Smart money

Rick was an ambitious entrepreneur beginning the first of several businesses at age 16. He amassed a fortune by age 35. Between the ages of 42 and 50, his gambling rampage liquidated his assets, he lost his business and license to practice in his field, and he ended up in debt of over $1 million. Today at age 53 he is starting a new career in counseling and working with compulsive gamblers.     

New information from the State Committee on Statistics of the USSR

Selected data concerning the USSR are presented. They concern vital statistics by republic for 1989 for rural and urban areas, birth order, life expectancy by sex, and population change and vital statistics for cities with a population over one million.     

Effects of fixed costs in two-person sequential bargaining

Rubinstein (1982) considered the problem of dividing a given surplus between two players sequentially, and then proposed a model in which the two players alternately make and respond to each other's offers through time. He further characterized the perfect equilibrium outcomes, which depend on the players time preferences and order of moves. Using both equal and unequal bargaining cost conditions and an unlimited number of rounds, two experiments were designed to compare the perfect equilibrium model to alternative models based on norms of fairness. We report analyses of final agreements, first offers, and number of bargaining rounds, which provide limited support to the perfect equilibrium model, and then conclude by recommending a shift in focus from model testing to specification of the conditions favoring one model over another.     

THE EFFECTS OF PRESTIGE NAMES IN QUESTION WORDING

Although survey researchers are often warned against using prestigenames in questions (e.g., identifying Contra aid as "PresidentReagan's policy"), prestige names are still commonly used. Tolearn more about the effects of using prestige names, we analyzetwo sets of experiments—on judicial confirmation electionsand on an initiative on tax indexing. The results indicate thatprestige names do more than shift responses in one direction—they eliminate the effect of education on DKs and provide moreof a political basis for the responses.     

Assimilation vs. multiculturalism: Views from a community in France

A recent American survey of attitudes toward societal multiculturalism vs. assimilation has found surprisingly widespread support for maintaining heritage cultures not only among immigrant minority groups but also among most subsamples of majority host groups, black and white. Working-class whites are the one exception. This pilot study explores the same attitude domain in a contrasting European setting. Randomly selected samples of middle- and working-class families (a mother, father, and teenage son or daughter) from a small city in France were interviewed. As a group, they were neutral to slightly favorable to immigrants maintaining heritage cultures and languages rather than losing them through assimilation. On measures of attitudes toward specific immigrant groups, there were marked intergroup dyfferunces with Maghrebian Arabs rated leist favorably and Southeast Asians, the model immigrants, most favorably. Comparisons of subgroups of respondents who varied in terms of (a) political left-right orientation, (b) social class standing, (c) degree of religiosity, and (d) generational level provide the base for a more general discussion of cultural assimilation and multiculturalism.     

CONTEXT EFFECTS FOR CENSUS MEASURES OF RACE AND HISPANIC ORIGIN

This paper reports on the results of a split-ballot experimentconducted in 1987 to test alternative versions of the decennialcensus long form. Two forms were randomly assigned and self-administeredin group sessions involving a total of 515 respondents. Theorder of race and Hispanic origin items was experimentally manipulated.The standard long form asks race, then Hispanic origin. Theexperimental form reversed the order of the items in order toreduce perceived redundancy, and to create a more restrictedframe of reference for the race item. The objectives of thecontext manipulation were (1) to reduce item nonresponse forthe Hispanic origin item, and (2) to reduce reporting of "Otherrace" by Hispanics in the race item. Objective (1) was met.Objective (2) was met for Hispanics born in a U.S. state, butnot for immigrants. The results are interpreted as reflectinga process of acculturation that affects how Hispanic respondentsapply U.S. racial categories "white" and "black" in the census.     

Triangular empathy: “The other” in psychotherapy with individuals

This paper seeks to explore triangular dimensions in individual psychotherapy. In addition to serving as the dyadic object of transference projection and/or as selfobject for a person in psychotherapy, the therapist may be called upon to help the patient work on relationships with certain early, important people or their representations and on the interplay between such relationships and the therapeutic one, that is, in a triangular configuration. Because patients' attempts to introduce others into individual psychotherapy are sometimes experienced by therapists as resistant rather than as integral to the therapeutic process, I propose an empathic reconsideration of such patient efforts to get us to help with the complicated dimensions of human relatedness.     

How to fight the regulator glut: the role of the HCFA-type survey

More and more hospitals in this country are being threatened by the removal of their Health Care Financing Authority (HCFA) Medicare Certification. A perception of competitiveness among HCFA, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), and other organizations has heightened this concern. This unpleasant situation has provoked many hospitals to prevent any type of regulator decertification. One of the practical methods of prevention is the use of a HCFA-type survey. These surveys prepare institutions for unexpected, unarmored review by regulators and should be part of the quality improvement (QI) process even in institutions with limited resources. This article discusses the means to accomplish the HCFA-type survey. The development of the survey process involves institutional commitment, hospital policy and procedures, a department review schedule, selection of review personnel, preparation of review personnel, record keeping, and department education.