This study investigates the differences between the hard and soft scales of the General Social Survey (GSS) which analyzes attitudes toward abortion. Hard reasons for supporting abortion include such considerations as health of mother, deformed child, rape, and incest. Soft reasons might be low income, unmarried mother, and attainment of desired family size. Data was obtained from the 1982 National Opinion Research Center (NORC) GSS, a 6 item questionnaire on attitudes toward abortion. Demographic variables and their interactions, 4 attitudinal scales, and 3 abortion scales--hard, soft, and a diffference scale--were used in the analysis. A multiple regression analysis was performed. Variation between the hard and soft scales, while significant, was not large and could be explained in terms of different sensitivities to different types of information. The soft scale, for example, was found to be more strongly related than the hard to demographic and attitudinal variables. It also showed greater variation than did the hard. Items such as religiosity and residence showed a strong affect on both scales. Yet interactions produce the strongest responses for or against abortion. For instance, age and religious preference interact; older Catholics and Baptists are more opposed to abortion than their younger counterparts. The authors conclude that the primary causes of each scale are the same and that 1 scale measuring the 6 abortion items would be the most balanced way to analyze abortion attitudes and their underlying reasons.
Asian-Americans have been considered “model minorities”—a group which has “made it” in American society. Analysis was conducted to ascertain whether or not Asian-Americans in general and the Japanese, Chinese, and Filipinos in particular have “made it” economically. By defining “making it” as reaching earnings parity with Anglo males, it is concluded that only the Japanese have “made it” in American society (in 1969 and 1975). Multiple classification analysis was conducted to measure the earnings differentials between the Anglo and Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino males net of differences attributable to generational status, number of completed years of schooling, and socioeconomic status. The residual gap represents the “cost” of ethnic membership. It is concluded that the “cost” of being Japanese and Filipino in the United States has declined since the 1960s, that the Japanese experience some economic discrimination, and Filipinos experience no economic discrimination in regard to returns for generational status, education, and occupational status. However, the “cost” of being Chinese has remained quite substantial.
This research examines the efficacy of the theoretical statements regarding the sources, direction, and extent of racial attitude change offered by Myrdal (1944). Survey metric analysis is employed to decompose changes in tolerance of school desegregation between 1954–1980, using 17 surveys totaling 23,938 respondents. As Myrdal predicted, there as been a general increase in racial tolerance of about 33%, and a convergence of regional differences in this regard. Other findings, unforeseen by Myrdal, include: (1) stable differences between cohort and educational subgroups over time; (2) only small components of the increase stemming from cohort replacement; (3) miniscule effects on tolerance due to direct and indirect increases in educational attainment; and (4) the presence of increasing tolerance among all cohort and educational groups over time as the driving force behind the substantial change in racial attitudes.
Sociologists differ in their views of the primacy of technology in social processes but have followed Ogburn's tradition in analyses of social and cultural effects. Investigations of technology are more prevalent in some sociological specialities than others, but additional research is needed to include technology as a central variable. To survive, the discipline must assess the viability of interdisciplinary instructional and professional activities with technological areas.
Recent studies of intraorganizational power are based on models of interpersonal exchange. Because of the limitations of exchange theory, these studies give us static descriptions of power relations and provide little understanding of the historical processes that determine the distribution of power. Recent phenomenological approaches are similarly limited to describing members' understandings, values, and motives. An alternative approach for studying power as political process is derived from critical theory. This approach assumes that the power distributions we observe are the consequence of a dialectic between historically changing power structures and collective understandings, values, and motives. Fundamental changes in power relations occur as a result of the unintended consequences of political action. These lead to contradictions between social structures and understandings which encourage the formation of new understandings and new power structures. The critical approach retains the concepts of human intentionality and choice while recognizing the constraints of socially preformed structures and understandings.
Recent investigations have noted that immigrants to the United States from Asian and Latin American countries (the new national origin countries) are not faring as well economically as immigrants from European countries. This study sets forth possible reasons these patterns obtain, one of which is that immigrants from the new countries have less of the characteristics associated with higher economic attainment than immigrants from the European countries. To test this hypothesis, we take data from the 1970 Census of Population and apply a regression standardization approach in which all immigrants are assigned the compositional characteristics of a standard population. Even after their earnings have been adjusted statistically, the Asian and Latin American immigrants still earn less than immigrants from the old national origin countries.
The concept of the “middleman minority” has been employed in the social sciences to deal with minority groups whose historical experience, although marked by discrimination, is not characterized by continuous, extreme subordinate status. The explanatory value of this concept is challenged, however, when one examines the historical experience of one of its primary empirical examples, Japanese Americans in agriculture. In this case, one of the most important requirements of the theory—that the group occupies a middle-rank position in the stratification system and functions as “middleman” in the movement of goods and services—is not met. Furthermore, we suggest that the more parsimonious concept of “petite bourgeoisie,” combined with an emphasis on the common cultural/social organizational resources found in these groups, allows us to understand better the social-psychological consequences of involvement in small-scale businesses. Such an approach provides insights into the way economic activities influence the character of persons and their communities in certain types of ethnic groups.
