William Magee

Linking Life Histories and Mental Health: A Person-Centered Strategy

We present a strategy for using longitudinal survey data to identify life history pathways linked with mental health outcomes. The central aim is to begin with richly detailed descriptions of individual lives and, from them, to discern generalizable features of aggregates of multiple lives. Conceptual principles guiding the organization and interpretation of life history information are summarized. Data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) are used to illustrate the specific steps for analyzing life histories of “resilient” women (those with a history of depression who report high levels of current well-being). The steps begin with writing narratives of individual life histories, which are then reviewed for commonalities, and subsequently thinned to more generic descriptions. The process culminates with tests of distinguishability, contrasting the “resilient” with three other mental health groups. Illustrating the constructive tensions between idiographic and nomothetic analyses, our approach documents multiple life pathways to resilience. The methodology also underscores the delicate interplay between activities of the mind and machine in facilitating scientific discovery.

Effects of illness and disability on job separation

Effects of illness and disability on job separation result from both voluntary and involuntary processes. Voluntary processes range from the reasoned actions of workers who weigh illness and disability in their decision-making, to reactive stress-avoidance responses. Involuntary processes include employer discrimination against ill or disabled workers. Analyses of the effects of illness and disability that differentiate reasons for job separation can illuminate the processes involved. This paper reports on an evaluation of effects of illness and disability on job separation predicted by theories of reasoned action, stress, and employer discrimination against ill and disabled workers. Effects of four illness/disability conditions on the rate of job separation for 12 reasons are estimated using data from a longitudinal study of a representative sample of the Canadian population-the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID). Two of the four effects that are statistically significant (under conservative Bayesian criteria for statistical significance) are consistent with the idea that workers weigh illness and disability as costs, and calculate the costs and benefits of continuing to work with an illness or disability: (1) disabling illness increases the hazard of leaving a job in order to engage in caregiving, and (2) work-related disability increases the hazard of leaving a job due to poor pay. The other two significant effects indicate that: (3) disabling illness decreases the hazard of layoff, and (4) non-work disability increases the hazard of leaving one job to take a different job. This last effect is consistent with a stress-interruption process. Other effects are statistically significant under conventional criteria for statistical significance, and most of these effects are also consistent with cost-benefit and stress theories. Some effects of illness and disability are sex and age-specific, and reasons for the specificity of these effects are discussed.

Neighbourhood Ethnic Concentration and Discrimination

We investigate the association between the residential concentration of Chinese in Toronto and discrimination as experienced and perceived by Chinese immigrant residents. A unique aspect of this study is our focus on perceived employment discrimination. We find that Chinese immigrants living in neighbourhoods with a high concentration of other Chinese residents are more likely to perceive employment discrimination against Chinese people as a group, and are more likely to report exposure to ethnically motivated verbal assault, than are Chinese immigrants living elsewhere. Our results are consistent with studies of other populations. However, we argue that theory and policy related to ethnic concentration and discrimination should recognise that effects of ethnic concentration on discrimination are likely to vary with the ecological setting under investigation (for example, neighbourhoods versus larger areas), as well as by size of locale (city, region, or country), and the ethnic groups involved.

The association of work-related worries and anger with home-related worries, and anger at others at home

Abstract Studies have found anger at others at home (AOH) to be associated with job-related stress, and work-to-home interference (WHI). These findings suggest that WHI may mediate the translation of stress about work into AOH. This study investigates the associations of work-related worries, and anger about work, with worries about home and AOH. WHI is investigated as a mediator of the translation of job worry into AOH, and spillover of moods between work and home. Gender, age and job control are investigated as moderators of those associations. Data are from a telephone survey of employed residents of Toronto, Canada who are living with others. The results suggest that WHI mediates the spillover of worries between work and home, but not the spillover of anger or the translation of job worries into AOH. The moderation analyses suggest that WHI increases AOH only among people with low job control.

