Discusses empowering youth as means of prevention/intervention. Considers empowerment programs such as those used by Ekerd Therapeutic Wilderness Camping System. Focuses on challenges, opportunities, and responsibilities of extended wilderness trips. Notes that proactively empowering adolescents requires adult leaders who are sensitive to…

Measured anxiety and autonomy in kibbutz father-orphaned (n=28) and nonorphaned (n=42) adolescents. Found no significant differences on levels of manifest anxiety and autonomy. When groups were broken down according to gender and age, found that older father-orphan girls manifested significantly greater anxiety than any group and significantly…

Studied effectiveness of intervention to help frail elders to record advance directives (ADs). In collaboration with physicians and lay volunteer, social worker provided information/counseling to elderly subjects, families, and proxies in series of visits to geriatric evaluation and management clinic. Seventy-one percent of subjects recorded ADs.…

Used nationally representative sample of 2,031 adults aged 18 to 90 to compare housework and family care as primary activity with paid work and with volunteer work, leisure activities, home and yard maintenance, and schoolwork. Found that unpaid domestic work was more routine, and it provided less intrinsic gratification and fewer extrinsic…

Urges rehabilitation professionals to identify, through scientific studies, the factors that contribute to their client's quality of life on the basis of the client's assumptions, perceptions, goals, and values. Both culturally relevant theoretical foundations and measurement-methodology issues are addressed. (DB)

Studied the role of popular culture in the literacy curriculum by focusing on superhero role play by 57 6- and 7-year-olds. Findings suggest that superhero play is strongly attractive to girls, who explore agency and autonomy through such plays. (SLD)

Community health nurses (n=96) taking distance-learning courses preferred flexible but highly structured materials with clear guidance and support. There appears to be some conflict between learning style and the autonomous nature of distance learning. (SK)

Used hypothetical vignettes to examine the development of children's and adolescents' understanding of nurturance and self-determination rights. Found that 8- to 12-year-olds were significantly less likely than 14- to 16-year-olds to identify nurturance and self-determination rights as salient. Reasoning about self-determination rights, but not…

The authors examine the concept of subjectification, using Judith Butler's theorizing of subjection to investigate their memories of being subjected in school settings and analyze subjectification. Their collective biography highlights aspects of the achievement of the individual appropriated schoolgirl subject who simultaneously constitutes…

Telephone survey of 2,592 people found that their sense of personal control was positively affected by nonroutine, autonomous, fulfilling, or nonisolated work. Women's low personal control was attributed to overrepresentation in part-time work and homemaking. Homemakers reported more autonomy than did paid workers; female paid workers performed…

Examined relations between personality and parenting behavior in 78 mothers of adolescent boys. Results suggest that mothers high in dependency relate to competent sons in ways that encourage independence, but relate to their less competent sons in ways that may foster dependency by thwarting attempts at autonomy. (SLD)

Although the nature of knowledge is contested, "official knowledge" is promulgated in national standards such as New Zealand's National Qualifications Framework. Autonomy and accountability are used in the politics of official knowledge by competing interests. Critical theory provides guidelines for adult educators to deal with the…

Psychologists (N=305) completed a questionnaire concerning criteria for sexual consent capacity by individuals with mental retardation. Factor analysis identified five factors of which basic sexual knowledge, knowledge of the consequences of sexual behavior, and abilities related to self-protection were most critical for sexual consent capacity.…

I will argue in what follows, following the insights of James Marshall on busno-cratic power, that resistance to this new power is already well underway, and that this resistance is potentially problematic and potentially transgressive (in Marshall's words "a reflective reconstitution"). The self is not only a chooser in busno-cratic land, it is…

Locus of control is fairly stable over time but does change as a result of natural events, such as the acquisition of college education. Previous research found this to be so in a study of the high school class of 1972. This investigation asked whether a model of stability and change in locus of control had changed since the benchmark study of the…