Ever since the WHO (World Health Organization) defined health as a state of complete physical, mental, and social wellbeing, Quality of life (QOL) has been considered important for children's wellbeing. This study examined the relationship between maternal QOL and the QOL of their schoolchildren, assessed by children's self-reports and mothers' reports. Participants were 461 mother-child pairs with children in second to sixth grades. Children's QOL was assessed by children's and their mothers' responses to the Kid-KINDL Questionnaire (children's and parent's versions). Maternal QOL was assessed by the WHO-QOL26, and maternal caregiving was assessed by Emotional Caregiving of Parent Scale. Results of multiple regression analyses indicated that differences between mothers and children about the cognition of children's QOL affected children's QOL, such that larger differences resulted in lower children's QOL. Moreover, in boys, mothers' QOL and their restrictive feeling about childcare affected children's QOL, whereas this was not the case in girls. A regression analysis indicated that mothers' lower QOL significantly affected the interaction between QOL of boys and mothers, whereas mothers' higher QOL did not affect the interaction between QOL of boys and mothers. These findings showed that mothers' QOL affected the QOL of boys more than that of girls. Therefore, it is suggested that in clinical settings, attention should be focused on the QOL of mothers when dealing with boys with especially low QOL scores.

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In human and social science, narrative is regarded as an important theoretical construct associated with human cognition, human vitality, sense of unity and cohesion of organization. In this regards, narrative is also expected to increase vitality and cohesion of planning organizations for public policies, such as governmental section for city planning, transportation planning, national land planning and any other public planning. In this study, we review academic genealogies with respect to narratives including western philosophy, hermeneutics, historical science, historical philosophy, literary criticism, clinical psychology and sociology, narrative psychology and folklore. Then we discuss how narrative can be pragmatically applied for planning organizations.

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[in Japanese]

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Direct action is often regarded as a response to democratic deficit because it can sensitize the general public to the cause of the marginalized, stimulating communication among individuals of different walks of life in society. However, such theoretical discussion has mainly been limited to domestic situations, despite the development of transnational activism in practice. This paper examines a case of trans-border direct action - a contentious anti-whaling protest by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in a town in Japan. It illustrates that trans-border direct action can be detrimental to democracy for sustainability, largely because of the disparity of power related to communication in the global society. Such action might even pave paths for the powerful to pressure the weak. At the international level, the group legitimized its civil and uncivil forms of disobedience by using advanced English language and media skills to overwhelm the voices of local actors. At the local and national levels, the group's action lacked support and legal-democratic efforts through communication and discussion with stakeholders. Thus, the group failed to save the lives of cetaceans and to strengthen anti-whaling activism. Re-examination of the nexus between radical activism, communication and sustainability that involves social and cultural diversity is recommended.

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The aim of this study was to investigate the feature of behavior and cognitive development such as verbal and drawing for the children with special needs. Sixteen children with special needs (special needs group) and fourteen children with no special needs (control group), 5 to 6 years old, were asked to take the two following tests; (1) the Picture Vocabulary Test- Revised (PVT-R) and the verbal task of brief version based upon the Tanaka-Binet intelligence test; (2) the human figure drawing task developed by Goodenough (1926). Also, we asked the nursery stuff to check each item in the Strength and Difference Questionnaire (SDQ) developed in order to measure the behavioral pattern of children. The results showed that (1) the performance of PVT-R in the special needs group was worse than that in the control group; (2) the task performance of the Understanding of Attribution in the special needs group was worse than that in the control group, whereas the other task was not differed; (3) the performance of human figure drawing task in special needs group did not differ from that in the control group and (4) the behavior pattern of special need group was similar to that of another group got the diagnosis of developmental disorder, such as Mental Retardation, Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Pervasive Developmental Disorder (Autism Spectrum Disorder). These results suggest that the children with special needs would have the behavioral trait of developmental disorder and the unevenness and atypical feature of their verbal development.

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[in Japanese]

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The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between causal attribution toward unemployed people and motivation to reduce employment disparity in Japan. In Japan, it is argued that social inequality leads to employment disparity. The inequality composes of sex, age, educational background and family background. The perception that people fail to get jobs due to the inequality possibly leads to motivation to reduce employment disparity. Causal attribution of a negative situation is an important factor to predict human attitude toward the situation. Therefore, in this present study, causal attributions toward unemployed people as predicting factors for motivation to reduce employment disparity were focused on. As causal attributions, inequality attribution (social inequalities such as sex), individual attribution (individual characteristic such as negligence) and fate attribution (individual fate such as misfortune) are proposed. In the present study, questionnaire packets from university students were distributed and collected. Participants answered items referring to causal attribution toward unemployed people and motivation to reduce employment disparity. As a result of the survey, there was a positive correlation between the inequality attribution and the motivation, a negative correlation between the individual attribution and the motivation, and no correlation between the fate attribution and the motivation. Hypotheses were confirmed and the results were consistent with previous studies of causal attributions. It was shown that the strength of individual attribution was the highest among the attributions, and the next was inequality attribution and the last was fate attribution. The participants possibly thought that Japanese government dealt with social inequality and unemployed people did not get jobs due to their own remissness compared to the inequality. This study discussed the motivation to reduce employment disparity in Japan from the perspective of causal attribution, and how to engage in employment disparity.

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[in Japanese]

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