A cost containment program targeting home infusion drug therapy

A program was instituted to determine if retrospective, concurrent, and prospective analysis of home infusion therapy cases by a multidisciplinary team comprising clinicians and financial analysts would lead to cost reductions and cost-effective behavioral changes by providers. Actual invoices and prospective price quotes for infusion therapy were reviewed and compared to a database of "usual and customary" prices. The results were presented to providers with the intent of obtaining a reduction in prices for the services rendered or about to be rendered. As a result, $3,265,248 in short-term cost reductions were achieved, and $15,146,789 in long-term cost reductions are projected. Analysis resulted in average cost reductions of $2,247 and $10,424 respectively. Very significant cost reductions can be achieved through the use of a multidisciplinary team and a comprehensive pricing database for home infusion therapy.     

Education,work, and family formation in early adulthood

A multivariate analysis examined relationships among education, work, and family formation using data from the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972. A consensus has emerged among behavioral scientists that these three variables affect each other mutually, but until recently, methodological limitations have made it difficult to study these mutual effects. The present study attacked these difficulties by usingLISREL procedures. The most important findings, perhaps, are that, among women, both working and pursuing higher education exert substantial negative influences on marrying and becoming a parent. These influences are substantially stronger than. influences in the opposite direction. Therefore, these results imply that, for women, delaying childbearing is more a consequence of decisions to pursue other activities than it is a cause of such decisions. Among men, pursuing higher education negatively influenced family formation but working did not. The most notable difference between men and women, however, was that forming a family exerted a positive influence on working among men but not among women. Locus of control exerted little influence on any outcome.     

Sexual Harassment and the Construction of Ethnographic Knowledge

It is not uncommon for women researchers to experience sexualized interactions, sexual objectification, and harassment as they conduct fieldwork. Nevertheless, these experiences are often left out of ethnographers’ “tales from the field” and remain unaddressed within our discipline. In this article, we use women's experiences with harassment in the field to interrogate the epistemological foundations of ethnographic methodology within the discipline of sociology. Based on more than 50 qualitative interviews, we examine three “fixations” of contemporary ethnography that inform women ethnographers’ understandings of and reactions to harassment in the field. These fixations are solitude, danger, and intimacy. Our data show that these fixations not only put researchers in danger but also have implications for the construction of ethnographic knowledge. They contribute to silence surrounding sexual harassment, and are motivated by and reproduce androcentric norms that valorize certain types of fieldwork. We argue that acknowledging and analyzing experiences with harassment and other unwanted sexual attention in the field is part of a more fully developed understanding of ethnographic research itself.     

MEASURING QUALITY OF LIFE IN INFORMAL SETTLEMENTS IN SOUTH AFRICA

South African cities attract thousands of new residents every year in search of work and a better life. The housing backlog coupled with a shortage of housing subsidies means that for many South Africans there is no alternative but to live in informal housing and shack settlements. Informal settlements are therefore here to stay for the next decade and beyond. Given the importance of these residential areas, research needs to be undertaken to determine how to improve the lives of people living in shack settlements. This theme has received little dedicated attention by South African quality of life researchers in the past and the paper begins to address this by exploring the quality of life of informal dwellers in three distinct city areas in South Africa: Buffalo City, Durban, and Alexandra, Johannesburg. The paper investigates the factors that are most important in improving the quality of life of residents in informal housing as well as the main obstacles to a better quality of life. It uses regression analysis to obtain an understanding of the kinds of issues which shape quality of life in these areas and concludes by suggesting several research directions which would improve our knowledge of quality of life for informal settlement residents.     

“Sacrificing at the altar of tenure”: Assistant professors’ work/life management

Work/family scholars are increasingly paying attention to how professors manage their work responsibilities, mainly examining how women with children handle such duties. Virtually nothing is known about how male and female professors without children manage their work demands in relation to their personal lives. The author explores this topic through in-depth interviews with untenured tenure track assistant professors with and without children at two research universities in the U.S. Some participants prioritized work over other aspects of their lives whereas other participants exhibited a shared dedication to work and family. This research demonstrates that the academe's expectations of professors not only affect faculty with children, but others as well.     

Understanding Persistent Food Insecurity: A Paradox of Place and Circumstance

Survey data from a U.S. Department of Agriculture funded multi-state longitudinal project revealed a paradox where rural low-income families from states considered prosperous were persistently more food insecure than similar families from less prosperous states. An examination of quantitative and qualitative data found that families in the food insecure states were more likely to experience greater material hardship and incur greater housing costs than families in the food secure states. Families in the food insecure states, however, did not have lower per capita median incomes or lower life satisfaction than those in the food secure states. A wide range of strategies to cope with food insecurity reported by families in both food insecure and food secure states was examined using the Family Ecological Systems Theory. Families in the food insecure states used several risky consumption reduction strategies such as curbing their appetite and using triage. Families in the food secure states, on the other hand, employed positive techniques involving their human capital.

Remainers are nostalgic too: An exploration of attitudes towards the past and Brexit preferences

Nostalgia had a prominent place in the Brexit Referendum campaign, epitomized by Nigel Farage carrying around with him an old-fashioned blue British passport on the campaign trail. In this paper, we seek to examine British attitudes towards the past through a new survey instrument administered online in July and August 2018 (N = 3,000). We empirically establish two dimensions of nostalgia that are differentially associated with political preferences. We conclude that it is the substance of the nostalgia that matters, not the looking towards the past per se.     

Peripheral Stimulus Localization by 5‐ to 14‐Week‐Old Infants During Phases of Attention

This study examined the effect of attention in young infants on the saccadic localization of peripheral stimuli. Infants ranging in age from 5 to 14 weeks were tested using a peripheral stimulus detection paradigm. The presence of a central fixation stimulus decreased detection probability, particularly if attention was engaged with the central stimulus. Peripheral stimulus localization usually was accomplished with a single eye movement. When localization was accomplished by multiple eye movements, corrective saccades occurred most frequently and fixed‐amplitude hypometric saccades occurred less frequently. A decrease in the slope of the linear component of the main sequence was found from 5 to 11 weeks of age, and this decrease was independent of attention.