Unemployment induced adaptations: Relationships among economic responses and individual and marital well-being

This study explores the impact of consumption changes, implemented during unemployment, on perceived economic, marital, and emotional functioning of 34 husbands and 34 wives. Questionnaires completed at the onset of unemployment assessed initial level of perceived functioning. Questionnaires completed one year later assessed the level of functioning in three areas and the extent to which seven categories of consumption changes were implemented. Multivariate analyses determined that credit use and income raising are significant predictors of economic satisfaction. Changes in income raising, credit use, planning, and store choice are significant predictors of marital adjustment. None of the changes predict depression.This research was supported by Arizona Research Station Project #174509-R-07-64 and is part of the Agriculture Experiment Station Project W-167 titled, Coping With Stress: Adaptation of Nonmetropolitan Families to Socioeconomic Changes.Mari S. Wilhelm is assistant professor and Carl A. Ridley is professor in the School of Family and Consumer Resources at the University of Arizona Tucson Arizona 85721 Dr. Wilhelm is presently conducting research in the areas of family financial stress and family financial decision-making. Dr. Wilhelm received her Ph.D. from Michigan State. Dr. Ridley, who received his Ph.D. from Florida State, is conducting research on conflict management behavior in marriage.     

The Effects of Merit-Based Scholarships on Educational Outcomes

This paper analyzes the effect of a statewide merit-based scholarship program on educational outcomes in Arizona. It tests whether Arizona’s Instrument to Measure Standards (AIMS) scholarship has an effect on a comprehensive set of educational outcomes such as the number of applicants, student admissions, first-year first-time enrollment, ACT scores of entering freshman, retention rates, as well as on the level of tuition and fees at the three schools targeted by the program; Arizona State University, University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University. Both difference-in-differences estimation as well as synthetic control methods shows that AIMS has an economically and statistically significant effect enrollment. Enrollment effects are greatest among African American and Hispanic students and are significant for both men and women. While point estimates suggest that AIMS also lead to increases in tuition and fees, these results are not robust to placebo tests.     

After the highwayman: Syntax and successful placement of press releases in newspapers

This study proves once again that too many press releases are poorly written and over-written, with long sentences and paragraphs, and poor syntax as well as weak and passive construction. In their use of press releases, journalists almost always have to make them simpler, shorter, easier to read, and less passive.The authors conclude that success in writing of press releases requires brevity and simplicity, shorter paragraphs, sentences, and words, and the elimination of the passive voice.Timothy Walters is an assistant professor of communication at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, TX. Lynne Walters is associate professor of journalism and Douglas Starr professor of journalism, both at Texas A&M University, College Station. Lynne Walters is currently a Fulbright professor at the American Journalism Center in Budapest, where her husband Timothy is also on a one-year appointment as a visiting professor.     

Women's perceived stress and well-being following voluntary and involuntary relocation

This study investigated the relationship between voluntary and involuntary relocation and women's perceptions of stress and amount of control, as well as their satisfaction with personal well-being. Results indicated that involuntary movers felt significantly less control and had lower levels of satisfaction with the relationship with their spouses than did voluntary movers. Educational level and employment status were also explored in relation to the dependent variables. Women with high school/trade school education had significantly higher levels of perceived stress, feelings of less control, and lower levels of satisfaction with family life than women with more education.This paper was supported by the Colorado State University and University of Wyoming Experiment Stations and published as Scientific Series Paper No. 290.Paula P. Makowsky received her M.S. from Colorado State University. She is currently a Counselor, Catholic Social Services, Phoenix, AZ.Alicia Skinner Cook is a Professor, Department of Human Development & Family Studies, Colorado State University, Ft. Collins, CO 80523. Her research interests include grief and loss issues related to relocation. She received her Ph.D. from Arizona State University.Peggy S. Berger received her Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University. She is an Associate Professor, Department of Consumer Science & Housing, Colorado State University, Ft. Collins, CO 80523. Her research interests include socioeconomic issues related to geographic mobility and to gender.Judith Powell received her Ed.D. from Oklahoma State University. She is a Professor, Child & Family Studies, and Head, Department of Home Economics, Division of Home Economics, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071. Her research interests include parent-child relations and effects of relocation on families.     

The Shift of Employee Welfare

ABSTRACT

Arizona State University has accepted a preventive framework for its multi-purpose Employee Assistance Program, and is partnering with local service providers to ensure that these services are relevant and of high quality.     

