Loren D. Lovegreen

This article extends previous conceptualizations of person-environment fit from institutional to community settings, focusing on neighborhoods. The authors consider applicability of the congruence construct for understanding the impact of neighborhoods, including dwelling units, on older persons' residential satisfaction. They argue that characteristics of person, environment, and person-environment fit are important for determining residential satisfaction. Understanding each of these distinct but interdependent influences should result in better prediction of outcomes. To provide taxonomies of environmental features, the authors consider the following four physical and two social domains of neighborhood environments, which also form counterparts of personal characteristics for community-dwelling older people: physical amenities or aesthetics, resource amenities, safety, stimulation or peacefulness, homogeneity or heterogeneity, and interaction or solitude. In addition, they attempt to specify salient environmental dimensions, which may be best understood in terms of congruence with personal preferences, distinguishing them from personal or environmental influences that individually affect outcomes.

OBJECTIVE: We examined the influence of prosocial orientations including altruism, volunteering, and informal helping on positive and negative well-being outcomes among retirement community dwelling elders. METHOD: We utilize data from 2 waves, 3 years apart, of a panel study of successful aging (N = 585). Psychosocial well-being outcomes measured include life satisfaction, positive affect, negative affect, and depressive symptomatology. RESULTS: Ordinal logistic regression results indicate that altruistic attitudes, volunteering, and informal helping behaviors make unique contributions to the maintenance of life satisfaction, positive affect and other well being outcomes considered in this research. Predictors explain variance primarily in the positive indicators of psychological well-being, but are not significantly associated with the negative outcomes. Female gender and functional limitations are also associated with diminished psychological well-being. DISCUSSION: Our findings underscore the value of altruistic attitudes as important additional predictors, along with prosocial behaviors in fostering life satisfaction and positive affect in old age.

This study explores parental health and well-being in relation to “empty nest” transitions. Focus is placed on the purported empty nest syndrome (i.e., self-reported experiences of depression and emotional distress when children leave home) and variations by parental gender and cultural background. This study is primarily based on in-depth telephone interviews conducted in 2006 and 2007 with a subsample ( n = 316) of parents from four cultural groups (British, Chinese, Southern European, and Indo/East Indian) living in Metro Vancouver, British Columbia. A mixed-methodological approach is used whereby both quantitative and qualitative strategies are combined. Findings reveal that overall only a minority of parents report having experienced the empty nest syndrome. However, cultural background and other sociodemographic and relational processes are found to influence the likelihood of reporting this condition. With increasing cultural diversity in North American society, these results have the potential to shed light on a significant life course transition.

BACKGROUND: We examined the differential impact of a well-established human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/sexually transmitted infections (STIs) curriculum, Be Proud! Be Responsible!, when taught by school nurses and health education classroom teachers within a high school curricula. METHODS: Group-randomized intervention study of 1357 ninth and tenth grade students in 10 schools. Twenty-seven facilitators (6 nurses, 21 teachers) provided programming; nurse-led classrooms were randomly assigned. RESULTS: Students taught by teachers were more likely to report their instructor to be prepared, comfortable with the material, and challenged them to think about their health than students taught by a school nurse. Both groups reported significant improvements in HIV/STI/condom knowledge immediately following the intervention, compared to controls. Yet, those taught by school nurses reported significant and sustained changes (up to 12 months after intervention) in attitudes, beliefs, and efficacy, whereas those taught by health education teachers reported far fewer changes, with sustained improvement in condom knowledge only. CONCLUSIONS: Both classroom teachers and school nurses are effective in conveying reproductive health information to high school students; however, teaching the technical (eg, condom use) and interpersonal (eg, negotiation) skills needed to reduce high-risk sexual behavior may require a unique set of skills and experiences that health education teachers may not typically have.