The Supervision of Two Isolated Practitioners: It's supervision,Jim, but not as you know it

A supervisory format used over a four year period for two isolated family therapists is discussed. After an initial face to face meeting, in-person supervision took place quarterly. Between these meetings, supervision was by a combination of audiotapes and letters. Supervisees recorded their questions, comments and news on cassette tapes, often sending as well the tape of a client session, and the supervisor responded by letter. The particular difficulties and advantages of this format are discussed, and some attention is given to the special needs of isolated practitioners.     

Rules for aggregating information

We present a model of information aggregation in which agents’ information is represented through partitions over states of the world. We discuss three axioms, meet separability, upper unanimity, and non-imposition, and show that these three axioms characterize the class of oligarchic rules, which combine all of the information held by a pre-specified set of individuals.     

Editor's Note

Each Fall issue of Public Opinion     

The influence of the organization on clinical practice

Almost all, if not all clinical decisions represent agency policy and organizational imperatives in action. The organization influences and shapes services, problem definition, assessment and intervention, and careers of clients. This paper explores ideas about the organizational context of practice, organizational problems and related issues, and offers suggestions for increasing the clinician's influence and effectiveness.     

Are immigrants and natives perfect substitutes in production?

This article discusses whether immigrant and native labor are perfect substitutes in production when conventional measures of skill and demographic characteristics are held constant. The ratio of immigrant to native labor and the ratio of immigrant to native earnings are studied in 5 major immigrant receiving countries with other variables held constant. Countries included are 1) the US and Britian, where the foreign born are only about 5% to 6% of the adult male labor force; 2) Canada and Australia, where they are about 20% and 30%, respectively; and 3) Israel, where the foreign born are about 3/4 of the Jewish adult male labor force. The relative earnings of adult male immigrants and the adult male native-born sons of immigrants are found to be lower when the labor supply of immigrants is greater. The estimated elasticity of substitution between immigrant and native labor is high, but significantly less than infinity. Workers who are relatively more intensively in the favorable self selection characteristics of immigrants are not perfect substitutes for workers relatively more intensive in country-specific skills. As immigrants increase in the labor force, their relative earnings tend to fall, although the decline is small. Economies have sufficiently flexible markets and develop institutional arrangements to mitigate the relative fail in immigrant earnings as their relative supply increase.     

Reducing health care costs using claims adjudication software

An important area for reduction in health care costs is incorrect coding of physician services. Current software systems provide high-volume, consistent claims review with substantial savings for payers. The third generation of such systems offers comprehensive coverage across clinical disciplines, across individual claims, and across an entire history of claims. It is likely that these systems will be useful to both nontraditional payers, such as physician groups and hospital-based networks, and traditional payers seeking to reduce costs and enhance competitiveness.     

The effect of legalization and public funding of abortion on neonatal mortality: An intervention analysis

This paper examines the impact of the legalization of abortion on neonatal mortality in the United States. Monthly time series data are used to estimate intervention models separately for the U.S. as a whole and for the States of New York and South Carolina. Legalization of abortion in 1973 is found to have no discernible impact on national neonatal mortality rates. However, results from New York and South Carolina, states in which accessibility and public funding of abortion differed markedly, suggest that abortion is significantly related to declines in neonatal mortality, particularly among nonwhites. The magnitude and timing of such impacts varied between races and states.     

Removal of status offenders from the juvenile justice system: the Florida experience.

In 1975 Florida transferred jurisdiction over runaway, truant or ungovernable children from the juvenile justice system to the child welfare system. This paper reports on the results of decriminalization.