Perceptions of and Responses to Stigma

In the last 10 years, interest in the concept of stigma has grown remarkably throughout the social sciences. Today, stigma is an important topic that bridges many disciplines, including sociology, psychology, social psychology, and public health. This literature review primarily addresses perceptions of and responses to stigma from the insider's or target's perspective. The topics examined in this review include the following: defining stigma, public opinion and attitudes toward the stigmatized, measurement of perceptions of stigma and discrimination, the coping strategies employed by stigmatized persons to deal with stigma, the impact of stigma in terms of psychological and behavioral outcomes, explanations of coping strategies and outcomes, and strategies and interventions to reduce stigma. As many of the concerns faced by stigmatized persons are universal, what has been learned in research about one stigmatized group can provide insight into another. Promising directions for future stigma-related research are identified and discussed.     

Wer das Stabilisieren vergisst: Warum eine schöne Abschlusspräsentation noch kein gutes Ende bedeutet

Many organizational change projects fail — despite a well thought out concept, professional project management and a binding implementation timetable. The reason why the expected success doesn’t materialize often lies with the missing maintenance. Once the project is officially completed and the client and project manager withdraw, the manner in which the organization will take up these changes is seldom systematically dealt with. Difficulties often arise when no discrete stabilizing measures are planned. We have derived four central action areas which will be clarified by way of practical examples. It will also be shown what is important to pay attention to in the stabilization phase so that a lasting success of the organizational change project can be ensured.     

WOMEN'S WORK:

We use in-depth interviews, participant observation, and document analysis to examine women's involvement in the Gulf War Illness movement. We find that women's cumulative grievances of health concerns, financial hardships, and emotional problems opened them to movement recruitment as they surfed the Internet for information and support. The movement's division of labor was influenced not by gender but by health status. Women used the Internet to provide medical information and emotional support to geographically dispersed veterans. Activism transformed women activists by endowing them with a sense of empowerment and a somewhat broadened concern for social justice. Although their transformations disposed the women to become active on related issues, it did not extend to concerns about gender discrimination. We suggest that the next research step is to investigate gender differences in movement processes by surveying activists across a variety of movements to test propositions and to identify the characteristics of other social contexts that structurally instigate a departure from traditional gender roles.     

Dementia Problem Behavior and the Production of Informal Caregiving Services

Informal caregivers of individuals with Alzheimer's disease spend a considerable amount of time providing care. In this paper, we use Grossman's health production and Becker's time allocation models to develop a model of informal care provision to elderly dementia patients. In our model, time inputs produce caregiving services, which provides utility to the caregiver, but reduces leisure. We assume that time is less productive of services on the margin as the disease progresses. In this framework, an increase in patients' disease severity does not necessarily increase informal caregiver time input. The cost of formal care establishes a reservation price for informal caregiving. When the costs of informal caregiving rise above this reservation level, the patient is institutionalized. We test empirically the effect of deterioration in the patients' condition, proxied by both disease severity and dementia problem behavior, on informal caregiving time. We find that dementia-related problem behaviors and functional limitations significantly increase inputs of informal caregiving time. Patients' problem behavior exerts a modifying effect on functional limitations, and patients' comorbidities have no effect on informal caregiving time.     

Diagnostics for dependence within time series extremes

Summary. The analysis of extreme values within a stationary time series entails various assumptions concerning its long- and short-range dependence. We present a range of new diagnostic tools for assessing whether these assumptions are appropriate and for identifying structure within extreme events. These tools are based on tail characteristics of joint survivor functions but can be implemented by using existing estimation methods for extremes of univariate independent and identically distributed variables. Our diagnostic aids are illustrated through theoretical examples, simulation studies and by application to rainfall and exchange rate data. On the basis of these diagnostics we can explain characteristics that are found in the observed extreme events of these series and also gain insight into the properties of events that are more extreme than those observed.     

Facilitative Aspects of Field Research with Deviant Street Populations*

The authors examine facilitative aspects of field research with deviant street populations. Based on the authors' research with the homeless and with male street prostitutes, the facilitative aspects include access to settings, social relationships, acquisition of information, and the maintenance of researcher interest. The authors argue that in each of these aspects street deviants may in some ways be easier to study than other populations. The paper concludes with suggestions for maximizing the efficiency and quality of fieldwork with specific deviant populations.     

Earnings Inequality in the Nonmetropolitan United States: 1967–19901

Abstract Nonmetropolitan (nonmetro) inequality patterns are contrasted with those of metropolitan (metro) areas to assess the utility of neoclassical and restructuring theoretical frameworks. Inequality measures are constructed from March Current Population Surveys for the years 1968–1991. Results indicate that inequality is greater in nonmetro areas than in metro areas. Results of decomposition procedures suggest that the observed inequality is due to a mix of neoclassical and restructuring factors that account for more inequality in metro than nonmetro areas. National policies must take account of metro/nonmetro differences in patterns and sources of inequality.     

An introduction to econometric applications of empirical process theory for dependent random variables

This paper discusses some uses in econometrics of empirical process theory for dependent rendom variables. Examples considered include non-standard parametric hypotheses tests and semiparametric estimation. The application of bracketing functional limit results is discussed in some detail