Life Satisfaction Among Filipino Older Adults Living in the Coastal Area

Perhaps an all-encompassing aspiration of everyone who has ever walked the earth is to have lived his/her life to the fullest. However, the life experiences of each individual are the products of the decisions they make. This study aimed to investigate the relationship of older adults in Cabulijan, Tubigon, Bohol, Philippines’ self-esteem, social provisions received from other people, and relationships with other people to the level of their life satisfaction. Specifically, it sought to address the following queries: Is there a significant relationship between self-esteem, social provisions received from other people, and relationships with other people, and relationships with other people and the level of life satisfaction of older adults? Which of the factors of self-esteem, social provisions received from other people, and relationships with other people significantly contribute to the level of life satisfactions of older adults? Fifty respondents 65 years and older comprised the participants of this research. The method used was cross-sectional explanatory design. Frequency, percentage, weighted mean, and Spearman’s rank correlation were the statistical tools applied in this study. The findings clearly indicates support for the research hypotheses advanced in this study that posited the existence of a significant relationship between social provisions received from other people and relationships with other people, respectively, tended to manifest higher life satisfaction. This implies that the research participants with higher ratings of each of the Social Provisions received from other people and Relationship to Other people tend to maintain higher Life Satisfaction whereas Self-esteem has been found out to be of no significant relationship with Life Satisfaction. Abstrak Kepuasan Hidup di Antara Lansia Filipina yang Tinggal di Wilayah Pesisir. Kehidupan yang berkualitas merupakan dambaan semua orang. Namun, kesempatan tersebut tidak dapat dirasakan oleh semua orang karena pada hakikatnya, kehidupan yang berkualitas sangat bergantung pada pilihan hidup tiap individu. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengidentifikasi hubungan antara self-esteem pada lansia di Cabuljan, Tubigol, Bohol, Filipina, dukungan, dan hubungan sosial terhadap tingkat kepuasan hidup pada lansia. Penelitian ini juga berfokus menjawab beberapa pertanyaan penelitian sebagai berikut: apakah terdapat hubungan yang bermakna antara self-esteem, dukungan sosial, dan hubungan sosial serta tingkat kepuasan hidup pada lansia? Manakah di antara faktor-faktor, seperti self-esteem, dukungan, dan hubungan sosial yang sangat berpengaruh terhadap tingkat kepuasan hidup pada lansia? Sebanyak 50 responden dengan rentang umur 65 tahun ke atas bersedia untuk menjadi responden pada penelitian ini. Metode yang digunakan ialah penelitian eksplanatori dengan desain cross-sectional. Kemudian, instrumen statistika penelitian yang digunakan ialah seperti frekuensi, persentase, rata-rata tertimbang, dan Spearman’s rank correlation. Pada penelitian ini ditemukan bahwa hasil penelitian mendukung hipotesa penelitian yang menyebutkan bahwa terdapat hubungan yang bermakna pada dukungan dan hubungan sosial dengan kepuasan hidup yang tinggi. Hal ini mengindikasikan bahwa para responden dengan dukungan dan hubungan sosial yang tinggi memiliki kepuasan hidup yang tinggi juga, namun ditemukan juga bahwa self-esteem tidak memengaruhi tingkat kepuasan hidup pada lansia.Kata Kunci: dukungan sosial, hubungan sosial, kepuasan hidup, lansia, self-esteem

Exploration of Loneliness Among Black Older Adults

Background: Loneliness is a public and social issue affecting older adults, but in varying degrees across ethnic groups. Black older adults (BOAs) are more prone to loneliness because they have unique and accumulated factors (e.g., low socioeconomic status, high number of chronic conditions) that predispose them to loneliness. This review aims to describe the extent and the nature of research activities on loneliness and identify the contributory factors to loneliness among BOAs as presented in the global literature. Methods/Design: We will follow the five steps of Arksey and O’Malley’s (2005) framework to search multiple databases from inception till June 2021. MeSH terms and keywords, e.g., “older adults,” “blacks,” and “loneliness,” will be adopted for several databases, including CINHAL, Ageline, PsychINFO, Cochrane Central Registers of Control Trials, PubMed, Web of Science, Social Science Abstract. Multiple reviewers will independently screen citations (title/abstract and full text) and extract data using predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria. “Best fit” framework synthesis using the six social provisions of Weiss’ framework as a priori themes will guide the data analysis. Discussion: This review will inform policy development around contributory factors for loneliness among BOAs and the most relevant issues on loneliness related to BOAs.