Financial challenges in remarriage

Remarried couples, especially those with children from a previous marriage, face financial complexities unknown to couples in their first marriages. The few empirical investigations which have explored this feature of stepfamily life have revealed that couples often have a difficult time with the financial functioning aspect of their remarriage. While further research is needed to examine the dynamics of the financial aspects of remarriage, educators and counselors need to begin to help remarried couples to develop management strategies for coping with their unique situations. Recommendations for a workshop are made and resources are listed.Supported in part by Utah State University Vice President for Research. Scientific contribution Number 1480 from the New Hampshire Agricultural Experiment Station.Jean M. Lown received her Ph.D. from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Family Economics and Consumer Studies. Currently Dr. Lown is assistant professor, Department of Home Economics and Consumer Education, UMC-2910, Utah State University, Logan, UT 84322.Elizabeth M. Dolan is associate professor, Department of Family and Consumer Studies, Pettee Hall, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03824. Drs. Lown and Dolan are collaborating on a research investigation into the dynamics of financial management in remarried families.     

Disciplinary knowledge revisited: The social construction of sociology

In Making Science (1992) I make the distinction between two types of knowledge: research frontier knowledge and core knowledge. Core knowledge is the small body of knowledge for which the entire scientific community treats as indisputable facts. The research frontier is all new knowledge which makes claim to being facts but in practice there is no consensus on this knowledge. The two types of knowledge are linked together by the evaluation process. Most frontier knowledge turns out to be insignificant and is ignored. A small part of frontier knowledge is taken as candidates for the core and evaluated. Most of this knowledge turns out to be “wrong.” Thus the important data of Jacobs ( 1989) loses a good deal of its impact because he forces it into a theory which he calls “social control”: a theory for which there is no evidence. Stephen Cole is professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is the author of Making Science: Between Nature and Society and, with Jonathan R. Cole, Social Stratification in Science. Stephen Cole is professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is the author of Making Science: Between Nature and Society and, with Jonathan R. Cole, Social Stratification in Science.     

Adaptation to unemployment: Effects of a mine closure on husbands and wives

The purpose of this study was to increase understanding of how individuals/couples respond to the unemployment of the primary breadwinner. Data were collected from 66 individuals (33 couples) shortly after becoming unemployed and again one year later. Results determined that the significant predictor variables of economic satisfaction, marital adjustment, and depression were primarily economic, marital, and emotional variables, respectively. Findings also showed that interaction existed among economic, marital, and emotional variables in predicting the three well-being outcomes. Additionally, differences were found in the pattern of results for husbands and for wives. Based on these findings, areas and hypotheses for future study are proposed.Carl A. Ridley received his Ph.D. from Florida State University. He is a Professor in the Division of Child Development and Family Relations, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721. His research interests include relationships and conflict management.Mari S. Wilhelm received her Ph.D. from Michigan State University. She is an Assistant Professor in the School of Family and Consumer Resources, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721. Her research interests include financial management, socio-economic stress, financial stress and problems.     

Student-Athletes and Gambling: An Analysis of Attitudes Towards Risk-Taking

Gambling scandals at Arizona State University, Boston College, and Northwestern University have made gambling prevention a point of emphasis in the NCAA and throughout colleges and universities across the nation. Despite this emphasis, there is minimal research at any level regarding gambling and student-athletes. This research examines attitudinal differences towards risk-taking among student-athletes who gamble on college sports and those who indicate no such gambling activity. Our findings indicate that student-athletes who gambled were more likely to have attitudes supportive of risk taking behavior than their student-athlete peers who did not gamble.     

Socioeconomic stress in rural families: Part II from the co-guest editors

Dorothy Z. Price is Professor, Child and Family Studies, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164-2010. Mari S. Wilhelm is Associate Professor, School of Family and Consumer Resources, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721.     

Family/work roles' relation to perceived stress: Do gender and ethnicity matter?

