Leo Bogart, 1921-2005

Leo Bogart, who died October 15, 2005, in New York City, calledhimself an "applied sociologist" because he spent his careerin marketing rather than academic research. But his contributionsto knowledge filled 14 books, three of them published afterhe turned 80. His appreciation for the nuances of opinion measurementand contributions to question design would have earned him distinctionon any faculty, and so his career embodied the commercial-academicblend that has characterized the American Association for PublicOpinion Research (AAPOR). Born in Lvov, Poland, he moved with his family to New York atthe age of 2. He was a high school newspaper editor in     

Scheduling with interjob communication on parallel processors

Consider a scheduling problem in which a set of tasks needs to be scheduled on m parallel processors. Each task \(T_i\) consists of a set of jobs with interjob communication demands, represented by a weighted, undirected graph \(G_i\). The processors are assumed to be interconnected by a shared communication channel, which can be used by jobs to communicate among each other while being processed in parallel. In each time step, the scheduler assigns jobs to the processors and allows any processed job to use a certain capacity of the channel in order to satisfy (parts of) its communication demands to adjacent jobs processed in the same step. The goal is to find a schedule with minimum length in which the communication demands of all jobs are satisfied. We show that this problem is NP-hard in the strong sense even if the number of processors is constant and the underlying graph is a single path or a forest with arbitrary constant maximum degree. Consequently, we design and analyze approximation algorithms with asymptotic approximation ratio \(\min \{1.8, 1.5 \frac{m}{m-1}\}+1\) if the underlying graph G, the union of the \(G_i\), is a forest. For general graphs it is \(\min \left\{ 1.8, \frac{1.5m}{m-1}\right\} \cdot \left( \text {arb}(G) + \frac{5}{3}\right) \), where \(\text {arb}(G)\) denotes the arboricity of G.     

Agency and clientship in public encounters: co‐constructing ‘neediness’ and ‘worthiness’ in shelter placement meetings

This article seeks to develop our understanding of the agency of vulnerable groups who at first sight may not seem to have much agency in their lives. It explores the co‐constructed nature of agency in three Danish homeless shelters. Unlike earlier interview‐based studies, our research is based on naturalistic data drawn from 23 video‐recorded placement meetings. Using concepts from Goffman, we examine how versions of the neediness and worthiness of homeless people are negotiated verbally and bodily between staff and clients. We find that homeless people have to juggle two partly contradictory roles when they are given or take the roles of either a (active) citizen or a (passive) client. Clientship is actively negotiated by both parties and demonstrates the agency of homeless people: they can collaborate with (as clients) or challenge (as citizens) the staff’s attempts to formulate solutions to their troubles. We further examine how the professional ideology of client centredness affects the meeting between the two parties. However, we show that, like any discourse, client centredness has no intrinsic meaning and is played out by actors in very different ways. In work with the homeless, the discourse of client centredness is related to discourses of ‘neediness’, ‘worthiness’ and ‘value for money’ that define agency in different ways and make three different client positions available: the resolute client, the acquiescent client and the passive client.     

Gender differences in self-regulation patterns and attitudes toward driving among older adults

The automobile is essential for many older adults to fulfill their daily needs, especially since many live where they lack access to public transit or other acceptable modes of transportation. Increased self-regulation is one way older drivers continue to drive safely and maintain mobility. This research considers whether self-regulation attitudes and patterns differ by gender. Results indicate that women and men report distinct patterns of self-regulation behaviors. Age, health status, and household status also interact with gender, influencing the extent of self-regulation. The results also show that women report lower levels of confidence in their driving skills than men, although the difference varies based on whether or not a woman lives alone. Implications of these results are considered for an aging population--particularly women--that over the coming decades will be more reliant on the automobile for transportation than ever before.     

An abused child grows up and enters treatment

This article explores the dynamics which can occur in abused children by focusing on the long term treatment of a young woman who was physically, sexually, and emotionally abused as a child. Particular emphasis is placed on the understanding and management of the highly charged transference and countertransference which ensued.