The dynamics of immigrant welfare and labor market behavior

This paper analyzes transitions into and out of social assistance, unemployment, and employment. We estimate a dynamic multinomial logit model, controlling for endogenous initial condition and unobserved heterogeneity, using a large representative Swedish panel data set. The empirical results suggest that particularly refugee immigrants display a greater degree of “structural” state dependence than natives. The high welfare participation rates among refugee immigrants may be due to the existence of a “welfare trap”, while participation among natives and non-refugee immigrants is largely due to permanent unobserved characteristics. These results suggest that welfare reforms may have differential effects on refugee immigrants and natives.

The effect of work absence on wages and wage gaps in Sweden

We use unique information about short-term absence from the labor market among Swedish employees to investigate the potential wage loss attributed to this type of absence. A reform in the Swedish health insurance system was used as an instrument. The results indicate that women's wages are significantly reduced by work absence due to own sickness, while absence to care for a sick child has no significant wage effect. For men, we find no support for effects on wages from short-term absence. We also show that the distribution of the gender wage gap depends to a large extent on work absence. Received: 29 September 1998/Accepted: 16 April 1999     

Shared decision making from the service users’ perspective: A narrative study from community mental health centers in northern Norway

This article aims to contribute to the understanding of shared decision making as an important aspect of user involvement in mental health care from the perspectives of service users. A thematic analysis of interviews with 25 individual service users in three different community mental health centers in Norway identified different understandings of shared decision making. Shared decision making was identified as essential in four contexts: 1) during admission, 2) in individualized treatment, 3) in different treatment contexts, and 4) in user-professional relationships. We consider shared decision making to be intertwined with treatment from the service user perspective.     

Teachers' delivery skills and substance use prevention program outcomes: the moderating role of students' need for cognition and impulse decision making

The purpose of this study was to extend the literature in both substance use implementation and persuasive health communication by examining the extent to which students' need for cognition and impulsive decision-making moderated the relationship between teachers' classroom communication behavior and program outcomes in an evidence-based middle school substance use prevention curriculum. Participants included 48 teachers and their respective 7th grade students who participated in a randomized trial testing the effectiveness of personal coaching as a means to improve the quality with which teachers implemented the All Stars curriculum. Need for cognition and impulse decision-making were both associated with positive changes in lifestyle incongruence and commitments to not use substances for students whose teachers displayed greater interactive teaching. Further, need for cognition was associated with lower alcohol use rates while impulse decision making related to lower rates of marijuana use in classes with interactive teaching.     

Wall Street Scandals: The Myth of Individual Greed1

There is rarely an introductory text in sociology that does not begin with C. Wright Mills’s (1967) distinction between personal troubles and structural or public issues. To lack sociological imagination is to confuse between these two levels of analysis in trying to explain public issues in terms of personal troubles, or history in terms of the individual’s biography. “Troubles occur within the character of the individual and within the range of his immediate relations with others; Issues have to do with matters that transcend these local environments of the individual and the range of his inner life” ( Mills, 1967:8 ). Issues are generated in response to the dynamics of the social system and unfold within the larger structural and historical contexts where the character of the individual takes shape. Yet, the most popular explanation of the contemporary financial crisis with its disastrous social and economic consequences is personal greed. It is the greedy investment bankers, corrupt politicians, and unscrupulous lobbyists who are to take the brunt of the current economic meltdown in the United States. A few bad apples on Wall Street have created havoc on Main Street. Here, one may argue that greed that—if not kept in check—which seems to afflict almost everyone, transcending social class and status boundaries, may be a public issue—a structural problem—rather than a problem within the character of the individual. Not to be greedy within the contemporary social and economic system may be considered pathological, an instance of personal trouble.     

Perceived personal immunity: Beliefs about susceptibility to AIDS

Subjects aged 18–25 were surveyed regarding their beliefs about susceptibility to getting AIDS. Males generally viewed their probability of contracting AIDS under conditions of risky sexual behavior to be significantly lower than did females. Subjects’ risk status was classified based on their recent self‐reported condom use and the number of different partners with whom they had sexual intercourse during the past year. High‐risk males perceived themselves to be at significantly lower risk than others who engaged in the same practices. High‐risk females perceived themselves to be at equal risk to others who engaged in unprotected sex with numerous partners. Condom use was significantly related to subjects’ socioeconomic status. These findings indicate that information about factors that augment risk for contracting HIV may, in and of itself, be insufficient to foster adequate preventive behaviors among many sexually active individuals.     

Social Network Analysis and Critical Realism

Social network analysis (SNA) is an increasingly popular approach that provides researchers with highly developed tools to map and analyze complexes of social relations. Although a number of network scholars have explicated the assumptions that underpin SNA, the approach has yet to be discussed in relation to established philosophies of science. This article argues that there is a tension between applied and methods‐oriented SNA studies, on the one hand, and those addressing the social‐theoretical nature and implications of networks, on the other. The former, in many cases, exhibits positivist tendencies, whereas the latter incorporate a number of assumptions that are directly compatible with core critical realist views on the nature of social reality and knowledge. This article suggests that SNA may be detached from positivist social science and come to constitute a valuable instrument in the critical realist toolbox.     

Stories of strangers: Writing donor acquisition letters in the human services

This study explores the choices fundraisers make in crafting letters to acquire new donors for a human services organization, and whether the type of client served affects those choices. We use an experiment to control for organizational differences, and code the resulting letters written for elements identified in theory and practice, then perform an exploratory factor analysis to find patterns of co‐occurring variables. Writers tended to focus either on the quality of the organization or the unmet need in the community, but not both. Two of the factors, Universalism and Security, describe distinct personal value constructs that may reflect the preferences of the writer or the presumed preferences of the reader. Compared to participants writing for an older adult client base, participants writing for clients with mental illness were less likely to use a negative frame, more likely to use statistical evidence, and used lower expectations in describing successful client outcomes. Within letters, clients were described using three patterns: by describing a stranger who is worth helping because of intrinsic attributes; by describing a stranger who is worth helping because of their relationships within the social order; by describing the client group using facts and statistics, rather than an emotionally compelling story narrative.     

Grief and loss of religion: the experiences of four rural lesbians

The purpose of this four-person study was to discover the grief and loss experiences of rural lesbians using a phenomenological approach. A prominent theme that emerged from the interview data was grief and loss related to religion and a lesbian identity. Participants identified the need to modify their beliefs, the experience of rejection by church members or the church itself, and seeking acceptance.