Public Participation and Claimsmaking: Evidence Utilization and Divergent Policy Frames in California's Ergonomics Rulemaking

Notice and comment provisions in agency rulemaking provide animportant mechanism for the public to contribute to policy.Yet there is limited research on how interest groups participatein this process. California's passage of an ergonomics standardin 1997, the only current state statute in the country, providesa useful, high salience policy case for examining public commentary.Between an initially proposed comprehensive standard and theenactment of a much weaker regulation occurred the largest publicresponse in California's state Occupational Safety and HealthAdministration history. Through a detailed content analysisof the notice and comment submissions we identify features ofparticipation and claimsmaking that differ between businessand nonbusiness submissions. Business groups were the largemajority of participants and also presented a disproportionateamount of evidence, using an "abstract-technical" policy frameto assert the illegitimacy of the ergonomics standard. Labor,public health organizations and private citizens representedless than one-third of the participants and relied primarilyon experiential information and a "concretized-moral" characterizationof policy issues in support of the standard. The existence ofthese distinct "interpretive communities" that mobilize differentresources raises questions about whether public commentary canfulfill its purported "democratic accountability" purpose aswell as underline the limitations of appealing to scientificexpertise for solving complex policy problems.     

Wage-Poor Mothers and Moral Economy

"You have to choose ... and what mother's choosing this jobover her child?"

This article explores the subaltern work andfamily care practices of 300 low-wage women. Although US welfarereform enforced the labor market as the sole route for familysupport, many, often single–mother, families remain wageimpoverished. Their work habits orbit around keeping childrensafe and defy market norms. Furthermore, in wage-poor Americaand beyond, this defiance is understood as morally legitimate,representing a hidden challenge to an economic ideology thatsubordinates humanity to the market.     

Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking: A Social Work Perspective on Misidentification,Victims, Buyers,Traffickers, Treatment,and Reform of Current Practice

Domestic minor sex trafficking (DMST) has been steadily on the rise in the United States, with estimates between 15,000 and 50,000 victims per year. Actual estimates of DMST victims are difficult to determine based on misidentification, conflicts between state and federal laws about age of consent and charges, perceptions of the victim, as well as lack of knowledge regarding the prevalence and dynamics of sex trafficking of minors. Oftentimes, child victims come from multi-problem homes and have already experienced abuse and neglect, which further complicates treatment and services. This article explores the emerging literature and defines the problem and identifies laws, statues, and definitions of the problem. It also reviews the literature on victim, buyer, and trafficker characteristics. Organized crime's role in this growing epidemic is explained as well as treatment options and recommendations for future social work practice at the micro-, mezzo-, and macro-levels.     

Testing Respite Effect of Work on Stress Among Mothers of Children with Special Needs

Extant research is ambivalent about whether or not working outside the home provides mothers of children with special needs a buffer against the stressful effects of caregiving. The empirical evidence of a respite effect is based primarily on small, non-probability samples. The study reported here used a large nationally representative sample of families from the National Survey of American Families (NSAF) and analysis that addressed the biasing effects of simultaneity between the dependent variable (parent stress) and employment. Results produced are consistent with a caregiver-specific respite effect from work, at least among mother caregivers of older children who were not concerned that working will have negative effects on their child’s well-being and who worked regular shifts in higher level occupations.     

THE IMPURITY OF REPRESENTATION AND THE VITALITY OF DEMOCRACY

This article compares the conceptions of democratic representation found in the work of Ernesto Laclau and Hanna Pitkin. Whereas Laclau takes Pitkin as his foil, I contend that her treatment of representation has much more in common with Laclau's than he gives her credit for. Pitkin made a bold critique of foundationalist notions of responsiveness and acknowledged representation's constitutive function. Yet, her antipathy to symbolic representation made Pitkin recoil from the most radical implications of her argument: she would see as a threat to democratic politics that which Laclau casts as its vitality. Laclau's work, then, does not merely refute Pitkin's but advances a line of argument that she set into motion.     

An assessment of the use of the continuity correction for sparse data in meta-analysis

A problem which occurs in the practice of meta-analysis is that one or more component studies may have sparse data, such as zero events in the treatment and control groups. Two possible approaches were explored using simulations. The corrected method, in which one half was added to each cell was compared to the uncorrected method. These methods were compared over a range of sparse data situations in terms of coverage rates using three summary statistics:the Mantel-Haenszel odds ratio and the dersimonian and Laird odds ratio and rate difference. The uncorrected method performed better only when using the Mantel-Haenszel odds ratio with very little heterogeneity present. For all other sparse data applications, the continuity correction performed better and is recommended for use in meta-analyses of similar scope     

Wives’ Tales: The Experience of Trans Partners

This article presents a collective account of a qualitative study on the subjective experience of six Caucasian female subjects, ranging in age from 38 to 63 years, who are coupled with a trans-person undergoing a gender transition by means of hormones and/or surgery. A psychoanalytic case-study design was used to collect in-depth and reflective data that were analyzed and interpreted. Findings across cases are discussed. A summary of the core implications is critical to the mental health field, not only to provide more effective clinical services to this population, but to help remedy the scarcity of literature available at present.