Predictors of employment among sheltered homeless women

The effect of homelessness on the psychological and physical health of women is damaging and long lasting. Understanding of the personal factors that enable homeless women to secure employment and re-enter mainstream society is of utmost importance. A sample of homeless women residing in a US Midwestern nonprofit treatment and transitional living shelter for homeless women and their children were surveyed regarding the extent to which life satisfaction, social self-efficacy, and hopeful thinking predicted women's expected capabilities to obtain employment above and beyond social support provisions, while controlling for participants' age, ethnicity, and education level. Findings failed to reveal that social psychological (i.e., life satisfaction and social self-efficacy) and intrapersonal (i.e., hope) variables predicted homeless women's job procurement self-efficacy above and beyond perceived social support. The social support provision of social integration and younger age significantly predicted women's self-efficacy to secure employment. Implications of results for social justice initiatives and interventions are discussed.     

Unemployment,Reemployment, and Health Insurance Status Among Older Workers in the Flexible Labor Market

As employment becomes more precarious, and spells of displacement become more common across the labor market, many individuals are forced to make decisions about the speed at which they seek reemployment and the types of employment they will seek. Using repeated cross‐sectional data from various years of the Displaced Worker Supplement of the Current Population Survey, we examine the degree to which employer‐provided health insurance and organizational provision of advanced layoff warning helped workers—particularly those from earlier birth cohorts—navigate the labor market during a period of growing employment flexibility. Our results indicate that workers from older cohorts, rather than older chronological ages, suffered more from displacement in terms of longer unemployment spells and declines in job quality upon reemployment. Workers able to obtain a job with health insurance had shorter unemployment durations, while those displaced from jobs with health insurance remained unemployed for longer periods of time. Advance notice appears to reduce some of the disproportionately negative effects of displacement for older workers, perhaps by easing the shock of a psychological contract breach. Our findings point to the importance of historical and cultural factors in shaping labor market outcomes.     

A Cost–Benefit Analysis of a Family Systems Intervention for Managing Pediatric Chronic Illness

Despite recent increases of psychosocial programs for pediatric chronic illness, few studies have explored their economic benefits. This study investigated the costs–benefits of a family systems‐based, psychosocial intervention for pediatric chronic illness (MEND: Mastering Each New Direction). A quasi‐prospective study compared the 12‐month pre–post direct and indirect costs of 20 families. The total cost for program was estimated to $5,320. Families incurred $15,249 less in direct and $15,627 less in indirect costs after MEND. On average, medical expenses reduced by 86% in direct and indirect costs, for a cost–benefit ratio of 0.17. Therefore, for every dollar spent on the program, families and their third payers saved approximately $5.74. Implications for healthcare policy and reimbursements are discussed.     

A NOTE ON HOLDING COSTS AND LOT-SIZE ERRORS

This note examines the sensitivity of the basic economic-order-quantity inventory model to lot-size errors when holding costs are assumed to be a strictly increasing (though not necessarily linear) function of average inventory. In particular, we show that the penalty associated with ordering either too much or too little is a function not only of the size of the error but of the shape of the holding-cost curve as well. We demonstrate that, under certain conditions, even relatively small lot-size errors can be extremely costly.     

Names and naming in adoption: Birth heritage and family‐making

In this article, we consider the significance and practices of names and naming in adoption to develop understanding of the issue amongst scholars, policymakers, adoption practitioners, and adoption communities. Research on the topic of names and adoption is scarce and focused mostly on international and domestic adoptions in the United States. We draw on the research literature to critically explore names and naming in adoption through two recurrent and related themes. The first is “birth heritage,” where names, forenames especially, are shown to be important in the approach taken by adopters to their child's birth family and cultural identity. The second theme is “family‐making,” where namesaking and homogeneity of surname emerge, amongst others, as strategies to create, sustain, and display “family.” In gathering together for the first time an otherwise scattered, disparate body of research, our article showcases names and naming as illuminating distillations of key contemporary challenges experienced by families formed through adoption. We conclude our article by considering emergent gaps in existing knowledge and understanding about names, naming, and adoption that might usefully be addressed, to inform professional advice and familial decisions about names, and enhance outcomes for adoptees and their families.     

Talking Prose All These Years: Agent‐Based Modeling as Process‐Oriented Analysis

This article considers the implications of an approach to computer simulation called agent‐based modeling for process‐oriented analysis. It argues that many theoretical and methodological debates found in the latter field can be effectively advanced by the former. The argument is presented and then extended using a ubiquitous agent‐based model proposed to improve understanding of ethnic residential segregation. The argument has three strands. The first is that theoretical and methodological debates are unlikely to progress unless they can be “cashed out” empirically. The second is that agent‐based modeling (and its distinctive methodology) has capabilities to do this that existing research methods lack and, in fact, that agent‐based models are a natural way to represent “social process” as apparently conceived by process‐oriented analysis. The third is that possibilities exist for productive synthesis between agent‐based modeling and process‐oriented analysis with the former clarifying, instantiating, and perhaps even testing notions of process developed by the latter.