No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

<p>This thesis comprises three essays. The first two essays examine what inferences can be drawn about the structure of wages from the experiences of displaced workers using the Ontario Ministry of Labour Plant Closure Survey. The third essay examines the effect of unemployment benefits on household consumption during spells of unemployment, with a particular emphasis on durables purchases. It employs data from a second and new data source, the Canadian Out of Employment Panel.</p> <p>The first essay revisits the issue of what can be learned about wage tenure profiles from displaced worker data. The positive relationship between wages and tenure in cross section data is consistent with the accumulation of firm specific capital. Alternatively, it may be explained by unobserved heterogeniety across workers, or by endogenous mobility. Displaced worker data is quite helpful in correcting for the first possible bias, and less so for the second. The relationship between various estimation strategies in the literature is illustrated. Estimates that control for individual heterogeniety and endogenous mobility driven by systematic differences in the pay policies of firms are presented. In this data, 10 years of tenure appears to raise wages by about 7%.</p> <p>The second essay examines intra-industry wage differentials. Even after conditioning on a rich set of worker and job characteristics, firm of employment is a significant determinant of wages. Estimates that employ the longitudinal nature of data demonstrate that sorting of workers across firms by unobserved ability can explain about half of the observed differentials. Firm wage differentials are observed within narrow industries, consistent across broad occupational groups, and robust to conditioning on differences in the mix of skills or job characteristics. Further "high wage" firms exhibit high average tenures suggesting that positive wage premia are associated with reduced mobility. These observations imply that compensating wage differentials are also a poor candidate explanation for the observed differentials. The results are more consistent with models based on rents or some firm monopsony power. The results also raise questions about the interpretation of wage regressions which ignore firm heterogeneity, and about the sources of wages losses among displaced workers.</p> <p> The final essay examines how households smooth consumption over the income losses due to an unemployment spell. A model of "internal capital markets" is proposed, which suggests that households adjust the timing of the replacement of small durables to income flows. The plausibility of this model is investigated empirically, using a series of program changes in the Canadian unemployment insurance scheme for exogenous variation in transitory income. The data are consistent with the predictions of the "internal capital markets model" while rejecting both a standard life cycle model and a "rule of thumb" model of household expenditure patterns.</p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This quantitative survey study examined stress/burnout and job satisfaction in a sample of 108 social workers in rural Mississippi using the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) and Abridged Job Description Index (AJDI). The research examined the prevalence of stress/burnout among mental health social workers employed with the Mississippi Department of Mental Health. The research focused primarily on the relationship between burnout and job satisfaction and the degree to which levels of burnout and satisfaction were associated with demographic characteristics. Results of this study showed that 36.1% of respondents reported a high level of emotional exhaustion, 6.5% reported high levels of depersonalization, and 27.8% reported high level of personal accomplishment. Multiple dimensions of job satisfaction were found to be associated with burnout; emotional exhaustion was a particularly strong predictor of low job satisfaction. No significant differences in burnout and job satisfaction were found between men and women. Levels of burnout and job satisfaction were not related significantly to respondents’ age, marital status, or years of experience. Bachelor-level social workers scored higher on both emotional exhaustion and depersonalization than Masters-level social workers. A significant difference between African-Americans and Caucasians was found for general job satisfaction. Social worker certification, years of social work experience, and education level were related significantly to satisfaction with opportunities for promotion. Caseload was associated with differential levels of job satisfaction, but not in a simple linear pattern: the lowest levels of job satisfaction were found among social workers with moderate caseloads (21-30 clients).

Abstract This study sought to understand the differences and similarities between social work practice and evidence-based practice (EBP). As evidence-based practice becomes popularized in areas of professional practice, challenges and tensions arise for social workers. This qualitative research study asked social workers working in the hospital setting how they define and use evidence-based practice in their work, and about the tensions they experience in using EBP. The study revealed that social workers maintain their scope of practice in areas related to advocacy, the use of systems theory and the importance of the therapeutic relationship with clients in the helping process. The social workers in the study identified that social workers understood the value of scientific research and indicated that as a profession, social work practice can use research to influence areas for social change. The participants in the study described that social work practice and evidence-based practice are distinct. Social work practice is intended to understand and respond to social problems, whereas EBP in mental health settings is designed to resolve more narrowly-defined problems of individual coping. The social workers recognized that the two practices could only really co-exist. However, they did note that social workers’ commitments to reinforce self-determination for clients have potentially important overlap with EBP’s attention to patient values and preferences. / Thesis / Master of Social Work (MSW)

No description available.

The problem of this study is to record the evolution and to determine the present status of workmen's compensation insurance in Texas.

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2999-01-01

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / This study was concerned with examining some of the perceptions which female volunteers and female employees have of their respective work situations. It also compared some of the satisfactions which both groups derived from their work. A review of the literature on volunteers revealed that they come from varying backgrounds and that their specific motives for doing volunteer work were likely to be highly diversified. It was noted that little information was available describing the extent to which they differed from a comparable population of non-volunteers. It was suggested that there were some similarities between paid employees and volunteers. For example: 1) volunteers and employees work for another individual; 2) volunteers and employees work in the context of a total setting; 3) volunteers and employees expect some form of payment, be it tangible or intangible, for their services. An assumption was made based upon these similarities, namely, that many of the same psychological needs can be met through either volunteer work or paid employment. Important differences between the two groups were also identified. Some of these were the fallowing: 1. Volunteers are supplementary to the paid personnel. 2. Volunteers have less responsibility than the paid employees. 3. Volunteers receive a different kind of supervision than do employees. 4. Volunteers seek more personal gratifications from their work than do paid employees. It was suggested that the major factor contributing to these differences was that of monetary reward although it was also recognized that economic gain was not necessarily the primary benefit which a worker sought or obtained from employment. Nevertheless, financial remuneration or some tangible equivalent is a basic part of the contract between the employer and the paid employee. Its absence is what distinguishes the volunteer contract from that of the paid employee and determines the individual's role with respect to each. It defines what is expected of the worker and what the worker may expect from participating in the work situation. A second assumption was made on the basis of the differences outlined above, namely, that being a volunteer was different from being a paid employee. A theory of volunteer behavior was presented which was based upon the two assumptions that had been made. It was suggested that volunteers are freer to select a work situation on the basis of personal needs than are paid employees. The absence of monetary remuneration in the volunteer contract caused the volunteer and the volunteer supervisor to place more emphasis upon the psychological rewards which are to be gained from the work. failure to satisfy personal needs often results in termination of the volunteer activity. In the paid employment situation recognition is given to the importance for the person to meet various personal needs through her activity; however, the fact that she is being given wages and other tangible benefits tends to curtail the extent to which either she or the employer may be concerned with such needs being met. It was therefore suggested that volunteers and paid employees within the same work situation might view it differently because of the fact that there were differences in the extent to which their personal needs could influence their subsequent involvement in the setting. The first set of hypotheses offered for testing were: Hyp. 1. The perception of tbe work situation of women volunteers and paid employees within a given setting will differ. Hyp. 1a. There will be differences between volunteers and paid employees in terms of these needs which they perceive the setting as being most able to satisfy. It was noted that work situations differ from one another in terms of the kinds of satisfactions which they made available to the individual. It was then suggested that when an individual selects a setting predominantly on the basis of her personal needs that she chooses one in which she thinks those needs can be most easily met. Thus given a setting conducive to gratifying certain needs, volunteers should therefore be more homogeneous as a group than paid employees in terms of the kinds of satisfactions which they derive from their work. [TRUNCATED] / 2999-01-01