Union administrative practices: A comparative analysis

In response to growing challenges, many labor organizations are reevaluating themselves in an effort to become more efficient and effective. Their efforts, however, are limited by their frames of reference. Seldom do unions compare practices across labor movements. To expand these frames of reference we compare union administrative practices in three countries: Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Two specific areas of union administration are examined — human resource/personnel practices and strategic planning. Results from these countries are presented and analyzed to identify and explain similarities and differences.     

The Autodriven interview: A photographic viewfinder into children's experience

As children have been increasingly conceptualized as active participants in their own social worlds, researchers have sought methods able to reveal children's perspectives as arbiters of their own experience. In an autodriven interview, photographs of the child's experiences serve as the basis for a child‐directed interview. Studies using this method illustrate its benefit for revealing child‐relevant content. In a study of childhood chronic illness, autodriving encouraged the child's free recall, sense of personal control, and ability to reflect upon photographed events.     

Cue-Reactive Rationality,Visual Imagery and Volitional Control Predict Cue-Reactive Urge to Gamble in Poker-Machine Gamblers

Poker-machine gamblers have been demonstrated to report increases in the urge to gamble following exposure to salient gambling cues. However, the processes which contribute to this urge to gamble remain to be understood. The present study aimed to investigate whether changes in the conscious experience of visual imagery, rationality and volitional control (over one’s thoughts, images and attention) predicted changes in the urge to gamble following exposure to a gambling cue. Thirty-one regular poker-machine gamblers who reported at least low levels of problem gambling on the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI), were recruited to complete an online cue-reactivity experiment. Participants completed the PGSI, the visual imagery, rationality and volitional control subscales of the Phenomenology of Consciousness Inventory (PCI), and a visual analogue scale (VAS) assessing urge to gamble. Participants completed the PCI subscales and VAS at baseline, following a neutral video cue and following a gambling video cue. Urge to gamble was found to significantly increase from neutral cue to gambling cue (while controlling for baseline urge) and this increase was predicted by PGSI score. After accounting for the effects of problem-gambling severity, cue-reactive visual imagery, rationality and volitional control significantly improved the prediction of cue-reactive urge to gamble. The small sample size and limited participant characteristic data restricts the generalizability of the findings. Nevertheless, this is the first study to demonstrate that changes in the subjective experience of visual imagery, volitional control and rationality predict changes in the urge to gamble from neutral to gambling cue. The results suggest that visual imagery, rationality and volitional control may play an important role in the experience of the urge to gamble in poker-machine gamblers.     

Use of Quality-Adjusted Life Year Weights with Dose-Response Models for Public Health Decisions: A Case Study of the Risks and Benefits of Fish Consumption

Risks associated with toxicants in food are often controlled by exposure reduction. When exposure recommendations are developed for foods with both harmful and beneficial qualities, however, they must balance the associated risks and benefits to maximize public health. Although quantitative methods are commonly used to evaluate health risks, such methods have not been generally applied to evaluating the health benefits associated with environmental exposures. A quantitative method for risk-benefit analysis is presented that allows for consideration of diverse health endpoints that differ in their impact (i.e., duration and severity) using dose-response modeling weighted by quality-adjusted life years saved. To demonstrate the usefulness of this method, the risks and benefits of fish consumption are evaluated using a single health risk and health benefit endpoint. Benefits are defined as the decrease in myocardial infarction mortality resulting from fish consumption, and risks are defined as the increase in neurodevelopmental delay (i.e., talking) resulting from prenatal methylmercury exposure. Fish consumption rates are based on information from Washington State. Using the proposed framework, the net health impact of eating fish is estimated in either a whole population or a population consisting of women of childbearing age and their children. It is demonstrated that across a range of fish methylmercury concentrations (0-1 ppm) and intake levels (0-25 g/day), individuals would have to weight the neurodevelopmental effects 6 times more (in the whole population) or 250 times less (among women of child-bearing age and their children) than the myocardial infarction benefits in order to be ambivalent about whether or not to consume fish. These methods can be generalized to evaluate the merits of other public health and risk management programs that involve trade-offs between risks and benefits.     

