The Importance of Good Data

2010 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanne Spetz

In 1977, the federal government launched the nation's largest and most significant program to collect data on the registered nurse (RN) workforce of the United States—the National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses (NSSRN). This survey is conducted by the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration, first in 1977 and then every 4 years since 1980. This article offers the history of the NSSRN and a review of the ways in which the NSSRN data have been used to examine education, demographics, employment, shortages, and other aspects of the RN workforce. The influence this body of research has had on policymaking is explored. Recommendations for future research are offered, in the hope that future waves of the NSSRN will continue to be used to their fullest potential.

Author(s):  
Rosina Lozano

An American Language is a political history of the Spanish language in the United States. The nation has always been multilingual and the Spanish language in particular has remained as an important political issue into the present. After the U.S.-Mexican War, the Spanish language became a language of politics as Spanish speakers in the U.S. Southwest used it to build territorial and state governments. In the twentieth century, Spanish became a political language where speakers and those opposed to its use clashed over what Spanish's presence in the United States meant. This book recovers this story by using evidence that includes Spanish language newspapers, letters, state and territorial session laws, and federal archives to profile the struggle and resilience of Spanish speakers who advocated for their language rights as U.S. citizens. Comparing Spanish as a language of politics and as a political language across the Southwest and noncontiguous territories provides an opportunity to measure shifts in allegiance to the nation and exposes differing forms of nationalism. Language concessions and continued use of Spanish is a measure of power. Official language recognition by federal or state officials validates Spanish speakers' claims to US citizenship. The long history of policies relating to language in the United States provides a way to measure how U.S. visions of itself have shifted due to continuous migration from Latin America. Spanish-speaking U.S. citizens are crucial arbiters of Spanish language politics and their successes have broader implications on national policy and our understanding of Americans.


Public Voices ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
John R Phillips

The cover photograph for this issue of Public Voices was taken sometime in the summer of 1929 (probably June) somewhere in Sunflower County, Mississippi. Very probably the photo was taken in Indianola but, perhaps, it was Ruleville. It is one of three such photos, one of which does have the annotation on the reverse “Ruleville Midwives Club 1929.” The young woman wearing a tie in this and in one of the other photos was Ann Reid Brown, R.N., then a single woman having only arrived in the United States from Scotland a few years before, in 1923. Full disclosure: This commentary on the photo combines professional research interests in public administration and public policy with personal interests—family interests—for that young nurse later married and became the author’s mother. From the scholarly perspective, such photographs have been seen as “instrumental in establishing midwives’ credentials and cultural identity at a key transitional moment in the history of the midwife and of public health” (Keith, Brennan, & Reynolds 2012). There is also deep irony if we see these photographs as being a fragment of the American dream, of a recent immigrant’s hope for and success at achieving that dream; but that fragment of the vision is understood quite differently when we see that she began a hopeful career working with a Black population forcibly segregated by law under the incongruously named “separate but equal” legal doctrine. That doctrine, derived from the United States Supreme Court’s 1896 decision, Plessy v. Ferguson, would remain the foundation for legally enforced segregation throughout the South for another quarter century. The options open to the young, white, immigrant nurse were almost entirely closed off for the population with which she then worked. The remaining parts of this overview are meant to provide the following: (1) some biographical information on the nurse; (2) a description, in so far as we know it, of why she was in Mississippi; and (3) some indication of areas for future research on this and related topics.


Author(s):  
James L. Gibson ◽  
Michael J. Nelson

We have investigated the differences in support for the U.S. Supreme Court among black, Hispanic, and white Americans, catalogued the variation in African Americans’ group attachments and experiences with legal authorities, and examined how those latter two factors shape individuals’ support for the U.S. Supreme Court, that Court’s decisions, and for their local legal system. We take this opportunity to weave our findings together, taking stock of what we have learned from our analyses and what seem like fruitful paths for future research. In the process, we revisit Positivity Theory. We present a modified version of the theory that we hope will guide future inquiry on public support for courts, both in the United States and abroad.


