Constraints to the fulfillment of residential preferences among Texas homebuyers

A 1983 survey of Texas homebuyers reveals a high degree of mismatch between their preferred and actual residences. Analysis indicates that the logit of fulfilling residential preference is largely determined by the type of area preferred and the occupation and age of the homebuyer. Mismatch is most common among homebuyers preferring a suburban location, less so for those preferring nonmetropolitan residences, and lowest among people preferring central cities. Occupation as a social structural variable also affects homebuyers ’ chance of fulfilling residential preference. Professionals are more likely to fulfill their residential preferences than persons in other occupations. Finally, younger persons suffer a higher degree of residential mismatch than older persons.     

Educating back-injured workers: What should we be teaching?

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to identify what information people with acute and chronic back pain, health care practitioners, employers and case managers felt should be included in an educational brochure for recently back-injured workers. STUDY DESIGN: Four focus groups were convened, each comprising several representatives from one of the four constituencies. Participants rated 32 information items regarding their inclusion in an educational brochure. Ratings were tabulated for ranking and for group comparisons. RESULTS: While consensus was strong for most information items, there were apparent differences between the groups for several items relating to work resumption, medical attention, and legal or compensation consultation. CONCLUSIONS: Perceived educational needs of back-injured workers may differ from those of their health care practitioners and from their employers or insurers. Future efforts to prevent back disability through education should include evaluation of the informational needs of injured workers.     

Helping Respondents Get It Right the First Time: The Influence of Words, Symbols, and Graphics in Web Surveys

We utilize and apply visual design theory to experimentallytest ways to improve the likelihood that web respondents reportdate answers in a particular format desired by the researcher,thus reducing possible deleterious effects of error messagesor requests for corrections. These experiments were embeddedin a series of web surveys of random samples of university students.We seek to examine the sequential and cumulative effects ofvisually manipulating the size and proximity of the answer spaces,the use of symbols instead of words, the verbal language ofthe question stem, and the graphical location of the symbolicinstruction. Our results show that the successive series ofvisual language manipulations improve respondents’ useof the desired format (two digits for the month and four digitsfor the year) from 45 percent to 96 percent. These results suggestthat writing effective questions for web surveys may dependas much or more on the presentation of the answer categories/spacesas the question wording itself.     

Does "Yes or No" on the Telephone Mean the Same as "Check-All-That-Apply" on the Web?

Recent experimental research has shown that respondents to forced-choicequestions endorse significantly more options than respondentsto check-all questions. This research has challenged the commonassumption that these two question formats can be used interchangeablybut has been limited to comparisons within a single survey mode.In this paper we use data from a 2004 random sample survey ofuniversity students to compare the forced-choice and check-allquestion formats across web self-administered and telephoneinterviewer-administered surveys as they are commonly used insurvey practice. We find that the within-mode question formateffects revealed by previous research and reaffirmed in thecurrent study appear to persist across modes as well; the telephoneforced-choice format produces higher endorsement than the webcheck-all format. These results provide further support forthe argument that the check-all and forced-choice question formatsdo not produce comparable results and are not interchangeableformats. Additional comparisons show that the forced-choiceformat performs similarly across telephone and web modes.     

Problem Gambling and Intimate Partner Violence

This study examined the prevalence and severity of intimate partner violence (IPV) among 248 problem gamblers (43 women, 205 men) recruited from newspaper advertisements. The main outcome measures used were the Canadian Problem Gambling Index, the Conflicts Tactics Scale-2, the State Trait Anger Expression Inventory-2, the drug and alcohol section of the Addiction Severity Index and the substance use section of the Structured Clinical Interview for the DSM-IV. In this sample, 62.9% of participants reported perpetrating and/or being the victims of IPV in the past year, with 25.4% reporting perpetrating severe IPV. The majority of the sample (64.5%) also had clinically significant anger problems, which was associated with an increased risk of being both the perpetrator and victim of IPV. The presence of a lifetime substance use disorder among participants who had clinically significant anger problems further increased the likelihood of both IPV perpetration and victimization. These findings underscore the importance of routinely screening gambling clients for anger and IPV, and the need to develop public policy, prevention and treatment programs to address IPV among problem gamblers. Future research to examine IPV among problem gamblers is recommended.     

The Great Cut: The Support for Private Modes of Social Evasion by Public Policy

The counterpart city represents an attempt to conceptualize the hidden spaces inhabited by social problems and ‘problem’ people who are counter to the mainstream, or included, modes of contemporary urban social life. This ‘opposite’, or negative, space comprises the spatially withdrawn and socially excluded who are largely outside the purview of the comfortable classes of the same cities. Not only has residential segregation been sustained over recent decades, so too have mobile circuits of mutual exclusion been created, which enable higher‐income groups to avoid the associated negative externalities of poverty (visibility, disorder, aggression and so on). As responsibility for dealing with social risks has become devolved to the level of the household, the desire for social evasion, as politicians, media systems and welfare patterns mark out threatening territories, has become more evident. The counterpart city is shunned in ever more elaborate ways and with the support of public policies. As the ‘spatial’ social policies, housing and urban, have become increasingly criminalized in the focus of their agendas, such interventions expend energy to facilitate this separation between affluent and poor. Traditional imperatives for public intervention are diminished as poverty has become more concealed from affluence – its costs and impacts evaded by technologies, socio‐spatial circuits and policies that skirt those who are locked into places of poverty and abject marginality, a constellation of social forces and effects I term the great cut.     

Negotiation: the CMO's indispensable skill

Negotiation is the most important tool that a chief medical officer, or any physician leader, can possess. Here are some tips and insights on ways to improve your negotiation skills.     

Vestiges of the medical model: a critical exploration of the Ontario Disability Support Program in Ontario,Canada

Although ample literature exists on workfare in Ontario, Canada, research on the social assistance programme for disabled people, the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP), is relatively scant. What we do know points to similar shortcomings. We present a critical disability study considering four policy domains to explore how disabled people are identified and accommodated in Ontario. Discussing the principles of universal design, we argue for policy design that meets the needs of as many individuals as possible, while accounting for significant human variability. We conclude that the ODSP, in failing to adopt a rights-based framework, violates the dignity and rights of disabled people.