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Craig Gallet’s scrutiny of anti-smoking laws isn’t a personal quest. Apart from the occasional cigar, the economics professor isn’t a smoker and never had a particular interest in cigarettes. But what does interest him are the factors that affect demand for consumer products.
“I began this research with a student about three years ago,” says Gallet. “I found that a lot of literature showed how smoking bans affected the sales of cigarettes, but no link was ever made between smoking bans and their affect on alcohol demand.”
In particular, Gallet was curious about the impact on beer, wine and liquor sales in bars and restaurants once smoking was banned in public areas. “The drop was statistically significant,” he says. “We found that smoking bans did reduce alcohol consumption overall.
“It really helped our understanding that one public policy could have this spillover influence into another social activity.” Gallet’s study was recently published in Social Science Journal. Gallet also looked into smoking bans and whether their enforcement affected cigarette consumption. He found that ultimately, it was not the enforcement of bans that prevented smokers from lighting up.
“It was the social pressure that the ban created that was sufficient to get people to not smoke in public places,” Gallet says. “We found the stigma associated with smoking was sufficient to make clean indoor air laws self-enforcing.”
And while studying the merits of health information and advertising restrictions as measures to reduce smoking, Gallet came across some interesting findings. “We found that health warnings reduced cigarette demand, but advertising restrictions mainly affected the supply-side of the market.”
In other words, Joe Camel may not have turned a non-smoker into a smoker, but he did influence smokers to buy his cigarette brand
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Five minutes. That’s all it would take to help many truck drivers avoid accidents on America’s highways, according to business administration professor Don Carper. Carper, who specializes in business law and dispute resolution, is one of a team of researchers that says that the use of a specialized questionnaire can screen drivers who should be tested for obstructive sleep apnea. The condition can lead to drowsiness during waking hours.
“Obstructive sleep apnea in the truck driving community is high,” says Carper, because of their sedentary working conditions. “It is something we need to be very concerned about.”
The findings appeared in the April-May 2007 edition of Sleep Diagnosis and Therapy. The study, by Carper and researchers from Carlsbad, Calif.-based Advanced Brain Monitoring Inc., validates the need for trucking companies to use the company’s Apnea Risk Evaluation System questionnaire.
The researchers evaluated 608 people who had completed the questionnaire, and found that 94 percent of the time the questionnaire had been able to identify those likely to have obstructive sleep apnea and in need of a diagnostic sleep study. They then gave the questionnaire to 100 transportation workers and found that 51 percent of them were identified as being at high risk of having the condition, with 43 percent of those at high risk predicted to have a severe case.
Carper says there are implications for drivers, companies and health care providers who ignore screening for sleep apnea. “Identifying and treating obstructive sleep apnea reduces automobile accidents, and thus liability, and related costs, if an employee’s untreated obstructive sleep apnea is found responsible for the accident.”
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Improving education at the ground level. It’s the idea behind the Teachers Network Leadership Institute and it’s producing real improvements in elementary and high schools because of research done by those who know the situations best— classroom teachers.
Teacher education professor Janet Hecsh and bilingual multicultural education professor Pia Wong coordinate the Sacramento chapter of the nationwide program which connects policymakers and teacher researchers.
Each year, Hecsh and Wong coordinate “action” research—onthe- job efforts to address specific problems—and policy proposals by classroom teachers serving low-income and culturally and linguistically diverse communities. Topics include intervention programs, professional development and support, and effective academic advising and study skills.
The two professors hold a Saturday meeting every month that focuses on the basics. “We provide a framework, some guidelines and support,” Hecsh says.
The program has encouraged instructors to try new approaches, some of which have resulted in big payoffs. “One teacher took 30 minutes each day to give her second-graders a brief break from the strict curriculum now set for elementary students and had them assess their own needs,” Wong says.
“The students set progressively more ambitious goals and honestly assessed their own weaknesses, which the teacher incorporated into the classroom with dramatic results,” Wong says. “She had children at the end of the fall semester wanting to read chapter books, which she hadn’t seen in second grade before.”
“The teacher’s research may help set a new tone in the present approach many see as too strict and robotic,” Hecsh says.
In addition to working on action research, the teachers also learn more about California’s complex educational policy process. And once a year the researchers get together with representatives from the state government and federal and local education entities to present their findings in the hope they will result in better policy.
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