THE FREE-LANCE MUSICIAN AS A TYPE OF NON-PERSON: AN EXTENSION OF THE CONCEPT OF NON-PERSONHOOD

Free-lance musicians are professionally trained artists who lack permanent membership in any musical organization. Although trained to be creative artists, most frequently free-lancers play supporting music for operas, ballets and solo performers on stage, or provide background music for dinners or receptions. As a consequence, their technical skills are devalued by audiences; they often play music below their skill level; spontaneity in interpretation is extremely limited or impossible; they are anonymous to the audience and their playing generally receives an impersonal response; performances serve a functional rather than an aesthetic purpose; and players are interchangeable between groups. As a result of treatment as non-persons, free-lancers hold a sense of low prestige for themselves, and the occupation in many ways serves as a negative reference group for its members. Wide implications regarding non-personhood are drawn for an increasingly mechanized society. Contrary to Goffman's examples, non-personhood is not tied to occupations of limited skill, but rather, can occur in any occupational group under conditions in which individual interpretation, decision making, and power are nullified.     

Learning about radon's risk

This article reports the results of an evaluation of the effectiveness of different types of information materials in communicating the risk from exposure to radon, a naturally occurring indoor air pollutant. The study involved a panel of 2300 homeowners who actually experienced risks from radon, and the information program used to explain these risks. The analysis considered information transfer and performance on specific tasks requiring information on the risk from radon to measure learning. The results suggest a systematic learning process, but indicate that the process can be influenced by how risk information is presented.     

Dropouts and continuers in Gamblers Anonymous: Part 3: Some possible specific reasons for dropout

This is the third part of a study of dropouts from Gamblers Anonymous, the overall design, aims and rationale of which are outlined in part one. Dropouts who had attended more than one meeting were asked about many specific aspects of their experience in Gamblers Anonymous. These reports are compared with similarly obtained reports from a group of continuing attendees who had not gambled for more than one year in an attempt to explore the viability of many specific hypotheses as to the possible factors in dropout.     

Extreme-value analysis of canadian wind speeds

Estimates of extreme winds are essential for engineering design, but in preparing such estimates major statistical issues are encountered. In this case study, the analysts were provided with hourly readings on wind speed, wind direction, and barometric pressure at five Canadian stations for observation periods ranging over several recent decades. Their assignment was to calculate point and interval estimates of 10-, 20-, 50-, and 100-year return values (i.e., upper fractiles) for the wind speeds at these stations.     

Bayesian break-point forecasting in parallel time series,with application to university admissions

A regular supply of applicants to Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario is provided by 65 high schools. Each high school can be characterized by a series of grading standards which change from year to year. To aid admissions decisions, it is desirable to forecast the current year's grading standards for all 65 high schools using grading standards estimated from past year's data. We develop and apply a Bayesian break-point time-series model that generates forecasts which involve smoothing across time for each school and smoothing across schools. “Break point” refers to a point in time which divides the past into the “old past” and the “recent past” where the yearly observations in the recent past are exchangeable with the observations in the year to be forecast. We show that this model works fairly well when applied to 11 years of Queen's University data. The model can be applied to other data sets with the parallel time-series structure and short history, and can be extended in several ways to more complicated structures.     

Union commitment and membership support for political action: An exploratory analysis

Union political activity has always been controversial, even among union members. Research has shown that a sizable minority of union members question the propriety of union political involvement and disagree with union leaders on public policy issues. It has also shown, however, that union members’ commitment to the union may be positively associated with members’ political support. This study extends this research by statistically estimating the relationship between union commitment and members’ support for their national union’s political involvement. Based on the questionnaire responses of several hundred local union members, the findings support a positive relationship between union commitment and political support. The authors wish to thank John Delaney and Cynthia Fisher and an anonymous referee for their comments on an earlier draft of the paper. They also wish to thank the numerous union participants in the study.