Psychometric Assessment of a Weight Management Social Provisions Survey in a Sample of Adults with Prediabetes

Background: The relevance of social support for weight management is not well documented in people with prediabetes. An important consideration is the adequate assessment of social provisions related to weight management in this population.Purpose: To assess the factor structure and measurement invariance of an adapted Social Provisions Scale specific to weight management (SPS-WM) in adults with prediabetes (n=599).Methods: Participants of a diabetes prevention trial completed a demographic survey, and the SPS-WM. Confirmatory analyses tested the factor structure of the SPS-WM, and measurement invariance was assessed for gender, weight status, education level, and age.Results: Removal of two collinear items resulted in acceptable model fit, supporting six correlated factors for social provisions specific to weight management. Measurement invariance was supported across all subgroups.Conclusion: Results support score interpretations for these scales reflecting distinct components of social support specific to weight management in alignment with those of the original survey.

Understanding and Assessing Construct Validity of the Social Provisions Scale: Implications for Youth Development

Confirmatory factor analysis using structural equation modeling was used to measure the construct validity of the increasingly utilized social provisions scale. This scale was used to measure social support sources and types among a sample of 421 youth from 4 Pennsylvania schools. The youth were surveyed to determine their levels of social support and the relationship of social support to community and youth development capacities. Research findings indicated an acceptable model fit indices for the sources of the social support model. A lower fit for the types of social support was found. Overall, the analysis further verified the reliability and validity of the social provisions scale. With this information, youth practitioners can better measure and assess social support and use the social provisions scale to tailor youth development programs to individual and group needs.

Productive engagement and ageing in productivist welfare regimes: questing for an age-friendly city in Hong Kong

The population aged 65 years and above in Hong Kong is projected to rise from 15 per cent in 2014 to 38.4 per cent in 2069. Therefore, the quest for creating age-friendly conditions and the promotion of active ageing has become a priority for the Hong Kong Government and stakeholders in the city. Using a cross-national comparative framework for productive engagement in later life, this article examines the predictors of productive engagement (perceived voluntary engagement) in two districts (the Islands and Tsuen Wan) of Hong Kong – a typical productivist welfare regime in Asia. Data were collected through a social survey to ascertain the perception of an age-friendly city and active ageing in 2016 and 2018 from 1,638 persons aged 60 years and older. The results indicate some differences in the perception of the key determinants in both districts, but the factors associated with productive engagement were consistent, namely social atmosphere, social provisions and the built environment. The findings are discussed within the broader discourse on social gerontology, age-friendly cities and productivist welfare regimes.

Conclusion: The Fatal Abstractions of Capitalist Rule

This chapter concludes that digital society requires significant restructuring if it is to facilitate greater democratization. But unless it is achieved via a path where workers' democracy is entrenched, then whatever social provisions and degree of democracy happens to be attained through concessions, it will always be susceptible to erosion as capitalists reassert themselves at a later date. In many different registers, widespread digital communication is revolutionary. Within four decades the Internet expanded from niche military, government and scientific institutions to being integral to all parts of social life. In providing access to many goods and facilitating the creation of others, it has become a public good in and of itself. This fact has often been construed as a key episode within a triumphant narrative found in the cheerleading technology press as well as large circulation newspapers about the potency for greater communication to yield opportunities for commerce and emancipation. In one way or another, digital utopians have argued that the Internet is, or can be, a great leveller. But the promise of egalitarian liberation is far from materializing. Instead, power has radically concentrated with the ruling class, those that own the means of production. This development should be foremost in any analysis of contemporary social life. Accordingly, the key question should be how does the development, acquisition and deployment of technology reshape the balance of power between governors and the governed.

