How Welfare Policies Affect Adolescents' School Outcomes: A Synthesis of Evidence From Experimental Studies

Using data from 8 random assignment studies and employing meta‐analytic techniques, this article provides systematic evidence that welfare and work policies targeted at low‐income parents have small adverse effects on some school outcomes among adolescents ages 12 to 18 years at follow‐up. These adverse effects were observed mostly for school performance outcomes and occurred in programs that required mothers to work or participate in employment‐related activities and those that encouraged mothers to work voluntarily. The most pronounced negative effects on school outcomes occurred for the group of adolescents who had a younger sibling, possibly because of the increased home and sibling care responsibilities they assumed as their mothers increased their employment.     

Legal implications of managed care arrangements

Prior to the 1980s, managed care was virtually nonexistent as a force in health care. Presently, 64 percent of employees in America are covered by managed care plans, including health maintenance organizations (20 percent) and preferred provider organizations (44 percent). In contrast, only 29 percent of employees were enrolled in managed care plans in 1988 and only 47 percent in 1991. To date, the primary reason for this incredible growth in managed care has been economic-market pressure to reduce health care costs. For the foreseeable future, political pressures are likely to fuel this growth, as managed care is at the center of President Clinton's national health care plan. Although there are numerous legal issues surrounding managed care, this article focuses primarily on antitrust implications when forming managed care entities. In addition, the corporate practice of medicine doctrine, certain tax issues, and the fraud and abuse laws are discussed.     

A grounded theory of living a life with a physical disability in Taiwan

This study explores the experiences of disability for a number of Taiwanese adults with a physical disability. Using a grounded theory approach, their experiences of living a life with a physical disability were gained through in-depth interviews. The resulting grounded theory ‘it is more than just the impaired body’ presents the dynamic interactions between the participants and the context in which they were living their lives and how they managed their lives within that context. With its inclusion of the cultural dimension, a holistic way of understanding the daily lives of those who experience physical disability in Taiwan is provided.     

Power analysis for clustered non-continuous responses in multicenter trials

Power analysis for multi-center randomized control trials is quite difficult to perform for non-continuous responses when site differences are modeled by random effects using the generalized linear mixed-effects model (GLMM). First, it is not possible to construct power functions analytically, because of the extreme complexity of the sampling distribution of parameter estimates. Second, Monte Carlo (MC) simulation, a popular option for estimating power for complex models, does not work within the current context because of a lack of methods and software packages that would provide reliable estimates for fitting such GLMMs. For example, even statistical packages from software giants like SAS do not provide reliable estimates at the time of writing. Another major limitation of MC simulation is the lengthy running time, especially for complex models such as GLMM, especially when estimating power for multiple scenarios of interest. We present a new approach to address such limitations. The proposed approach defines a marginal model to approximate the GLMM and estimates power without relying on MC simulation. The approach is illustrated with both real and simulated data, with the simulation study demonstrating good performance of the method.     

Regional inequality and the welfare state: Convergence and divergence in levels of living in the United Kingdom, 1951–1971

Relatively little is known about the persistence or otherwise of geographical gradients in levels of living, even though the eradication of inter-and intra-regional disparities has been a major objective of the ‘welfare state’ created in the United Kingdom after the Second World War. Using a series of well-established territorial social indicators, this paper describes the relative change in levels of living in the United Kingdom by local authority areas between 1951 and 1971. A typology of change derived from the results of a linear regression analysis is presented. It is shown that the overall intensity of spatial inequality has changed very little over the period. At the same time, however, the relative position of some areas has deteriorated significantly, while that of others has significantly improved.     

‘A Blinding Lack of Progress’: Management Rhetoric and Affirmative Action

In this study we explore how versions of organizational reality and gender are constructed in management discourse and whether such patterns change over time. Specifically, we examine management explanations and accounts of the gendered nature of their organizations through their commentaries on their affirmative action programmes. In Australia private sector organizations with 100 or more employees are required to report to government on their affirmative action programmes for women. In these documents, management representatives outline objectives for the coming year and report on their progress in reducing employment‐related barriers for women. In doing so they account for the ‘problem’ of gender‐based discrimination that affirmative action is designed to address, justify their actions (or lack of action) and reproduce versions of gendered identity. Thus we use affirmative action reporting as cases of management rhetoric to explore how aspects of gender and organization are constructed, taken for granted, challenged or problematized. Comparing reports from the hospitality sector over a 14‐year period, we explore whether there is any evidence of discursive change in management accounts of the gendered nature of their organizations.     

Working with the Experts: collaborative research with people with an intellectual disability

This paper reports on part of a wider study concerned with the collaborative efforts of an inquirer and six people with an intellectual disability, to develop a grounded theory explaining the processes by which these informants manage the relationships within their personal communities. The study was conducted through a series of in-depth interviews with each informant; a process characterised by information sharing, tentative theory development and elaboration, and informants' checking the accuracy of the emerging theory. This inductive approach allowed not only an insight into the lives of each informant, but recognised the informants' expertise in matters concerning their own lives and thus facilitated the emergence of theoretical elements of relevance to the informants themselves. The focus of the paper is on the collaborative or partnership approach adopted. The outcomes of the research partnership are detailed and implications drawn for the role of research in the lifestyles of people with an intellectual disability.     

The effect of unionization on labor productivity: Some additional evidence

Following Brown and Medoff (1978), a number of studies have investigated the effect of unionization on labor productivity using a log-linear, Cobb-Douglas model of technology. To derive this model, a first-order Taylor-series approximation to the intrinsically nonlinear unionization variable is made; the resulting linear equation is estimated with generalized least-squares (GLS) techniques. We demonstrate that this approximation introduces a bias that necessarily results in an overstatement of the absolute value of the exact union productivity effect. We illustrate the magnitude of this bias by comparing GLS estimates of the linear Brown-Medoff model with GLS estimates of the exact, nonlinear relationship, using aggregate time-series data from the private domestic sector of the U.S. economy.     

Overcoming the Fear of the “Other”: Building Trust Between British Muslims and the Wider Community

Initiatives that seek to build community trust are timely given the increasing focus on terror-related attacks and the rise in associated hate crimes as well as scrutiny of the way Muslim leadership is responding to such incidents. This paper details a novel and proactive model that aims to improve and build trust between Muslims and the wider community. The Trust Building Project was found to accomplish its two objectives. Not only was there an improvement in participant knowledge of Islam scores but there was also evidence suggesting trust had improved through engagement, understanding and through getting to know one another. Listening and learning sought to dispel myths and highlight shared morals and values. We propose that through these interactions the basis to building a more trusting society can be formed. It is unclear to what extent this could reduce incidents of hate crime and discrimination, however social change has been shown to occur where there are grass roots initiatives and suggestions are made to examine how this work can be rolled out nationally in order to address the trust deficit seen within our society today.