Insuring equity in compensatory education student selection

Student selection strategies, because they determine who will receive special services, must be evaluated in terms of equity and validity. Yet those responsible for designing compensatory education student selection in the local school district lack methods that allow them to appraise their selection strategies in terms of equity. This paper describes a decision-theory-based procedure that, if followed, will increase the informational value of data often available from program evaluation data collection and district information systems. The information produced by the decision theory approach bears directly on the basic question of who gets served.     

Non-strict ordinal 2 × 2 games: A comprehensive computer-assisted analysis of the 726 possibilities

Game theory has provided many tools for the study of social conflict. The 2 × 2 game has been found to be a particularly useful model. This paper describes the enumeration and analysis of all 726 distinct 2 × 2 games. A computer is used to generate the complete set, and a wide variety of maximin, equilibrium and stability calculations is performed for each player for every outcome in every game. The resulting data set is of great value for both the modeling and analysis of social conflict.     

THE MULTIPLE BODIES OF THE MEDICAL RECORD:

This article argues that the medical record is an important focus for sociological research. In medical work, the modern patient's body that Foucault has so aptly described is produced through embodied, materially heterogeneous work, and the medical record plays a crucial role in this production. It does not simply represent this body's history and geography; it is a central element in the material rewriting of these. Simultaneously, the record fulfills a core role in the production of a body politic . As the record is involved in the performance of the patient's body, it is also involved in the performance of the clinic in which that body comes to life. Finally, we argue that different records and different practices of reading and writing are intertwined with the production of different patient's bodies, bodies politic, and bodies of knowledge. As organizational infrastructure, the medical record affords the interplay and coordination of divergent worlds. Seen as a site where multiple stories about patients and organizations are at stake, including the interoperability between these stories, the medical record becomes highly relevant both analytically and politically.     

Rethinking craft administration: Managerial position,work autonomy,and employment security in the building trades

The organization of work in the construction industry often has been presented as the exemplar of craft administration wherein managerial positions are of relatively low significance. Occupational control of employment and work structure in this context presumably is manifest through the craft union. On the other hand, research on other industries has shown the managerial position in the firm to be a source of extrinsic and intrinsic reward. This results from the manager's pivotal position in the bureaucratized labor process. This paper seeks to reconcile these perspectives. Data from a survey of 246 unionized construction workers and 14 local union officers from nine building trades are used to assess the impact of the managerial position and union involvement on work autonomy (self-direction and freedom from supervision) and employment security (unemployment and trade agreement infringements). In general, the results indicate that managerial affiliations to employers' firms are associated with greater autonomy and more employment security. Union involvement has contradictory consequences for individual tradespeople.     

Explaining Low Subjective Well-Being of Persons with Disabilities in Europe: The Impact of Disability, Personal Resources, Participation and Socio-Economic Status

Persons with chronic disabilities report the lowest subjective well-being (SWB) in many countries. The gap in SWB compared with the non-disabled population is smaller in some countries than in others. Data from the European Social Survey were analysed in order to: (1) describe the inequality in SWB in 21 European countries; and (2) identify the main determinants of this inequality in SWB. Data on a range of topics of a total of 40,605 persons, including 2,846 persons with serious chronic disabilities, were used of the European Social Survey. SWB was measured using multi-item scales for ‘emotional well-being’ and ‘satisfying life’. Variables on disability, socio-demographics (age, gender, household composition), socio-economic status (level of education, net household income), participation (paid work, voluntary work, social contacts), and personal resources (supportive relationships, social cohesion, vitality, optimism, resilience, perceived autonomy, perceived accomplishment, perceived capacity, perceived engagement, perceived meaning and purpose) were entered stepwise in regression models of SWB. The results show that persons with disabilities are in a disadvantaged position in terms of SWB in all countries. In the Northern countries, the gaps between disabled and non-disabled persons are smaller than in Eastern European countries. In all countries inequality in SWB is explained mostly by personal resources and not by the level of disability, socio-economic status or level of participation in work. The implications of these findings for policy and practice (e.g. social cohesion and physical exercise programs) are discussed.     

Book review

Deterministic Aspects of Mathematical Demography (An Investigation of the Stable Theory of Population Including an Analysis of the Population Statistics of Denmark). John Impagliazzo. Biomathematics Series, Volume 13. Berlin: Springer‐Verlag, 1985. xi+186 pp. $34.00.     

Flexible estimation of serial correlation in nonlinear mixed models

In the conventional linear mixed-effects model, four structures can be distinguished: fixed effects, random effects, measurement error and serial correlation. The latter captures the phenomenon that the correlation structure within a subject depends on the time lag between two measurements. While the general linear mixed model is rather flexible, the need has arisen to further increase flexibility. In addition to work done in the area, we propose the use of spline-based modeling of the serial correlation function, so as to allow for additional flexibility. This approach is applied to data from a pre-clinical experiment in dementia which studied the eating and drinking behavior in mice.