COVIDiSTRESS Global Survey dataset on psychological and behavioural consequences of the COVID-19 outbreak

This N = 173,426 social science dataset was collected through the collaborative COVIDiSTRESS Global Survey – an open science effort to improve understanding of the human experiences of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic between 30th March and 30th May, 2020. The dataset allows a cross-cultural study of psychological and behavioural responses to the Coronavirus pandemic and associated government measures like cancellation of public functions and stay at home orders implemented in many countries. The dataset contains demographic background variables as well as measures of Asian Disease Problem, perceived stress (PSS-10), availability of social provisions (SPS-10), trust in various authorities, trust in governmental measures to contain the virus (OECD trust), personality traits (BFF-15), information behaviours, agreement with the level of government intervention, and compliance with preventive measures, along with a rich pool of exploratory variables and written experiences. A global consortium from 39 countries and regions worked together to build and translate a survey with variables of shared interests, and recruited participants in 47 languages and dialects. Raw plus cleaned data and dynamic visualizations are available.

PROŠIRIVANjE TRADICIONALNE USTAVNE MATERIJE –SOCIJALNE I EKONOMSKE ODREDBE U VIDOVDANSKOM USTAVU

The final establishment of a unified Yugoslavian state, as the fundamental reason behind the adoption of the Vidovdan Constitution, contributed to the overshadowing of all other characteristics of this act by the unified state system. Although it is one of the common conceptions that the Vidovdan Constitution had to a great extent copied the economic and social provisions of the Weimar Constitution, much less attention was given to the fact that the nature of this constitution, as the highest legal act, was somewhat modified. Comparatively, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was amongst the first to transform their constitution from a purely organizational-constitutive act by implementing elements of an economic and social charter as a future-ready program. The constitution is no longer only a constitutive act of a state, it simultaneously serves as an act that transforms the state from a political organization into a social and cultural community. In addition, although the Weimar Constitution was an exemplary model, the framers of the Vidovdan constitution were not plagiarizers, as they were original in many of their provisions. Distinctive constitutional provisions were the result of complex socio-political circumstances at the time that the framers of the constitution had to consider in order for the constitution to be adopted.

The 1993 World Conference on Human Rights and the retreat of a redistributive rights vision

The 1993 UN World Conference on Human Rights, the second held in the history of the UN, and the sequel to the 1968 conference in Tehran, was convened as the faith in the liberal democratic human rights order was renascent. Economic and social rights, one of the dominant notes of Tehran a quarter century earlier, were—in comparative terms—marginal to Western priorities. This paper draws on new archival research to assess the new equilibrium in post-Cold War human rights that emerged from Vienna. The interrelationship between political, civil, and legal freedoms, and economic and social provisions was pared down to mere exhortation. After the transnational ‘Breakthrough’ of human rights NGOs in the 1970s, almost everyone had begun to transliterate their cause to the language of human rights—but it had become a language which required the excision of economic radicalism as a prerequisite for drawing on its newly inflated moral currency.

Remembering love: Memory work of orphaned children in the Philippine drug war

Summary The “war on drugs” in the Philippines has left a generation of Filipino orphaned children in deep grief and social disarray. Using feminist memory work as critical methodology and intervention design, this study examines accounts of 56 orphaned children and how they exercise agency embedded in the collective remembering of a traumatic past (i.e. rooted in painful memories of tokhang or community police operations) and to identify social structures that marginalize their present and future lifeworld. Findings Findings show three overarching themes namely: (1) reclaiming stripped agency in the loss and injustice of the past, (2) holding on to crippled agency in the sadness and insecurity of the present, and (3) carrying on with agency to hope for healing and justice in a reimagined future. Applications Insights and recommendations to critical praxis of social work in light of an ongoing drug war are further discussed which include strengthening civil societies and intersectoral collaborations, integrating specific social provisions for tokhang survivors in the creation of a national orphan policy, and using digital memorialization. Guided by enacting ethics and politics of caring for and with the marginalized, social workers working alongside expanded communities of care are called to remember love despite traumatic pains and to restore homes for orphaned children in the midst of state insecurity.