A Tribute to Bill Kruskal

Discussion of ``The William Kruskal Legacy: 1919--2005'' by Stephen E. Fienberg, Stephen M. Stigler and Judith M. Tanur [arXiv:0710.5063]Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/088342306000000358 the Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

State of the Humanities 2021: Workforce & Beyond

How should one measure the value of a college degree? In recent years, policy-makers have focused their attention on earnings as the primary measure of the value of a degree, often using that metric to single out humanities degrees as less valuable than others. But there are other—less tangible—measures of value, such as satisfaction with one's work and life more generally, that might also be applied to these discussions.Without taking a position on which metrics are best, this report, based largely on original research commissioned by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences' Humanities Indicators, examines a variety of outcome measures, including graduates' satisfaction with their jobs, their finances, and their lives generally. The evidence shows that humanities graduates tend to earn less and have slightly higher levels of unemployment than business majors and graduates from some STEM fields. With respect to perceived well-being, however, humanities majors are similar to graduates from almost every other field. The data cannot explain the seeming disparity between the objective and subjective measures, but they provide a starting point for a more nuanced discussion about the relationship among fields of undergraduate study, employment, and quality of life. And for faculty, the report also points to a potential area of concern regarding the way they communicate to students about the skills developed in the course of an education in the field, as a substantial share of humanities graduates perceive little or no relationship between their job and their degree. The data were all gathered prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, but past experience tracking this sort of data for the humanities—particularly through the Great Recession—gives us little reason to expect a significant shift in values over the medium term

State of the Humanities 2022: From Graduate Education to the Workforce

Given the recent decline in students earning bachelor's degrees in the humanities, a great deal of concern is focused on undergraduate education. But many of the questions received by the Humanities Indicators staff have to do with outcomes for those who earn a graduate degree in the field. This report explores several key topics related to graduate education, including degree trends, the demographics of degree recipients, the extent to which programs engage students in career preparation activities, and graduates' career outcomes. The report relies heavily on the high-quality data collected by the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics, and also the National Science Foundation's National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, several of whose surveys yield valuable information about graduate degree holders in the humanities.The findings include a few surprises: 1) while most of the attention in the disciplines seems to focus on PhDs, the field conferred almost five times as many master's as doctoral degrees in recent years; 2) even so, the number of master's degrees conferred annually in the humanities has been in decline over the past several years and their share of all master's and professional degrees reached a historic low in 2020; 3) the number of humanities PhDs awarded each year was at a near-record high in 2020, but as a share of all doctoral degrees, they fell to a historic low; 4) while the academic job market for humanities PhDs has been depressed since 2008, there is no evidence that this is due to the substitution of adjunct for tenure-track positions; and 5) regardless of where they end up—either in academia or out—the large majority of graduate degree recipients in the humanities are satisfied with their jobs, despite earnings that are considerably lower than those of their counterparts from other fields.This report reflects the ongoing mission of the Humanities Indicators, a nationally recognized source of nonpartisan information about the field. The Indicators website covers 121 topics and includes more than 340 graphs detailing the state of the humanities in schools, higher education, and the workforce; levels of support for research and other key activities; and the role of the humanities in the day-to-day life of the nation. The project draws on data sources that meet the highest standards of social scientific rigor, relying heavily on the products of the U.S. federal statistical system

Linked Markov sources: Modeling outcome-dependent social processes

Many social processes are adaptive in the sense that the process changes as a result of previous outcomes. Data on such processes may come in the form of categorical time series. First, the authors propose a class of Markov Source models that embody such adaptation. Second, the authors discuss new methods to evaluate the fit of such models. Third, the authors apply these models and methods to data on a social process that is a preeminent example of an adaptive process: (encoded) conversation as arises in structured interviews. © 2007 Sage Publications

Does wage rank affect employees' well-being?

How do workers make wage comparisons? Both an experimental study and an analysis of 16,000 British employees are reported. Satisfaction and well-being levels are shown to depend on more than simple relative pay. They depend upon the ordinal rank of an individual's wage within a comparison group. “Rank” itself thus seems to matter to human beings. Moreover, consistent with psychological theory, quits in a workplace are correlated with pay distribution skewness

Work status and the quality of life

The general thesis from which this paper derived is that objective conditions are related to perceptions and evaluations of those conditions, but that such relationships are mediated by personal characteristics such as expectation and aspiration levels, and other motivational factors. The specific relationship examined is that between work status and overall life satisfaction among women. Although there is little difference in average levels of life satisfaction expressed by housewives and by women working outside the home, substantial differences emerge when women are distinguished by their motivation with respect to paid work: among women who want jobs, working women are more satisfied with their lives than are housewives; while among those who would prefer not to work, housewives are more satisfied. Evidence is also found in support of a hypothesis that work tends to be less central to the overall quality of women's lives than is true for men.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/43690/1/11205_2004_Article_BF00353134.pd

Using peer advocates to improve access to services among hard-to-reach populations with hepatitis C:a qualitative study of client and provider relationships

BACKGROUND: Peer support programmes use individuals with specific experiences to improve engagement and outcomes among new clients. However, the skills and techniques used to achieve this engagement have not been mapped. This potentially restricts the development and replication of successful peer advocate models of care. This study explored how a group of peer advocates with experience of homelessness, alcohol and drug misuse made and sustained relationships with their client group. For the purposes of this project, the client group were located among a hepatitis C-positive cohort of people who have a history of injecting drug use and homelessness. METHODS: Five self-selecting advocates gave a narrative interview lasting 40-90 min. These interviews were double transcribed using both thematic analysis and narrative analysis in order to triangulate the data and provide a robust set of findings about the unique skills of peer advocates in creating and sustaining relationships with clients from hard-to-reach populations. RESULTS: Peer advocates build rapport with clients through disclosing personal details about their lives. While this runs counter to assumptions about the need to maintain distance in client-patient relationships, the therapeutic benefits appear to outweigh the potential costs of this engagement. CONCLUSION: We conclude the therapeutic benefits of self-disclosure between peer advocates and their clients offer a moral grounding for self-disclosure as a means of building relationships with key hard-to-reach populations

Épisodes d’inactivité et revenus criminels dans une trajectoire de délinquance

L’instabilité de l’activité criminelle dans le temps est déjà bien documentée. On connaît toutefois peu les circonstances qui expliquent ces variations à court terme. Une meilleure connaissance de ces facteurs est souhaitable puisqu’il est possible que les transitions et les changements à court terme précèdent les points tournants des carrières criminelles. Les conditions qui rendent compte d’une interruption temporaire des activités peuvent, par exemple, contribuer à expliquer un désistement définitif. L’étude se fonde sur les trajectoires de 172 délinquants impliqués dans des crimes à but lucratif et analyse les variations mensuelles de leurs revenus criminels ainsi que les épisodes d’inactivité criminelle à l’intérieur d’une période fenêtre de 36 mois. La méthode des calendriers d’histoire de vie combinée aux modèles hiérarchiques permet d’examiner conjointement le rôle de facteurs statiques (les caractéristiques individuelles des sujets) et dynamiques (les circonstances de vie). Les résultats mettent en évidence l’importance des événements qui marquent le style de vie des délinquants et des paramètres qui caractérisent l’engagement criminel dans la compréhension des variations dans les trajectoires à l’étude. Ils soulignent également l’importance de la finalité derrière les activités criminelles pour expliquer la décision des délinquants de cesser temporaire leurs activités illicites