Unmet service needs of families of young children with chronic illnesses and disabilities

Data about health and educational services were collected from 187 families with young children (under two years) who have chronic illnesses and disabilities. The purpose was to assess parents' satisfaction with services their families received and to identify families' unmet service needs as well as the reasons for these unmet needs. Although families' ratings of the adequacy of services are relatively high, 28% of the families report unmet service needs. The unmet needs most often reported are occupational, physical, or speech therapy; respite care/child care; and special education. Lack of funding is the most commonly given reason for unmet needs. Children with multiple impairments are at highest risk for unmet needs. Only 22% of unmet needs reported at the initial interview have been met by the time of the six-month follow-up. Increased coordination and monitoring of services across service sectors are indicated. Her research interests include the effects of disability on family identity and families' responses to minority stress. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. She gratefully acknowledges Shelley Blazis and Nadav Casuto for statistical consulting. Her research interests focus on the impact of chronic illness and disability on families. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. Her research interests include families and health and chronic illness and disability in children. She received her Ph.D. in Family Social Science at the University of Minnesota. His areas of interest include neurodevelopmental outcomes of low birth weight infants and training in developmental pediatrics. He was graduated from the University of Minnesota Medical School. His areas of interest include adolescents with chronic illness and disabilities, adolescent sexual decision making, and international adolescent health care issues. He was graduated from Howard University College of Medicine was awarded his earned doctorate in Health Policy from the University of Minnesota. Preparation of this article was supported by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research Grant #H133890012.     

Resolving conflicting demands on evaluation: A test demonstration of videotex for farmers

Evaluating an innovation for federal, state, and local policymakers and program managers alike entails conflicting demands on the evaluation study. Policymakers at federal, state, and local levels are best assisted by impact evaluations, whereas state and local program managers are best assisted by process evaluations. In-house evaluators often have an advantage in conducting process evaluations; external evaluators generally have an advantage in conducting impact evaluations. A cost-effective approach may be to combine in-house process evaluation and external impact evaluation. This dual approach was found to reduce conflicting demands on the evaluation of an experimental videotex system for agricultural producers.     

Union use of employee pension funds: Introduction and overview

Summary and Conclusions A case can be made that labor unions are seeking to gain control of the financial leverage of employee pension funds as a means of offsetting a secular decline in membership which has occurred over the past twenty years and which has been accelerating. Pension fund assets are now substantial and are growing very rapidly so that even partial or indirect influence over investment policies could have major impacts on the economy. Unions have already achieved success on a limited scale with the pension fund weapon. Their intention to achieve widespread influence through this vehicle is signalled by the establishment in January, 1981, of a monthly newsletter,Labor & Investments which is devoted exclusively to the union use of employee pension funds. In sum, it is clear that the union use of employee pension funds is a very timely and significant topic. The papers that follow may not provide definitive answers to the many questions produced by this new initiative, but they do enhance our understanding of the issues involved.     

Older men in employed and retired families

Although much research on household work has focused on young dual-career couples, there has been speculation that retirement may have a significant effect on the arrangement of household activities in later life. Furthermore, involvement in the household is believed to influence psychological well-being. Available literature, however, provides contradictory evidence regarding the extent to which integration into household activities may either reduce or contribute to stress. The degree to which male involvement in the household in later life was stressful was examined in this research. Data were analyzed from structured interviews with 1165 older, married men who were employed full-time, part-time, or retired. Employed men were significantly less involved in the household than were the retired; however, men participated more in both masculine and feminine tasks if their wives were employed. Involvement in the household was not stressful although the benefits derived from participation varied somewhat by type of task.     

Research on unions: Some subjects in need of scholars

Research in industrial relations, as in other disciplines, frequently is narrow in scope and follows well-trodden paths. Although this approach has produced valuable insights into some areas, it has contributed to a lack of research in areas that are increasingly important. Accordingly, after a brief review of industrial relations research over the past decade, we suggest a number of overlooked or largely neglected topics that offer considerable research potential. We thank A1 Achtner for helpful research assistance.     

Combining an Internal Pilot with an Interim Analysis for Single Degree of Freedom Tests

An internal pilot with interim analysis (IPIA) design combines interim power analysis (an internal pilot) with interim data analysis (two-stage group sequential). We provide IPIA methods for single df hypotheses within the Gaussian general linear model, including one and two group t tests. The design allows early stopping for efficacy and futility while also re-estimating sample size based on an interim variance estimate. Study planning in small samples requires the exact and computable forms reported here. The formulation gives fast and accurate calculations of power, Type I error rate, and expected sample size.     

The poisson-inverse gaussian disiribuiion as a model for species abundance

An inverse Gaussian mixture of Poisson distributions(the P-IG distribution) is considered as a model for species abundance data,, Minimum chi-square and maximum likelihood methods of estimation for the zero-truncated P-IG distribution are developed, Ihe performance of the P-IG distribution is illustrated and discussed for several well-known sets of insect abundance data.     

Comment

We propose a sequential test for predictive ability for recursively assessing whether some economic variables have explanatory content for another variable. In the forecasting literature it is common to assess predictive ability by using “one-shot” tests at each estimation period. We show that this practice leads to size distortions, selects overfitted models and provides spurious evidence of in-sample predictive ability, and may lower the forecast accuracy of the model selected by the test. The usefulness of the proposed test is shown in well-known empirical applications to the real-time predictive content of money for output and the selection between linear and nonlinear models.