Does Relationship Lending Still Matter in the Consumer Banking Sector? Evidence from Two Financial Service Organizations in Vermont

We use actual loan applications submitted to a community development credit union (CDCU) and a traditional community bank to examine the role of relationship lending in the automobile loan market. We first show that the community bank relies upon credit scoring, not relationship lending; low-income households with poor credit histories are very unlikely to receive car loans from this traditional bank. We then show that relationship lending is a critical factor in the loan decision at the CDCU; low-income households with strong ties to the institution are likely to receive loans, despite poor credit histories. We conclude that as consolidation, deregulation and technology move mainstream financial institutions away from relationship lending and toward credit scoring, CDCUs will occupy an increasingly critical niche for low-income households.

Do Hospitals Alter Patient Care Effort Allocations under Pay-for-Performance?

To determine whether hospitals increase efforts on easy tasks relative to difficult tasks to improve scores under pay-for-performance (P4P) incentives.The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Hospital Compare data from Fiscal Years 2003 through 2005 and 2003 American Hospital Association Annual Survey data.We classified measures of process compliance targeted by the Premier Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration as easy or difficult to improve based on whether they introduce additional per-patient costs. We compared process compliance on easy and difficult tasks at hospitals eligible for P4P bonus payments relative to hospitals engaged in public reporting using random effects regression models.P4P hospitals did not preferentially increase efforts for easy tasks in patients with heart failure or pneumonia, but they did exhibit modestly greater effort on easy tasks for heart attack admissions. There is no systematic evidence that effort was allocated toward easier processes of care and away from more difficult tasks.Despite perverse P4P incentives to change allocation of efforts across tasks to maximize performance scores at lowest cost, we find little evidence that hospitals respond to P4P incentives as hypothesized. Alternative incentive structures may motivate greater response by targeted hospitals.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/79380/1/j.1475-6773.2010.01192.x.pd

Methodological Journey: Lessons Learned From a Student-led Intercultural Pilot Study

New technical communication scholars face the challenge of developing cultural competence in order to effectively and appropriately carry out intercultural research. With interculturally competent technical communicators in increasingly high demand, instructors wrestle with the challenge of preparing students for cross-cultural work environments (Melton, 2011; Smith & Mikelonis, 2011; St.Amant, 2011). The field has adopted a wide variety of globalization-driven, culture-conscious educational practices over the past few decades, but a knowledge gap still persists regarding how to equip new scholars with training and tools that are necessary for building cultural competence, particularly as it relates to designing and conducting research. In this article, we offer a critical reflection on our recent research journey during an intercultural pilot study in order to share lessons learned along the way about cultural competence, intercultural rhetoric, and multi-lingual interpreter-facilitated interviews

Childhood maltreatment, psychological resources, and depressive symptoms in women with breast cancer.

Childhood maltreatment is associated with elevated risk for depression across the human lifespan. Identifying the pathways through which childhood maltreatment relates to depressive symptoms may elucidate intervention targets that have the potential to reduce the lifelong negative health sequelae of maltreatment exposure. In this cross-sectional study, 271 women with early-stage breast cancer were assessed after their diagnosis but before the start of adjuvant treatment (chemotherapy, radiation, endocrine therapy). Participants completed measures of childhood maltreatment exposure, psychological resources (optimism, mastery, self-esteem, mindfulness), and depressive symptoms. Using multiple mediation analyses, we examined which psychological resources uniquely mediated the relationship between childhood maltreatment and depressive symptoms. Exposure to maltreatment during childhood was robustly associated with lower psychological resources and elevated depressive symptoms. Further, lower optimism and mindfulness mediated the association between childhood maltreatment and elevated depressive symptoms. These results support existing theory that childhood maltreatment is associated with lower psychological resources, which partially explains elevated depressive symptoms in a sample of women facing breast cancer diagnosis and treatment. These findings warrant replication in populations facing other major life events and highlight the need for additional studies examining childhood maltreatment as a moderator of treatment outcomes