Volunteering is any activity in which time is given freely to benefit another person, group or cause. Volunteering is part of a cluster of helping behaviors, entailing more commitment than spontaneous assistance but narrower in scope than the care provided to family and friends. Although developed somewhat independently, the study of volunteerism and of social activism have much in common. Since data gathering on volunteering from national samples began about a quarter of a century ago, the rate for the United States has been stable or, according to some studies, rising slightly. Theories that explain volunteering by pointing to individual attributes can be grouped into those that emphasize motives or self-understandings on the one hand and those that emphasize rational action and cost-benefit analysis on the other. Other theories seek to complement this focus on individual level factors by pointing to the role of social resources, specifically social ties and organizational activity, as explanations for volunteering. Support is found for all theories, although many issues remained unresolved. Age, gender and race differences in volunteering can be accounted for, in large part, by pointing to differences in self-understandings, human capital, and social resources. Less attention has been paid to contextual effects on volunteering and, while evidence is mixed, the impact of organizational, community, and regional characteristics on individual decisions to volunteer remains a fruitful field for exploration. Studies of the experience of volunteering have only just begun to plot and explain spells of volunteering over the life course and to examine the causes of volunteer turnover. Examining the premise that volunteering is beneficial for the helper as well as the helped, a number of studies have looked at the impact of volunteering on subjective and objective well-being. Positive effects are found for life-satisfaction, self-esteem, self-rated health, and for educational and occupational achievement, functional ability, and mortality. Studies of youth also suggest that volunteering reduces the likelihood of engaging in problem behaviors such as school truancy and drug abuse.

We construct an integrated theory of formal and informal volunteer work based on the premises that volunteer work is (1) productive work that requires human capital, (2) collective behavior that requires social capital, and (3) ethically guided work that requires cultural capital. Using education, income, and functional health to measure human capital, number of children in the household and informal social interaction to measure social capital, and religiosity to measure cultural capital, we estimate a model in which formal volunteering and informal helping are reciprocally related but connected in different ways to different forms of capital. Using two-wave data from the Americans' Changing Lives panel study, we find that formal volunteering is positively related to human capital, number of children in the household, informal social interaction, and religiosity. Informal helping, such as helping a neighbor, is primarily determined by gender, age, and health. Estimation of reciprocal effects reveals that formal volunteering has a positive effect on helping, but helping does not affect formal volunteering.

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I use a volunteer process model to organize a review of recent research on volunteerism, focusing mainly on journal articles reporting survey research results. Scholars from several different disciplines and countries have contributed to a body of work that is becoming more theoretically sophisticated and methodologically rigorous. The first stage of the process model—antecedents of volunteering—continues to attract the most attention but more and more scholars are paying attention to the third stage, the consequences of volunteering, particularly with respect to health benefits. The middle stage—the experience of volunteering—remains somewhat neglected, particularly the influence of the social context of volunteer work on the volunteer’s satisfaction and commitment.

Different mutations in the same gene often cause distinct disease phenotypes in humans. Generally, such variations in the clinical phenotypes have been considered to be a consequence of the function or dysfunction of mutant proteins. Thus, a primary emphasis in genotype-phenotype correlation studies has been placed on determining the unique functional properties of encoded mutant proteins. But in vitro functional assays of mutant proteins often show discordance between predicted protein function and clinical outcome. Little is known about the many factors that are potentially involved in this discrepancy, but loss-of-function versus gain-of-function effects are often invoked as a possible mechanism.We previously identified two unrelated individuals with an unusual phenotype that combined four distinct syndromesperipheral demyelinating neuropathy, central dysmyelinating leukodystrophy, Waardenburg syndrome and Hirschsprung disease-that are characterized by deficiencies of Schwann cells, oligodendrocytes, melanocytes and enteric ganglia neurons, respectively 1,2 . Here we describe four more individuals and propose that this complex disorder is a newly described neurocristopathy called PCWH.We previously identified mutations in SOX10 in all affected individuals 1,2 . SOX10 is a transcription factor that contains a central high mobility group (HMG) DNA-binding domain and a transactivation domain at its C terminus 3 . SOX10 is essential for the development of cells in the neural crest lineage, including melanocytes and enteric ganglia neurons 4,5 ; it also controls the proliferation and differentiation of Schwann cells and oligodendrocytes [6][7][8] . Notably, some mutations in SOX10 also cause a distinct and more restricted disease that does not involve either the peripheral (PNS) or the central (CNS) nervous systems 9-11 . This less complicated neurocristopathy, called WS4, combines Waardenburg and Hirschsprung diseases 12 . Most SOX10 disease-associated mutations, regardless of whether they cause PCWH or WS4, result in premature termination codons (PTCs).As in SOX10, different mutations in MPZ are responsible for distinct neurological diseases, which each affect the myelin of the PNS. These neuropathies include early onset congenital hypomyelinating neuropathy (CHN; OMIM 605253), Dejerine-Sottas neuropathy (DSN; OMIM 145900) and the less severe, adult onset Charcot-MarieTooth disease type 1B (CMT1B; OMIM 118200; ref. 13). It has been suggested that the severity of alleles in CHN and DSN is due to dominant-negative effects, whereas the reduced severity of alleles in CMT1B is due to loss of function. But although some nonsense and frameshift alleles cause CMT1B, several truncating mutations have been reported that convey either a CHN or a DSN phenotype.We investigated the molecular mechanisms underlying the neurological phenotypes of the PCWH and WS4 neurocristopathies resulting from allelic SOX10 truncating mutations, as well as those underlying the CHN, DSN and CMT1B myelinopathies caused by allelic MPZ truncatin...

