Changes in Firm Pension Policy: Trends Away from Traditional Defined Benefit Plans

In light of the recent concerns regarding the solvency of Social Security’s Old-Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance (OASDI), private pensions may play an increasingly important role in retirement welfare of US retirees. However, the private pension landscape has evolved in ways that may result in lower private pension wealth for retirees. One recent such phenomenon involves the conversion of traditional defined benefit pension plans to cash balance plans, which results in lower pension benefits for many workers. In this study, I investigated how characteristics of the firm’s workforce influenced whether the firm converted their traditional pension plan to a cash balance plan and how these characteristics related to the firm’s pension plan policy more generally. Using the Longitudinal Employer-Household Data and pension plan data from the Department of Labor/Internal Revenue Service and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, I found little evidence of workforce age distribution effects on the likelihood of DB plan conversion to a cash balance plan in the 1990s. More generally, I consistently found positive associations between firms with older and more female workforces and defined contribution plans during the same time.     

Making it real: using standardized patients to bring case studies to life

With increases in the overall number of individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), nurse educators must provide experiences that help nursing students learn how to better communicate and care for individuals with this disorder. This article describes how two learning strategies-case studies and standardized patients-were combined to facilitate the development of therapeutic communication and assessment skills. Two case studies on PTSD were written, and actors were trained to portray the individuals in the case studies. Fourteen baccalaureate nursing students enrolled in a senior-level psychiatric nursing clinical course participated in this pilot alternative learning activity. This article describes the learning activity and presents student evaluations of the assignment.     

Explaining the move toward the market in US academic science: how institutional logics can change without institutional entrepreneurs

Organizational institutionalism has shown how institutional entrepreneurs can introduce new logics into fields and push for their broader acceptance. In academic science in the United States, however, market logic gained strength without such an entrepreneurial project. This article proposes an alternative “practice selection” model to explain how a new institutional logic can gain strength when local innovations interact with changes outside the field. Actors within a field are always experimenting with practices grounded in a variety of logics. When one logic is dominant, innovations based on alternative logics may have trouble gaining the resources they need to become more broadly institutionalized. But if a changing environment starts systematically to favor practices based on an alternative logic, that logic can become stronger even in the absence of a coherent project to promote it. This is what happened in US academic science, as growing political concern with the economic impact of innovation changed the field’s environment in ways that encouraged the spread of local market-logic practices.     

Carceral politics as gender justice? The “traffic in women” and neoliberal circuits of crime,sex, and rights

This article draws upon recent works in sociology, jurisprudence, and feminist theory in order to assess the ways in which feminism, and sex and gender more generally, have become intricately interwoven with punitive agendas in contemporary US politics. Melding existing theoretical discussions of penal trends with insights drawn from my own ethnographic research on the contemporary anti-trafficking movement in the United States—the most recent domain of feminist activism in which a crime frame has prevailed against competing models of social justice—I elaborate upon the ways that neoliberalism and the politics of sex and gender have intertwined to produce a carceral turn in feminist advocacy movements previously organized around struggles for economic justice and liberation. Taking the anti-trafficking movement as a case study, I further demonstrate how human rights discourse has become a key vehicle both for the transnationalization of carceral politics and for the reincorporation of these policies into the domestic terrain in a benevolent, feminist guise. I conclude by urging greater and more nuanced attention to the operations of gender and sexual politics within mainstream analyses of contemporary modes of punishment, as well as a careful consideration of the neoliberal carceral state within feminist discussions of gender, sexuality, and the law.     

Perceived barriers to accessing health services among people with disabilities in rural northern Namibia

People living with disabilities (PWD) face unique problems in dealing with conventional healthcare facilities. We investigate the experiences of PWD as they access healthcare facilities in rural Namibia. More specifically, we investigate structural–environmental and process barriers to accessing health facilities. The study relied on semi-structured interviews and purposive sampling. The results showed PWD find it difficult to walk to health centers for treatment due to lack of transport, money to pay for treatment and toilet facilities and the distance is too far for people with lower-limb disabilities. There is a need to consider the unique issues affecting access to healthcare for people living with disabilities to achieve equitable access to healthcare services.     

The roller-coaster of experiences: becoming the parent of a deaf child

When early testing indicates a hearing loss, parents find themselves on a roller-coaster of experiences leaving little time or space for reflection. This study is based on interviews with families in the Flemish region of Belgium, one of the earliest in the world to introduce universal neonatal screening for hearing loss. Starting from a phenomenological approach, we explore parents’ accounts of their experiences in order to uncover the meanings of early parenting of a child identified with a label. Soon after birth, these parents encounter a different world in which intertwined discourses construct parenthood with a deaf child. During the process of becoming a parent, representations of deafness as impairment were omnipresent. In contrast to a medical and technological perspective that insists on the need to intervene as fast as possible, it is argued that the private and social implications of rapid intervention require explicit consideration.     

Drivers' safety needs, behavioural adaptations and acceptance of new driving support systems

The aim of this paper is to discuss the contribution of two complementary approaches for designing and evaluating new driver support systems likely to improve the operation and safety of the road traffic system. The first approach is based on detailed analyses of traffic crashes so as to estimate drivers' needs for assistance and the situational constraints that safety functions should address to be efficient. The second approach is based on in depth-analyses of behavioral adaptations induced by the usage of new driver support systems in regular driving situations and on drivers' acceptance of the assistance provided by the systems.     

Biomechanics-based active control of bedding support properties and its influence on sleep

Proper body support plays an import role in the recuperation of our body during sleep. Therefore, this study uses an automatically adapting bedding system that optimises spinal alignment throughout the night by altering the stiffness of eight comfort zones. The aim is to investigate the influence of such a dynamic sleep environment on objective and subjective sleep parameters. The bedding system contains 165 sensors that measure mattress indentation. It also includes eight actuators that control the comfort zones. Based on the measured mattress indentation, body movements and posture changes are detected. Control of spinal alignment is established by fitting personalized human models in the measured indentation. A total of 11 normal sleepers participated in this study. Sleep experiments were performed in a sleep laboratory where subjects slept three nights: a first night for adaptation, a reference night and an active support night (in counterbalanced order). Polysomnographic measurements were recorded during the nights, combined with questionnaires aiming at assessing subjective information. Subjective information on sleep quality, daytime quality and perceived number of awakenings shows significant improvements during the active support (ACS) night. Objective results showed a trend towards increased slow wave sleep. On the other hand, it was noticed that % N1-sleep was significantly increased during ACS night, while % N2-sleep was significantly decreased. No prolonged N1 periods were found during or immediately after steering.