The effect of shiftwork related fatigue on the family life of train operators: implications for safety and health professionals

Drawing upon an original research study about the effects of fatigue on train operators, the present article focuses upon family issues as having the most significant impact on the participants. Family support, for example, represents an important mechanism for managing and coping with fatigue. Family support comprises understanding of the physiological and emotional issues surrounding shiftwork and erratic work schedules. This article explores the impact of fatigue upon a variety of family and relational issues. This inquiry describes the impact of family on the broader employee view of managing fatigue that considers such comprehensive issues as perception of the work environment, emotional stability, personal control concerns and other positive attributes. These issues ultimately impact the health, productivity and performance of employees. Final discussion includes implications for workplace application of the research findings.     

Disparities in Educational Opportunities and Outcomes: What Do We Know and What Can We Do?

This article examines disparities based upon poverty and race/ethnicity. After framing the issues by looking at national, state, and local data, it illustrates ways that social scientists can be involved in shaping educational practices and policies, focusing on the types of skills that are useful and on ways of thinking about the types of collaboration that are needed. Skills discussed are methodological as well as substantive; both types draw from existing knowledge bases. For collaboration, the model described is that of action research. Approaches are illustrated through personal examples drawn from collaborations with urban public schools. They include defining expected growth for students at different achievement levels, school accountability issues, and setting up long-term collaboration .     

LOWER BOUNDS FOR THE DIVERGENCE OF DIRECTIONAL AND AXIAL ESTIMATORS

Consider estimation of a unit vector parameter a in two classes of distributions. In the first, α is a direction. In the second, α is an axis, so that –α and α are equivalent: the aim is to obtain the projector αα^t. In each case the paper uses first principles to define measures of the divergence of such estimators and derives lower bounds for them. These bounds are computed explicitly for the Fisher-Von Mises and Scheidegger-Watson densities on the g-dimensional sphere, ω_q. In the latter case, the tightness of the bound is established by simulations.     

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Darts,drink and the pub: the culture of female drinking

Sociologists and anthropologists have paid little attention to women's role in the pub. This article, based on fieldwork reseach, sets out to describe the use of two pubs by two different groups of women in an English village. Through these examples, we seek to illustrate not only the social class differences between the two groups of women but also their differential use of the pub. For many working-class women, as opposed to their middle-class counterparts, the pub represents an important social centre in the village - joining the darts team provides one of a limited range of available options to get away from responsibilities of home and kin. This is not the case for middle-class women. For them the pub represents only one of many options in their social lives and as a result they make less use of the pub and its facilities.     

FAMILY GOAL RECORDING: AN ADAPTATION OF GOAL ATTAINMENT SCALING FOR ENHANCING FAMILY THERAPY AND ASSESSMENT*

Family Goal Recording is proposed as a systemic approach for measuring change in the presenting concerns of couples and families. This paper describes the procedures for using Family Goal Recording as an outcome measure for family therapy and a device to enhance goal attainment. In addition, the results of an initial study on the reliability and validity of this method are presented.