Browsing by Author "Hollar, Danielle S."
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- The Creation and Illustration of Quality of Life: A Conceptual Model for Examining Welfare Reform ImpactsHollar, Danielle S. (Virginia Tech, 2000-11-27)Policymakers, public administrators, the media, and others are celebrating the "success" of the latest version of welfare reform, codified into law in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. Most often, success is defined in terms of declining caseloads or in some other economic form - a practice that does not provide a true sense of the impact of policy changes such as welfare reform. Assessing the human impact of policy change requires more than the evaluation of economic outcomes; it requires knowing about the resources of beneficiaries of social services and their conditions of life from various perspectives. Thus, we have to strive for greater understanding about the socio-cultural aspects of people's lives that create the whole person, aspects such as health, family and friendship networks, housing situations, public and private support service and program use, conditions of work, and so forth (Erikson, 1993). This is how we come to understand one;s quality of life. The present research creates a conceptual model called quality of life, and illustrates the model using data from a follow-up study of former welfare recipients in a county in northern Virginia. Evaluation activities premised on a quality of life model will assist policy actors in understanding policy impacts and how to strategically manage public institutions within their very complex contexts, especially in an era of welfare reform.
- Knowledge, self-esteem, and sexual behavioral practices in response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic: a study of an undergraduate population at a land-grant universityHollar, Danielle S. (Virginia Tech, 1993-06-05)This study extends previous research on safer sexual behavioral practices by exploring the relationship between self-esteem and risky sexual behavioral practices. The Health Belief Model is the theoretical model used in this research. The Health Belief Model has been used to predict preventive health behaviors (Weiss & Lonnquist, 1993). To test the model, a questionnaire was given to undergraduate Introductory Sociology students at a land-grant university. What this research found, was that self-esteem was statistically significantly related to risky behaviors; more specifically, for those sexual behavioral practices which carry the highest risk, such as unprotected anal intercourse and sharing of needles for the injection of drugs. Students with high levels of self-esteem, as well as high levels of knowledge of HIV/AIDS, reported engaging in safer behavioral practices, for the unconventional sexual behaviors than those with low and moderate levels of self-esteem. With respect to those more conventional sexual behavioral practices, such as unprotected vaginal/penile intercourse and unprotected sex with multiple sex partners, those with high self-esteem reported more risky sexual behaviors than those with low and moderate self esteem which was not as hypothesized. Males and females reported similar levels of unconventional risky sexual behavioral practices and conventional risky sexual behavioral practices. The results indicate that self-esteem operates differently in different contexts. An important result of this study is that factors which predict unconventional sexual behavioral practices are not the sa,me as those which predict conventional sexual behavioral practices. Theses differences need to be taken into account by those trying to influence less risky sexual behavioral practices.