutic approaches are required to improve the working lives of patients with BD. Moreover, male patients had a higher fear of losing their jobs, suggesting a match between the expected clinical course and the predictions of BD patients.

Development of the Adolescent and Young Adult Activity Card Sort.

Emerging adulthood defines transition to employment, higher education, and domestic life. This study describes the development of an assessment of self-reported participation in a range of age-appropriate activities. Item selection was established from literature review, feedback from youth and professionals, the former Adolescent Activity Card Sort (AACS), and the original Activity Card Sort (ACS). Iterative item selection occurred with three separate samples of emerging adults and six professionals. Test-retest reliability was evaluated. The Adolescent and Young Adult Activity Card Sort (AYA-ACS) consists of chores (11 items), leisure (13), social (10), health and fitness (9), work (10), education (8), and parenting (9). Test-retest reliability showed significant moderate to substantial Kappa agreement (.48-.85) for all domains except parenting (κ = .15). This preliminary study describes the development of the AYA-ACS to be used with individuals who encounter challenges when transitioning to young adulthood.

Understanding human--coyote encounters in urban ecosystems using citizen science data: what do socioeconomics tell us?

The coyote (Canis latrans) has dramatically expanded its range to include the cities and suburbs of the western US and those of the Eastern Seaboard. Highly adaptable, this newcomer's success causes conflicts with residents, necessitating research to understand the distribution of coyotes in urban landscapes. Citizen science can be a powerful approach toward this aim. However, to date, the few studies that have used publicly reported coyote sighting data have lacked an in-depth consideration of human socioeconomic variables, which we suggest are an important source of overlooked variation in data that describe the simultaneous occurrence of coyotes and humans. We explored the relative importance of socioeconomic variables compared to those describing coyote habitat in predicting human-coyote encounters in highly-urbanized Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, USA using 707 public reports of coyote sightings, high-resolution land cover, US Census data, and an autologistic multi-model inference approach. Three of the four socioeconomic variables which we hypothesized would have an important influence on encounter probability, namely building density, household income, and occupation, had effects at least as large as or larger than coyote habitat variables. Our results indicate that the consideration of readily available socioeconomic variables in the analysis of citizen science data improves the prediction of species distributions by providing insight into the effects of important factors for which data are often lacking, such as resource availability for coyotes on private property and observer experience. Managers should take advantage of citizen scientists in human-dominated landscapes to monitor coyotes in order to understand their interactions with humans.

The French version of the Family Assessment Device.

OBJECTIVE: To validate a French version of the Family Assessment Device (FAD), a well-known self-report questionnaire assessing family functioning in clinical and research settings. METHODS: A French adaptation of the FAD was administered to 3 groups of subjects: a nonclinical group (n = 115), relatives of psychiatric patients (n = 102), and medical patients and their relatives (n = 106). Temporal stability was assessed by test-retest intraclass correlations. Internal consistency was measured by Cronbach alpha reliability coefficients. Discriminant validity was explored, comparing the scores of the 3 groups, using a covariance analysis (ANCOVA). The dimensional structure of the instrument was explored using a principal component analysis, with promax oblique rotation, on the entire sample. RESULTS: The French FAD showed good temporal stability and good discriminant validity across groups. Internal consistency was satisfactory only for the General Functioning (GF) subscale. Factor analysis yielded a 3-factor model. The GF subscale was highly correlated with all of the other subscales. CONCLUSIONS: The French version of the FAD provides a valuable tool for assessing family functioning. However, our study failed to identify the theoretical structure of the FAD and suggests that the GF subscale could be used as a better overall indicator of family functioning.

Women's fashions in transition: Ottoman borderlands and the Anglo-Ottoman exchange of costumes.

Following the considerable increase in the interactions between Ottomans and Europeans, Ottoman port cities, referred to here as "borderlands," became meeting places of distinct worlds. Ottoman and British people met, clashed, and grappled with each other in the borderlands of the Ottoman Empire. There was unbalanced, disparate, and disproportionate, but also mutual and constant interchange between the two societies. This article discusses one facet of this interchange: the Anglo-Ottoman exchange of women's costumes.

The origin of bursts and heavy tails in human dynamics.

The dynamics of many social, technological and economic phenomena are driven by individual human actions, turning the quantitative understanding of human behaviour into a central question of modern science. Current models of human dynamics, used from risk assessment to communications, assume that human actions are randomly distributed in time and thus well approximated by Poisson processes. In contrast, there is increasing evidence that the timing of many human activities, ranging from communication to entertainment and work patterns, follow non-Poisson statistics, characterized by bursts of rapidly occurring events separated by long periods of inactivity. Here I show that the bursty nature of human behaviour is a consequence of a decision-based queuing process: when individuals execute tasks based on some perceived priority, the timing of the tasks will be heavy tailed, with most tasks being rapidly executed, whereas a few experience very long waiting times. In contrast, random or priority blind execution is well approximated by uniform inter-event statistics. These finding have important implications, ranging from resource management to service allocation, in both communications and retail.

Assessment of behavioral symptom management in demented individuals.

This article is intended to stimulate interdisciplinary research by social, behavioral, and biomedical researchers to solve some of the problems for persons with Alzheimer disease who suffer from behavioral symptoms. We identify the need for using conceptually based measures that have adequate reliability and validity to operationalize indicators of psychological well-being, suggest instruments to assess mood, engagement, agitation, resistiveness and comfort, and pose research questions to explore responses to active involvement (individual or group), passive involvement, lack of activity, aversive activity (related to activities of daily living), and limitation of activity (restraints) in persons with dementia. Answers to the research questions posed in this article will lead to expanded knowledge and can redefine how we give care to those in need.