PHYSICIAN RESPONSE TO A MAILED SURVEY AN EXPERIMENT IN TIMING OF PAYMENT

This article reports the results of an experiment in obtainingphysician response to a mailed questionnaire. Each physicianwas eligible for a payment of $20. A randomly selected halfreceived the payment with their initial questionnaire and coverletter; half were told they would receive their payment afterthey completed and returned the questionnaire. The same mailand telephone followup procedures were used for both groups.Overall, prepayment had significant positive effects on responserates. This paper examines these effects in terms of responserates for various specialties, field efficiencies, cost, andrepresentativeness of the sample.     

Statistical Considerations in Social Work Research

Correspondence to David Goda, School of Computing and Information Technology, University of Wolverhampton, Wulfruna Street, Wolverhampton WV1 1SB. Summary Guidelines are presented in an attempt to assist those consideringsubmitting to this Journal papers containing quantitative data.     

The News Media in Children's Political Socialization

The research reported examines the impact of the news mediaas an agent of political socialization on children's politicalknowledge, their attitudes toward political parties and electoralsystems, and their activities relative to politics. Childrennews media use and level of political knowledge function asprimary sources of causal effects for each other. They are consistentlymore important in their effects on the attitudes and types ofparticipation studied in this research than are the parentaland educational system socialization indicators or the structuralvariables of grade and gender.     

Writing Experience: Does Ethnography Convey a Crisis of Representation,or an Ontological Break with the Everyday World?

L'auteur pose comme prémisse la «brisure ontologique», telle qu'imaginée par Alfred Schutz, qui sépare deux champs: le «monde des coassociés», dans lequel la réalité sociale est directement expérimentée en face à face avec le présent intense, et l'«univers des contemporanéités», dans lequel l'autre est représenté selon des «types». Il soutient que cette coupure constitue un véhicule incitant à présenter une méta‐exposition de revendications majeures problématisant l'autorité traditionnelle en ethnographie. À la lumière de cette brisure, les tentatives postmodernistes d'acquérir ou de conserver la compréhension ici et maintenant de la signification subjective, ou de la «voix» des ethnographies, ne forment que des impossibilités épistémologiques. L'auteur conclut que le privilège postmoderniste accordéà une «ethnographie naïve» insistant sur les processus «expérimentaux», «interprétatifs», «dialogiques» et «polyphoniques» ne peut remplir sa promesse sur le plan méthodologique, pas plus qu'il n'est adaptable à la brisure ontologique de Schutz sur le plan théorique. This paper is premised on the “ontological break” as coined by Alfred Schutz that disconnects two realms: the “world of consociates” where social reality is directly experienced face‐to‐face in the vivid present, and the “world of contemporaries” where the other is interpreted in terms of “types.” It is argued that this break is a suggestive vehicle for conducting a meta‐exposition of major claims which problematize the traditional authority of ethnography. In the light of the break, the postmodernist attempts to attain or retain the here‐and‐now understanding of subjective meaning, or “voice” in ethnographies are but epistemological impossibilities. It is concluded that the postmodernist privileging of a “naive ethnography” which emphasizes “experiential,”“interpretive,”“dialogical,” and “polyphonic” processes is neither able to deliver on its promise at the methodic level, nor amendable to Schutz's ontological break at the theoretical level.     

Themes and Continuities in Radical and Traditional Social Work

Summary Traditional and radical social work are amongst the principalcombatants in the paradigm-crisis that is alleged to characterisecontemporary social work. In considering the way in which thesetwo theoretical stances approach one of social work's centralproblems—the relationships between the person and society—itis argued that what is revealed is as much overlap as disagreement.This is in part through the subdued radicalism of a traditionalapproach which struggles to comprehend the effects of societyon clients' lives, and in part because radicalism is incorporatedinto prevailing ways of thinking through having to answer thesame questions as social work orthodoxy. It is because of thisthat Marxist social work is shown to be inevitably compromised,though this is not to deny the important contribution of radicalismin providing more satisfactory answers to crucial social workproblems.