Revenue diversification among non-profits

Although the non-profit literature has grown substantially, the issue of how revenue diversification affects non-profits has not been fully explored. This paper presents several disciplinary perspectives regarding the financing of non-profits, what determines their ability to diversify, and the consequent effects on their behaviour. It first develops an index for measuring revenue diversification and applies it to a national sample of charitable non-profits. The results indicate that, while the perception that most non-profits rely on a single revenue source is exaggerated, the institutions in our sample have somewhat concentrated revenue. Our findings also suggest that the activity of a non-profit and the proportion of its expenditures that it devotes to fund-raising affect its ability to diversify its revenues concentration. While a number of anomalies exist, the weight of our evidence suggests that diversified revenue sources are more likely to be associated with a strong financial position than are concentrated revenue sources. Researchers interested in studying the life-cycle of non-profits, the factors that give rise to stability and growth, and the constraints on non-profit behaviour would do well to consider the diversification index presented in this paper.     

An Experimental Multi-Lingual Health Program in Industry

Health programs too frequently reflect the needs and experience of middle class health professionals rather than the real concerns of at risk populations. The migrant industrial workforce is one population frequently overlooked. The experiment described here, a multi-lingual industrial health education program, was designed as a contribution to overcoming this discrepancy. The program was extensively evaluated and found to be moderately successful. Programs relevant to the industrial workforce are possible, but, as well as scientific and technical expertise, require skills in education, knowledge of industrial relations and awareness of and sympathy with the particular problems of migrant workers.     

Childbearing and family in remarriage

Proportional hazards models are used to test hypotheses about the effect of women’s prior childbearing on the probability of having a birth in remarriage and to analyze the effects of other factors. Results indicate that the number of children at the time of remarriage has no effect on childbearing probabilities, but the age of the youngest child has a significant effect. These findings support the view that having a child is important to confirm the marriage, but that individual and family life course factors also affect the decision to have a child in a remarriage.     

Book reviews

Clinical Interviewing and Counseling: Principles and Techniques. Golda Edinburg, Norman E. Zinberg and Wendy Kelman. (New York: Appleton‐Century‐Crofts, 1975.)

The Depressive Spectrum. Dean Schuyler. (New York: Jason Aronson, 1974.)

Masked Depression. Stanley Lesse. (New York: Jason Aronson, 1974.)

Clinical Prediction in Psychotherapy. Leonard Horwitz. (New York: Jason Aronson, Inc., 1974.)     

The Measurement and Evaluation of Social Attitudes in Two British Cohort Studies

This paper presents an empirical evaluation of the internal consistency and validity of six attitudes scales assessing left–right beliefs, political cynicism, antiracism, libertarian-authoritarian views, and gender equality (two versions) in two large nationally representative samples of the British population born in 1958 and 1970. In the 1958 National Child Development Study (NCDS) 10,827 participants completed a series of social attitudes items in 1991 at age 33 and again in 2000 at age 42. In 2000 at age 30, 11,114 participants of the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) completed a broadly similar set of items of which 8,906 participants had also completed a shorter version of the same social attitudes questionnaires 4 years earlier in 1996, at age 26. Based on the data from the two cohorts we conducted confirmatory analyses to evaluate the factor structure of the six social attitudes scales using Structural Equation Modelling. In addition we tested the predictive as well as concurrent validity of the scales by establishing associations within the scales across time and their associations with indicators of voting behaviour and political interest. All six attitudes scales have good internal reliability and factorial stability, and external validity, they are robust and consistent over time. The measures also have wide applicability for researchers interested in social attitudes and behaviour in times of social change.     

Child protection: An unreflective practice

This paper highlights the need for social work education to focus on the ideological, cultural and organisational influences that shape practitioner perspectives and determine case careers, particularly in the area of child protection. Using the findings from a case study on the processing of child abuse referrals made to a social work team in Ireland's largest health board region, this paper illustrates the dissonance between the 'official' child protection discourse and the complexities and dilemmas of everyday practice. It also highlights practitioners' apparent lack of awareness of the dynamics that determine the way in which decisions and assessments are reached. The need to encourage and facilitate social workers' use of theory as a means of addressing these complex areas is endorsed, and implications for educational programmes are discussed.