This exploratory research examines whether gender and ethnic differences exist in family- and work-related variables that best predict perceived stress. The Anglo male (N=115) and female (N=199) and Mexican-American male (N=35) and female (N=85) respondents each had the roles of employee, spouse, and parent. Data were collected by mail questionnaire from state-classified employees at the three land-grant universities in Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming as part of Cooperative Regional Research Project W-167. Regression analysis indicates that role overload is a significant predictor of stress for Anglo males and females and Mexican-American females, thus providing some support for the role strain theory, which suggests that increasing the number of roles drains personal resources and may increase stress. Satisfaction with family roles enters regression equations as significant predictors for two sample groups. Other variables enter only one of the four regression equations; thus ethnicity and gender differences are found in the variables predicting perceived stress and should be considered in future research in this area. The research was funded by the Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming Agricultural Experiment Stations as part of Cooperative Regional Research Project, W-167, “Work, Stress, and Families.” Her research interests include issues related to balancing work and family and to family resource management. She received her Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University. Her research interests include grief and loss issues and family support systems. She received her Ph.D. from Arizona State University. His research interest is minority families, and his Ph.D. is from Florida State University. Her research interest is Latino family functioning. Her Ph.D. is from New Mexico State University. His research interest is human resource development emphasizing ranching families. He received his Ph.D. from Iowa State University.     

The relation of economic factors to perceived stress in mobile families

The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between objective and subjective measures of economic well-being, amount of and satisfaction with control, and perceived stress level of subjects, who have relocated with their families within the past year. Both males and females indicate more stress if their financial condition is worse following the move than before, if their employment status is not satisfying, and when they have little control over their lives and are not satisfied with their level of control. Stress is negatively related to satisfaction with the specific aspects of economic situation studied for both males and females with limited exception.Peggy S. Berger received her Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Consumer Sciences, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523. Her research interests include socioeconomic issues related to geographic mobility and to gender, and work and family issues.Judith Powell received her Ph.D. from Oklahoma State University. She is a Professor of Child and Family Studies, and Head of the Department of Home Economics, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071. Her research interests include parent-child relations and effects of relocation on families.Alicia Skinner Cook received her Ph.D. from Arizona State University. She is a Professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523. Her research interests include grief and loss issues, family stress, and adjustment to relocation.     

Enhancing motivation, ability, and opportunity to process public relations messages

Drawing on the motivation, ability, and opportunity (M-A-O) model in the consumer psychology literature, this article suggests that motivation, ability, and opportunity provide theoretically rich frameworks to address strategies for effective communication with publics in general and inactive publics in particular. Examples of specific techniques frequently used in the construction of public relations messages are related to each of these three concepts. Implications for public relations practice and research are discussed.Kirk Hallahan is assistant professor in the Department of Journalism and Technical Communication at Colorado State University.     

Managing work and family in home-based employment

Two 10-item scales, one describing the management of the home-based work and the other, the management of the family work, were administered to a sample of household managers who are also the home-based worker. Scale items are designed to assess dimensions of input, planning, implementing, and output.T-tests are used to compare the means of the individual items and the scale means. Confirmatory factor analysis is used to assess whether the factoring of the scale items support the theoretical framework. Scores are higher for the management of the home-based work than for the management of family work. Although both scales are highly reliable, the items in the home-based work scale factor clearly into the dimensions of standard setting and controlling. One interpretation may be that, given a choice, the dual-manager may choose to consciously organize the paid work instead of the family work.This paper reports results from the Cooperative Regional Research Project, NE-167, entitled, At-Home Income Generation: Impact on Management, Productivity and Stability in Rural/Urban Families, partially supported by the Cooperative States Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Experiment Stations at the University of Hawaii, Iowa State University, Lincoln University (Missouri), Michigan State University, Cornell University (New York), The Ohio State University, The Pennsylvania State University, Utah State University, and the University of Vermont. Appreciation is expressed to Frank Chiang at Cornell University and Young Rae Oum at Iowa State University for the computer assistance needed to complete this research article. Patsy Sellen was instrumental in formatting and stylizing this paper to required guidelines.Her current research interests include household asset and debt formation, working families and employers' benefits, and home-based employment. She received her Ph.D. from Purdue University in 1978.Her current research work includes an analysis of family resource management in Mexico and housing conditions in rural areas. She is also involved in the study of households who work at-home for pay and their associated management practices and coping strategies. She received her Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University in 1970.Her current research work includes such topics as divorce settlements, at-home income generation and management practices of households who are engaged in home-based employment. Her Ph.D. was received from Cornell University in 1978.     

Memoir

According to an exchange agreement with Moscow State University, Brock University occasionally invites one of its history professors to teach here for a semester. Our second visitor was Aleksandr Pavlovich Shevyrev, an associate professor (dotsent) with the section for nineteenth and early twentieth-century Russian history. He spent the Winter 2008 semester at Brock, during which he kept a diary. I have somewhat abridged my translation.     

