Mode Effects in Self-Reported Mental Health Data

This article analyzes the impact of audio computer-assistedself-interviewing (ACASI) administration on the reporting ofmental health syndromes in a general population survey. Estimatesof four mental health syndromes (major depressive episode, generalizedanxiety disorder, panic attack, and agoraphobia) obtained froman interviewer-administered, paper-and-pencil (I-PAPI) mentalhealth module were compared with those obtained from an ACASIversion of the same module implemented in a separate field test.The mental health questions consisted of four scales from theWorld Health Organization's Composite International DiagnosticInterview Short-Form. Comparisons of ACASI and I-PAPI estimatesfor each mental health syndrome were made overall and withinage, race/ethnicity, gender, educational level, geographic region,and population density subgroups. To assess the likelihood ofreporting a mental health syndrome using ACASI versus I-PAPI,logistic regression models were utilized controlling for possibleconfounding and interaction variables. The results suggest thatadult respondents reported more mental health symptoms wheninterviewed with ACASI than when interviewed with I-PAPI, andthe results support the use of ACASI in general population surveysof mental health.     

Restructuring Municipal Government: Labor-Management Relations and Worker Mental Health

Cette étude présente une enquête selon la méthode mixte sur l'association qui existe entre les relations travail-gestion et la santé mentale d'employés d'un secteur municipal subissant une restructuration de style nouvelle gestion publique. L'analyse des données du sondage ( N =902) démontre qu'il existe une relation relativement forte et constante entre les pratiques de gestion et la santé psychologique des employés. Des interviews réalisées auprès d'un sous-échantillon de 54 travailleurs révèlent que le contrôle excessif, l'incompétence et l'indifférence des gestionnaires combinés avec un minimum de récompenses soulignant les efforts consentis par les travailleurs ont pour conséquence que le personnel se sent dévalorisé. Nos résultats démontrent que la santé mentale des travailleurs a étéébranlée, en sapant leur estime de soi et en leur faisant perdre des possibilités d'améliorer leurs conditions de travail.
This study is a mixed-method investigation of the association between labor-management relations and employees' mental health in a municipal sector undergoing New Public Management-style restructuring. Analysis of the survey data ( N =902) demonstrates a relatively strong and persistent relationship between management practices and employee psychological health. Interviews with a subsample of 54 workers reveal that management's excessive control, incompetence, and unresponsiveness, combined with minimal rewards for workers' efforts, left staff feeling devalued. Our findings suggest that workers' mental health was harmed by the undermining of their sense of self-worth and the loss of avenues to improve their working conditions.     

Corporate Citizenship and Managerial Motivation: Implications for Business Legitimacy

In 2000, Business and Society Review published a Special Issue of the journal to explore scholars’ ideas about how the practice of corporate citizenship would evolve in the 21st century. Contributors to the volume predicted a change in business motives for engaging in social initiatives, suggesting that managers would begin to see corporate citizenship as a strategic necessity to preserve organizational legitimacy in the face of changing social values. This article uses data from a study of corporate citizenship practices in over 500 Norwegian companies to explore the validity of the Special Issue predictions. We begin by reviewing the foundations of organizational legitimacy theory and examine recent research documenting the growing importance of corporate citizenship for assessments of business legitimacy. We describe our study methods, present our results, and discuss the implications of our findings in this context.     

Vernacularization on the ground: local uses of global women's rights in Peru,China, India and the United States

The articles published in this special journal issue examine how global ideas about women's rights actually get used in four contexts – China, India, Peru and the United States. Our findings result from collaborative research conducted by teams in each country. We call the process of appropriation and local adoption of globally generated ideas and strategies vernacularization. In each country, vernacularization differed depending on the contents of the global women's rights packages at play, the work of vernacularizers and the different social positions they occupy, how human rights ideas are framed, the channels and technologies of transmission, and the local geographies of history and culture within which circulation and vernacularization take place. We find that vernacularization is a widespread practice that takes different forms in different kinds of organizations and in different cultural and historical contexts. Ongoing tensions between global and national rights ideas are quite common. Finally, our work brings to light two dilemmas in the way human rights are appropriated and used – a resonance dilemma and an advocacy dilemma – both arising from the disparity between human rights as law and human rights as a social movement.     

Negative Dependence in Sampling

Abstract. The strong Rayleigh property is a new and robust negative dependence property that implies negative association; in fact it implies conditional negative association closed under external fields (CNA+). Suppose that and are two families of 0‐1 random variables that satisfy the strong Rayleigh property and let . We show that {Z_i} conditioned on is also strongly Rayleigh; this turns out to be an easy consequence of the results on preservation of stability of polynomials of Borcea & Brändén (Invent. Math., 177, 2009, 521–569). This entails that a number of important π ps sampling algorithms, including Sampford sampling and Pareto sampling, are CNA+. As a consequence, statistics based on such samples automatically satisfy a version of the Central Limit Theorem for triangular arrays.     

UNDERSTANDING ATTITUDES TOWARD PROGRESSIVE TAXATION

This article examines attitudes toward and understanding ofprogressive taxation by comparing subjects' choices of fairtax rate structures in response to questions framed in bothabstract and concrete terms. Consistent with surveys of thegeneral public, a majority of the subjects indicated a preferencefor progressive taxation in response to abstract questions.However, consistent with results from social psychology andpolitical science research, the subjects' preferences for progressivetaxation were significantly different (lower) in response toconcrete questions. The observed preference reversal betweenprogressive taxes in the abstract and flat taxes (i.e., proportionalto income) in concrete situations is hypothesized to be associatedwith subjects' ignorance (their lack of understanding of theabstract concept of progressive taxation). Thus, between-subjectstests are conducted to examine (1)differences in order effectsof the abstract and concrete frames that might cue the subjectsto a greater understanding of the abstract terms, (2) the effectsof definitions and illustrations on subjects' choices, and (3)the use of different scales and reference points to measureresponses. Consistent results (preference reversals from preferencesfor progressivity in the abstract to nonprogressive preferencesin concrete frames) were obtained across all of the between-subjectsexperimental manipulations. A within-subjects design also includesa posttest knowledge test that demonstrates the tendency ofa majority of subjects to misidentify concrete comparisons asprogressive when they actually are regressive. Subjects whowere able to correctly identify the concrete comparisons weremore likely to be consistent in their responses to abstractand concrete frames. However, 36 percent of these "knowledgeable"subjects still preferred progressive taxes in the abstract butflat or regressive taxes in the concrete situations. These resultsraise concerns about conclusions from public opinion polls usingabstract questions regarding preferences for progressive taxrates.