Gender differences in social workers’ assessments and help-giving strategies towards single parents

The study investigates Swedish male and female social workers’ assessments and help-giving strategies towards single parents applying for income support. The study was carried out with the help of a vignette distributed as a mail questionnaire. Results show that social workers tend to conform to assessments and help-giving strategies that are consistent with expectations linked to their own gender role.     

Expectations, Capital Gains, and Income

A theoretical framework for the measurement of income under uncertainty is developed that addresses some long-standing controversies about the treatment of capital gains. The consequences for economic analysis and policy making are potentially serious, because the treatment of capital gains can significantly affect some major macroeconomic aggregates, including national income and savings, balance of payments deficits, government deficits, and depreciation. (JEL O47 , P44 , Q32 )     

Interactionism,Social Organization,and Social Processes: Looking Back and Moving Ahead

With its roots in American pragmatism, symbolic interactionism has created a distinctive perspective and produced numerous important contributions and now offers significant prospects for the future. In this article, I review my intellectual journey with this perspective over forty years. This journey was initiated within the American society, sociology, and symbolic interaction of circa 1960. I note many of the contributions made by interactionists since that time, with particular focus on those who have contributed to the study of social organization and social process. I offer an agenda for the future based on currently underdeveloped areas that have potential. These are inequality orders, institutional analysis, collective action across space and time, and the integration of temporal and spatial orders. The article concludes with calls for further efforts at cross‐perspective dialogues, more attention to feminist scholars, and an elaborated critical pragmatism.     

Lines through the origin—is NO INT the answer?

The fitting of a straight line that must pass through (0, 0) is a frequently encountered application of linear regression. Many computer packages provide a least-squares option sometimes identified as NO INT, or even NOINT, or as ‘suppressing the intercept’. Often these procedures are invalid or do not correspond to the most suitable model. This paper questions the least-squares-line approach and suggests some alternatives. Two measures are proposed for comparing the fit of alternative models.     

The discovery of participatory research as a new scientific paradigm: Personal and intellectual accounts

The article presents considerations for the placing of participatory research in the practice of sociology. The changing conditions in contemporary society have compelled social scientists to rethink the way social theory has been conceptualized and has been practiced in relation to social change. Modernist social theory, of which sociology is a prime example, has been imbued with the biases of the Enlightenment that privilege the essentialized male rational actor set above the ordinary people. As a consequence it has produced narratives and practices that are not in the interest of the people, especially those who have been dominated and oppressed. In order to live up to the potential of sociology as a vehicle for the improvement of social conditions, it must include the interest and the wisdom of the people in its researching and theorizing activities. It is argued that participatory research provides an opportunity to follow this course in sociology. Participatory research, it is contended, will lead to a paradigm shift in the social sciences because it is based on an expanded conception of knowledge and because it changes the relationship between the researcher and the researched and between theory and practice. Arguments are drawn from the history of science, critical theory, and postmodernist and feminist critiques. Peter Park is currently on the faculty of the Fielding Institute.     

The Farm Crisis and Mental Health: A Longitudinal Study of the 1980s1

Abstract This paper examines rural/urban differences and trends in mental health during the farm crisis of the 1980s in a large panel sample from a midwestern state. A community research perspective, which attributes differences to life styles, culture, and community context, is contrasted with an economic stress perspective, which focuses on individual differences in economic circumstances as determinants of rural-urban differences in mental health. Survey samples from 1981, 1986, and 1989 are used to examine differences among seven categories of community type. Multiple regression analysis of the trend and panel data provide support for both the individual economic distress and community context models.     

Mean squares in saturated fractional designs revisited

In a previous paper (Bissell, 1989) some suggestions were offered for interpreting mean squares in saturated fractional designs where no independent estimate of experimental error is available. One of the methods leads to a simple numerical test of homogeneity which provides an objective accompaniment to half-Normal plotting of effects (Daniel, 1959) in 2n designs or exponential plotting of mean squares (Bissell, 1989) in 3n designs. A table of percentage points for a convenient test statistic is provided in this paper.