Depression and unemployment: Panel findings from the Epidemiologic Catchment Area study

Studies that have found an association between unemployment and psychological depression often fail to establish the direction of causal influence. Analyses of Epidemiologic Catchment Area panel data revealed that of employed respondents not diagnosed with major depression at first interview, those who became unemployed had over twice the risk of increased depressive symptoms and of becoming clinically depressed as those who continued employed. Although the increase in symptoms was statistically significant, the effect on clinical depression was not, possibly because of the low power of the test. The reverse causal path from clinical depression at Time 1 to becoming unemployed by Time 2 was not supported. The unemployment rate in the respondent's community at time of interview was not related directly to psychological depression but appeared associated indirectly with depression via its impact on the risk of becoming unemployed. Implications for policy and further research were discussed. The research described in this paper was supported by Grant #5 RO1 AA08379-02 from the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The authors appreciate the suggestions provided by members of the Consortium for Research Involving Stress Processes sponsored by the W. T. Grant Foundation and by two anonymous journal reviewers.     

My place,your place,and no place: Behavior settings as a risk factor for HIV-related injection practices of drug users in Baltimore,Maryland

Information is sparse on the social context of illicit drug injection behaviors and their relationship to HIV infection. This study examined relationships between injection settings, injecting with others, and HIV risk behaviors of sharing needles and not cleaning contaminated needles in a sample of 630 inner-city injecting drug users in Baltimore, MD. Through open-ended interviews, five primary settings of injection behavior were identified. These settings included one's own, friends' and mother's residence, shooting galleries, and semipublic areas. Most participants reported injecting in their own residence (92%) and friends' residence (86%) in the prior 6 months. In a multiple regression analysis, injecting at friends' residence, in shooting galleries, and in semipublic areas and frequency of injecting with others were significantly associated with frequency of sharing uncleaned needles, “slipping” (i.e., failure to disinfect shared needles), and not always cleaning used needles before injecting. Results suggest that interventions may benefit from targeting settings as well as behaviors to reduce the spread of HIV. This research was supported by grants DA04334, DA05911, DA06313, and DA08985 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.     

Accounting for macro-level causation

By a macro-level feature, I understand any feature that supervenes on, and is thus realized in, lower-level features. Recent discussions by Kim have suggested that such features cannot be causally relevant insofar as they are not classically reducible to lower-level features. This seems to render macro-level features causally irrelevant. I defend the causal relevance of some such features. Such features have been thought causally relevant in many examples that have underpinned philosophical work on causality. Additionally, in certain typical biological cases, we conceive of causally relevant features at various compatible levels of analysis. When elaborated, these points make a strong prima facie case for macro-level causal relevance. However, we might abandon both the philosophical guideposts and the corresponding explanatory practice in the special sciences were we convinced that no reflective philosophical account could provide for the causal relevance there supposed. I show that such drastic measures are not necessary, for we can make sense of macro-level causal relevance by drawing on Paul Humphreys' recent work in ways suggested by the concrete examples considered here.Some of the work on this paper was undertaken at the 1991 NEH Summer Seminar on Causality, directed by Paul Humphreys. I wish to thank my fellow participants, and Paul Humphreys, John Tienson, and Terry Horgan for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.     

Repairing the reticulated model of scientific rationality

InScience and Values (1984) and other, more recent, works, e.g. (1987a, 1987b, 1989a, 1989b, 1990), Larry Laudan proposes a theory of scientific debate he dubs the reticulated model of scientific rationality (Laudan, 1984, pp. 50–66). The model stands in sharp contrast to hierarchical approaches to rationality exemplified by Popper (1959), Hempel (1965), and Reichenbach (1938), as well as the conventionalist views of rationality defended by Carnap (1950), Popper (1959), Kuhn (1962), and Lakatos (1978). Ironically, the model commits some of the same errors Laudan finds in hierarchicalist and conventionalists approaches to scientific rationality. This paper will show that the model can be fixed by recognizing that criteria of goal assessment have no privileged status. These rules are best viewed as simply rules of rationality (or rules of scientific method) by another name.     

Making sense: The work of Eugene Gendlin

This and the following papers were presented at a symposium organized by David M. Levin honoring the work of Eugene Gendlin at meetings of the Society for Phenomenology and the Human Sciences, Boston, October, 1992.     

Valid and more valid? Keys to understanding personal appraisal practices at work

Four empirical studies of the roles of self-report questionnaires, tests, and ratings in employment interviews, staff appraisal, and personnel validation surveys are presented in order to examine the number and relationships of psychological constructs derived from data provided by candidates, employees, and their assessors. Test results are related to different kinds of criteria, including job offers following interview, supervisor ratings on the job, and objective indices of work performance. From the practices reported and observed in these various contexts, a theory of personal appraisal mechanisms in occupational settings is derived using data reduction and linear regression methods. Applications of cognitive information processing theory to self-reports and ratings by individuals, and of exchange theory to the social context of panel discussions among assessors, provide a key to understanding why psychometric measures of personal qualities vary in their power to predict work performance in spite of consistent construct validity.     

Factors Affecting the Career Aspirations of Asian Americans

The authors compared the career considerations of a group of Asian American college students (52 men and 72 women) with a comparison group of Caucasian students (95 men and 151 women) using an Occupations List. The results revealed that Asian American students were more likely to have considered Investigative occupations and less likely to have considered Enterprising and Conventional occupations than were the Caucasian students. There were also differences in the career considerations of the two racial groups in terms of the prestige level and gender traditionality of the occupations. The implications of the findings for theory and practice are discussed.     

Taking an individualized approach to the assessment of self-efficacy and the prediction of alcoholic relapse

The present study reports on a clinical instrument designed for assessing self-efficacy in alcoholics. In contrast to studies that construct general measures, it was proposed that taking an individualized approach to assessment might offer an effective methodology. Thirty-four alcoholics in an outpatient, behaviorally oriented treatment program participated as subjects. During therapy, an Individualized Self-Efficacy Survey (ISS) was developed for each subject. The ISS was developed by (a) administering the Drinking Patterns Questionnaire (DPQ) to identify important problem areas (e.g., work, children, marital) and specific drinking antecedents and (b) constructing a 15-item scale using each drinker's most important cues. The utility of having clients choose their own items was supported by finding a significant relationship between problem areas identified as important on the DPQ and the areas reported as surrounding relapse. ISS ratings were reflective of efficacy changes during treatment, while posttreatment ISS scores were predictive of subsequent relapse. Situation-specific prediction of relapse was not found. The advantages of this methodology for clinical use are discussed, while general directions for future research are suggested.     

SPEECH PERCEPTION AS A TALKER-CONTINGENT PROCESS

Abstract— To determine how familiarity with a talker's voice affects perception of spoken words, we trained two groups of subjects to recognize a set of voices over a 9-day period One group then identified novel words produced by the same set of talkers at four signal-to-noise ratios Control subjects identified the same words produced by a different set of talkers The results showed that the ability to identify a talker's voice improved intelligibility of novel words produced by that talker The results suggest that speech perception may involve talker-contingent processes whereby perceptual learning of aspects of the vocal source facilitates the subsequent phonetic analysis of the acoustic signal