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Chapter 11 of the book "Partnering to Prepare Urban Teachers: A Call to Activism," edited by Francine P. Peterman is presented. It focuses on the Urban Teacher Education Program developed by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and its implementation at Center X, an experimental urban teacher preparation program in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies in the university. The chapter highlights the interim events of the program and analyzes its effectivity based on a longitudinal study of Center X graduates.

The article focuses on the numerous trends in communication research and education in Japan. It says that the disaster communication research is considered one of the biggest and richest subareas in communication research in the country. It mentions that the country has a good long-term longitudinal data in social sciences including "The Time Budgets Survey," by Broadcasting Culture Research Institute of Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK).

The method used in the book "A Model for Analysing One-to-One Teaching in the Maths Recovery Program" is presented. It explores the methodological principles of Vygotsky's approach to the analysis of higher psychological functions and on methodologies for longitudinal analyses of teaching in the form of video recordings. These involve studying the process, explanation against description and developmental analysis that returns to the source and reconstructs all the points in a given structure.

The chapter presents an integration of findings from several cross-sectional and longitudinal studies conducted in the past on the psychosocial etiology of the risk and protective factors for drug use. The studies are used as a base from which to discuss the major empirical and theoretical issues related to the causes of adolescent drug use and identify effective prevention programs that address psychosocial risk factors for drug use and abuse.

The psychological and social consequences of having a diagnosis of cancer can continue beyond the initial year of diagnosis. However, very few empirical studies examine the long-term adjustment of cancer survivors and the factors that promote survivors' well-being. This paper presents an 18 month follow-up study of 26 women who were treated for various types of cancer at a major medical center in the United States. They completed questionnaires during the initial treatment phase of the illness and 18 months liner. The questionnaire consisted of standardized scales measuring relationship factors (i.e., mutuality, silencing-the-self schemas, and relationship-focused coping) and psychosocial well-being (i.e., quality of life, depression, self-care agency). The results of the follow-up study revealed that the women's psychosocial well-being changed for the better between Time 1 and Time 2. while their relationship factors remained constant. Only one relational Factor, silencing-the-self beliefs, at Time 1, was significantly correlated with a well-being variable at Time 2. However, relationship factors at Time 2 were significantly correlated with psychosocial wellbeing at Time 2, indicating that relational Factors continue to play a significant role in the sample's psychosocial adjustment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the paradox of global social change and national path dependencies. The idea that one could distinguish two major pathways of development--the modernization of Western liberal democracies in contrast to the development of state socialist societies--had collapsed. But if--with some minor remaining doubt in regard to China--socialism could not represent an alternative developmental goal and trajectory, then the assumption that advanced societies could be grouped together as changing in broadly similar manner regained strength. A concluding remark is in order on how the research program outlined here will have to proceed. A first further step will be to validate the cross-sectional country profiles in regard to institutional configuration, life course outcomes and their inter-linkages. A second major step will have to transform both the institutional configuration and the life course outcomes into diachronic accounts across time, i.e., into accounts of institutional and behavioral change. As a third step, comparative micro-analytic longitudinal studies will have to be employed to unravel the causal linkages between institutional setups and life course regimes.

The article focuses on qualitative studies. Qualitative projects are frequently small, detailed accounts of a few cases or a closely related situation, although projects may be longitudinal or comparative. Qualitative analyses can either be approached manually, which is the traditional approach, or they may be computer-assisted. Qualitative methods may take a number of approaches so that, whilst some projects are clearly defined from the start, others take form and substance as data accumulates and become subject to ongoing analysis. Unlike experimental approaches, which generally adopt a educationist strategy, qualitative approaches are 'organic' or holistic in that they attempt to integrate many features and determinants of situations and explain the interplay of people in groups, societies and organizations. Understanding meaning in these situations is essentially down to the researcher gaining a deep and empathetic grasp of what people say and how they act through direct personal observation.