Author(s):  
Travis D. Stimeling

This chapter offers a historiographic survey of country music scholarship from the publication of Bill C. Malone’s “A History of Commercial Country Music in the United States, 1920–1964” (1965) to the leading publications of the today. Very little of substance has been written on country music recorded since the 1970s, especially when compared to the wealth of available literature on early country recording artists. Ethnographic studies of country music and country music culture are rare, and including ethnographic methods in country music studies offers new insights into the rich variety of ways in which people make, consume, and engage with country music as a genre. The chapter traces the influence of folklore studies, sociology, cultural studies, and musicology on the development of country music studies and proposes some directions for future research in the field.


1988 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-124
Author(s):  
Marian McDonald

November 1988 marks the tenth anniversary of the U.S. Government's adoption of guidelines for federally-funded sterilizations. This action was the result of years of organizing by the anti-sterilization abuse movement which grew in the early 1970s in response to the alarming increase in numbers of coercive sterilizations, particularly among poor and minority women. This retrospective examination looks at the strengths and weaknesses of anti-sterilization abuse organizing in the United States, and draws out lessons for other areas of work. It begins by exploring the problem of sterilization abuse and the history of the movement against it. The movement is analyzed using key theoretical concepts of community organizing. An evaluation indicates that the anti-abuse efforts were successful and rich with lessons for reproductive rights and other popular health struggles today.


2021 ◽  
Vol 90 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-376
Author(s):  
Elizabeth O’Brien Ingleson

In December 1977, a tiny group of U.S. glove makers—most of whom were African American and Latina women—launched a petition before the U.S. International Trade Commission calling for protection from rising imports. Their target was China. Represented by the Work Glove Manufacturers Association, their petition called for quotas on a particular kind of glove entering the United States from China: cotton work gloves. This was a watershed moment. For the first time since the Communist Party came to power in 1949, U.S. workers singled out Chinese goods in pursuit of import relief. Because they were such a small group taking on a country as large as China, their supporters championed the cause as one of David versus Goliath. Yet the case has been forgotten, partly because the glove workers lost. Here I uncover their story, bringing the history of 1970s deindustrialization in the United States into conversation with U.S.-China rapprochement, one of the most significant political transformations of the Cold War. The case, and indeed the loss itself, reveals the tensions between the interests of U.S. workers, corporations, and diplomats. Yet the case does not provide a simple narrative of U.S. workers’ interests being suppressed by diplomats and policymakers nurturing globalized trade ties. Instead, it also underscored the conflicting interests within the U.S. labor movement at a time when manufacturing companies were moving their production jobs to East Asia.


Author(s):  
Craig Allen

The first completely researched history of U.S. Spanish-language television traces the rise of two foremost, if widely unrecognized, modern American enterprises—the Spanish-language networks Univision and Telemundo. It is a standard scholarly history constructed from archives, original interviews, reportage, and other public materials. Occasioned by the public’s wakening to a “Latinization” of the U.S., the book demonstrates that the emergence of Spanish-language television as a force in mass communication is essential to understanding the increasing role of Latinos and Latino affairs in modern American society. It argues that a combination of foreign and domestic entrepreneurs and innovators who overcame large odds resolves a significant and timely question: In an English-speaking country, how could a Spanish-speaking institution have emerged? Through exploration of significant and colorful pioneers, continuing conflicts and setbacks, landmark strides, and ongoing controversies—and with revelations that include regulatory indecision, behind-the-scenes tug-of-war, and the internationalization of U.S. mass media—the rise of a Spanish-language institution in the English-speaking U.S. is explained. Nine chapters that begin with Spanish-language television’s inception in 1961 and end 2012 chronologically narrate the endeavor’s first 50 years. Events, passages, and themes are thoroughly referenced.


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