Making the Randomized Response Technique Work

The ability of the randomized response technique to obtain sensitiveinformation on surveys was compared to two other methods involvingself-administered questionnaires. Using a national probabilitysample, and extending upon a number of developmental changeswhich have evolved over the years, the randomized response techniqueproved to be decidedly superior to the other methods.     

Demographic and Organizational Variables That Affect Southeastern College and University Student Health Promotion

Abstract

This study examined the relationship between demographic and organizational variables and college student health promotion efforts. Two hundred and forty-one college administrators from 14 southern states were surveyed to determine factors that may affect college student health promotion programming. Enrollment, tuition, affiliation, and highest degree offered were the demographic variables that were examined. The organizational variables were goals, control, motivation, interaction, and decision making. The methods of gathering information regarding student health problems, the kinds of health promotion programs offered, the methods of publicizing the programs, and the extent of student participation in health promotion programs were the dependent variables.

The statistical tests for the effects of the demographic and organizational variables on student health promotion efforts indicate that a relationship does exist. Combined multiple regression analysis equations that include all of the organizational variables demonstrated graphically the effects of interaction among the independent organizational variables and the dependent variables. These combined equations were better predictors of student health promotion programs and services than any of the organizational variables taken separately. Future studies of the factors that affect student participation in health promotion programs, the extent of student participation, and the effects of a student participation should be conducted.     

Shifting global supply networks and fast fashion: made in Turkey for Marks & Spencer

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was noted that retailers in Britain had started providing increased variety and fashionability to their customers, had added mid‐season purchasing to their previous two‐season calendars, and that a high fashion and low price ‘throwaway market’ had appeared on the retail scene. Since then mid‐season purchasing has evolved into purchasing throughout the year; and the ‘throwaway market’ (now called fast fashion) has become almost the norm. Here we revisit one of those British retailers (Marks & Spencer) together with its Turkish suppliers and observe a trend towards the diffusion of design capabilities to suppliers that is more widespread than is suggested in the literature. We also consider the question of how most appropriately to conceptualize the nature of these retailer‐ supplier relations in today's circumstances. We especially look into the manner in which these relations are reflected in price negotiations, the eventual distribution of the value‐added, and the nature of everyday interactions such as accreditation and reclamation practices. We conclude that even though Turkish suppliers seem to be successfully upgrading into design–a high value‐added activity–the question of whether or not this development has entailed a renegotiation of power between retailer and supplier remains a complicated one.     

Institutional Infrastructure and Economic Performance: Dynamic Panel Data Evidence

This paper attempts to empirically investigate the link between institutional quality and economic performance in a group of 72 countries during 1980–2001, using dynamic panel data analysis. Five institutional indicators that represent the overall institutional infrastructures of an economy are employed, namely corruption, rule of law, bureaucracy, repudiation of contracts and risk of expropriation. The empirical results demonstrate that institutions’ variables are statistically significant determinants of economic performance. The findings also suggest that the effects of institutional quality vary according to the level of economic development, where institutions are more responsive in the low-income and middle-income countries. In terms of specific effect of institutional development, the results reveal that the higher level of rule of law is most potent in delivering long-run economic benefits.     

Michael Polanyi and the sociology of a free society

Michael Polanyi’s defense of freedom in science and society conflicts in major ways with Weber (process of rationalization, value neutrality of sociologists), Popper (objective knowledge, open society), and technological or oppositional sociology. Polanyi rejects positivism, utilitarianism, and Marxism, and defends freedom as a necessary condition for pursuit of spiritual ideals such as truth, justice, charity, and tolerance. Half truths about science seen as rejecting tradition, faith, authority, values, and the subjective, have helped bring valuable social results, but in the form taken by radical philosophical skepticism (doubt), also called objectivism, they also threaten freedom itself. A more truthful account is needed. Scientists and citizens who would maintain a free society are morally responsible persons, joined together in quest of truth and certain other ideals, demanding of themselves and each other that they be faithful to that quest. Polanyi’s thought has connections with that of Shils, and has implications for what Shils calls a consensual sociology. Louis H. Swartz teaches law, and is interested in the development of sociological theory and legal sociology, building upon the contributions of Polanyi and Shils.     

UNEMPLOYMENT AND FINANCIAL CONSTRAINTS FACED BY SMALL FIRMS

A distinguishing feature of small firms is that most small business owners work for themselves and only employ relatives and friends. We examine conditions under which this labor market practice is an economic outcome and consider the link between this outcome and unemployment. The model is motivated by empirical evidence that suggests that small firms are subject to financial constraints that are supported by information asymmetries. I show that, in a constrained equilibrium, sole proprietorship and unemployment arise from an information imperfection in the credit market that makes infeasible the consummation of mutually beneficial contracts in the labor market.     

“A Community of Communities”– Catholic Communitarianism and Societal Crises in Ireland, 1890s–1950s1

Abstract This article argues that discourse on community as a socio‐political problem needs to be located within historical, institutional, and socio‐structural contexts if it is to be properly understood. In particular, it suggests that the role of religion in promoting forms of communitarian discourse and practice needs to be given greater attention than it has hitherto received within the social sciences. The article pursues this argument through examination of the religious discourse on community cultivated and promoted by the Catholic Church in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By providing an analysis of its role in Catholic responses to three major socio‐political crises in Ireland between the 1890s and 1960s, the paper suggests that not only does socio‐religious discourse on community constitute a powerful alternative to secular social‐scientific discourses, but that such discourse is particularly effective in helping to constitute specific groups as communities, given favourable sociological conditions.