The transplant experience of 20 liver organ transplant recipients was investigated in a longitudinal study. Five primary themes were identified from analysis of recipients' interviews including concerns about: (1) quality of life, (2) quality of health care, (3) economic factors, (4) social support factors, and (5) psychological factors. These findings are analyzed within the current context of social work in health care characterized by three interactive trends: advances in medical technology, changing health care economics, and a shift in the locus of health care delivery from institutions to the community. All five themes reflect the impact of these trends and give rise to ethical issues with practice implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses about the programme of National Child Development Study (NCDS). This programme had taken every child born in Britain in one week in March 1958 and followed them and their parents with interviews almost wholly structured and statistical at first frequently, and more recently at intervals of around five years. Using NCDS made our stepfamily research unique in Great Britain in its basis on a reliable sample, and it was hoped to compare the fifty retrospective life story interviews which we carried out with the earlier statistical data and thus strengthen our interpretations of what mattered most for these children in the long run. The retrospective life story grounded in a longitudinal study also has its problems, but they can be mitigated by quantitative social scientists who felt a genuine willingness to interact practically with in-depth qualitative researchers.

This article focuses on waveguides. In the electromagnetic spectrum, microwaves are the waves with wavelengths comparable to ordinary laboratory dimensions. Furthermore, smooth surfaces of good conductors form very perfect reflectors for them. The researcher found that such waves existed only in a set of well-defined normal modes, with waves of two types: one with a longitudinal component of electric intensity only, while the other had a longitudinal component of magnetic intensity only. Both types had transverse components of both electric and magnetic intensity.

This section analyzes controversial issues of criminology: definitions, the relationship between research strategies and the questions for which answers are sought, the assumption that psychological hedonism satisfactorily explains motivation and the assumption that grand theory is good theory. The concepts of criminal career and career criminal have sometimes been confused. The second issue asserts that longitudinal studies are inappropriate for getting at questions of distribution. Only a handful of criminologists have considered the inadequacies of assuming that all people are always motivated by self-interest. Criminologists often seem to believe that a theory of crime must account for the existence of crime.

The chapter provides information on a theory of crime that acknowledges the ability of society to control crime without fundamental reconstruction of itself or the individuals within it. The solution criminology offers for the problems is to collect more data, usually via the large-scale longitudinal study, data meant to represent the interests of several disciplines. Crime is only one of many possible expressions of criminality and that crime requires more than criminals for its existence. It is misleading to assume that crimes are a perfect or even a good reflection of the tendencies of the person.

This chapter presents an overview of several basic elements of serious leisure theory and research. The overview is based on a longitudinal research project consisting of eight groups of amateurs, which is summarized and elaborated. The amateur groups were examined sequentially over a fifteen-year period, starting with those in classical music and continuing with those in theatre, archaeology, baseball, astronomy, Canadian football, entertainment magic and stand-up comedy. Upon completion of the longitudinal project, the world of hobbies is explored to study barbershop singers. According to the article, serious leisure has six distinctive qualities which are the occasional need to persevere at it, the development of the activity as in a career, the requirement for effort based on specialized knowledge, training or skill, the provision of durable benefits or rewards including personal enrichment, feelings of accomplishment, enhancement of self-image, social interaction and a sense of belonging, the identification of the person with the activity and the production of an ethos and social world. Social worlds may be local, regional, multi-regional, national and even international. Members may vary in degree of involvement. A rich subculture may be found there, and each social world can have a set of special norms, values, beliefs, styles, moral principals, performance standards and shared representations. These elements can help to explain social stratification in social worlds. This chapter, also emphasizes that, unlike family and work activities where institutional supports sustain involvement, such support for equivalent activities in leisure is absent, producing a marginal status for serious leisure. The chapter then concludes that serious leisure can foster enjoyment and hence well-being but that the relationship between serious leisure and well-being seems destined to be far more complicated than current levels of theory and research would suggest.

