Moderating effects of social support in shiftworking and non-shiftworking nurses

The effects of social support on the job stress (role ambiguity)-strain (job dissatisfaction, intent-to-turnover, health problems) relationship were investigated in shiftworking (second and third shifts) and non-shiftworking (first shift) groups of nurses (N = 191). Previous research indicates that shiftworkers frequently report problems of social integration as a negative aspect of their jobs. Additionally, shiftworkers demonstrate a number of stress-related illnesses. Social support has been hypothesized to show its strongest stress-buffering (i.e. moderating) effects in high stress environments. In other words, persons with higher levels of social support are less likely to be negatively affected by high stress environments. It was hypothesized that individuals working on shiftwork would demonstrate stronger moderating effects of social support on the job stress-strain relationship than non-shiftworkers because of the stressful nature of shiftwork and the importance of social integration difficulties to shiftworkers. The dependent measures used in the analyses were global job satisfaction, intent-to-quit, and perceived health problems. Main and moderating effects of social support were found for several of the analyses. For shiftworkers, this buffering effect was significantly greater for supervisor social support on global job satisfaction and intent-to-quit. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

Demography of disaster: Population estimates after hurricane Andrew

Hurricane Andrew blasted through the southern tip of Florida in August 1992, damaging or destroying tens of thousands of homes and forcing hundreds of thousands of persons to move at least temporarily to different places of residence. The hurricane not only disrupted the lives of many Floridians, but destroyed the statistical basis for producing local population estimates in South Florida as well. These estimates are used for many types of decision-making, from the distribution of state revenue-sharing dollars to choosing sites for fast-food restaurants. This article describes the estimation problems created by the hurricane and how those problems were resolved through the use of existing data sources and the collection of new types of data. It closes with a discussion of several conceptual, methodological and procedural issues that will have to be faced in virtually any attempt to estimate the demographic consequences of natural disasters.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1994 annual meeting of the Population Association of America, Miami, Florida, USA.     

Black identity: The O. J. Simpson case

The purpose of this paper is to review the White and Black perspectives regarding the O.J. Simpson trial. The hermeneutic-dialectic (HD) method of inquiry will be utilized in order to comprehens how Whites and Blacks reached their respective conclusions concerning O. J. Simpson's guilt or innocence. This method of inquiry employs discourses, separately by Blacks and Whites, the interchange of the recorded discourses, and last, the coming together of both groups of participants for further discourse. Blacks, in contrast to Whites, experienced justice through a common sense of identity forged historically by a minority people rather than by the immediate circumstantial evidence gathered at the time of the trial.     

Labor union effects on innovative activity

Union rent-seeking is considered a tax on firm returns from investments in innovative activity. We examine this proposition by considering the responses of firms in a 1985 survey on R&D and product innovation. Consistent with our model, we find that innovative activity is significantly less important for union than for similar nonunion firms. We conclude that innovative activity may be an important route through which union rent-seeking affects the long-run performance of firms. We appreciate the helpful assistance and suggestions received from our colleague Terry Seaks, Barry Bozeman at Syracuse University, and participants in the Vanderbilt Microeconomics Workshop.     

Young People's Images of Self and Others

In an analysis of the validity of popular stereotypes of youthful conflict with adult society, based upon surveys carried out in Melbourne, the attitudes of young people are compared with the attitudes which they impute to their friends, parents and teachers. The results indicate that young people are influenced in their estimate of the friends' attitudes by the popular stereotype of young people which may in turn, influence their own attitudes. This interpretation explains the distribution of responses along the conservative-innovative continuum, except in regard to opposition to de-humanization where the respondents are more likely to attribute innovative responses to themselves than to their friends. Most young people perceive their interpersonal environment to be supportive of their own attitudes.     

Impact of developmental variance on behavior of models for insect populations I. Models for populations with unrestricted growth

Summary The concept of developmental variance is discussed with reference to its use in models for insect populations. When included in a model, developmental variance is typically used to describe the variation of developmental periods among individuals. However, its presence in a model can also have indirect impact on survival and fertility schedules. This impact can lead to significant changes in population growth rates and generation times. These relationships between developmental variance and population growth in models are quantified and discussed.     

Dwelling Space: Expectations and the Housing System

The average person-per-room ratio in Australia is low by international standards. But there are marked inequalities in the distribution of dwelling space, and the question is examined of whether the current allocation of dwelling space within the housing system constitutes a social problem on a national scale. The examination is based partly on an analysis of published census data, partly on existing literature, and partly on raw data derived from two recent housing surveys.     

Assessing the impact of planned social change

It is a special characteristic of all modern societies that we consciously decide on and plan projects designed to improve our social systems. It is our universal predicament that our projects do not always have their intended effects. Very probably we all share in the experience that often we cannot tell whether the project had any impact at all, so complex is the flux of historical changes that would have been going on anyway, and so many are the other projects that might be expected to modify the same indicators.It seems inevitable that in most countries this common set of problems, combined with the obvious relevance of social science research procedures, will have generated a methodology and methodological specialists focused on the problem of assessing the impact of planned social change. It is an assumption if this paper that, in spite of differences in the forms of government and approaches to social planning and problem-solving, much of this methodology can be usefully shared — that social project evaluation methodology is one of the fields of science that has enough universality to make scientific sharing mutually beneficial. As a part of this sharing, this paper reports on program impact assessment methodology as it is developing in the United States today.