Are gamblers more likely to commit crimes? An empirical analysis of a nationally representative survey of US young adults

We examine the relationship between gambling and criminal behaviour using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Our data set includes survey responses from 6145 young adults. The results of our empirical analysis are consistent with the gambling literature in which it is suggested that higher gambling losses increase the propensity to commit crime. This study complements the current literature, as our data and empirical analysis allow us to control for many variables that have been neglected in previous studies, including various forms of gambling. Our findings provide useful information on the general relationship between gambling behaviour and criminal behaviour.     

TECHNICAL AND INSTITUTIONAL STATES: Loose Coupling in the Human Rights Sector of the World Polity

While human rights treaties have become increasingly popular over the past quarter century, there has not been a corresponding improvement in human rights practices. This discrepancy implies that a country's formal pledge to uphold human rights principles is "loosely coupled" from its actual performance. In this study, I develop a model of loose coupling based on organizational research and apply it to the human rights sector of the world polity. Empirically, I identify a set of institutional states whose human rights practices fall short of their treaty commitments, as well as a set of technical states whose practices exceed their commitments. Analyzing an unbalanced data set with a maximum of 755 observations across 167 countries during the 1975 to 2000 period, I use random effects models to predict a state's location on the Human Rights Decoupling Index (HRDI). The findings illustrate the importance of several organizational concepts for predicting a state's HRDI score. In particular, the analyses reveal the countervailing effects of globalization. While economic globalization (i.e., trade and foreign investment) is associated with the technical (positive) end of the HRDI, cultural globalization (i.e., memberships in international organizations) is associated with the institutional (negative) end.     

Role-Taking Accuracy in Medical Encounters: A Test of two Theories

Abstract

This paper tests five hypotheses derived from two contrasting theoretical perspectives on role-taking accuracy: a social contact theory and an institutional resource theory. We investigate how well doctors and patients perceive one another's perspectives in a medical encounter. The cumulative weight of the data supports the proposed social contact theory. Increased contact between residents and patients, as reflected in physician's year in residency, contributes to more accurate role-taking on the part of physicians. Conditions of social compatibility between doctors and patients vis a vis gender or race lead to more accurate role-taking. Finally, personal characteristics are better predictors of role-taking accuracy than institutional status variables such as type of residency training program or doctor's year in residency status.     

Family Ties and Young Fathers' Engagement in Cape Town,South Africa

Young South African fathers are often engaged in their children's lives even if they do not live together. Using longitudinal data on children (n = 1,209) from the Cape Town area, the authors show that although only 26% of young fathers live with their children, 66% of nonresidential fathers maintain regular contact, and 61% provide financial support. The father–child relationship, however, is embedded in broader family ties. The type of father–mother relationship is strongly associated with whether fathers coreside with their children but not with fathers' contact with nonresidential children. Close mother and maternal grandmother bonds reduce the likelihood that fathers live with their children, whereas close ties between fathers and paternal grandmothers increase the chance that fathers visit nonresidential children. Family ties do not affect fathers' financial contributions, which are driven by men's current economic situation. These findings illustrate that father–child relationships are best understood in the context of interacting family systems.     

Integrating the older/special needs adoptive child into the family

This qualitative, grounded theory study investigated 11 families who reported having successfully integrated into their family unit at least one older/special needs adoptee. The theory that emerged through the constant comparative methodology consisted of two categories (Decision to Adopt and Adjustment) and a core category (Developing a Sense of Family). The two categories and core category comprised a process that was informed by the Family Narrative Paradigm and culminated in the successful integration of the child or children into the existing family unit. Parental perceptions that appeared to facilitate this process included: (a) finding strengths in the children overlooked by previous caregivers, (b) viewing behavior in context, (c) reframing negative behavior, and (d) attributing improvement in behavior to parenting efforts.