Richard M. Hessler

Gender, social networks and survival time: a 20-year study of the rural elderly

The study design is a 20-year panel of 1700 rural elderly individuals who were interviewed in 1966, 1974 and in 1986-1987. The dependent variable was survival time. Proportional hazards and time dependent covariates were used to analyze the data. Gender differences in survival were explored. Participation in formal social networks predicted survival time. The findings support Durkheims theory of social integration and call into question genetic differences as the explanation for the differential survival time of men and women.

Demographic context, social interaction, and perceived health status: excedrin headache no. 1.

This study of a large municipal housing project for the poor in one of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvanias eight wards measured and analyzed social context and social interaction in terms of their individual and mutual eflects upon indices of physical, social, and emotional health status. Architectual factors were analyzed, as well as processes of demographic determinism on the part of the housing project manager. Interaction was highest in constant demographic contexts. However, contextual dissonance was not related to reported health aberrations in the predicted positive direction. Finally, the architectural or structural orientation of buildings was found to be a substantively and empirically important factor in the amount of interaction among building residents.

The compression of morbidity debate in aging: an empirical test using the gerontological and geriatric population studies in Goteborg, Sweden (H70)

The H70 longitudinal study of aging, Göteborg, Sweden is used to empirically test the compression of morbidity theory advanced by. We reconceptualize compression as postponement of morbidity in the sense of decreasing amounts of illness for increasingly long life spans. Operationally, morbidity is defined as the average number of hospital days in the last year of life. The date of death and the date of 1-year prior to death define the risk period. The linear regression model with age at death, age at death squared, year of birth, and sex are statistically significant with the oldest having the fewest hospital days. The findings offer partial support for the compression of morbidity theory.

Citizen participation and conflict

Some crucial issues affect citizen participation in poverty area community mental health centers. Sources of conflict that inhibit citizen participation are discussed. The authors propose a transitional model to facilitate a move toward workable consumer control.

Consumer evaluation of health services: implications for methodology and health care policy.

Consumer evaluation research is defined and analyzed as an experimental model for establishing a link between social science research and public policy. The paper reports the results of an 18-month longitudinal study of an experimental citizen evaluation group. Participant observation was the method used to organize the data. The impact of the model on methodological issues, such as objectivity, researcher autonomy, and control over research decision-making are discussed. Implications of the consumer evaluation model for integrating social research and health policy formulation are analyzed and principles of citizen evaluation research are presented.

Privacy ethics in the age of disclosure: Sweden and america compared

Sweden, a model welfare state, and the United States, with its ethos of rugged individualism, have institutionalized ethical systems for protecting the research subject’s right to privacy. The ethical concerns driving these “codes” of ethics are similar across the two societies, but the institutional systems for protecting privacy, indeed the very definitions of privacy, are different, reflecting variant value systems. The Swedes have an open government but are vigilant and effective guardians of the privacy of individual files. In contrast, the Americans keep their government relatively closed but allow relatively easy access to individual files. Regardless of this basic difference, researchers in both countries are struggling to rethink their ethical systems in the face of rapid development of communications technology in what has emerged as the age of disclosure.This paper begins with the cultural concepts of privacy in Sweden and the United States. Privacy was chosen as the focus of this paper because it stands at the center of deception and disclosure in research, a pressing ethical problem facing sociologists today. Next is a comparison of the institutionalized systems for protecting the individual’s right to privacy in the two countries, followed by a discussion of the social pressures confronting the two systems. The paper concludes with a comparison of the ethical principles utilized by both countries.

Research Entry: A 20-Year Longitudinal Study of the Rural Elderly

A difficult research entry problem was analyzed sociologically which caused the authors to reject the traditional natural science methodological solutions in favor of a set of qualitative techniques grounded in the social relations between researcher and respondent. Facing the last of three face-to-face interviews with very elderly respondents over a 20-year time frame, the authors turned to the sociology of social relations which develop between researcher and the everyday lives of the respondents. The time frame was very long, the respondents were very old and frail, and the traditional methodological wisdom of gaining entry did not work under these conditions. Telephone contact, letters, and other traditional yet impersonal techniques produced refusals. In contrast, personal face-to-face interaction established through a social relations model produced excellent access to the respondents. The specific qualitative techniques for gaining entry and establishing rapport are described and interpreted sociologically.

Sports Competition and International Capitalism

The extreme competitiveness in American sports limits the possibility of mass citizen participation. Highly competitive sports are not enjoyable for most participants, except the very best, and sports facilities are often only available to these same select few. In any event, sports participation is often seen as impossible by most citizens since they do not measure up to the image of sports superstars found in the mass media. Also, rampant competition often leads to high levels of sports violence and a dehumanization of both competitors and spectators. Such sports competition based on individual excellence is not found in China where collective, nationwide excellence and breadth of participation are emphasized. The widespread ethic of individual excellence and individual competition in sports seems to be a product of international capitalism, since both international capitalism and the sports empire are dominated by the same groups of people and com petitive sports serve the interests of international capitalism very well.