Showing papers in "Social Science & Medicine in 1995"

TL;DR: The World Health Organization's project to develop a quality of life instrument (the WHOQOL) is described, the reasons that the project was undertaken, the thinking that underlies the project, the method that has been followed in its development and the current status of the project.

TL;DR: Consequences of specific physician behaviors on certain patient outcomes, namely: satisfaction, compliance/adherence to treatment, recall and understanding of information, and health status/psychiatric morbidity are described.

TL;DR: This work reviews some of the participatory methodologies which are currently being popularized in health research, focusing on the issue of control over the research process.

TL;DR: Empirical evidence is yielded supporting the feasibility of a non-English language reproduction of the SF-36 Health Survey in Sweden and tests of scaling assumptions including hypothesized item groupings were consistently favorable across subgroups, although lower rates were noted in the oldest age group.

TL;DR: The preliminary results suggest that the SF-36 Health Survey in its German form may be a valuable tool in epidemiological and clinical studies, however further work as concerns responsiveness and population based norms is necessary.

TL;DR: The essential processes through which individuals personalize the illness, dilemmas encountered in interpersonal relations, strategies that are used to avoid or minimize HIV-related stigma, and subcultural networks and ideologies that are drawn upon to construct, avow, and adapt to an HIV identity are considered.

TL;DR: It is demonstrated not only that older people can talk about, and do think about, quality of life, but also how quality oflife varies for different age groups of the elderly population living at home, in different geographical areas.

TL;DR: It is argued that because concepts such as PTSD implicitly endorse a Western ontology and value system, their use in non-Western groups should be, atmost, tentative.

TL;DR: In this article, the OPCS Omnibus Survey was used to obtain population norms on pertinent domains of life and health related quality of life, and the relative importance of these domains to people.

TL;DR: Whether marital status continues to exert any influence on health and mortality at the older ages is explored and the extent to which the social environment and economic status of the elderly can account for the existing disability and mortality differences by marital status is investigated.

TL;DR: This paper argues that the underlying issues are crucial to contemporary public health debates and the methods are simply tools that are used to further knowledge and have no inherent status as sound or unsound.

TL;DR: It is suggested that improving patients' decision-making competencies may require more discussion of benefits and risks, as well as discussion of patients' opinions about the prescribed medications and their abilities to follow through with the treatment plans.

TL;DR: This research focuses on 25 U.S. women who sought medical treatment for infertility and describes their perception of the stigma associated with infertility, applying a critical, feminist perspective to the analysis of the women's lived experiences within the social and medical contexts in which they occur.

TL;DR: It is found that satisfaction with the partner helping relationship was associated with psychological well-being and that interventions aimed at couples may be an effective way of reducing psychological distress.

TL;DR: The literature is reviewed and variables that increase patient delay are identified and a theoretical model based on the health belief model, a self regulation model of illness cognition, and interactionist role theory is proposed to explain the response of an individual to the signs and symptoms of acute myocardial infarction.

TL;DR: The case for restructuring AIDS prevention is made by describing the growing risk of HIV infection faced by women throughout the world, examining the serious limitations of the contemporary AIDS prevention strategy in meeting women's needs, and exploring how new approaches--including a shift toward a more 'community organizing' approach to AIDS prevention--could help women exert more control over their sexual and reproductive lives.

TL;DR: The Chinese experience showed that its increasing expenditure per person for health care through user fees and insurance had not produced commensurate improvement in health status, and draws some lessons for less developed nations.

TL;DR: The paper argues that the higher rates of perinatal mortality and accidents/disability observed in many migrant groups compared to the native population are linked to their lower entitlements in the receiving societies.

TL;DR: A profile of male sex partners is described and gender roles and sexuality are emphasized, requiring an examination of how traditional gender role socialization runs counter to safer sex practices.

TL;DR: The findings confirm the need for a gender-specific approach to further research on this subject, and suggest the need to measure variables that capture the different meaning and value of social network participation for men and women.

TL;DR: Patients' symptoms, and to a lesser degree patient immobility, were strong predictors of patient depression which in turn predicted caregiver depression, and the disposition of caregiver optimism was a strong predictor of caregivers' reactions to the burdens of caring.

TL;DR: Health-related quality of life measures have been developed from the utilitarian ethical perspective of public health medicine which may be contrasted with individual-centered indicators; these emphasise the unique experience of a patient.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors explored empirically using data from a large (N = 2956) community sample drawn in the southeastern U.S. and found that frequency of church attendance is inversely associated with depressive symptoms among whites, but not among blacks.

TL;DR: The findings of this study reveal the urgent need for a health education campaign to convince the general population that tuberculosis is curable and all health care providers should act as destigmatizers.

TL;DR: A six session intervention program, which included support, problem-solving and coping skills, was designed to help spouses to cope with the stress of caring for their partner, found participants to be more psychologically distressed than the general population but were not as distressed as psychiatric outpatients.

TL;DR: A policy of health benefit maximization received very limited support when the consequence is a loss of equity and access to services for the elderly and for people with a limited potential for improving their health.

TL;DR: The paper focuses on self-appraisal and illness behavior and the way social movements help to define and redefine conceptions of illness and disability and the types of interventions that can be helpful in encouraging and reinforcing such developments.

TL;DR: Friends, the social culture at university, and the interaction of the two with the developmental tasks characteristic of the period between adolescence and adulthood were more important influences than parents or high school sex education classes in how sexual relationships were managed.

TL;DR: The case study represents a crisis in the consumer movement today, in which rapid growth of alternatives has been accompanied by a social amnesia of the emancipatory vision that originally spawned the movement.

TL;DR: A consistent finding across studies is that many people show a high level of knowledge of the dangers of excessive sun exposure and the need for sun protection, however, this knowledge often does not transfer into behaviour, with many people, particularly adolescents, still desiring and actively seeking a suntan.