The age old question, which comes first? A simultaneous test of children's savings and children's college-bound identity

This study has three goals: (1) to provide an extensive review of research on the assets/expectation relationship, (2) to provide a conceptual framework for how children's savings effects children's college-bound identity (children's college expectations are a proxy for children's college-bound identity), and (3) to conduct a simultaneous test of whether owning a savings account leads to college-bound identity or college-bound identity lead to owning a savings account using path analytic technique with Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). Our review reveals asset researchers theorize about college-bound identity in two distinct but compatible ways: college-bound identity as a “linking mechanism”, and college-bound identity as a mediator. However, there has been little theoretical development on the attitudinal effects of assets. In this study, we posit a conceptual framework for how children's savings affects children's college-bound identity. Findings from the simultaneous test of the assets/college-bound identity relationship suggest that savings has modest effect on college-bound identity and vice versa. A policy implication is that asset building policies that seek to build children's college-bound identity in addition to their savings may be more effective than policies that only seek to build children's savings.     

Measurement Error and the Effects of Unions on the Compensating Differentials for Fatal Workplace Risks

With essentially the same estimation methods and time period but using different UK data sets and risk measures, Sandy and Elliott (1996) found that nonunion male manual workers had a substantially higher fatal risk premium than union workers while Siebert and Wei (1994) found the opposite. This paper attempts to reconcile these conflicting results using the different measures of fatal risk employed in these two studies together on the same data set. The conflicting results are due to several types of measurement error. We find substantial miscoding in the employee-reported industry affiliation as well as larger errors-in-variables bias in the industry-based risk than in the occupation-based risk.     

Social movement in stages: a reply to Shultziner and Goldberg

This paper is a reply to Doron Shultziner and Sarah Goldberg's article The Stages of Mass Mobilization: Separate Phenomena and Distinct Causal Mechanisms. The article recognizes the theoretical contribution of the study, in particular the re‐introduction of the largely neglected stage approach in social movement studies. It then raises two major concerns related to how the authors narrow their approach to single episodes of mass mobilization and how definitively they distinguish movement stages.     

Obtaining cancer risk factor prevalence estimates in small areas: combining data from two surveys

Summary.  Cancer surveillance research requires accurate estimates of risk factors at the small area level. These risk factors are often obtained from surveys such as the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) or the Behavioral Risk Factors Surveillance System (BRFSS). The NHIS is a nationally representative, face-to-face survey with a high response rate; however, it cannot produce state or substate estimates of risk factor prevalence because the sample sizes are too small and small area identifiers are unavailable to the public. The BRFSS is a state level telephone survey that excludes non-telephone households and has a lower response rate, but it does provide reasonable sample sizes in all states and many counties and has publicly available small area identifiers (counties). We propose a novel extension of dual-frame estimation using propensity scores that allows the complementary strengths of each survey to compensate for the weakness of the other. We apply this method to obtain 1999–2000 county level estimates of adult male smoking prevalence and mammogram usage rates among females who were 40 years old and older. We consider evidence that these NHIS-adjusted estimates reduce the effects of selection bias and non-telephone coverage in the BRFSS. Data from the Current Population Survey Tobacco Use Supplement are also used to evaluate the performance of this approach. A hybrid estimator that selects one of the two estimators on the basis of the mean-square error is also considered.     

Reconciling autonomy and community: the paradoxical role of HRD

This paper examines the competing discourses of autonomy and community, so long a concern to social theorists but which we argue have been under-theorised by researchers of HRD. We argue that it is this tension, embedded in the assumptions and behaviours of those working within organisations, which has informed a growing concern by HRD practitioners to balance the needs of the individual with those of organisations, a preoccupation which dates at least to the appropriation by organisations of the socio-psychological theories of the human relations movement. The paper examines the most recent attempts to reconcile autonomy and community through the emergence of the new managerial discourses of spirituality and organisational citizenship. We conclude that this quest is inevitably elusive, based as it is on assumptions of trust within organisation relationships which are increasingly challenged by the short term nature of our post-bureaucratic organisational relationships and the fragmentation, instability and the blurring of boundaries. We conclude with a call for HRD to take on the mantle of critical educator and moral conscience raiser to encourage a deeper engagement with social, existential and philosophical questions that lie at the heart of organisational life.     

Dirty money: Is there a wage premium for working in a pollution intensive industry?

Within a compensating wage differential framework we investigate whether there is a wage premium for working in a pollution intensive industry. Our results for the economy as a whole suggest a small wage premium of approximately one quarter of one percent associated with the risk of working in a dirty job. This premium rises to over fifteen percent for those individuals who work in one of the five dirtiest industries. We also find evidence of a fatal risk wage premium, providing estimates of the value of a statistical life of between ￡12 million and ￡19 million (2000 prices).     

Do Legacy Industrial Sites Produce Legacy Effects in Ethnic and Racial Residential Settlement? Environmental Inequality Formation in Rhode Island’s Industrial Core1

This study advances understanding of environmental inequality by examining its production through the interaction of two ubiquitous and ongoing urban-ecological processes: industrial land-use changes and changing patterns of residential segregation. We employ longitudinal data from the Rhode Island Directory of Manufacturers (1953–2012) and tract-level US Census data measured at four panel-years (1980, 1990, 2000, and 2010) to study the effects of these interactions in Rhode Island’s historical industrial cities of Providence, Pawtucket, and Central Falls. Spatial patterning analysis and hybrid spatial panel modeling of residential exposure to active and legacy industrial sites in relation to ongoing racial and industrial change reveal two novel findings. First, we find a “legacy effect,” suggesting that the spatial organization of industrial activities prior to the study period has measurable impacts on patterns of residential segregation in later decades. Our results also indicate that over the study period Latinx and African-American residents have become increasingly less likely to bear disproportionate impacts of active manufacturing sites, despite very different spatial patterns of population growth. This is strong evidence that environmental inequality formation is a variable process in which historically distinct pathways can lead to similarly disproportionate exposure to environmental risk.     

Research encounters,reflexivity and supervision

Reflexivity in qualitative and ethnographic social science research can provide a rich source of data, especially regarding the affective, performative and relational aspects of interviews with research subjects. This paper explores by means of three case examples different ways of accessing and using such reflexivity. The examples are drawn from an empirical psycho-social study into the identity transitions of first-time mothers in an inner-city multicultural environment. Fieldnotes and supervision were used to engage with researcher subjectivity, to enhance the productive use of reflexivity and to address the emotional work of research. The methodology of the supervision was psychoanalytic, in its use of a boundaried frame and of psychoanalytic forms of noticing oneself, of staying engaged emotionally as well as creating a reflective distance. The examples illustrate how this can enhance the knowledge gained about the research subjects.