Is Workers' Compensation a Substitute for Unemployment Insurance?

This paper examines how the Workers' Compensation (WC) and Unemployment Insurance (UI) programs interact to influence the duration of claims due to workplace accidents. We use longitudinal WC administrative micro-data on more than 30,000 workers in the Canadian construction industry for the period 1976–1986. For the estimations, we use the Meyer (1990) semi-parametric proportional hazard model. Our results show, in particular, that a reduction in the UI replacement ratio is associated with an increase in the duration of claims due to severe accidents that are difficult to diagnose. Moreover, the duration of spells on WC is much higher when an accident occurs in December, a month which corresponds to the beginning of the lay-off season in the construction sector. This result is consistent with the fact that WC benefits are more generous than UI benefits in Canada.     

A Markov chain model used in analyzing disease history applied to a stroke study

In clinical research, study subjects may experience multiple events that are observed and recorded periodically. To analyze transition patterns of disease processes, it is desirable to use those multiple events over time in the analysis. This study proposes a multi-state Markov model with piecewise transition probability, which is able to accommodate periodically observed clinical data without a time homogeneity assumption. Models with ordinal outcomes that incorporate covariates are also discussed. The proposed models are illustrated by an analysis of the severity of morbidity in a monthly follow-up study for patients with spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage.     

The Future of Sociology

The variety of efforts that have constituted the twentieth-century sociological project are to be celebrated. Although I am somewhat ambivalent about sociology's future, I am confident of its substantial continuation. Yet I worry about its future as an identifiable scholarly craft on U.S. campuses. Contemporary working sociologists must protect their craft's legacy by making a nurturing place for young scholars in the US. academy.     

Alcohol Education Project: Preliminary Answers

Abstract

The goal of the five year University of Massachusetts (UMass) Demonstration Alcohol Education Project has been to promote responsible decision making about alcohol use. The UMass/Amherst campus has 25,000 students, of which there is an approximate one third turnover every academic year. Educational methods used to achieve the goal have included community development, mass media, and such intensive approaches as workshops, courses, and guest lectures. Mass media reaches up to 70% of the student body, while intensive interventions reach about 5%.

Data has been gathered from a large number of sources in order to evaluate the following objectives: 1) University students will demonstrate decreased inappropriate alcohol consumption patterns. 2) University students will demonstrate an increased level of planning, conducting, and participation in responsible social activities. 3) University students will demonstrate an increased number of interventions with peers around alcohol issues. 4) University students will demonstrate a decrease in peer pressures which contribute to inappropriate alcohol use among their peers. 5) Key people within the university community will demonstrate an increase in behavior which encourages responsible decisions about alcohol.

Analysis of the program model indicates the initial assumptions were generally valid. For example, predisposing factors such as attitudes toward drinking, and certain demographics are in fact predictors of contexts and quantity and frequency of drinking, which are in turn predictors of negative consequences. Preliminary results from the data collected indicate significant changes in knowledge, but no significant change in individual behavior for the parameters measured. There are indications of trends toward changes in party giving behaviors and heightened alcohol awareness in certain dormitories. Additionally, the university community designed and adopted a set of guidelines for interpretation of the trustees' policy on consumption of alcoholic beverages on campus. The guidelines were designed to be social and educational in nature; their impact was confounded when the minimum drinking age for the state was raised to 20.     

Recruitment and retention of ethnically diverse long-term family caregivers for research

The inclusion of ethnically diverse long-term care family caregivers is significant in research, particularly in social work research because of the importance placed on diverse populations. However, the inclusion of diverse populations poses a set of unique recruitment and retention challenges for researchers. This process can be particularly complicated when multiple long-term care recruitment partners are utilized and when the project involves a multi-phase data collection plan with different minority recruitment needs for each phase. In our work we learned that: (a) research teams should plan for gender and ethnic differences in the ways that family caregivers think about and approach research involvement, (b) socioeconomic disadvantages and ethnic differences have both independent and interactive effects on research participation, (c) physical and emotional "costs," as well as financial costs, of caregiver participation should be given more attention in informed consent procedures, and (d) agency collaboration for minority recruitment and retention requires continuous nurturing and sustained effort by all members of the research team.     

Home From Home? A Mixed-Methods Study of Relocation Within a Purpose-Built Retirement Community

Moving from a location where one has intimate knowledge of the physical and social aspects of space, with established daily routines, social networks, and attachment to place, can present challenges in later life. The literature supports the optimality of aging in place, and several studies point to the potentially detrimental effects of disruption, particularly in cases of involuntary relocation. Using both qualitative and quantitative data, this exploratory study aimed to examine the experiences and effects of relocation as part of a redevelopment of a community housing older people. Thirty-five interviews were completed with 17 participants across stages of the relocation process. Quantitative indicators of well-being were also compared between residents who had moved and those who had not over this period. No significant differences were found between movers and non-movers in the quantitative data. However, the qualitative data suggested that the relationship with the environment is more nuanced than the duality of optimal and detrimental. Individuals’ agency in relation to their environment was found to be mediated by such factors as lifestyle and daily routine, bereavement, sociospatial factors, and access to nature. The effects of relocation appear to be complex and mediated by a variety of individual and social factors.     

Non-Professionals in the Human Services,Edited by Charles Grosser,William E. Henry,and James G. Kelly. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass,Inc. Publishers, 1969.288 Pages, $8.50 Hardbound

As social work deals with human deprivation that is often a direct result of racism, social work educators need to be aware that Black students may approach the field with different insights and objectives than white students. Without understanding and appreciation for Black culture, social work educators may perpetuate racist policies and stereotypes of Blacks as clients. University and departmental policies that violate a student's right to grow and to assert a positive Black identity must be challenged. Social work educators should demonstrate a commitment to the development of future Black professionals.     

Community Mental Health and the Educational Dilemmas of the Mental Health Professions

Liberation theory from a Third World adult educator is seen as consistent with social work ideals and an avenue for social work education to travel in developing better learning and more motivated, knowledgeable, critical, responsible, and autonomous learners. Conscious choice can free professional education from its pedagogical overtones, recast it in an androgogical perspective, and help it produce learners who are creative subjects rather than receiving objects.     

THE IRRUPTION OF TRANCE IN CONTEMPORARY YORUBA THEATRE: THEATRE,WITCHCRAFT, AND SOCIAL FRAGMENTATION IN LAGOS,NIGERIA

The golden age of Yoruba folk opera, Yoruba travelling theatre, and Yoruba theatre is over and the brightly coloured trucks carrying the companies that cruised the Nigerian Federation up to the middle of the 1980s have certainly long since been dismantled. Although many actors, musicians, and directors have indeed moved from theatre to the flourishing home-video industry, a community of actors continues to present live performances that can be categorized as “neotraditional.” This genre of Yoruba theatre is undergoing a crisis in the context of an unrelenting economic recession in Nigeria that began in the early 1980s. This situation has released tensions that lead to a real and sadly all-too-justifiable sense of insecurity and to proliferating accounts of witchcraft attacks. The outcome has been a rise in violence manifested in the unleashing of the powers of witchcraft and enflaming relations between small rival groups hitherto unified under the sway of a salaried and—at least until the beginning of the 1980s—optimistic middle class. Yoruba neotraditional theatre that represents deities on stage that belong to “an invisible world” is playing with fire and, by conjuring up the powers of witchcraft, has in turn itself been bewitched.