Employment after spinal cord injury: the impact of government policies in Canada

The British Columbia Paraplegic Association (BCPA) sought a research partnership to evaluate where its activities should be focused. A survey of members with disabilities of the BCPA included questions on employment and identified three priorities related to employment. These were the need for assistance in finding appropriate work, the impact of policies of government and insurance agencies, and attitudes of employers. This paper examines the social and political environment related to employment following spinal cord injury in British Columbia, Canada. There is no coherent set of goals underlying government employment and income programs in Canada. Incremental development of particular employment and income programs during the 20th century led to a patchwork of policies and programs, which deal with people differently according to the cause of their disability. Federal and provincial governments have attempted to educate employers and reduce barriers to employment of those with disabilities by focusing on anti-discrimination legislation and individual rights (e.g. the Employment Equity Act and the Canadian Human Rights Act). However, people with disabilities face non-accommodating environments, inadequate income support, lack of opportunities and little political influence which stem from an unfair distribution of societal resources, not from discrimination. Joint efforts of the BCPA and other disability organizations are likely to have the most impact on legislative changes.     

Testing the reactance vs. the reciprocity of politeness explanations for the effectiveness of the “but you are free” compliance-gaining technique

Two studies were conducted to assess whether reactance or politeness offers a better explanation of the effectiveness of the “but you are free” (BYAF) technique of gaining compliance. The first was conducted with an online survey in the US (N = 131) and found that the BYAF was associated with lower perceived freedom threat than a control or polite request. The second was a field study and collected data in France (N = 372), Norway (N = 360), and the US (N = 108) to test a 3 (direct request, polite request, or BYAF) × 2 (requester benefits or 3rd party group benefits) design. The BYAF was associated with higher compliance than the other two messages.     

Moving to a World of More Seamless Single Sign-on Access: NISO’s RA21 Recommended Practice

Abstract

In this Standards Update column, Todd Carpenter, Executive Director of the National Information Standards Organization (NISO), provides a preview of NISO’s upcoming RA21 Recommended Practice for single sign-on systems. Carpenter describes previous attempts at single sign-on standards, the essential difficulties in authenticating users, and how RA21 will address these issues while ensuring the privacy of user data.     

WHAT DO BICYCLE HELMET LAWS DO? EVIDENCE FROM CANADA

Twenty‐one states and the District of Columbia require youths to wear helmets when riding a bicycle, and there has been a push to extend such laws to adults. We provide new evidence on helmet laws by studying Canada using difference‐in‐differences models and restricted area‐identified public health survey data with information on cycling and helmet use for nearly 800,000 individuals from 1994 to 2014. We first confirm prior patterns from the United States that laws requiring youths to wear helmets significantly increased youth helmet use. We then provide the literature's first comprehensive evidence that “all‐age” bicycle helmet laws significantly increased both adult and youth helmet use by 50%–190% relative to pre‐reform levels, with larger effects for younger adults and less‐educated adults. All‐age helmet laws had modest effects at reducing cycling and increasing in‐home exercise during winter months among adults but did not meaningfully affect weight. Overall, our findings confirm that all‐age helmet laws can be effective at increasing population helmet use without significant unintended adverse health consequences. (JEL I18, I12, K32)     

Implementing and sustaining evidence-based practice in health care: The Bridge Model experience

This qualitative study analyzed the experience of community-based organizations (CBOs) implementing and sustaining the Bridge Model of Transitional Care, a social work-based health service intervention for reducing hospital readmissions. We conducted semi-structured interviews with clinical supervisors from 13 CBOs that received Bridge Model training between 2012 and 2015. CBOs faced significant challenges implementing and sustaining transitional care programs, particularly related to building effective and sustainable partnerships with hospitals. Additional barriers to program implementation and sustainability included financial barriers and staff turnover. Facilitators to implementation and sustainability included organizational champions, organizational culture, and value of evidence. Recommendations for CBOs to implement health service interventions include gaining early buy-in from hospital partners, creating a contractual arrangement with the hospital partner, understanding changes in health-care payment models, diversifying funding sources, developing an evaluation plan, and nurturing organizational champions.     

Joint Attention and Imitative Learning in Children,Chimpanzees, and Enculturated Chimpanzees*

In this study we compared the nature of the joint attentional interactions that occurred as chimpanzees and human children engaged with a human experimenter (E). Subjects were three chimpanzees raised mostly with conspecifics (mother-reared), three chimpanzees raised in a human-like cultural environment (encultur-ated), and six 18-month-old human children. Of particular interest were possible differences between the two groups of chimpanzees that might have resulted from their different ontogenetic histories. Observations were made as subjects participated in an imitative learning task involving a number of novel objects. Variables coded were such things as subjects' looks to the object, looks to E, the coordination of such looks in periods of joint engagement with E, and gestural attempts to direct E's attention or behavior (declaratives and imperatives). Results showed that encultur-ated chimpanzees were most similar to human children in social interactions involv-ing objects, for example, in their attention to the object in compliance with E's request, their joint attentional interactions during less structured periods, and their use of declarative gestures to direct E's attention to objects. They were not similar to children, but rather resembled their mother-reared conspecifics, in the duration of their looks to E's face. A positive relation between subjects' joint attentional skills and their imitative learning skills was found for both chimpanzee and human sub-jects. It is concluded that a human-like sociocultural environment is an essential component in the development of human-like social-cognitive and joint attentional skills for chimpanzees, and perhaps for human beings as well     

NORM ENFORCEMENT: ANGER,INDIGNATION, OR RECIPROCITY?

The enforcement of social norms often requires that unaffected third parties sanction offenders. Given the renewed interest of economists in norms, the literature on third‐party punishment is surprisingly thin. In this paper, we report the results of an experiment designed to replicate the anger‐based punishment of directly affected second parties and evaluate two distinct explanations for third‐party punishment: indignation and group reciprocity. We find evidence in favor of both, with the caveat that the incidence of indignation‐driven sanctions is perhaps smaller than earlier studies have hinted. Furthermore, our results suggest that second parties use sanctions to promote conformism while third parties intervene primarily to promote efficiency.