Furthermore, marginal functional literacy has been associated with poorer physical health, psychological health, and higher health care costs. [4][5][6] The implication for physicians is that at least one-fourth of our patients may not be able to discern prescription bottles, understand patient education materials, or use written directions to find a lab or get a mammogram. Identifying patients with potential literacy problems is important if physicians are to attempt to combat the adverse effects literacy has on health care. Because many illiterate patients will attempt to hide this disability from their physicians and because people with more schooling may still be functionally illiterate, physicians cannot merely ask a patient if they can read or what their educational achievement is. search attempting to identify a shorter literacy screening instrument was unsuccessful. We designed the Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Medicine-Revised (REALM-R), a shortened version of the REALM. The REALM-R was designed as a rapid-screening instrument to assess how well primary care patients read words that they commonly experience and are expected to understand in the course of interacting with their physician. This pilot study was conducted to determine whether the REALM-R could be used as a screening instrument to identify patients with potential literacy problems. METHODSWe set out to revise the REALM, a well-validated and reliable instrument, but one that is still too long to practically administer in busy clinical settings. The 66-item REALM was administered to 50 patients in the Internal Medicine Clinic at the University of Kentucky. We examined 2 item characteristics of the 66 words from the full scale REALM. First, we identified items with an item-whole correlation of greater than 0.40, and then selected those that maximized discrimination by being as close as possible to a 50 / 50 correct / incorrect split. The new 8-item REALM-R demonstrated a Cronbach's α of 0.91. The part whole correlation between the REALM-R and the REALM was 0.72.

The connection between church membership, church activista, and volunteering is explored us. ing a three-wave panel study of young adults. Volunteering to help others solve community problems is more likely among members of churches that emphasize this-worldly social coneerns, especially among those socially involved in these churches. Among Catholics, the connection between church involvement and volunteering is formed early and remains strong. Among liberal Protestants, the connection is made only in middle age. Among moderate and conservative Protestants the.re is little connection at aU. Conservative Protestants who attend church regularly are less likely to be involved in secular volunteering and more likely to be involved in volunteering for church-related work. The results suggest caution in generalizing about the connection between religious preference or involvement, and volunteering because this connection depends on the theological interpretation of volunteering and the significance attached to frequent church attendance.

The Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression Scale (CES-D; L. S. Radloff, 1977) assesses the presence and severity of depressive symptoms occurring over the past week. Although it contains only 20 items, its length may preclude its use in a variety of clinical populations. This study evaluated psychometric properties of 2 shorter forms of the CES-D developed by F. J. Kohout, L. F. Berkman, D. A. Evans, and J. Cornoni-Huntley (1993): the Iowa form and the Boston form. Data were pooled from 832 women representing 6 populations. Internal consistency estimates, correlations with the original version of the CES-D, and omitted-included item correlations supported use of the Iowa form over the Boston form when a shortened version of the scale is desired. Regression statistics are provided for use in estimating scores on the original CES-D when either shortened form is used. Factor analytic results from two populations support a single-factor structure for the original CES-D as well as the short forms.