The availability of personal and external coping resources: Thier impact on job stress and employee attitudes during organizational restructuring

This study examines the relationships among personal coping resources, social support, external coping resources, job stressors and job strains in a sample of 110 American Telephone and Telegraph employees undergoing a major organizational restructuring. The study expanded on a model suggested by Ashford (1988) by defining another category of coping resources that employees may draw upon to deal with the stressors and strains which occur during major organizational changes. External coping resources were defined as those which provided employees with a sense of 'vicarious control' in stressful situations. Results indicated that personal coping resources, social support and external coping resources had a direct effect upon job stressor and strain levels. No 'buffering' effect of these coplng resources was found. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that external coping resources added to the prediction of job stressors and strains even when pertonal coping resources and social support were entered first into the prediction questions.     

A magical model to predict individual differences in mood change

We tested a mathematical model of psychological well-being (PWB) with data from a paradigm that included a negative mood induction followed by a positive induction. The propositions from the model encompass the hypothesis that the relative mood prior to either induction has implications for the magnitude of subsequent induction effects, such that relative mood is defined by current mood as a ratio of the prevailing mood that is predicted by the model. The findings confirm the hypothesis that the relative mood at baseline predicts mood change in a nonoverlapping time period, even after control for potentially mediating variables.     

Accuracy of the College Majors Finder for Three Majors

The Self-Directed Search was administered to 68 university seniors who were majoring in Chemistry/Chemical Engineering, Elementary Education, and Office Administration. Their resulting three-letter summary codes were compared with three-letter college major codes obtained from the College Majors Finder. A high degree of agreement between the two sets of codes was found for each of the three majors. Effective methods for matching people to jobs have held the interest and occupied much time for career counselors and vocational theorists since the inception of the trait-factor approach to career counseling. More recently, Holland (1985a) broadened and clarified matching procedures through the development of his typological theory of vocational choice. Just as personality types and occupational environments have been organized using Holland's framework to foster an understanding of occupational choice, Holland's theory can also be used to explain other types of choices, such as choice of a college major.     

Adoptive parents to children with severe developmental disabilities: A profile

A sample of 16 women and men who accompanied their adopted children with severe developmental disabilities to a medical appointment at Henry Ford Hospital's Multidisciplinary Care Clinic during the one-year period beginning July 1, 1988 are described in the context of their parental role vis-a-vis these children. Results of the study are presented through use of a six-part organizational scheme: demographic and social traits of the parents and their adopted children, the adopted children in family context, life satisfactions of the parents, adoption motives, adoption satisfactions, and humanization of the children.     

Forced to work and liberated from work

The work-welfare nexus is essential in all social policy regimes. The question is in what situations individuals should be entitled to social welfare benefits and in which situations they should be obliged to work. Social welfare law and administrative practices define mechanisms that separate the deserving poor from people able to work. This article analyses the functions and character of these "separation mechanisms" in Sweden during three periods in history: a) in rural society in the late 19th century; b) in industrial society during the successful years of the Swedish model from World War II until the late 1970s; and c) the present, including the period of welfare retrenchment and reconsideration since the early 1980s. The conclusion is that Swedish social policy has always been strongly work-oriented, but the specific form and content of the work ethic has varied under the influence of different ideologies and handled in different social policy institutions. Under specific conditions the work line has been either generous or restrictive and it has been based on structural attempts to improve the opportunities to work as well as on attempts to strongly pressure the individual to work. The work line of today is seen as an interesting attempt to combine an effort to create good work through improved work conditions and an effort to reinforce elements of work enforcement in the social insurance system.     

The epidemiology of schizophrenia among Caribbean-born and first- and second-generation migrants in Britain

The study of migrants in their new environments is often a useful means of investigating environmental influences on health. Migrants have been found to develop higher rates of mental illness compared to their counterparts who remain at home. These deleterious effects of migration have been attributed to selection factors and stressful life experiences. Migration from an agricultural and traditional society to an urban industrial society where value systems can be demanding, often leads to role strain and role conflict. These kinds of incongruities are the beginning of a series of stressful experiences that contribute to poor health/mental health status. The extent to which one experiences stress is dependent on a number of factors. First, it depends on the perceived difference between home and the new environment. Second, it depends on the cultural homogeneity of the new environment, that is, the extent to which the migrant is readily assimilated into the new culture or is able to maintain a traditional lifestyle by living in an ethnic enclave, and the psychological resources available to successfully access services in the new environment. This paper examines the rates, incidence, and prevalence of schizophrenia found in Caribbean-born immigrants to Britain, and first- and second-generation people of Caribbean background born in Britain. It is argued that Afro-Caribbean people in England are overrepresented in the diagnosis of schizophrenia. Factors that may contribute to this finding range from unemployment, social disadvantage status, social adversity, racism in the health and criminal justice systems, and misdiagnosis.This paper was completed when the author served as Distinguished Visiting Professor-William Patterson College, Wayne, New Jersey.     

Circuits of schooling: A sociological exploration of parental choice of school in social class contexts

Parental choice of school is one of the main platforms of government education policy and is the centre piece of the Parents Charter. But sociological understanding of choice and choice-making is woefully underdeveloped. This paper draws on an ESRC study of market forces in education to explore social class variations in choice of school in one specific locality. The complexity of choice-making is portrayed using data from interviews with parents and it is argued that middle-class parents are taking full advantage of ‘the market’ to sustain or re-assert their class advantages.     

Beyond recruitment: Predictors of differential participation in a national antihunger organization

Surprisingly little research has sought to explain differential participation after recruitment into social movement organizations (SMOs). This study examines the influence of several sets of predictors on participation by members of a national organization in the antihunger movement. The findings highlight the importance of incentive, ideological, and microstructural factors for differential participation and suggest that favorable perceptions of SMOs also promote participation. Final remarks address the implications of the findings for the social movement and voluntary organization literatures.     

A case of suspected child abuse by an adolescent mother: The use of short-term psychotherapy

The incidence of pregnancy during adolescence has escalated dramatically in recent years, with an estimated half a million infants born to teenagers each year in the United States. A disproportionately high amount of child abuse and/or neglect is encountered among adolescent parents, underscoring the need for an effective intervention strategy. Short-term psychotherapy may be beneficial in these cases for forging a therapeutic alliance expeditiously and rigorously challenging the patient's resistance. The case described involves alleged abuse by a 16-year-old mother. An intervention was designed to clarify the allegations surrounding the abusive incident, help the mother confront episodes of loss in her own life and overcome feelings of hopelessness engendered by separation from her infant.     

log-logistic survival estimation based on failure-censored data

Approximations of the Bayesian estimators of the survival function based on the censored data of the log-logistic distribution are obtained under squared-error and log-odds squared-error loss functions. A numerical example is presented. Through a Monte Carlo simulation study, the behavior of the approximations found by Tierney & Kadane and Lindley are compared with a method suggested by Weiss & Howlader.