Book Review: Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Robert D. Putnam. Simon and Shuster,New York, 2000

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations -     

The industrial division of labor among immigrants and internal migrants to the Los Angeles economy

This study examined the industrial division of labor among immigrants and in-migrants in the Los Angeles, California, metropolitan area. It addresses debates about channeling of new arrivals into jobs among similar ethnic groups and human capital views. Data were obtained from the 1990 Census on resident native-born, resident foreign-born, in-migrants, and recent immigrants who arrived during 1985-90. Light and Rosenstein's (1995) concepts of groups and their resources were used to organize ideas about ethnic networks and their effectiveness in channeling migrant workers into 15 industrial sectors. Sectoral differences were revealed with the familiarity index of dissimilarity. Findings reveal that social networks were the strongest for Koreans, who supplied work for recent arrivals in the same sectors as Korean-born residents, regardless of education. Mexican new arrivals were less likely to work in the same sectors as their resident Mexican counterparts. Mexican networks placed new arrivals in durable manufacturing in the 1960s and 1970s when it was a key source of employment. By the 1980s and 1990s, the economy shifted and employment went down in durable manufacturing. Mexicans thus found employment elsewhere. Native White and Black in-migrants had the strongest channeling into same sector jobs. This is attributed to the small streams, the ability of the labor market to absorb these workers, and the availability of job vacancies among native out-migrants. Filipino migrants had similar patterns as Whites and Blacks. Mexican and Central American residents had more inter-ethnic competition over jobs than Whites or Blacks.     

UNDERSTANDING AND TREATING POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER SYMPTOMS IN FEMALE PARTNERS OF VETERANS WITH PTSD

Studies of post-traumatic stress disorder have focused primarily on veterans, generally ignoring their female partners (wives or girlfriends). recently, clinicians have begun to identify PTSD-like symptoms in these female partners, but the literature describing this phenomenon has been limited. This paper addresses the fact that women in long-term relationships with veterans suffering from PTSD commonly experience PTSD-like psychiatric symptoms themseoves. These wonem's symptoms and issues they face in their relationships with their veteran partners are described. Conceptual explanations of and causal factors for these women's symptoms are presented, followed by discussion of treatment approaches and issues.     

Stress in Social Services: Mental Wellbeing, Constraints and Job Satisfaction

Correspondence to Margaret Coffey, Liverpool Hope University College, Room AEW 098, Hope Park, Liverpool L16 9JD, UK. E-mail: coffeym{at}hope.ac.uk Summary The public sector is facing an impending shortage of staff,because young people no longer want to work in it and nearlya third of its workforce is over 50 years of age. Staff workingwithin the public sector report that stress is the biggest singlefactor affecting their decision to leave. This research notereports the findings of a recent study carried out in two socialservice departments in the north-west of England. The primaryaim of the research was to explore work-related stress, usinga ‘problem diagnosis tool’ to understand the stressorsexperienced by social services staff, and to inform the developmentof interventions aimed at reducing and/or eliminating them.This study used in-depth interviewing to develop a questionnaireincorporating a variety of measures to assess potential stressorsand mental well-being. The questionnaire response rate was 33per cent (n = 1234) and the results demonstrated statisticallysignificant differences between staffing grades. Staff workingwith children and families reported the highest levels of absenteeism,poorest well-being, and highest level of organizational constraints.Job satisfaction was low compared with established norms forvarious occupational groups. This grounded research baselineis a crucial step to inform specifically designed and targetedinterventions, which can be effectively evaluated from thisbaseline position.     

Reports of childhood sexual abuse by adolescents and young adults: stability over time

The consistency of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) reporting was explored in this study. Two-hundred seventeen adolescents and young adults (ages 14-24) enrolled in urban health care clinics completed self-report questionnaires assessing CSA and other problem behaviors at enrollment and at 7 months. Results indicated that the stability of CSA self-report at two time points was poor (58% consistent nonreporters of CSA, 20% consistent reporters, 22% inconsistent reporters). Consistent and inconsistent reporters were differentiated on risk measures. Adolescents who endorsed more items from the CSA scale were five times more likely to be consistent reporters. In sum, adolescent CSA reporting was quite inconsistent over time. Using multi-item scales and assessing CSA at two time points enhances accuracy of reporting.     

THE THERAPEUTIC ALLIANCE IN HOME‐BASED FAMILY THERAPY: IS IT PREDICTIVE OF OUTCOME?

This study examined the association between the therapeutic alliance in family therapy and changes in symptom distress, interpersonal relationships, and family coping. The participants (N = 81) were members of low socioeconomic status families referred to a university clinic for in-home family therapy. Participants completed the Outcome Questionnaire, Family Crisis Oriented Personal Evaluation, and the Family Therapy Alliance questionnaires. Regression analyses revealed that the therapeutic alliance explained 19% of the variance in symptom distress changes for mother, 55% for fathers, and 39% for adolescents. The implications of these findings for practicing and researching family therapy are presented.     

Identity processes and the positive youth development of African Americans: an explanatory framework

This chapter presents Spencer's phenomenological variant of ecological systems theory, or PVEST (1995), as a conceptual framework for examining positive youth development. Contextual factors affecting racial and gender identity of African American youth are discussed, with the focus on the influence of schools and religious institutions.     

An Empirical Test of the Relative Validity of Expert and Lay Judgments of Risk

This article investigates how accurately experts (underwriters) and lay persons (university students) judge the risks posed by life-threatening events Only one prior study (Slovic, Fischhoff, & Lichtenstein, 1985) has previously investigated the veracity of expert versus lay judgments of the magnitude of risk. In that study, a heterogeneous grouping of 15 experts was found to judge, using marginal estimations, a variety of risks as closer to the true annual frequencies of death than convenience samples of the lay population. In this study, we use a larger, homogenous sample of experts performing an ecologically valid task. We also ask our respondents to assess frequencies and relative frequencies directly, rather than ask for a "risk" estimate--a response mode subject to possible qualitative attributions-as was done in the Slovic et al. study. Although we find that the experts outperformed lay persons on a number of measures, the differences are small, and both groups showed similar global biases in terms of: (1) overestimating the likelihood of dying from a condition (marginal probability) and of dying from a condition given that it happens to you (conditional probability), and (2) underestimating the ratios of marginal and conditional likelihoods between pairs of potentially lethal events. In spite of these scaling problems, both groups showed quite good performance in ordering the lethal events in terms of marginal and conditional likelihoods. We discuss the nature of expertise using a framework developed by Bolger and Wright (1994), and consider whether the commonsense assumption of the superiority of expert risk assessors in making magnitude judgments of risk is, in fact, sensible.