THE INFLUENCE OF CLASSROOM CHARACTERISTICS ON HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER TURNOVER

This paper examines the effect of class load and other factors on teacher turnover. Unlike previous studies, class load characteristics–class size, number of classes taught, and percentage of class time spent in areas outside a teacher's certification area–are included along with salary, personal characteristics, and district characteristics in a discrete time hazard model to simulate the effects of changing classroom characteristics on high school teacher turnover. The results indicate that class load characteristics are important correlates of job turnover. Policy implications for school districts, given a growing school-age population, are discussed.     

Invoking Public Opinion: Policy Elites and Social Security

Do policy elites invoke public opinion? When they do, are theirclaims based on evidence from public opinion surveys? To learnabout the claims that policy elites make, we examined statementsthe president and members of Congress, experts, and interestgroup leaders in congressional hearings made about Social Security.To learn about opinion data on Social Security, we conducteda Lexis-Nexis search of the archives of the Roper Center forPublic Opinion Research. Our analyses show that policy elitesdiscussing Social Security did invoke public opinion. Contraryto our expectations, however, few of the elite invocations ofpublic opinion cited specific surveys or concrete facts aboutthe distribution of opinion. Although claims directly contradictingsurvey evidence were relatively rare, only with the rather fewspecific claims by congressional elites did we find much clear-cutsupport in the available polling data. Relatively seldom couldwe find clear-cut support for the elites' general claims. Moreover,some of the most frequent claims about public opinion—couldhave been contested but seldom were. The highly visible andwell-polled case of Social Security suggests that specific,data-based elite invocations of public opinion may be even lesscommon on other, lower-visibility and less-polled issues. Italso suggests that survey research professionals might do wellto intensify their scrutiny of public discourse about publicopinion and to increase their efforts to bring scientific expertiseto bear upon such discourse.     

Why self-care fails: Implementing policy at a low-income sickle cell clinic

This paper addresses health care service delivery—its practice and its meanings—to a low income African-American population. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews at a sickle cell clinic, I explain why assumptions in the literature on self-care do not apply to a population historically excluded from access to health services. Self-care, a practice in which the individual assumes primary responsibility for health care, is typically seen as empowering patients and reducing the use of professional health services. While these predictions may apply to white, middle-class populations, they were not borne out in the low-income African-American population I studied. Self-care did not increase client control, nor was it associated with sparing use of health services. In this paper I explain why this was the case. I argue that conditions of poverty and the meanings clients attach to self-care impinge upon the implementation of policy producing results directly contrary to those that are predicted.     

Moderating the Effects of Childhood Exposure to Intimate Partner Violence: The Roles of Parenting Characteristics and Adolescent Peer Support

We investigate parenting characteristics and adolescent peer support as potential moderators of the effects of childhood exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV) on adolescent outcomes. Lehigh Longitudinal Study (N=416) data include parent and adolescent reports of childhood IPV exposure. Exposure to IPV predicted nearly all adverse outcomes examined; however, after accounting for co‐occurring child abuse and early child behavior problems, IPV predicted only 1 outcome. Several moderator effects were identified. Parental “acceptance” of the child moderated the effects of IPV exposure on the likelihood of teenage pregnancy and running away from home. Both peer communication and peer trust moderated the relationship between exposure to IPV and depression and running from home. Peer communication also moderated the effects of IPV exposure on high school dropout. Interventions that influence parenting practices and strengthen peer support for youth exposed to IPV may increase protection and decrease risk of several tested outcomes.     

Toward a Mediation Model of Employability Enhancement: A Study of Employee‐Supervisor Pairs in the Building Sector

This study examines whether jobs that enable competence development and a constructive leadership style enhance workers' employability or career potential through their assumed positive relationship with work‐related flow (absorption, work enjoyment, and intrinsic work motivation). The authors conducted an explorative study with 303 pairs of employees and their direct supervisors working in a Dutch building company. Results indicate that self‐ratings of learning value of the current job and transformational leadership have an indirect relationship with supervisor ratings of employability through work‐related flow.     

The contraceptive revolution in Israel: changing family planning practices among ethnoimmigrant groups

This paper uses data from the 1974-1975 Israel Fertility Survey and the 1987-1988 Study of Fertility and Family Formation to examine trends in fertility control among ethnoimmigrant groups in Israel. From 1974 to 1988, Israel underwent extremely rapid economic growth and there occurred what might be considered a contraceptive revolution in the realm of family planning. Specifically, the nonuse of family planning and reliance on less effective techniques of fertility control (withdrawal and abortion) were largely replaced by more efficient modes (e.g., pill, IUD) of family size limitation. In addition, ethnic differences in patterns of fertility control diminished. Meanwhile, socioeconomic and cultural variables such as religiosity and income maintained their importance as determinants of variation of family planning practices among Israeli women.     

What is the effective sample size of a spatial point process?

Point process models are a natural approach for modelling data that arise as point events. In the case of Poisson counts, these may be fitted easily as a weighted Poisson regression. Point processes lack the notion of sample size. This is problematic for model selection, because various classical criteria such as the Bayesian information criterion (BIC) are a function of the sample size, n, and are derived in an asymptotic framework where n tends to infinity. In this paper, we develop an asymptotic result for Poisson point process models in which the observed number of point events, m, plays the role that sample size does in the classical regression context. Following from this result, we derive a version of BIC for point process models, and when fitted via penalised likelihood, conditions for the LASSO penalty that ensure consistency in estimation and the oracle property. We discuss challenges extending these results to the wider class of Gibbs models, of which the Poisson point process model is a special case.     

From Natural Variation to Optimal Policy? The Importance of Endogenous Peer Group Formation

We take cohorts of entering freshmen at the United States Air Force Academy and assign half to peer groups designed to maximize the academic performance of the lowest ability students. Our assignment algorithm uses nonlinear peer effects estimates from the historical pre‐treatment data, in which students were randomly assigned to peer groups. We find a negative and significant treatment effect for the students we intended to help. We provide evidence that within our “optimally” designed peer groups, students avoided the peers with whom we intended them to interact and instead formed more homogeneous subgroups. These results illustrate how policies that manipulate peer groups for a desired social outcome can be confounded by changes in the endogenous patterns of social interactions within the group.