Under recent conditions of economic competition, customer/worker interactions increasingly are a source of profitability in service firms. Companies may employ refined methods for making these interactions a source of information about workers' performance. This paper investigates how managers and employers use customer feedback to monitor, evaluate and discipline service workers. We argue that management by customers may deepen and complicate authority and power relations in the workplace, and may also give rise to new forms of workplace conflict.

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This article examines the effects of refusers and reluctant respondents to a general population survey on estimates of population distributions and multivariate relationships. Our data indicate that refusers do not constitute a simple random sample of respondents, and that efforts to correct for nonresponse by positing a “continuum of resistance” with refusers assumed to resemble reluctant respondents is not justified. Furthermore, we find that refusers and reluctant respondents can have serious effects on estimates of the relationship among variables. We do this by using analysis of covariance to assess the effect of callbacks on sample estimates and an imputation technique that can be used routinely in personal interview surveys to detect the magnitude and significance of refusal bias on final sample estimates.

The homogeneity (mass-elite) paradigm exerts inordinate influence over social research on East and Central European socialism and its transition. I explore the epistemological and methodological underpinnings of this paradigm and argue that it has masked the importance of class relations for grasping the dynamics of these societies. I help retrieve class in general, and the working class in particular, from the analytic obscurity to which the homogeneity paradigm has relegated them by juxtaposing workers' and intellectuals' perceptions of economic inefficiency. Finally, I suggest ways that inattention to class under socialism has retarded understanding of the political struggles that have accompanied its demise.

Stationary manometry is the gold standard for the evaluation of patients with suspected esophageal motility disorders. Comparison of videoesophagram in the evaluation of esophageal motility disorders with stationary motility has not been objectively studied. Two hundred two patients with foregut symptoms underwent stationary motility and videoesophagram. Radiographic assessment of esophageal motility was done by video recording of five 10-cc swallows of barium. Abnormal esophageal body function was defined by stasis of barium in the middle third of the esophagus on at least four swallows or stasis on at least three swallows in the distal third. Stationary manometry was performed using a five-channel water perfused system. Contraction amplitudes <25 mm Hg in any of the last two channels or the presence of simultaneous or interrupted waves in 10 per cent or more were considered to be abnormal. Sixty-two patients had abnormal manometry. Thirty-four patients also demonstrated abnormal videoesophagrams for an overall sensitivity of 55 per cent. The positive predictive value was 53 per cent; specificity was 79 per cent; and negative predictive value was 80 per cent Sensitivity was greatest in patients with achalasia (94%) and scleroderma (100%) and in patients presenting with dysphagia (89%). Sensitivity was poor for nonspecific esophageal motility disorders. A videoesophagram is relatively insensitive in detecting motility disorders. It seems most useful in the detection of patients with esophageal dysfunction, for which surgical treatment is beneficial, and in those patients presenting with dysphagia.

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