SYMPATHY AND SCIENCE: THE SETTLEMENT MOVEMENT IN GARY AND INDIANAPOLIS, TO 1930 (INDIANA)

Jane Addams and Hull House have dominated the historiography of the settlement movement. Hull House and a number of other settlements were spearheads of progressive reform. They fought for the rights of labor, battled municipal corruption, took stands on unpopular issues. However, the settlement movement was not confined to New York, Chicago, and Boston. There were settlement houses in all American cities. This study is less concerned with finding heroines than with defining the general nature of the settlement movement. It focuses on two medium-sized Indiana cities, Gary and Indianapolis, which present contrasts to the larger metropolitan centers and to each other. Whereas Indianapolis was a city experiencing steady growth based on a diversified economy, Gary was a city by decree, planned and built by U.S. Steel as the site of the most modern steelworks in America. Gary resembled a company town, but in Indianapolis, political and economic power were more diffuse. Seven settlement houses thrived in these cities between 1890 and 1930, representing the humanitarian and missionary efforts of a variety of reformers. The form of this study is settlement portraits, or case studies. The settlements are compared with each other and with the Hull House model. In addition, several main themes are explored. One is professionalization. An attempt has been made to see whether the settlement workers\u27 career patterns, philosophy, and methods reflect increasing professionalization. A second theme explores the settlements\u27 goals, revealing them to be not agitation, but adaptation, and discusses how this goal was implemented. The study analyses contrasts and similarities between settlements\u27 programs with blacks and whites, immigrants and native born, men and women. Religion forms a third theme. Unlike the pragmatic, secular, Hull House model, several of these settlements resembled missions. A final assessment of the settlements takes account of tensions inherent in early twentieth century reform: as humanitarians, settlement workers were guided by sympathy, but as professionals they were constrained to follow standard, bureaucratic procedures--to temper sympathy with science. As an embodiment of both, the settlements represented both the humanitarian and the coercive aspects of progressive era reform

Assessing the relative importance of key quality of life dimensions for people with and without a disability:an empirical ranking comparison study

BACKGROUND: In economic evaluation, the quality of life of people with a disability has traditionally been assessed using preference-based instruments designed to measure and value quality of life. To provide robust measurement of the effectiveness of programs designed to improve the quality of life of people living with a disability, preference-based measures need to be sufficiently sensitive to detect incremental changes in the quality of life dimensions that are most important to people who have a disability. This study sought to explore whether there was a difference in the ranked order of importance of quality of life dimensions between people with a disability and people without a disability. METHODS: An online survey was developed and administered Australia wide. The first sample (n = 410) comprised adults (aged ≥ 18 years) with a disability (n = 208) and family carers of person/s with a disability who were asked to respond on behalf of the person with a disability (n = 202). The second sample included adults without disability (n = 443). Respondents were asked to rank the importance of 12 quality of life dimensions extracted from the content of established preference-based quality of life measures (EQ-5D, AQoL and ASCOT). RESULTS: People with a disability placed relatively higher importance on broader quality of life dimensions (e.g. Control, Independence, Self-care) relative to health status focused dimensions (e.g. Vision, Hearing, Physical mobility). This distinction was less differentiable for those ‘without a disability’. The biggest differences in ranked importance of dimensions were in: Vision (‘with disability’ = 10th, ‘without disability’ = 4th), Self-care (‘with disability’ = 3rd, ‘without disability’ = 7th) and Mental well-being (‘with disability’ = 6th, ‘without disability’ = 2nd). CONCLUSIONS: The relative importance of quality of life dimensions for people with a disability differs to people without a disability. Quality of life is a key outcome for economic evaluation and for assessing the impact of disability care policy and practice in Australia and internationally. It is important that the effectiveness of interventions is measured and valued in ways which are fully reflective of the quality of life preferences of people with a disability