Manufacturing American Identity Among Immigrant Workers: Colorado Fuel & Iron Company at the Turn of the 20th Century

Extant research indicates that white racial framing is utilized to rationalize discrimination, but less work has examined how the white racial frame becomes filtered into institutional settings such as corporations and instilled within its programs and practices. This paper analyzes white racial framing in the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company during the early twentieth century as part of its effort to Americanize and control its racially diverse workforce. The company developed a special unit headed by a physician and proponent of eugenics to promote “social betterment.” Our findings show how dominant racial ideologies were embedded within the company's conceptualization of social betterment and how these ideas influenced corporate programs aimed at mollifying the workforce and increasing productivity. We discuss the implications of our research for future analyses of historically embedded racial framing.     

Locating social service centres using interactive graphics

The paper explores the feasibility of using interactive graphic based solution procedures in location problems with discrete choices. It compares solutions generated through interactive graphics with those generated through optimization for a problem context where service centres had to be located in rural India. The comparison demonstrates the feasibility of generating near optimal solutions for problems with a certain dimensionality. Broad features of the graphic software are described. The paper also highlights other advantages and limitations of the interactive graphic procedure.     

A model for national planning policies

This paper attempts to develop a multiobjective model to help policy-makers choose the most appropriate mix of economic policies concurrent with the elimination of serious gaps. Each individual policy attempts to achieve a specific goal or a set of subgoals; but it may hinder the achievement of some other subgoals. To differentiate between the importance of different objectives, the analyst assigns different priorities to each of the given set of subgoals. Three sets of results are provided by three separate computer runs of this model. Each set of results corresponds to one of the three priority structures, and each run indicates quite differing underachievements or over-achievements of individual subgoals. A detailed explanation for each of these deviations (gaps) from the targeted subgoals is attempted in an overall framework and some interactions between various gaps (savings gaps, foreign exchange gap, domestic growth gap, GNP gap, etc.) are also identified.     

Influences on the effectiveness of peer interaction: children's level of cognitive development and the relative ability of partners

Studies of peer interaction among children have generally shown that this experience aids performance, or at the very least does not result in poorer performance in relation to control conditions. Furthermore, working with a more able partner has been found to be a particularly effective form of peer interaction. In contrast, a model proposed by Karmiloff-Smith suggests that at certain phases of cognitive development children may ignore feedback and information from task activities. These two ideas were tested in a study where pairs of 6–7 year old children had to balance a beam on a fulcrum during a computer task. The performance on a post-test did not support either viewpoint. Children who were working with a more able partner were found to perform significantly worse than other children. The findings of a second study suggested that this effect may have been due to the more able children having an incomplete understanding of the computer task and they may have dominated social interaction thereby restricting the progress of the less able pupil. The findings from these two studies indicate that peer interaction can result in poorer learning outcomes, and that Karmiloff-Smith's model should include the possibility of peer interaction effects.     

A Randomized Clinical Trial of Online Stress Inoculation for Adult Children of Divorce

Interventions for helping young adults cope with the stress produced by their parents’ divorce are rarely described or evaluated. Transitions, derived from a stress inoculation framework, was designed to foster stress-coping and parent–young adult relationship skills via the Internet. Participants (95 young adult college students who had experienced parental separation or divorce within the past year) were randomly assigned to experimental and delayed-treatment control conditions. Intervention modules included psychoeducation, relaxation, mindfulness meditation, cognitive restructuring, and communication skills. A multivariate analysis of variance yielded a significant treatment-by-repeated-measures interaction; univariate follow-up analyses of variance showed improvement on stress but not on relationship variables measuring quality of relationship with mother or father. Neither moderator nor intent-to-treat analyses altered this outcome pattern.     

Collective Identity and Memory: A Comparative Analysis of Community Response to Environmental Hazards

Research has explored the ways in which communities respond to local polluting facilities. In some cases, residents mobilize to confront corporate and state polluters, whereas in other cases residents remain quiescent in the wake of documented environmental threats. The variation in community response is often linked to demographic variables, including age, gender, education, and length of residence; yet cultural factors remain largely unexamined. We examine how cultural factors such as community identity and memory mitigate the relationship between community residents and polluting facilities. We present a comparative study of two heavily polluted communities—Blackwell, Oklahoma, and Cañon City, Colorado—that had divergent responses to contamination. The data for these cases come from in‐depth interviews with community residents and various officials (N = 105), content analyses of newspaper coverage and relevant organization documents, and direct observation of meetings and organizing activities. Our findings indicate that cultural factors play a critical role in understanding the relationship between local residents and polluting facilities. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for future research on rural communities and environmental contamination.     

Analytic approaches for assessing long-term treatment effects. Examples of empirical applications and findings

Analytic approaches, including the structural equation model (autoregressive panel model), hierarchical linear model, latent growth curve model, survival/event history analysis, latent transition model, and time-series analysis (interrupted time series, multivariate time-series analysis) are discussed for their applicability to data of different structures and their utility in evaluating temporal effects of treatment. Methods are illustrated by presenting applications of the various approaches in previous studies examining temporal patterns of treatment effects. Recent advancements in these longitudinal modeling approaches and the accompanying computer software development offer tremendous flexibility in examining long-term treatment effects through longitudinal data with varying numbers and intervals of assessment and types of measures. A multimethod assessment will contribute to a more complete understanding of the complex phenomena of the long-term courses of substance use and its treatment.     

Building a Secure Base: Treatment of a Child with Disorganized Attachment

Treatment strategies for children with disorganized attachments are not well established. This population exhibits a large array of difficulties in social relationships and self-regulation, as well as numerous other co-morbid conditions. As such, treatment of children with attachment problems is complex and requires a multi-faceted approach. This paper explores current research and theories about disorganized attachment and then examines how that research helped shape the treatment of an 8 year-old boy.