What's green about the 1996 award-winning school districts: A comparison of Indiana's districts containing Blue Ribbon winners with 30 randomly selected Indiana school districts

The relationship between spending on education and equal opportunity has been a subject of debate for several decades. This study aims to shed light on this debate by examining correlations between the distribution of Blue Ribbon awards to Indiana middle and high schools and per pupil expenditure. Based on criteria that include curricula, instruction, school climate, leadership, community support, goal setting and attainment, success with all students, skill development, and character education, Blue Ribbon School awards are a recognition of outstanding achievement given by the federal government. Using total federal, state, and local expenditures as the basis for comparison, we found that the federal government did not select more wealthy schools than poor schools for the Indiana Blue Ribbon School awards. However, there was a large difference in the expenditures per pupil in the Indiana districts with Blue Ribbon schools vs. the 30 randomly selected Indiana districts without Blue Ribbon schools. Total local sources were significantly greater in Blue Ribbon school districts than in non-Blue Ribbon school districts. A discussion of items related to the power, prestige, and wealth of the award-winning schools is included.     

After a Disaster: Lessons in Survey Methodology from Hurricane Katrina

In 2005, the National Science Foundation funded a number of projects to study the impact of Hurricane Katrina. The current article provides an overview of several research approaches used to conduct post-Katrina research. Each method had some advantages and disadvantages. The post-disaster context meant that experience from traditional survey methods often did not apply. Comparisons of advantages and disadvantages associated with each sampling method serve to inform future post-disaster research and illuminate the limits of classical research methods.     

The relationship between burnout and risk-taking in workplace decision-making and decision-making style

This study aimed to investigate what decision-making styles might be exhibited by employees who experience burnout. Using a Work Risk Inventory (WRI), developed for this study, which included generic workplace scenarios, it was also explored whether such employees take relatively more risky decisions. Risk was conceptualised as the adoption of decisions that threaten one’s reputation at work, job performance and job security. The mediating effect of the likelihood and seriousness of the consequences of the worst that could happen in each given scenario on the relationships between dimensions of burnout and risk-taking was also tested. A total of 262 employees in various occupations completed an online survey, including measures on burnout, decision-making styles and the WRI. As predicted, dimensions of burnout – exhaustion, cynicism and professional inefficacy – correlated significantly with avoidant decision-making and negatively with rational decision-making. The seriousness of the consequences of the worst-case scenario occurring mediated the relationship between professional inefficacy and risk-taking. In the context of identifying mechanisms by which burnout leads to risky decision-making, the findings suggest that employees’ sense of professional inefficacy determines their risky decision-making. The contribution to theory and implications for practice are discussed.     

A Social Choice Lemma on Voting Over Lotteries with Applications to a Class of Dynamic Games

We prove a lemma characterizing majority preferences over lotteries on a subset of Euclidean space. Assuming voters have quadratic von Neumann–Morgenstern utility representations, and assuming existence of a majority undominated (or “core”) point, the core voter is decisive: one lottery is majority-preferred to another if and only if this is the preference of the core voter. Several applications of this result to dynamic voting games are discussed.This paper was completed after Jeff Banks’s death. John Duggan is deeply indebted to him for his friendship and his collaboration on this and many other projects.     

Acyclic social choice from finite sets

This paper characterizes acyclic preference aggregation rules under various combinations of monotonicity, neutrality, decisiveness, and anonymity, in the spirit of Nakamura's (1979) Theorem on the core of simple games. Each of these characterizations can be seen to follow from Ferejohn and Fishburn's (1979) result on acyclic aggregation rules assuming only independence of irrelevant alternatives. We then state as corollaries to these characterizations extant results such as Sen's (1970) liberal paradox, Blau and Deb's (1977) theorem on the existence of vetoers, and Brown's (1975) theorem on the non-emptiness of the collegium.I thank David Austen-Smith, Michel Le Breton, Maurice Salles, and two anonymous referees for numerous enlightening conversations and comments. I also thank the National Science Foundation and Sloan Foundation for generous financial assistance.     

The validity of assessing mental health needs with social indicators.

Selection of the appropriate number and types of social indicators for use in mental health planning has been a perennial problem. Social indicators have been associated with several concepts (quality of life, community disorganization, populations at risk) of varying relevance for planning mental health services, and abstracting social indicators from these conceptual domains poses a variety of validity issues. The issues are discussed, and the viability of social indicators in mental health planning is reexamined.     

Employment transitions for clubhouse members

Using a longitudinal dataset which followed 2195 individuals employed in 3379 separate job placements over a four-year period, this paper explores movement between the employment supports, [Transitional (TE), Supported (SE), and Independent Employment (IE)], offered by clubhouses. Sixty-four percent of employed members held only one job (N=1395) and 36% held multiple jobs during the study (N=791). Patterns of movement were consistent for transitions between the first and second job and subsequent transitions. Forty-six percent of individuals holding multiple jobs moved from one employment type to another. When movement occurred clubhouse members were significantly more likely to move from employment types offering more supports to those that offer less supports.     

Reduction of Face‐to‐Face Contact Hours in Foundation Research Courses: Impact on Students' Knowledge Gained and Course Satisfaction

This study investigated the impact of reducing the number of face‐to‐face contact hours in a Masters of Science in Social Work (MSSW) foundation research course in an urban school of social work on students' knowledge gained and course satisfaction. A quasi‐experimental pretest/posttest comparison group design was used to test the following hypothesis: reducing the number of face‐to‐face contact hours will not negatively impact knowledge gain and course satisfaction in a foundation research course. The findings of this study suggest that reducing the number of face‐to‐face contact hours does not negatively affect student learning as both the comparison and the experimental group demonstrated an increase in foundation research knowledge. The level of course satisfaction was influenced by the number of hours completed in the program, age, and the number of hours worked in paid employment. Students who are especially vulnerable are younger students who have completed less course hours. They tend to struggle at the beginning to get used to new technology as part of their educational experience. This paper demonstrates that it is no longer ‘if’ web‐based and distance learning technologies are appropriate for social work education but rather ‘when’ and the degree to which their integration yields greatest educational value.