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The authors examine determinants of satisfaction with medical care among 1,784 (781 African American and 1,003 white) cardiac patients. Patient satisfaction was modeled as a function of predisposing factors (gender, age, medical mistrust, and perception of racism) and enabling factors (medical insurance). African Americans reported less satisfaction with care. Although both black and white patients tended not to endorse the existence of racism in the medical care system, African American patients were more likely to perceive racism. African American patients were significantly more likely to report mistrust. Multivariate analysis found that the perception of racism and mistrust of the medical care system led to less satisfaction with care. When perceived racism and medical mistrust were controlled, race was no longer a significant predictor of satisfaction.

Results from evaluations of interface design concepts conducted over short durations may not generalize to longer time spans. In an attempt to address this issue, this paper presents a longitudinal study of the effect of interface design on skill acquisition in which participants' quasi-dally performance was observed over an unprecedented period of six months. The research was conducted in the context of DURESS II, a real-time, interactive thermal-hydraulic process control simulation that was designed to be representative of industrial systems. The performance of two interfaces was compared, one containing physical and functional (P + F) system representations based on the principles of the ecological interface design framework, and a more traditional interface based solely on a physical (P) representation. Participants were required to perform several control tasks, including start-up, tuning, shutdown, and fault management. The results indicate that the P interface led to significantly less-consistent performance than did the P + F interface; with the former, participants occasionally took up to 2 times longer to complete the required tasks, even after 5.5 months of daily practice. There was very little difference in average performance between the two groups. These results have important implications for designing interfaces that lead to efficient performance under normal operating conditions.

To resolve the uncertainty and disagreement that currently exists in the field of mental workload, a unified research approach is required. It is argued that a promising path would be to identify the various dimensions of mental workload and then to develop a metric for each of these. The present study focused on the dimension of mental effort. In particular, the validity of spectral analysis of sinus arrhythmia as a measure of mental effort was investigated using a psychomotor task. The strong correlation observed between the physiological measure and subjective ratings of effort suggest that spectral analysis of sinus arrhythmia is an accurate measure of operator effort. Results also indicate that the intensity of effort invested by subjects could not be inferred from objective task difficulty or performance. Thus, it is important that a measure of effort be included in experiments investigating mental workload. Future research will be directed at developing a continuous measure of operator effort by implementing the physiological measure on-line.

Bibliometric analyses use the citation history of scientific articles as data to measure scientific impact. This paper describes a bibliometric analysis of the 1682 papers and 2413 authors published in Human Factors from 1970 to 2000. The results show that Human Factors has substantial relative scientific influence, as measured by impact, immediacy, and half-life, exceeding the influence of comparable journals. Like other scientific disciplines, human factors research is a highly stratified activity. Most authors have published only one paper, and many papers are cited infrequently, if ever. A small number of authors account for a disproportionately large number of the papers published and citations received. However, the degree of stratification is not as extreme as in many other disciplines, possibly reflecting the diversity of the human factors discipline. A consistent trend of more authors per paper parallels a similar trend in other fields and may reflect the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of human factors research and a trend toward addressing human-technology interaction in more complex systems. Ten of the most influential papers from each of the last 3 decades illustrate trends in human factors research. Actual or potential applications of this research include considerations for the publication and distribution policy of Human Factors.

Individual differences among users of a hierarchical file system were investigated. Results indicate that psychometric tests of vocabulary and spatial visualization are the best predictors of task performance, accounting for 45% of the variance in the data. The spatial predictor was found to be the most influential. This was dramatically illustrated by the fact that, on the average, subjects with low spatial ability took twice as long to perform the task as those with high spatial ability. Surprisingly, experience alone does not predict task performance. A comparison of the frequency of command usage between subjects with high and low spatial ability revealed that those with low spatial ability were getting lost in the hierarchical file structure. These data have implications for redesigning the software interface so as to accommodate people with low spatial ability.

This paper investigates the J-REITs' market performance and structure in order to suggest possible ways to overcome the J-REITs' major structural problems hindering further development. The JREITs market has been successfully grown; however, the growth has been mainly supported by Japanese domestic property market, which is currently sufficient to sustain the supply but will eventually face the issue of depletion. Thus, globalization is one of the most critical challenges which current domestic-dependent J-REITs urgently need to deal with. One way to promote globalization of J-REITs can be active overseas asset acquisition. Even though the necessary regulatory environment for overseas property acquisition has already been consolidated due to some legislative preparation by Japanese government, J-REITs themselves are also required to improve their governance structure. Because related-party transaction for overseas properties could be increased, the establishment of more solid governance structure would be necessary to maintain an upward trend for global transaction. Additionally, attracting offshore investors could be another way to generate further global expansion of J-REITs. Currently J-REITs could not successfully attract foreign investors because their current governance structure could not satisfy the needs of foreign investors. Particularly, the external management structure that all J-REITs adopt can be a main obstruct to draw interests of foreign investors. Together with the advanced governance systems and J-REITs supported from the reliable sponsor can play a significant role to encourage growth of the next stage of J-REITs. The application of the advanced governance systems and the synergetic relationship with the creditable sponsor can be short-time incentives for globalization of J-REITs.

Objective. This article examines poverty among working families with children using a refined experimental poverty measure based on recommendations by the National Academy of Sciences Panel on Poverty & Family Assistance. Methods. Using data from the 1998 Current Population Survey, this research constructs an experimental poverty measure that takes into account noncash government benefits as well as job-related expenses, elements not included in the current official measure of family income. Results. We find that current statistics based on the official poverty line understate the extent of economic hardship, particularly among full-time working families with children, because expenses, such as child care costs, tend to outweigh noncash benefits, such as food stamps, that these families may receive. Further, without the recent expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit, poverty among full-time working families would be even higher. Conclusions. These findings highlight challenges faced by many families, especially those with adults moving off welfare & into the labor market. 2 Tables, 2 Figures, 23 References. Adapted from the source document.