Critique of an Article

Examined in "Sources of economic distress: Individual and family outcomes," by Greer L. Fox,

and Dudley Chancey, (1998), are relationships between six measures of economic stress--

financial adequacy, perceived economic well-being, respondents and partner's job instability,

and respondents and partner's job insecurity--and seven measures of individual and family well-

being. Presented are descriptive and regression analyses of social survey data drawn from

telephone interviews with 366 householder's ages 18 to 65 residing in a southeastern U.S.

metropolitan county. For both women and men, perceived economic well-being was generally

the strongest predictor of measures of individual and family well-being. For men as well as

women, spouse's or partner's job variables were important predictors of measures of family well-

being. The respondent's own job instability and insecurity appeared more important to women

than men, and more so for family than individual well-being outcomes. Two alternative

pathways were proposed and partially supported for the influence of economic factors on

individual well-being.

The title of the article "Sources of economic stress: individual and family outcomes is very clear

and give the reader a good idea of what the article is about.

The abstract is specific and gives a good view of what the article is about. The introduction

clearly states what type of research is being conducted and how it was collected.

The article provided sound facts and provided a good interpretation of why people are stressed

and many of the causes. I don't feel all of the information provide in the article was relevant to

the study, in fact I think it could have been condensed and made reader friendly on a number of

levels. One of them being the measurement variables were not very easy to follow. Some of

the research material was repetitive and I don't feel that all of the information discussed was relevant to the research

an example The statistics should have been condensed, I feel that too much information was displayed and did not

have a purpose for the reader. See chart below:

TABLE 1

Indicators of Economic Sufficiency, Economic Well-Being,

Job Instability and Employment Insecurity

Total

Sample Women Men

(N = 366) (N = 212) (N = 144)

Economic sufficiency

Median income $32,500 $27,500 $37,500

Percentage with income

below $17,500 28.9 31.7 24.6

Percentage with income decline

in past 3 years 27.8 28.9 26.2

Percentage with debt increase

in past 3 years 33.0 33.5 32.3

Percentage with savings

decrease