“Stuck in the Middle with You?” Supervisory Level and Anger about Work

Although sociologists have long been interested in the stratification of emotions, the occupational stratification of anger has been investigated in only a few general population studies. Through analyses of data representative of workers in Toronto, we evaluate the hypothesis that workplace hierarchical position, defined by supervisory level, has an inverted u-shaped association with the frequency of anger about work. We also evaluate the more specific hypothesis that the difference in work-related anger between front-line supervisors and nonsupervisory workers will be relatively larger among workers in the commodified services sector than other sectors. Results are generally consistent with our hypotheses. We find that both front-line supervisors in the commodified services sector, and secondary supervisors in all employment sectors, report more frequent anger about work than do nonsupervisory workers. In contrast, higher level supervisors report anger about work at about the same frequency as nonsupervisory workers. These associations are only slightly reduced by controls for work stress and stressors. We discuss how supervisory relations might explain differences in anger about work among workers at different levels in organizational hierarchies.

Supervisory Level and the Impulse to Harm a Coworker: Advancing a Bourdieusian Perspective

Abstract Purpose The malicious impulse is a phenomenon that lies in the theoretical and ontological space between emotion and action. In this chapter, we probe this space. In the empirical part of this work, we evaluate the hypothesis that middle-level supervisors will be more likely than non-supervisory workers and top-level supervisors to report an impulse to “hurt someone you work with” (i.e., maliciousness). Methodology/approach Data are from a cross-sectional survey of a representative sample of employed Toronto residents in 2004–2005. Findings Results from logistic regression analyses show that when job characteristics are controlled, the estimated difference between middle-level supervisors and workers in other hierarchical positions reporting the impulse to harm a coworker is statistically significant. Moreover, the difference between middle-level supervisors and other workers persist after controls for anger about work and job-related stress. Social Implications In discussing our results, we focus on factors that might generate the observed associations, and on how Bourdieusian theory may be used to interpret the social patterning of impulses in general, and malicious impulses in particular. We also discuss the implications of our findings for emotional intelligence in the workplace.

Researching Trust and HealthResearching Trust and Health, edited by BrownlieJulie, GreeneAlexandra, and HowsonAlexandra. New York, NY: Routledge, 2008. 221 pp.

Following the introduction of the model, the book’s chapters consist of a series of literature reviews corresponding to the rubrics in the model: social policy, community, work and family, and individual health choices. Each chapter is followed by many useful references from a wide variety of disciplinary sources, and each one raises many interesting questions. Unfortunately, the existing literature offers few answers, in part because most of the work cited does not directly address the “paradoxical gender differences in health” in which the authors are primarily interested, leading them in speculative directions largely unwarranted by the evidence presented. Perhaps the greatest inconsistency is between Bird and Reiker’s emphasis on the putatively stressful nature of many women’s lives—combining home, work, infant and child care, elder care, and so on— and the relative lack of evidence that these multiple roles are damaging to women’s health. This is a critical inconsistency but one that the authors acknowledge only in passing. The authors’ attention to macrolevel influences on health outcomes—in the form of social policies, local social and built environments, and workplace conditions—is important and salutary. Unfortunately, the structure of the book, with each chapter devoted to a single rubric in their model, makes it difficult to see the connections among the various levels. The impact of this emphasis on macrolevel influences is further diluted by Bird and Reiker’s insistence on linking each and every variable to an individual “healthy choice,” leading them into occasional absurdities, e.g., that once people are properly informed about their unhealthy environments they will make better choices about where to live. This is triply problematic: first it assumes that the fully informed, i.e. “rational,” decision maker will select a neighborhood location on the basis of its “health”; second, that the option to move is available; and third, it depoliticizes the problem of environmental degradation: little room is left for social and/or political action to change the environment. The authors explicitly disavow “rational choice” models, but their insistence at every turn on the ideal of “healthy choice”—reducing morbidity and mortality to questions of consumer preference—belies their words. I would argue that systematic gender differences in morbidity and mortality rates, and in particular the variation in magnitude of these differences over time and place, are “social facts” in the Durkheimian sense of facts external to the individual, and that explanation for these differences should be sought in other “social facts”—aspects of gendered social and political organization— not in biological and/or psychological processes at the level of the individual. And so, although Bird and Reiker have identified an important set of problems and I laud their ambition, I believe that in their search for solutions they are barking up the wrong tree.