Why people feel crowded: An examination of objective and subjective crowding

Prior studies have found only a modest relationship between objective and subjective crowding, defying logic and commonsensical notions of why people feel crowded. Using data from a representative sample of Bangkok, Thailand, where the level of household crowding is four times that in western societies, we explore several possibilities of why this is the case. Examining seven different indicators of objective crowding, our analyses suggest that the modest relationship is not an artifact of measurement. Contrary to the assumption of prior investigations, the findings indicate that the objective-subjective crowding relationship is nonlinear and that there is a ceiling effect muting the impact of increased objective crowding. The analyses further suggest that the strength of the relationship is mitigated somewhat, with part of the feeling of being crowded accounted for by household circumstances, such as the degree of control an individual has over the use of household space.     

The Enduring Significance of Racism: Discrimination and Delinquency Among Black American Youth

Prominent explanations of the overrepresentation of Black Americans in criminal justice statistics focus on the effects of neighborhood concentrated disadvantage, racial isolation, and social disorganization. We suggest that perceived personal discrimination is an important but frequently neglected complement to these factors. We test this hypothesis with longitudinal data on involvement in general and violent juvenile delinquency in a sample of Black youth from a variety of communities in 2 states. We examine the direct effects of concentrated disadvantage and racial isolation and the direct and mediating effects of social organization, support for violence, and personal discrimination. Consistent with our hypothesis, perceived personal discrimination has notable direct effects on both general and violent delinquency and is an important mediator between neighborhood structural conditions and offending; moreover, its effects exceed those associated with neighborhood conditions.     

Psychometric analysis of the UK Health and Safety Executive's Management Standards work-related stress Indicator Tool

Abstract

Numerous tools have been developed that attempt to measure work-related stress and working conditions, but few practical instruments in the literature have been found to have a reliable psychometric factor structure. In the UK, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) Management Standards (MS) Indicator Tool is increasingly used by organizations to monitor working conditions that can lead to stress. In Health and Safety Executive (2004), a factor analysis was conducted demonstrating the reliability of the scales. However, the authors acknowledged that direct reassessment of the same factor structure was impossible as the questionnaire was split into two separate modules for data collection. Furthermore, the tool is designed to enable comparisons between as well as within organizations to take place, yet reliability has only previously been tested at the individual level. The current study is the first to examine the factor structure of the HSE MS Indicator Tool using organizational-level data. Data collected from 39 UK organizations (N=26,382) was used to perform a first-order Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) on the original 35-item seven-factor measurement scale. The results showed an acceptable fit to the data for the instrument. A second-order CFA was also performed to test if the Indicator Tool contains a higher order uni-dimensional measure of work-related stress. These findings also revealed an acceptable fit to the data, suggesting that it may be possible to derive a single measure of work-related stress. Normative data comprising tables of percentiles from the organizational data are provided to enable employers to compare their organizational averages against national benchmarks.     

Uncertainty and the Rise of the Work‐Family Dilemma

Existing research argues that women's wages, consumerism, and changing attitudes dismantled the male bread‐winner system. Families' economic need is dismissed with the suggestion that mothers' rhetoric of “need” was a smoke screen to defend against social stigma for working mothers. Drawing on biennial data from 1965 to 1987, I suggest that consumptive certainty of the 1950s and 1960s gave way to economic uncertainty in the 1970s and beyond. Economic uncertainty provided impetus, legitimacy, and justification for young families to adopt new work‐family arrangements. Hence, economic uncertainty is conceptualized as a real circumstance that substantiates families' reasonable perceptions of need.     

The protections of our privacy rights are under threat in Congress

As the executive director of the Pennsylvania Recovery Organizations Alliance, the statewide recovery community organization of Pennsylvania, I am alarmed by ongoing efforts occurring in Congress to erode our substance use disorder patient record privacy rights. There are sweeping changes being considered in Congress that would fundamentally erode our rights.     

Special Interests and/or New Right Economics? The Ideological Bases of Reform Party Support in Alberta in the 1993 Federal Election*

La faveur croissante que connaît le Parti réformiste auprès du public est d'ordre à transformer la scène politique canadienne. Dans le présent article, les auteurs soutiennent que les conditions du succès du Parti réformiste tiennent à des facteurs globaux, dont on peut égale-ment observer l'existence au cours des années 1980 et 1990 dans d'autres démocraties industrialisées avancées: la crise des dépenses de l'état-providence et la renaissance du conservatisme attenante. Néanmoins, si la crise fiscale a établi les conditions qui ont rendu possible la mise sur pied du Parti réformiste, ce sont surtout les traits populistes du projet qui lui ont attiré les votes. L'analyse des données d'un sondage de 1994 à l'échelle de la province de 1'Alberta met en lumière une différence prépondérante entre les individus qui ont reporté leur voix sur le Parti réformiste et ceux qui sont restés fidèles à leur parti: la conviction que certains groupes (special interests), exercent trop d'influence sur la politique du gouvernement. The recent growth in public support for the Reform Party has the potential to transform the Canadian political landscape. This paper argues that the conditions for Reform's success are broader factors also observed in other advanced industrial democracies in the 1980s and 1990s, namely the crisis of welfare-state expenditures and the attendant resurgence of conservatism. But while the fiscal crisis established the conditions that made Reform possible, it has been the populist elements of its project that have provided the strongest attraction for voters. Analysis of 1994 province-wide survey data from Alberta indicates that the belief that certain “special interests” have too much influence on government policy best differentiates those individuals who switched their allegiance to the Reform Party from those who maintained their previous party loyalties.     

Mothers and child care: policies,values and theories

Government expansion of child care services is based on the assumption that both parents are employed (the adult worker model) and make cost‐benefit calculations in choosing child care (the rational economic choice model). This paper addresses this assumption, based on research examining mothers' assessments of appropriate child care. These assessments involve complex moral and emotional decisions around their own and their children's needs, and differ between social groups. On this basis, we conclude that the assumptions underlying current child care expansion policy are inadequate, and that the mere expansion of services is not enough.     

Patterns of Conflict About Risky Technologies

This paper examines taxonomies for classifying risks and conflicts about risky technologies. First, we describe six levels of conflict that represent various " shades of gray" between purely factual and purely value laden conflicts in technology disputes. Subsequently, we survey several recent taxonomies of risks and hazards that were at least partly intended to clarify the nature of the public conflicts about technologies and their risks. After pointing out that non-risk features frequently shape technology debates, we develop a taxonomy of the disputes themselves, based on a collection of 162 cases. Our taxonomy of technological controversies is related to the recent risk taxonomies and to the different levels of conflict. It turns out that the different technological disputes create quite different levels of conflict ranging from mainly factual (consumer products, drugs) to extremely value laden (nuclear power, genetic engineering). Depending on the type of controversy and level of conflict we suggest alternative conflict management strategies.