Relevant Data Elements Research Articles

The Development of Ethnic Identity Among Chinese Adoptees

ABSTRACTThe development of attitudes towards one's own as well as other ethnic groups are childhood precursors of ethnic identity. The current paper examines the formation of ethnic attitudes among 266 school-age children who were born in China and adopted by Americans and, at the time of the study, were attending 254 different elementary schools across the country. We hypothesized that a disposition to associate socially desirable traits with being Chinese would be fostered by a school environment that was itself racially and ethnically diverse. In order to test this hypothesis, we linked attitudinal data from a photo preference task with archival data quantifying the number and distribution of students of different races and ethnicities in each child's school and other relevant data elements from a parents' questionnaire. The results do not support the assumption that diversity at school encourages children adopted from China to associate socially desirable traits with being Chinese. To the contrary, children attending schools with greater diversity were less likely to show a Chinese preference, and more likely to show a White preference. Further analysis suggested that such paradoxical results may be explained by the privileged economic status of the adoptive children which gave them more in common with White than with other minority classmates.

Costing Medical Care

This paper describes how the PORTS are using data from the Medicare administrative records systems to study the medical care costs of specific conditions. The general strengths and weaknesses of the Medicare databases for studying cost related issues are discussed, and the relevant data elements are examined in detail. Changes in the nature of the data collected over time are noted. Information is provided on how the PORTS are using these data to estimate the cost to Medicare of treating Medicare beneficiaries with specific conditions and the social (opportunity) cost of treating these patients. Furthermore, information is provided on how data from the Medicare administrative records system can be used to determine the cost of services for patients who have been identified through other large databases (i.e., state hospital discharge tapes) or who have been enrolled in prospective cohort studies.

Substance data bases and right to know laws: application to occupational epidemiology.

The Illinois Right to Know (RTK) law included requirements for substance lists to be submitted by companies to the Illinois Department of Labor (IDOL). This provided an opportunity to test the feasibility of identifying workplaces utilizing common chemicals for future epidemiologic investigations. A sample of IDOL files (n = 115) was obtained, and relevant data elements were coded. A second sample of substance names within these files (n = 1,015) was selected, and searches in three standard references were conducted to identify chemical descriptions. Equal proportions of employers and manufacturer/suppliers were in general compliance with RTK law reporting requirements (58%). Forty-five percent of substances sampled from employers (chemical users) and 71% of substances sampled from manufacturer/suppliers (chemical producers and distributors) could be identified. The ability to identify substances reported using chemical names was approximately equal across companies (90%), while the ability to identify substances with nonchemical names was greater in manufacturer (59%) than in employer (32%) files. This study suggests that the ability to identify potential occupationally exposed groups using this resource may be greater among manufacturers than among employers. Recognition of substances used in the workplace could be improved if companies were required to report chemical names.