Evaluating employee assistance programs. A review of methods, outcomes, and future directions

Renewed interest in assisting troubled employees has led to an upsurge in the development of employee assistance programs, coupled with demands for demonstrable effectiveness. This review examines the nature and scope of these programs, their administrative and methodological context, and the types and outcomes of evaluation studies conducted thus far. Proposals for improving future investigations through a number of different approaches and strategies are then made.     

讲学与传道: 马一浮与国立浙江大学

抗日战争期间,国立浙江大学被迫西迁,马一浮应浙大校长竺可桢之请为浙江大学师生开设国学讲座,为浙大创制校歌,这段历史成为浙大校史上光辉的一页。但相关文献和档案却显示,马一浮与浙江大学的交往充满各种误会与纠结,浙大险些因此错过这位“士林宗仰”的国学大师;而走过国立浙大的马一浮亦在他唯一任教的大学里,利用各种机会引导学生摒弃实用主义的现代工业观,回归对文化根本的关注,尽管讲学效果与其预想相距甚远。马一浮在浙大讲学并传道,结集而成的《宜山泰和会语》是马一浮一生讲阐六艺国学最集中的部分,由此完成了更为高迈、通贯的学术思想和学术人格的构建,并以一场场思想与精神的盛宴,寄予浙大很深的希望。     

1998-2005年间青岛科技大学人文社会科学论文统计分析

利用清华同方《中国期刊全文数据库》及重庆维普《中文科技期刊数据库》,对青岛科技大学1998-2005年发表的人文社会科学论文进行了检索和统计,统计的项目包括论文总量与学科分布、作者、期刊源、基金与资助产出论文情况等,在此基础上对其进行了综合评价,并提出相应建议。     

Dynamic models and attainment in the workplace

The two most marked trends in recent stratification studies are: (1) the shift away from a statical approach to attainment and toward a dynamical representation of achievement, and (2) the shift away from the assumption that achievement is largely a matter of individual characteristics, and toward the view that achievement is the outcome of an employer-employee exchange of productive resources for earnings and status. This paper forges a link between these parallel trends by elaborating on previous formulations of dynamic models of achievement and applying the results to the analysis of earnings attainment in an internal labor market. The modeling section of the paper joins within a single framework the growing interest in ascertaining how a given structure of opportunity shapes achievement and in determining the different points in the career line at which individual background and resource variables impact attainment. Special attention is devoted to the problems facing researchers who wish to bring a dynamic conceptualization of achievement to cross-sectional or otherwise deficient data. Although the empirical application of the various models is largely meant to be illustrative, it is of interest in its own right because it goes substantially beyond previous efforts in this area.     

Theory Trimming

This paper attempts to show that the “Theory Trimming” technique makes little contribution to theory in sociology. A brief history of the technique is given, and several key assertions of its proponents are abstracted. These assertions are shown to be highly questionable. The general alternative to Theory Trimming is shown, and the relationship between Theory Trimming and more general orientations to research is discussed.     

On the mode of administering a questionnaire and responses to open-ended items

Concurrently administered personal and telephone surveys are compared to measure differences between the modes for identical questions. Speed of questioning is found to be greater in telephone interviews than personal interviews. The faster pace of telephone interviews is linked to shorter answers to open-ended items on the telephone. The tendency to reduce such responses is disproportionately exhibited by younger, affluent respondents who tend to provide detailed responses in personal interviews.     

Sex similarities in occupational status attainment: Are the results due to the restriction of the sample to employed women?

Research on sex differences in occupational attainment suggests that working men and working women attain essentially the same mean level of occupational attainment and do so through quite similar processes. A possible explanation for these similarities is that the sample of working women contains an overrepresentation of successful women, since women who can afford not to work will stay out of the labor force unless they find a job commensurate with their education. This we define as a censoring problem. By extending a technique developed by Heckman, we can estimate the structural parameters for all women, regardless of current employment status. This procedure allows us to assess the impact of the censoring problem on women's occupational attainment equations.     

Size and duration of empires growth-decline curves, 3000 to 600 b.c.

Area changes of about 30 best known empires and states are compiled and tabulated. Superimposed and juxtaposed graphs (size versus time) help to visualize the relative size and location in time of these empires. Size-time integral, maximum stable size, adulthood date, and duration are defined operationally and are listed for 20 empires. A criterion is given for distinctness of successive empires. The size-time integral is a direct measure of an empire's impact on history insofar as that impact depends on sheer size and duration. The integral is largest for the Chinese Hsia-Shang, Egyptian New, Old, and Middle, Assyrian New, and Hittite empires. A world-wide territorial concentration index is tabulated. It increases during the period considered from 0.08 to 1.4% of the world dry land area.