The Advantages of Work Relief Over Direct Relief in Maintaining Morale in St. Paul in 1939

Bibliographic Data

ID2200908
AuthorsF Stuart Chapin (0000-0002-2558-9910), Julius A Jahn, J Jahn
Year1940
Volume46
Issue1
Pages13-22
Publication date1940-07-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Journal of Sociology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-9602 • E-ISSN: 1537-5390
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/218522
OpenAlexW2031492305
LanguageEN
Citations received6

Does the W. P. A. program maintain a higher morale than the direct-relief program? This study attempts to secure an answer to this question by a control-group analysis in which a group of eighty W. P. A. workers was matched on fourteen controls against a group of forty-two direct-relief clients waiting assignment in St. Paul, in 1939. The morale was measured on the Rundquist-Sletto morale scale, and three other measures of comparative adjustment were used: general adjustment (Rundquist-Sletto), social participation (Chapin), and social status (Chapin). The average difference expressed as percentage of superiority of scores of the W. P. A. workers over the matched group of direct-relief clients was 5.67 per cent on the percentage gains of the four scales. Although the absolute differences in scores were small, all were favorable to the W. P. A. workers. When the multiple critical ratio of the four separate critical ratios was calculated, it showed that the probability of a chance difference in pattern of adjustment on the four measures between the W. P. A. workers and the direct-relief clients was 49 against I. Hence when such a difference in pattern does occur, we may conclude that it probably represents a real difference between the W. P. A. workers and the direct-relief clients that were studied

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