Most research on the portrayal of older adults in the media has found a preponderance of negative imagery. In our own work on soap operas, however, it seemed that older adults were portrayed as more emotionally stable and as physically healthier than the younger characters. We undertook a smallscale exploratory study to determine if this impression was justified.The study covered a two-week period in June-July 1978, including 13 serials. Unlike other kinds of dramatic programs, which as a rule are complete within an individual episode, soap opera episodes continue plot lines to and from past and future episodes. Thus the small sample cannot be considered necessarily representative but only suggestive.Coding for the study was done by 26 university students between 20 and 35 years old, who viewed soap operas broadcast over commercial television stations in Buffalo, New York. Thirteen teams of two coders each watched 10 episodes of a series. Criteria used to identify older persons (55 years or older) included the representation of a character as (a) the eldest of at least three generations, (b) a grandparent, (c) a resident of an institution for the aged, or id) a retired person. Other criteria were the portrayal of any person who physically appeared to be elderly, and the actual birthdate of the actor/actress portraying the character.Of the 365 characters (186 females and 179 males) in the soap operas monitored, 58 (15.9 percent) were judged to be 55 or older. The 58 older characters were also coded for frequency of appearance on an episode by episode basis, and were found to appear a total of 153 times.The group of older characters was subdivided into three age groups: 43 percent were in their fifties, 55 percent were in their sixties, and about 2 percent were in their eighties. Coders did not observe any characters in their seventies. Thirty of the elderly characters (51.7 percent) were male and 28 (48.3 percent) were female. No difference was found in the presentation of older people in traditional (emphasis on character development and interpersonal interaction) or contemporary (emphasis on social issues) types of soap operas.Widows and widowers comprised 24 of the 58 characters; of the others, 19 were married, 4 were divorced, 3 were single, and 2 were separated. In 6 cases, marital status could not be determined.The overall good health of the older characters (92.9 percent were coded as being healthy and only 4 of the 58 were physically impaired) was reflected in their living arrangements. Seventy-five percent lived in their own home, either alone, with their spouses, or with their children.Males overwhelmingly dominated the professional/managerial occupational categories by a ratio of 4 : 1; females accounted for 100 percent of the
The incidence, prevalence and natural course of ALS were determined in the population of the province of Palmero, Italy. The average annual incidence calculated for the years 1973 through 1984, was 044./100.000 inhabitants. The prevalence rate on prevalence day December 31, 1984, was 1.67/100.000 population. The male/female ratio was 1.38. The mean age at onset was 54.3 +/- 11.02. The most common clinical form was the conventional one (61.4%); the bulbar form was more frequent among females than males. The mean duration of the disease was 33.7 +/- 35.8 months. The longest duration belongs to the pseudopolyneuritic form. The median survival was 36 months: 16 months for the bulbar, 36 months for the conventional and 51 months for the pseudopolyneuritic form.
Homicide is the number one killer, psychiatric disorders are the bane of fmh, and cardiovascular diseaae is the moat comnwn illness among the soap opera population.On prime-time television, sickness and injury are the province and provenance of the psychic and physical healer-the doctor. The incidence of disease generally appears to be secondary to other considerations (see 1,2, 5, 6, 8; cf. 9). On the soap opera, however, sickness and injury is a most important and pervasive problem.James Thurber was one of the first to deal with the role of sickness in the soap operas, in the second article of his now-famous series on "soapland" (12) published in the 1940s. At that time the major illnesses afflicting adults in the soap opera world were temporary blindness, amnesia, and paralysis of the legs; children were most often stricken by pneumonia and strange fevers, automobile accidents, and mysterious illnesses. Thurber noted that the two dreaded illnesses which were widespread at that time, cancer and infantile paralysis, were never mentioned in the serials, while strange illnesses such as "island fever" or "mountain rash" were not unusual.During the last decade the ill health of the soap opera world has continued. Soares (II), Downing (3), and Kinzer (4) have all commented on the avoidance of disease identification in the serials. Soares asserts that although serial charac-
Errors not thus caught are trusted to be found by "relying on library users to tell them later if the cataloguing content is faulty." The second conference, at which time a British "MARC Users' Group" was officially established, concerned itself-in the context of MARC use-with the relationship of the using libraries to book dealers, to the national library, and to future developments of automation. The seven papers-from a book dealer, the British Library, public libraries, a college library, and the Birmingham cooperative-are of interest insofar as they document current automatio. n uses and plans in Great Britain. Whereas one public library (ca. 13,000 orders per year) found that only an expensive on-line CRT configuration could better its manual system, the book dealer enthusiastically reported highly satisfactory flexibility with a complete online random access facility which has allowed him to realize "multiple output from single input." The magnitude of the users of the British Library's BRIMARC tape service (twentysix subscribers of which ten are outside the United Kingdom) is dwarfed by the number using LC' s program, yet the library has some grand intentions (e.g., convert all BNB (1950 on) to MARC; begin CIP in 1976). The college library described receiving shelf-ready books while using MARC for the cataloging copy but complained of the quality of LC' s use of DC 18, of the invariable use of record type "am" (printed monograph) for all forms of material, and of confusion and error in usage and appearance of the ISBN. The approaches to technical services automation may be new, although the problems discussed are not; however, these reports only underline the urgency for implementation of international standards.
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