Effects of instructions and verbal modeling in a survey interview setting

The effects of two interviewing procedures, Instructions and Verbal Modeling, on the reporting of health information in a survey interview setting were evaluated. The theoretical basis for selecting these procedures was derived from a conceptualization of the cognitive requirements for effective reporting. Two main dependent variables were used: number of health conditions reported, and number of ideas reported. An experimental sample design was employed, with the sample restricted to white females aged 18–64 yr, living in several towns and cities of a large metropolitan area.Results indicate various mediating effects of educational level and subjective health rating; and implications of the study for research on interviewing methodology, as well as on the cognitive and motivational aspects of reporting performance, are discussed.     

Multi-terminal vehicle-dispatch algorithm

This paper introduces the Multi-Terminal Sweep Algorithm, a heuristic algorithm for obtaining an approximate solution to the multiple terminal vehicle-dispatch problem. The procedure determines a set of routes by which vehicles from two or more terminals can service a collection of demand points so that the total distance traveled is kept near to the minimum. This solution also satisfies constraints on the vehicle load and on the length of each route. Application of the algorithm to eleven multiple terminal vehicle-dispatch problems shows that near-optimal solutions to large-scale problems can be found in a reasonable amount of computer time.     

Collective citizenship: From citizenship and mental health to citizenship and solidarity

Although the concept of citizenship is a widely used theoretical framework within political philosophy, its use in the field of mental health remains underexplored. Within this context, citizenship emphasises the social inclusion and participation of people who are marginalized and offers a more social and relational view of services and support for people with mental health problems than has been common in mental health systems of care. At the same time, however, the citizenship approach has operated in the context of systems of care in the United States that favour highly individualized conceptions of, and approaches to, care, and these systems of care operate in the social and political context of highly individualized concepts of the citizen. In this article building on the work of other citizenship scholars, we argue that a collective form of citizenship, grounded in the 5Rs framework, holds the individual and collective in creative tension. Furthermore, the paper applies this model to the domain of mental health, where people are treated in individualistic ways and experience marginalisation, making the collective dimension imperative and promoting participation, empowerment and the contribution for social change to people with mental health problems. Our theoretical framework of collective citizenship, while geared toward the needs of persons with mental health problems, also contributes to recent citizenship theory on the inclusion of marginalized, stigmatised, and excluded groups. We illustrate the application of this approach through an ethnographic-participant observation case study of a collective citizenship group with which we are associated.     

Assessing the Impact of Population Dynamics on Poverty Measures: A Decomposition Analysis

Social Indicators Research - Reducing income inequality is one of the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals recently announced by United Nations. A relative poverty concept adopted by...     

President Bush's image repair discourse on Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans and the surrounding area on August 29, 2005. This storm was devastating, causing death, injury, dislocation, and massive property damage. President Bush came under fire for the apparently slow and inept federal response. On September 15 President Bush gave a speech to repair his image. He employed three principal strategies: bolstering, defeasibility, and corrective action. An evaluation of how these strategies were used in his persuasive message judged his image repair effort to be largely ineffective. Bolstering did not counteract the slow response (e.g., Bush waited days to visit the area). Defeasibility is risky for a president to use because it explicitly portrays him as unable to solve the problem. Corrective action was too little (often proposals rather than direct action—and proposals with important unanswered questions) too late. Evidence of the public reaction is consistent with this unfavorable evaluation.     

Collective Bargaining and Community College Faculty: What Is the Wage Impact?

Studies that measure the impacts of collective bargaining on the salary of faculty in two-year colleges are limited. Most studies of faculty unions have used data that combine faculty in both two-year and four-year institutions. Recent work has demonstrated that past estimates of the impacts of unions on full-time faculty salaries in higher education suffer from multiple data, methodological, and statistical problems. This paper addresses these deficiencies, and the results support the claim that collective bargaining increases faculty salaries in two-year institutions, though by less than previously documented.     

Understanding Consumer Attitudes Toward Food Technologies in Canada

This article reports a study on consumer attitudes to 21 food and nonfood technologies in Canada. The study involves repertory grid interviews with 36 food consumers, the data from which are analyzed using generalized Procrustes analysis. Results highlight the role of perceived risk and perceived benefit in determining the acceptability of the technologies, with individual technologies lying along a continuum between the two. For technology as a whole and the 21 specific technologies, the perceived risk and perceived benefit constructs were the dominant determinants of consumer acceptability. While perceptions of perceived risk and perceived benefit differed between individual respondents, there were very limited consistent relations with a range of sociodemographic variables.