Texas pharmacist works with harm reduction on STR naloxone distribution

Legislatively, Texas may have its problems in addressing opioid overdoses and evidence‐based treatment, but the Texas Targeted Opioid Response (TTOR) grant, from the Opioid State Targeted Response (STR) from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), is changing all of that. “We have amazing folks in the TTOR department at the Texas Health and Human Services department who are aggressively minded and are focused on trying to do the right things with the money,” said Lucas Hill, Pharm.D., clinical assistant professor in the University of Texas at Austin College of Pharmacy and director of Operation Naloxone, which is funded by TTOR.     

Work Roles, Management and Perceived Well-being for Married Women within Family Businesses

The study uses the National Family Business Survey and is grounded in the systemic Sustainable Family Business Model. It investigated the relationship between management activity of married women within family businesses and perceived well-being controlling for work roles, family context, personal and financial resources. Statistical analyses indicated that successfully achieving the most important family goal was positively related to management activity. Low-income women performed more management than did those with other income levels. Successfully achieving family goals, having lower education, less competition between family and business resources, no family cash flow problems, and higher management activity contributed to positive perceived well-being. Well-being increased at a decreasing rate as income increased.This study reports results from the Cooperative Regional Research Project, NE-167R, ‘Family Businesses: Interaction in Work and Family Spheres,’ partially supported by the Cooperative States Research, Education and Extension Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Experiment Stations at University of Hawaii at Manoa, University of Illinois, Purdue University (Indiana), Iowa State University, Michigan State University, University of Minnesota, Montana State University, University of Nebraska, Cornell University (New York), North Dakota State University, The Ohio State University, The Pennsylvania State University, Texas A & M University, Utah State University, The University of Vermont, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (for The University of Manitoba).     

Relationship characteristics of couples married thirty years or more: A four-sample replication

A secondary analysis of four samples from earlier studies was used to test two hypotheses concerning long-term marriages. First, it was hypothesized that couples from marriages of 30 years or more duration would be characterized by higher levels of relationship quality, with the overall pattern between duration of marriage and relationship quality being curvilinear; across four samples of husbands and wives, only weak support was found for this hypothesis. A second hypothesis, that elements of intrinsic communication including positive regard, empathy, and congruence would be less important for couples from older marriages, received no support. Thus, it appears that relatively intrinsic components of the marital relationship are just as important currently for older couples as they are for younger couples, in spite of popular opinion to the contrary.The preparation of this paper was supported in part by the Kansas Agricultural Experiment Station, Contribution No. 84-516-J. Janette M. Copeland and Margaret A. Bugaighis are doctoral students, and Walter R. Schumm is an associate professor in the Department of Family and Child Development, College of Home Economics, Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas 66506.     

Building family functioning scales into the study of at-home income generation

This article describes testing of scales designed to measure the ways family members interact in a personal subsystem. The scales are intended to complement data about the managerial subsystem of a family and are to be used in conjunction with a regional research project focused on home-based work. The article includes conceptual underpinnings, construction of measures, and results of factor analysis of the measures administered. Suggestions for use of a family functioning scale in the context of a household that has a member working at home are explored in the final section.This article reports results from the Cooperative Regional Research Project, NE-167, entitled, At-Home Income Generation: Impact on Management, Productivity and Stability in Rural and Urban Families, partially supported by Cooperative States Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Experiment Stations at the University of Hawaii, Iowa State University, Lincoln University (Missouri), Michigan State University, Cornell University (New York), The Ohio State University, The Pennsylvania State University, Utah State University, and the University of Vermont.Her research interests include measuring household production, at-home income generation and rural families. She received her Ph.D. in Family and Consumer Economics from the University of Missouri-Columbia.Her research is primarily in poverty and divorce and the economic well-being of women and children. She received her Ph.D. from Oregon State University.Her research interests include entrepreneurship, especially as it relates to women and to international development. Her Ph.D. is from Cornell University.     

Gambling: The shaping of an opinion

Examining historical and contemporary writings, the authors show that many of the negative arguments about gambling spring from selfish interests in the business and political sectors. The stigma associated with gambling turns out to be a method of preventing competition from gambling, and leads to misguided social policies.The authors are, respectively, associate professor of economics at the Business School of the University of Montreal (HEC), and professor of economics in the department of economics of the University of Montreal. The paper draws on our recently published bookGambling and Speculation (Cambridge University Press, 1990), as well as on events that took place since we finished writing it. We thank Loto-Québec for its financial support.