Public Support for Rehabilitation Programs: The Analysis of U.S. Disability Policy

Although political scientists have displayed relatively little interest in research on disability thus far, a brief review of major issues in rehabilitation in the United States indicates the contribution that policy analysts can make to the study of this subject. This opportunity is enhanced by a recent shift in the definition of disability from a medical orientation, which emphasizes functional impairments, and from an economic approach, which stresses vocational limitations, to a socio-political perspective, which regards disability as the product of interactions between individuals and the environment. The latter definition has become the foundation for a new 'minority-group' model of disability that is challenging the traditional 'functional-limitations' paradigm and that might profitably be utilized in future research.     

The Politics of Physical Differences: Disability and Discrimination

Although a "minority-group" model has emerged to challenge the traditional dominance of the "functional-limitations" paradigm for the study of disability, research on attitudes toward disabled people has not produced a theoretical orientation that reflects these developments. This paper proposes a new conceptual framework, based on the fundamental values of personal appearance and individual autonomy, for assessing the "aesthetic" and "existential" anxiety aroused by persons with disabilities. Investigations using this perspective might contribute to determining the attitudinal foundations of the competing models that are dividing research on disability.     

Creating the park cool island in an inner-city neighborhood: heat mitigation strategy for Phoenix, AZ

We conducted microclimate simulations in ENVI-Met 3.1 to evaluate the impact of vegetation in lowering temperatures during an extreme heat event in an urban core neighborhood park in Phoenix, Arizona. We predicted air and surface temperatures under two different vegetation regimes: existing conditions representative of Phoenix urban core neighborhoods, and a proposed scenario informed by principles of landscape design and architecture and Urban Heat Island mitigation strategies. We found significant potential air and surface temperature reductions between representative and proposed vegetation scenarios: 1) a Park Cool Island effect that extended to non-vegetated surfaces; 2) a net cooling of air underneath or around canopied vegetation ranging from 0.9 °C to 1.9 °C during the warmest time of the day; and 3) potential reductions in surface temperatures from 0.8 °C to 8.4 °C in areas underneath or around vegetation.     

The implications of practice guidelines for physician medical malpractice liability

Medical practice guidelines are increasingly coming into use, and as more and more physicians are presented with guidelines to follow in the delivery of health care, the question arises of whether these guidelines will become instruments for imposing greater medical malpractice liability on physicians. This column will briefly describe what guidelines are, how they are developed, and how they have been and may be used in litigation against physicians, hospitals, and other health care institutions. As hospitals and managed care organizations continue to implement guidelines, the role these guidelines play in malpractice cases can be expected to increase. It appears, however, that, although guidelines will contribute to the establishment of the standard of care by which a physician's actions will be measured, they are not likely to become the standard that all physician treatment decisions must meet.     

Constructions of Deafness

As a social problem, deafness can be variously construed. Each of the primary constructions of deafness today - disability and linguistic minority - has its archetypes but most deaf children match neither of them. Organizations espousing each construction compete to 'own' deaf children and define their needs. As with service providers for blind people, the troubled-persons industry associated with deafness seeks conformity of the client to the underlying construction of deafness as disability. Some spokespersons in the disability rights movement have joined service providers in promoting the disability construction of all deafness. This neglects the fact that the DEAF-WORLD has a distinct culture and that deafness is constructed differently in that culture than it is in national cultures of hearing peoples. The implications of a shift toward the linguistic minority construction for deaf children and adults, the obstacles to such change, and the forces promoting change are examined.     

Federal job training programs and employment outcomes: Effects by sex and race of participants

This article examines the extent to which the program activity assignments of participants in federal job training programs affect their future employment prospects. We analyze the effects of three types of programs—classroom training, on-the-job training, and work experience—on the post-program employment outcomes of black and white women and men. The data are from the Continuous Longitudinal Manpower Survey of fiscal 1976 participants in the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA). Logistic regression and event history analysis are used to assess the likelihood of immediate employment upon leaving CETA and the rates at which participants enter and leave their first post-program spells of employment and nonemployment.     

