To evaluate the influence of quantity of early child care upon young children's social competence, vocabulary and motor development, caregivers and childcare professionals completed questionnaires measuring these factors. Indicators of child care quantity along with measures of family background, quality of caregiver behavior, and child characteristics obtained on children under the age of six years were used. The subjects were children and caregivers that used the services of child care centers. Caregivers were asked to complete a questionnaire on the child rearing environment, self-efficacy, and support for childcare. Childcare professionals evaluated the social competence, vocabulary and motor development of each child. The responses of the 485 caregivers and childcare professionals both in 1998 and 2001, were analyzed using multiple regression analysis. Types of care were divided into two categories based on the duration of time' "extended care" (11 hours≦), "normal care" (< 11 hours). 1) Social competence development was significantly related to "having chance to go shopping with the child" and not having siblings. 2) Gross motor development was significantly related to "having chance to read books for child" and baseline motor development. 3) The quantity of center-based care was not related to child development.

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The RAS is a popular scale developed by Rathus for the measurement of "assertiveness behavior". The purpose of the present article was to describe a Japanese version of the Rathus assertiveness schedule (RAS) and to evaluate its factor structures. The original scale was translated into Japanese along with back-translation and its validity was examined in 103 nursing students. The Japanese version of the RAS indicated high coefficients of reliabilities in a test-retest reliability test(r=0.86 p<0.01) and a split-half reliability test ( r=0.72〜0.80 p<0.01). The coefficient of reliability of Cronback's alpha for the Japanese version (r=0.82〜0.84 p<0.01) indicated a high internal consistency. Seven factors were extracted by using factor analysis in principal factoring with a varimax rotation, so the Japanese scale had a few implicative differences from the original RAS, but its validity was suggested to be high.

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The purpose of this study was to clarify the factors related to enhance empowerment for elderly people to promote healthy life in the community. The subjects were healthy and frail elders (n=108) who live in a farming village near the urban center of Japan. Home-visit survey and focus group interviews were conducted. The results were as follows' Analyzing data from home-visits surveys and group-interviews, there were several key concepts related to what kinds of support systems are needed to build relevant community support systems for elderly people. First, the key concepts are associated with personal perceptions, such as satisfaction and pleasure in their lives, contributing to society, community-connectiveness, positive attitude toward living healthy, and easy access to social support systems. Second, the key concepts are associated with mutual support systems, such as relationship with neighbors and building mutual support systems in the community. Third, key concepts are associated with community support system, such as building a safe and secure environment, and establishing an emergency support system. As conclusion, 1) Being more active and having a positive attitude toward their lives, 2) promoting and improving acknowledgement of mutual support systems to empower elderly people, and 3) enriching of health, medical, and social service are key concepts of living healthy and active lives in the community. As a result, it is necessary to improve social support systems for elderly people so that they are able to live positively, safely, and securely. These results suggest the essence of empower based health-social services with participation of clients by using qualitative research methods.

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The purpose of this study was to clarify the psychosocial actual condition of boxers to make basic materials to construct a support system for their total health. Sex, age, and consciousness for training were examined on sixty boxers in N boxing gym and the anxiety they might hold was also examined with a psychological investigation State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). The age to start training boxing was around 16years old, and amateur boxers tended to retire boxing by 25years old. Fifteen professional boxers were all unmarried, but a quarter of amateur boxers there were already married. Professional boxers have part time jobs except boxing for about 30 hours a week in average. As any matches are hard to be owned by sponsors in Japan, Fight money to pay for every match is little. It can be supposed that professional boxers have some economic problems. Examining training content, time for training, purpose of training, daily efforts and their consciousness for training, professional boxers have clearer goal for training to achieve their purpose than amateur boxers. On the result of STAI, in state anxiety, the male of both professional and amateur boxers have high anxieties, but amateur female was normal in anxiety. In characteristic anxiety, all of them have high anxieties. Though it was found that boxers were easy to be in anxieties, it cannot be denied that those who have high anxiety tend to choose the sport of boxing.

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