The article focuses on the findings of the longitudinal study concerning outcome of depressed elderly in Liverpool, England. Forty-six of the patients with depression had completed a five-year evaluation. Twenty-four percent of the elderly had sufficient symptoms to achieve AGECAT case levels at all follow-up examinations. Twenty-two percent never reached AGECAT case levels at any of the follow-up series.

This article presents a preface to the book "Mediated Discourse: The Nexus of Practice." The longitudinal study of infants is a difficult kind of work which, for many cogent reasons, is often best carried out by the young parents of the children under study. With no grandchildren imminent, the author had hoped and was excited to discover that his original tapes had remained in perfect condition, that the hundreds of hours of transcription of everything everyone said and did had produced abundant observations which were useful much beyond the original purposes of his earlier research, and that the scores of photographs and other contextual notes taken by his colleague and wife, Suzanne Scollon, also remained in perfect condition so that he was able to undertake this new study of these archived materials. The primary research on which this study is based was conducted in 1972 and in the years following through 1977. Members of the Asian Sociocultural Research Projects group, also at Georgetown University, gave important feedback on many of the ideas presented here.

Presents an analysis of changes among students in Bennington College in Vermont. Comparison of the mean scores of college freshmen and seniors; Criticism of the college characteristics index.

This article presents a preface to the articles published in the book "Courtship." The concept of courtship includes relationships that move to marriage as well as those that end before marriage and might more accurately be called dating relationships. The background, personality and dyadic characteristics of an individual may operate premaritally to affect later marriage. A participant-run system of courtship developed in the U.S. quite soon after the colonies were established. The courtship in the U.S. held on to vestiges of its European heritage. Early models of courtship were static in nature and assumed that a similar set of factors influenced mate choice for all premarital couples. The course of courtship is affected by different levels of causes, particularly the unique interaction of partners. A conceptual model of the dark side of courtship is proposed by current models of courtship development. The major longitudinal studies of premarital relationship stability that have occurred since 1970 examines the individual, dyadic, social network and circumstantial factors that have been found to discriminate between stable and unstable premarital relationships.

The article focuses on cohort studies, a methodology of designing and analyzing studies to make interferences about the behavior of a particular group of patients who presently have a certain condition and/or receive a particular treatment. It is a longitudinal study usually undertaken to obtain additional evidence to refute or support the existence of an association between suspected cause and disease.

This report outlines the importance of relationships and social capital expressed through a group of young Aussie Rules players in the early 80s who undertook what for some was a life changing journey to Melbourne to watch the Australian Rules Grand Final and play football against other young men. The findings of this project documents the health, employment, educational and social outcomes for participants during the 80s and today in order to assist the development of targeted health strategies focussing on the poor health status of indigenous men in north Queensland. [ABSTRACT FROM CONTRIBUTOR]

The article focuses on longitudinal studies of mood disorders conducted by the Psychobiology of Depression Study Group in the U.S. The researchers study inpatient and outpatient individuals in their adulthood and incorporated an extensive longitudinal study into their methodology. The study found that 50 percent of the cohort 59 years of age and younger had recovered from depression during the first year, while, the annual rate of recovery declined by 28 percent during the second year.

The encyclopedia entry for Local Improvement Heuristic is presented. It refers to a heuristic rule which determines all the solutions that are closely related to a given initial solution and is guaranteed to reach at least a local optimum.

The article presents a discussion on the importance of cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses in language learning. To characterize the language acquisition process in a fixed amount of research time, a choice often has to be made between following a small number of language learners over time, testing them at frequent intervals, known as longitudinal studies, or testing once, larger populations of different learners at different stages of development, known as cross-sectional studies. The advantages of longitudinal case studies are that they better capture the developmental path of the learner, but the results are not necessarily generalisable. Cross-sectional studies, on the other hand, give generalisable results because they are designed for and amenable to standard statistical procedures on representative populations. The disadvantage of cross-sectional studies is that they analyze the product of acquisition having-taken-place, and cannot guarantee that learners at a homogeneous level of achievement reached that level along a comparable developmental path.