Path Analysis of Welfare Use: Depression as a Mediating Factor

Path analysis was conducted to determine causal effects of life circumstances on depression and effects of these measures on employment and welfare use. Data were from the Welfare and Self-Sufficiency Survey conducted in a metropolitan county of Kentucky. Direct effects indicate that economic hardships and adverse life events increase depression scores and depression reduces earnings and increases welfare use. Indirect effects of economic hardships and adverse life events, through the mediating effects of depression, reinforce depression??s effects on employment and welfare use. The data include measures of life circumstances and depression scores of low-income women; thereby, permitting a path model that uniquely contributes to knowledge regarding the effects of life circumstances and depression on TANF-eligible women??s employment and welfare use.     

On the folly of principal's power: Managerial psychology as a cause of bad incentives

Faulty and dysfunctional incentive systems have long interested, and frustrated, managers and organizational scholars alike. In this analysis, we pick up where Kerr (1975) left off and advance an explanation for why bad incentive systems are so prevalent in organizations. We propose that one contributing factor lies in the psychology of people who occupy managerial roles. Although designing effective incentive systems is a challenge wrought with perils for anyone, we believe the psychological consequences and correlates of higher rank within organizations make the challenge more severe for managers. Patterns of promotion and hiring typically yield managers that are more competent than their employees, and ascending to management positions increases individuals’ workload and power. In turn, these factors make managers more egocentrically anchored and cognitively abstract, while also reducing their available cognitive capacity for any given task, all of which we argue limits their ability to design effective incentives for employees. Thus, ironically, those with the power to design incentives may be those least able to effectively do so. We discuss four specific types of bad incentive systems that can arise from these psychological tendencies in managers: those that over-emphasize compensation, generate weak motivation, offer perverse motivation, or are misaligned with organizational culture.

“There is no doubt that in our society the superior/subordinate relationship—the hierarchy itself—is crucial in terms of motivation.” (Lawler, 1973, p. 7)

     

The Political Values and Choices of Husbands and Wives

This article applies theoretical ideas in the literature on the household division of labor to the analysis of partners’ political preferences. We regress men's and women's political party preferences on their own and their partners’ characteristics using data from the 1991 British Household Panel Survey (N =2,846). We find a symmetrical pattern of influence: Men and women both give greatest weight to their own political values but also accord some significant weight to their partners’ values. Economically dependent men, however, place virtually no emphasis on their partners’ political values. Apart from this, we suggest that there may be a process of mutual accommodation within couples regarding political preferences that leads to greater concordance in the partners’ preferences over time.     

A review of research on violence in same-gender couples: a resource for clinicians

This paper reviews current research that has primarily focused on domestic violence among same-gender couples. Several key issues pertaining to the identification, assessment, and treatment of domestic violence among same-gender couples are examined and outlined to assist clinicians in effectively working with gay and lesbian clients who may be experiencing domestic violence. Resource information is included to help mental health clinicians recognize specific stressors of marginalized individuals as well as assessment and treatment recommendations are made.     

Differential validity: Another threat to compensatory education evaluations

The effects of the changing nature of intelligence test items during the follow-up period for compensatory education program evaluations on the judgements about the efficacy of such programs are examined. Data generated from Stanford-Binet test items, assuming known “true” underlying motor and verbal scores, as well as data from three compensatory education evaluations, are examined. The changing nature of the IQ test items, i.e., the differential validity of the tests, is put forth as an explanation for the often disheartening results of such program evaluations. Methods for dealing with the problem of differential validity are suggested.     

Dignity,happiness and being able to live a ‘normal life’ in the UK – an examination of post-accession Polish migrants' transnational autobiographical fields

This article examines data from a qualitative study of post-accession Polish migrants living in the UK. We examine themes from our interviews such as ‘dignity’, ‘normality’, ‘happiness’ and the ‘affordability’ and ‘ease’ of life in the UK (compared to Poland). We focus on the autobiographical or intra-personal discursive practices that define what Habib calls migrants' continuing relationship with their ‘homeland’. We draw on Emirbayer and Mische's analysis of the relationship between ‘agency’ and what they call ‘embedded temporalities’ to examine the interaction between our participants' recollections of life in Poland and their evaluation of their present lives in the UK in order to examine the impact of these on their future plans (to stay in the UK or return to Poland). We locate this analysis in what we call a transnational autobiographical field which is a modification of what Levitt and Glick Schiller call a transnational social field. Rather than examine, for example, how decisions to migrate, settle and re-migrate are embedded in inter or trans-personal social relations and networks, in this article we examine the self-dynamics associated with our participants' articulation of their intra-personal and autobiographical embedded temporalities. Our argument is that articulations of individuals' pasts, presents and anticipated futures are also significant factors shaping their migration, settlement, and re-migration decisions.