This study examined patterns of change and stability in religiosity over the life course. Open-ended interviews with 129 adults aged 65 and older provided a rich source of data for applying a life course perspective to the study of religion. Two theoretical constructs from the life course perspective (i.e., trajectories and transitions) were used as a framework for understanding religion and aging. The interviews were content analyzed to identify: 1) dimensions of religiosity that exhibit change; 2) patterns of religious trajectories; and 3) social forces that promote changes in religiosity. These analyses revealed four distinct patterns: stable, increasing, decreasing, and curvilinear trajectories. Several forces were involved with either increasing religiosity (e.g., child rearing, adverse life experiences) or decreasing religiosity (e.g., disillusionment with church members, adverse life experiences). Directions for future research are discussed.
Maintaining suspension stability by effective particle dispersion in systems with attractive interactions can be accomplished by the addition of dispersants that modify the interparticle potential to provide steric or electrostatic barriers against aggregation. The efficacy of such dispersants is typically considered simply by the modification of suspension rheological properties as a function of the overall added dispersant concentration. However, such considerations do little to reveal the molecular origin of differences in dispersant efficacy because they do not consider differences in surface activity. We combine measured adsorption isotherms with the rheological characterization of the elasticity of colloidal gels formed by particle aggregation to provide a more meaningful assessment of dispersant efficacy. The rheological data show that the dispersants are effective at reducing particle aggregation, whereas, from the adsorption isotherms, they differ considerably in their surface coverage at constant overall concentration. When compared at constant dispersant particle surface coverage, the gel rheology shows marked differences across the different dispersants, as opposed to comparisons at constant overall dispersant concentration in the suspensions. In particular, the power-law volume fraction scaling of gel elasticity at constant coverage reveals clear differences in the critical volume fraction for gel formation for the different dispersants. The most efficacious dispersant is that associated with the largest critical volume fraction for gel formation at a given surface coverage. This work demonstrates the utility of rheological investigations coupled with accurate determinations of surface coverage to better differentiate dispersant performance, which may improve efforts to engineer new dispersant molecules.
Traditional qualitative interviews typically involve a single subject; interviews of dyads rarely appear outside marketing research and family studies. Experienced qualitative researcher David Morgan's brief guide to dyadic interviewing provides readers with a road map to expand this technique to many other settings. In dyadic interviews, the interaction and co-constructions of the two subjects provide the data for the researcher. Showing the advantages and disadvantages of interviewing two people at once, the first book on this research topic -covers key issues of pair rapport, ethics, confidentiality, and dealing with sensitive topics;-describes the entire process from selecting the participants to the role of the moderator to analyzing results;-uses examples of grad student experiences, physician behavior, substance abuse, services to elderly, and dementia patients to show its many applications.
This article provides a systematic review of studies that reported on the prevalence of mixed methods research designs and the degree of integration between the qualitative and quantitative results. A total of 17 studies were located that reported on the prevalence of mixed methods research designs in 50 or more articles, with a total coverage of more than 3,000 articles. Comparing the prevalence of three core research designs showed that convergent designs were by far the most common, and that the two less frequently used formats, exploratory sequential and explanatory sequential designs, appeared in a similar number of articles. Additionally, a review of eight studies reporting on the degree of integration indicated that more than one quarter of articles had very low levels of integration. Overall, these results indicate that mixed methods rely heavily on a limited number of research designs, and low levels of integration remain a problem in this field.
