Peter H. Rossi’s research while affiliated with University of Massachusetts Amherst and other places

Estimates of average annual damages and personal injuries over the period 1970–1980 to households in the United States from each of five hazards—household fires, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes and earthuuakes–are derived from national sample surveys. The annual incidence rate for the four natural hazards combined is 18.7 per 1,000 households, or approximately 1.5 million household annually experiencing one or more incidents of floods, hurricanes, tornadoes or earthquakes. Average annual damages from the same hazards reported by the households amount to U.S. $6.1 billion (in 1980 dollars). Analyses of aid received in the forms of insurance payments, gifts, grants and loans show that floods present the most serious problems to households when experienced, not only causing more damage but also more likely not to be covered by insurance and more likely to lead the household into enlarging its debt burden. No substantively significant biases were found in the distribution aid to households afflicted by natural hazards.

To understand how decisions are made in abuse/neglect cases by the child welfare system, the authors asked child welfare experts and protective service line workers to make decisions about actual child abuse and neglect cases on the basis of written summaries of the cases. Respondents included 27 experts and 103 line workers. Regression analyses found that workers and experts emphasized the same case characteristics in making their decisions, but the decisions were not well structured in the sense that they were not well predicted by case characteristics. Individual experts and workers varied widely in the decisions they made on identical cases. The authors conclude that decision making in the child protective system is inconsistent, with errors of two kinds: failing to remove children from their families when that is called for and removing children when it is unnecessary. Progress must be made in developing decision-making criteria that are consistent, preserve family integrity, and promote the well-being of children.

Vignettes presented to experts and workers in the child welfare field were used to explore the degree of agreement on decisions to place children in substitute care or to refer them to family preservation services. The design allowed for investigation of the problem of targeting in family preservation programs. Findings indicate considerable inconsistency in decisions among experts and workers, particularly in decisions to refer to family preservation and other in-home services. Contrary to the stated intentions of family preservation services, a majority of the referrals to these programs do not involve children who would have been placed in the absence of these programs.

The sentencing guidelines written by the U.S. Sentencing Commission for the federal crime courts were designed to lead to uniform the just punishments for convicted criminals. How well did the Commission's judgments about what were just punishments compare to the view of the American public? Using data from a 1994 national household survey, the authors compare the punishments described by the Commission to those desired by the public. Contrary to the frequency claims of excessive leniency on the part of judges that are often asserted by journalists and shapers of opinions, Rossi and Berk find strong correspondence between the median sentences deemed appropriate by the public and the sentences prescribed by the guidelines. Although the authors conclude that the Commission was able to match prescribed punishments closely to the American consensus for most crimes, in one category -- drug trafficking offenses -- the guidelines were much harsher in dealing with offenders. The national survey used a factorial survey as its design strategy, allowing for analysis of a large variety of federal crimes and variations in the social characteristics of convicted felons. A wealth of detail, along with ample graphic and tabular illustrations, extends the book's application to issues of consensus and variations in punitiveness by region and socioeconomic characteristics of respondents.

The federal sentencing guidelines prescribe ranges of sentences to be given to persons convicted of felonies in the federal criminal courts. The U.S. Sentencing Commission wrote the guidelines attempting to make sentences conform to community views of appropriate punishments, along with several other criteria. Employing data from a 1994 national sample of adult Americans, designed as a factorial survey, the degree of correspondence is shown between guidelines sentences and those desired by the American public. Although at the individual level only a modest degree of concordance was found, the central tendencies of public opinion (median sentences) were found to correspond quite closely to the guidelines sentences. The major points of disagreement centered around drug trafficking crimes: the guidelines prescribed very long sentences for those crimes and distinguished sharply among trafficking in heroin, powder cocaine, and crack, whereas median sentences desired by the public were much lower and did not distinguish sharply among trafficking in those drugs. We interpret the findings as indicating that the guidelines sentences conform reasonably closely to American normative consensus concerning the sentencing of federal felons.

Advances in quantitative methods enable evaluators to collect and analyze data more efficiently, more cost-effectively, and with greater precision and sensitivity.

Claims that homeownership is beneficial to both owners and society have not been examined empirically. This article explores evidence from the General Social Survey and the National Survey of Families and Households, supple-mented by data from the American National Election Studies and several small but highly relevant researches, to determine whether owners and renters differ in a variety of ways. Strong differences in demographics were found. Small differences were found in some respects: Owners tended to be higher in life satisfaction and self-esteem and more likely to be members of community improvement groups. On a wide variety of social issues—from political partisanship to ethnocentric views—owners and renters were essentially alike. Thus, it appears that the claims for some social and individual benefits from homeownership are supported, but only weakly. Recognizing that the exploratory analyses pre-sented are not definitive, several strategies for more definitive future research are recommended.