Social work and day care: a role looking for a profession

The profession's present role in day care is assessed through a review of the social work literature. This analysis suggests that the profession is not systematically involved enough in child care systems on a local or national basis. The author discusses why this is so, and suggests professional points of access for social workers interested in providing social services in different types of child care. In addition, it is recommended that more policy and programmatic emphases be put on providing social services to family day care homes, the care of children by their relatives, and for centers that serve ethnic minorities and disadvantaged families.I wish to thank Beatrice Saunders and Eleanor Brilliant for their help in writing this article.     

Allocation of research and development funds: A zero-one goal programming approach

The research and development project selection process is one of the most difficult and important problems faced by management. It is typically complicated by indivisibility of projects and multiple and conflicting objectives, in addition to limitations on funding, facilities, and qualified researchers. In this paper a case example involving a high technology electrical equipment manufacturer is developed to illustrate this problem using zero—one goal programming to accommodate indivisibility of projects in addition to multiple and conflicting goals. The model presented is an attempt to provide managers with a robust tool for allocating scarce resources among research and development projects.     

Labor force participation and family formation: A study of working mothers

Drawing upon a sample of 638 mothers aged 18 to 40, with at least some marital work experience, significant associations were found between the extent, kind, and timing of employment and a series of family formation variables. Generally lower fertility, longer first birth intervals, and earlier use of birth control were associated with the longest work durations, the highest status jobs, and work before the birth of the first child. The data failed, however, to differentiate desired family size.     

Technical Uncertainty in Quantitative Policy Analysis — A Sulfur Air Pollution Example

Expert judgments expressed as subjective probability distributions provide an appropriate means of incorporating technical uncertainty in some quantitative policy studies. Judgments and distributions obtained from several experts allow one to explore the extent to which the conclusions reached in such a study depend on which expert one talks to. For the case of sulfur air pollution from coal-fired power plants, estimates of sulfur mass balance as a function of plume flight time are shown to vary little across the range of opinions of leading atmospheric scientists while estimates of possible health impacts are shown to vary widely across the range of opinions of leading scientists in air pollution health effects.