Faculty Bibliography

This article examines whether the psychological impact of different kinds of social supports varies according to who provides them. Data on 82 older adults' social relationships, measured as social provisions (Weiss, 1974), were used to evaluate whether the relationship between social provisions and emotional well-being varied when kin and, alternatively, nonkin, made the provisions. Findings showed that, although most social provisions were valuable regardless of their source, reassurance of worth was distinctly more beneficial when provided by nonkin than by kin, and reliable alliance, or instrumental assistance, was more strongly related to well-being when provided by kin than by nonkin. Analysis of social network structure showed that "multiplexity" was negatively related to well-being, and having duplicate providers for a given social provision was uniquely important in offsetting negative affect.

In this paper, the health needs and health care utilization patterns of home attendants and their families have been studied as an illustration of those likely to be found among working poor, immigrant women and their children. Despite tremendous growth in the number of immigrants, studies to date provide only limited information regarding the specific health needs and patterns of health care utilization among such women and their children. As part of a longitudinal study on the impact of insurance on health status and health care utilization, 387 female, immigrant home attendants were interviewed. Data were also gathered on 355 of their minor children. These women and children were found to be less likely than other Americans to make use of basic health services, despite the fact that they are more likely to indicate fair or poor health status. This is true even in comparison to poor or uninsured Americans. Immigrant attendants in fair or poor health report an average annual visit rate of 4.1 ambulatory care visits for themselves and 2.2 for their children, as compared to 8.4 for poor adults and 4.4 for poor children in national samples. These findings illustrate the likelihood that poor, immigrant women make limited use of American medical care, and face barriers to health care that appear even greater than those faced by the uninsured and the poor.

The present two studies were conducted to assess the prosocial behaviors (comforting and helping) of preschool children as a function of the race and gender of the subjects and peer confederates. Results indicated that black, preschool-age males demonstrated prosocial behaviors more often than did white males and females. These findings were discussed in terms of the confounding between race of child and father absence; that is, a disproportionate number of black children were living in fatherless homes. It was suggested that single parents may turn to their opposite-sex child for both emotional and physical support and thus the child learns comforting and helping behaviors early in life. Support for this suggestion was derived from the finding that the number of household chores assigned to a child was positively related to helping behavior. The present results also showed that comforting and helping behaviors were negatively related, suggesting that prosocial acts are not a function of a general personality trait but are situationally specific. Finally, it was noted that race and gender of the peer confederate were not factors in determining the prosocial responses of the subjects. © 1988.