Is it even rainier in North Vancouver? A non-parametric rank-based test for semicontinuous longitudinal data

When the outcome of interest is semicontinuous and collected longitudinally, efficient testing can be difficult. Daily rainfall data is an excellent example which we use to illustrate the various challenges. Even under the simplest scenario, the popular ‘two-part model’, which uses correlated random-effects to account for both the semicontinuous and longitudinal characteristics of the data, often requires prohibitively intensive numerical integration and difficult interpretation. Reducing data to binary (truncating continuous positive values to equal one), while relatively straightforward, leads to a potentially substantial loss in power. We propose an alternative: using a non-parametric rank test recently proposed for joint longitudinal survival data. We investigate the potential benefits of such a test for the analysis of semicontinuous longitudinal data with regards to power and computational feasibility.     

The World of Research Has Gone Berserk: Modeling the Consequences of Requiring “Greater Statistical Stringency” for Scientific Publication

ABSTRACT

In response to growing concern about the reliability and reproducibility of published science, researchers have proposed adopting measures of “greater statistical stringency,” including suggestions to require larger sample sizes and to lower the highly criticized “p?<?0.05” significance threshold. While pros and cons are vigorously debated, there has been little to no modeling of how adopting these measures might affect what type of science is published. In this article, we develop a novel optimality model that, given current incentives to publish, predicts a researcher’s most rational use of resources in terms of the number of studies to undertake, the statistical power to devote to each study, and the desirable prestudy odds to pursue. We then develop a methodology that allows one to estimate the reliability of published research by considering a distribution of preferred research strategies. Using this approach, we investigate the merits of adopting measures of “greater statistical stringency” with the goal of informing the ongoing debate.     

Conformist and Deviant Behaviour in High School: the Merton Typology adapted to an Educational Context*

A l'aide de donnees recoltees aupres de 3 465 etudiants de lOe annee pour une autre etude, on examine la valeur heuristique de la typologie mertonienne de la conduite dans un contexte scolaire. La valeur qu'accordent les etudiants a l'instruction en tant qu'objectif defini par la culture fut identified et comparee a leurs attentes vis-a-vis l'acces aux etudes collegiales comme etant le moyen institutionnel approprie pour realiser cet objectif. Les etudiants furent classes en quatre groupes: les conformistes sont ceux qui accordent une grande importance a l'instruction, et dont le niveau des aspirations est eleve; les innovateurs tout en valorisant l'instruction exhibent un bas niveau d'aspirations; les ritualistes valorisent peu l'instruction mais nour-rissent de fortes ambitions; les retraitistes entretiennent peu d'attentes et ont peu d'attrait pour les etudes. Un certain nombre d'hypotheses decoulant du modele de Merton furent verifiees par les donnees utilisees. On espere ainsi inviter d'autres etudes qui pourront examiner la validite de ce modele dans le domaine scolaire. Data collected from 3465 grade ten students in connection with another study were used to examine the heuristic value of Merton's typology of behaviour in an educational context. The value students have for education as a “culturally definied goal,” was identified and compared to their expectations concerning the use of college attendance as the “institutionally appropriate means” of achieving the goal. Four classifications of students were developed: conformists are those with high value for education and high educational expectations; innovators have high values, but low expectations; ritualists have low values, but high expectations; and retreatists are those with low values and low expectations.     

Diaspora Philanthropy in the Context of Policy Coherence for Development: Implications for the post‐2015 Sustainable Development Agenda

Thus far, there has been a dearth of studies that systemically examine the relationship between diaspora philanthropy, the development community and securitised migration regimes. This article addresses this by responding to the research question, “How coherent are securitised migration policies with diaspora philanthropy and the transformative development objectives that characterise the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agenda?” The analysis is based on the concept of policy coherence for development (PCD). The article compares the simultaneous regionalization and securitization of European Union and United States migration policies and contends that these policy strategies undermine diaspora philanthropy, development partnerships and transformative development. Normative change must be introduced in order to establish coherence between globalized migration policies and diaspora philanthropy objectives. Normative coherence for development can be achieved by introducing principles from the SDG's and the Busan Development Partnership Agreement amongst other international development agendas, into migration policy‐making at the national and regional levels.