The efforts of those advocating supported employment have resulted in expansion ofthe opportunities for people with moderate and severe disabilities in the past several years. Results reported previously on the benefits and costs associated with supported competitive employment have been extended in this article from the 4-year period in the previous analysis to the present 8-year analysis. This is one of the few benefit-cost analyses to be com pleted on people with mental retardation who have received supported competitive employment services. As in the previous analysis, these figures do not reflect theoretical projections, but direct placement data result ing from a longitudinal program. Our results show a final positivefinancial consequence accrued to the public of$1,05 7,000, of which more than $525,000 was a direct benefit of placing consumers with moderate and severe disabilities in supported competitive employment. Since this study extended over 8 years, all figures were cor rected for inflation and discounting to 1986 (Quarter 1) dollars. By using individual analyses, it was shown that all consumers served benefited financially from the pro gram. Results showed a substantial savings to taxpayers with the utilization of this model, along with significant financial benefits to all consumers, including those with moderate and severe disabilities.
The move to expand integrated employment oppor-The development and dissemination of this paper was sup ported in part by Grant GO08301124 from the National Insti tute on Disabilities and Rehabilitation, U.S. Department of Education.The contributors to the outcomes discussed in this paper are too numerous to mention. However, we wish to thank the employment specialists providing the direct service and their supervisors. In addition, we thank Betsy Lewis for suggestions and extended support and Rita Handrich for contributions on an earlier manuscript.Requests for reprints should be sent to Mark Hill, Rehabil
Once a fixture of research in the social and behavioral sciences, volunteer subjects are now only rarely used in human subjects research. Yet volunteers are a potentially valuable resource, especially for research conducted online. We argue that online volunteer laboratories are able to produce high-quality data comparable to that from other online pools. The scalability of volunteer labs means that they can produce large volumes of high-quality data for multiple researchers, while imposing little or no financial burden. Using a range of original tests, we show that volunteer and paid respondents have different motivations for participating in research, but have similar descriptive compositions. Furthermore, volunteer samples are able to replicate classic and contemporary social science findings, and produce high levels of overall response quality comparable to paid subjects. Our results suggest that online volunteer labs represent a potentially significant untapped source of human subjects data.
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