Bridge employment and job stopping: evidence from the Harris/Commonwealth Fund Survey

This article analyzes a 1989 Louis Harris and Associates survey designed to elicit information on the employment histories and job-stopping behavior of men and women who then were approaching or had recently reached retirement age. The results indicate that retirement often occurs gradually and includes a substantial period of "bridge employment." Most bridge jobholders work full-time, by choice, and report high levels of job enjoyment. Occupational mobility occurring late in life typically involves upward movement, although the pattern of change is quite different when it takes place outside, rather than within, the longest job. The principal concern identified in this article is the limited ability of some groups of workers (nonwhites, females, the less educated, and those in poorly compensated occupations) to either retain longest jobs or to obtain acceptable bridge employment. Health problems also frequently lead to early departures from the labor force.     

Non-profit institutions in a flow of funds framework

The benefits of providing a separate accounting for non-profit organisations in the financial accounts of the United States are discussed. At present, national economic accounts in the US include non-profit organisations with individuals in the household sector; separate information on the financial activity of non-profit institutions until now has not been available. In this paper, aggregate statistics from federal government tax-exempt filings for non-profit institutions are put into a US flow-of-funds framework. The data for the 1982–1988 period indicate that non-profit institutions accounted for a significant and growing proportion of assets of the household sector in the United States. Their liabilities were also a surprisingly large share of the household sector total. Moreover, funds supplied by the non-profit sector for investment were in some years comparable to funds made available by several important groups of non-depository financial intermediaries. Separate accounting for non-profit organisations within national economic accounts would be likely to reveal an important channel for investment financing in the United States and would significantly improve our ability to measure and analyse the financial activity of individuals by allowing for a purer household sector.The analysis and conclusions set forth are those of the authors and do not necessarily indicate concurrence by Salomon Brothers, the Board of Governors, Federal Reserve Banks or other members of their staffs.     

Parametric link modification of both tails in binary regression

Common binary regression models such as logistic or probit regression have been extended to include parametric link transformation families. These binary regression models with parametric link are designed to avoid possible link misspecification and improve fit in some data sets. One and two parameter link families have been proposed in the literature (for a review see Stukel (1988)). However in real data examples published so far only one parameter link families have found to improve the fit significantly. This paper introduces a two parameter link family involving the modification of both tails of the link. An analysis based on computationally tractable Bayesian inference involving Monte Carlo sampling algorithms is presented extending earlier work of Czado (1992, 1993b). Finally, the usefulness of the two tailed link modification will be demonstrated in an example where single tail modification can be significantly improved upon by using a two tailed modification.     

Application of Stein-type estimation in combining regression estimates from replicated experiments

This paper considers the application of Stein-type estimation procedure for the coefficients in a linear regression model when data are available from replicated experiment. Two families of estimators characterized by a single scalar are proposed and their large sample asymptotic properties are derived. These are utilized for comparing the performances of the two estimators along with the conventional estimator and conditions for the superiority of one estimator over the other are deduced.     

IRS offers safe harbor in physician employment contracts

Last year, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued Revenue Procedure 93-19 (Rev. Proc. 93-19), which provides guidelines regarding service and other contracts involving facilities financed with tax-exempt bonds. Rev. Proc. 93-19 creates four "safe harbors" for certain contracts signed by tax-exempt organizations that will not jeopardize the organizations' tax-exempt bond interest. Those guidelines and methods for complying with them are the subject of the following article. "Health Law" is a regular feature of Physician Executive contributed by Epstein Becker & Green. Mark Lutes of the law firm's Washington, D.C., offices serves as editor of the column.     

Administrative knowledge and skills needed by physician executives

A survey was mailed to 100 physician executives identified through the 1991 American College of Physicians Executives directory. The subjects were asked to rate 17 managerial areas on their value to the subjects' current work, on the subjects' preparation in the areas, and on the need for training in the areas. In addition, the subjects were asked how best to accomplish training in the areas and for a list of areas of greatest importance in the future for physician executives. The subjects rated communication skills, quality assurance, utilization review, and personnel management as being of primary value in their current roles. Preparation was most adequate in communication skills and most inadequate in the areas of finance and organizational management. Training was deemed desirable in all areas, but was thought to be most necessary in communication skills, negotiations, strategic planning, and organizational management. There was least desire for training in the areas of labor law and employment law. The most popular means of training were doing a fellowship in administrative medicine, receiving continuing education through seminars or workshops, or getting a degree in management.     

Ropes course training for youth in a rural setting: “At first I thought it was going to be boring ...”

Outdoor structured activities, such as Ropes Challenge Courses, are typically utilized as interventions for youth coming from urban settings. Evaluation of such programs is scanty at best. In this instance, the course experience is used as a prevention tool for high risk youth in a remote, rural setting of high unemployment, alcohol problems, and low income. The authors discuss the effectiveness of this approach, and the intended and unintended consequences for the rural community at large. The evaluation design relies on extensive qualitative methodology as well as quantitative methods to capture the unique nature of this rural project.     

DO SURVEYS OVERSTATE PUBLIC CONCERNS?

Because the item, "How concerned are you about...?" asks respondentsto indicate their level of concern about an issue, some respondentsmay sense it assumes they are concerned or should be concernedabout the issue. Using a filter question to first determineif people are concerned about the issue before asking for theirdegree of concern may help solve this problem. To test thishypothesis, a split-ballot experiment was embedded in a nationalrandom digit dialing telephone survey on food-related issues.For the four items included in the experiment, the group receivingthe filter versions of the questions gave roughly double thepercentages of "not concerned" responses as the group receivingstandard items, and the filter group also gave fewer responsesat the upper end of the response scale.     

DO RESPONDENTS REALLY "MARK ALL THAT APPLY" ON SELF-ADMINISTERED QUESTIONS?

An experiment was conducted to assess the effect of using "markall that apply" question instructions on survey reporting aspart of the field test for the Second Follow-up of the NationalEducation Longitudinal Study of 1988 Eighth Graders (NELS:88).Mark-all-that-apply instructions were compared with instructionsasking respondents to indicate "yes" or "no" to each responseoption on responses to three items dispersed throughout thequestionnaire and consisting of different topics and numbersof response options. For the three items, significantly fewerresponse options were selected with the mark-all-that-applyinstructions than with the yes/no instructions, but becauseexternal validity criteria were not available, overreportingto the yes/no instructions cannot be ruled out. Instructiondependentprimacy effects, predicted under the hypothesis that respondentswould engage in more superficial processing when given the mark-all-that-applyinstructions, were not found.     

Freud's “Anna O.”: Social work's Bertha Pappenheim

The story of Anna O. has loomed large in psychoanalytic history, but few social workers know that the young woman, who was so influential in the development of Freud's thinking, became a pioneer social worker in Germany. The story of the transformation of the troubled young woman, who was actually Joseph Breuer's patient, is the focus of this paper. In addition, some of the facts of the case are discussed as social constructions. Anna O./ Bertha Pappenheim participated in the creation of the talking cure and eventually went on to be a leading feminist, developer of social programs for women, and social reformer.