Articles published in ten major journals over a fifteen-year period are reviewed in order to identify methods of analysis, sample selection techniques, a model versus hypothesis-testing approach, sample size, and change over time. Theoretical and practical implications regarding these methodological decisions are discussed. Special emphasis is given to interdependencies among substantive theoretical positions and methodological strategies, especially decisions related to sample size.
Utilizing data from a survey of Japanese students enrolled in three Tokyo-area medical schools, this study attempts to ascertain the influence of socioeconomic background variables and parental encouragement on the decision to enter the medical profession. The results reveal considerable influence of such socioeconomic variables as father's educational level, father's occupation, and mother's educational level on career choice. The encouragement of fathers—especially physician fathers—is significant, resulting in a high proportion of students manifesting the pattern of occupational inheritance. The results suggest that the status attainment model is quite relevant to the experiences of Japanese youth and that its applicabilty warrants rigorous testing by a longitudinal study of a much larger sample of Japanese youth.
Using Stern's “network process” approach to interorganizational relations, the decline of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) from cartel to trade association is analyzed. IATA's loss of power and the erosion of stability in the international civil aviation network are traced to the emergence of a strong “proactive” regulatory style within the U.S. Civil Aeronautics Board, to increased competition for domain in the area of price setting, and to IATA's failure to maintain legitimacy with governments and the traveling public. In addition, it is suggested that industry networks are more vulnerable to external threats where they lack legal autonomy, where there are basic ideological differences built into a joint interorganizational structure from the beginning, and where the chief network “broker” is unable to mediate the majority of external contacts of network members. The case of IATA indicates that the relationships among a multiorganizational action set, the larger network in which it is located, and the task environment are complex and deserve further systematic research.
In this study the conditions are compared under which black and white upper-middle-class male inmigrants to large metropolitan areas between 1965 and 1970 chose the suburbs. Models of this aspect of the suburbanization process are evaluated for upper-middle-class members of each racial group. White suburbanization was led by the middle class, which responded primarily to the location of new housing, and an attempt is made to determine the extent to which this was true for blacks. Since almost no previous research has dealt with the determinants of suburbanization by socioeconomic status, either black or white, this analysis provides a more detailed understanding of the nature of the process. The units of analysis are metropolitan areas with 1970 total populations of 500,000 or greater, with moderately large central-city black populations.
In the criminal justice system, as in everyday life, strategies of self-presentation play a critical role. This article examines the accounts convicted white-collar offenders provide while explaining their illegal behavior to federal probation officers. Accounts are described and classified; then, after a scale reflecting the degree to which they conform to judicial preferences regarding post-conviction explanations is defined, the role accounts play in the sentencing process is identified. Although the content and quality of defendants' stories do not affect sentencing decisions directly, they do materially influence the probation officers' evaluations of defendants. These evaluations are, in turn, a significant factor in the decision to sanction.
Resource estimates are generally assumed to be the direct product of geological and engineering information. Historical analysis, using a perspective suggested by the sociology of science, demonstrates that social factors influence the magnitude and variation among resource estimates made during the same historical period. In terms of magnitude and variation, three chronological patterns in the estimates of United States crude oil resources can be discerned, and it is argued (1) that each pattern reflects the ideological orientation present at that time, and (2) that changes from one ideological orientation to another can be traced to changes in the political-economic environment of the oil industry.
A model combining structural and interorganizational causes of the decentralization of decision-making was constructed to investigate the merits of intra versus interorganizational determinants of decentralization in organizations. Relationships in the model were estimated with data from a sample of American corporations. The estimated parameters of the model, despite high zero-order correlations for all relationships, suggested a more parsimonious explanation of decentralization than is currently offered by existing research literature. Findings partially confirm and refute past research which has sought solely environmental or structural explanations. More important, the findings integrate and render some past findings consistent. It is concluded that decentralization of decision-making in corporations is more the consequence of geographical dispersion and coalition formation than other aspects of structure, size, and other features of interorganizational relations, such as competition. These latter factors appear to affect decentralization only indirectly and then through the geographical dispersion of a corporation. An adequate explanation of decentralization, therefore, requires a multidimensional approach that includes both inter and intraorganizational causes. Along with other recent work, this study offers additional evidence of the major theoretical importance of geographical differentiation, an often ignored concept, in understanding complex organizations.
Many social scientists believe the future will offer significantly fewer opportunities for most adults to gain and maintain a job in the way they are used to doing today. A smaller number of jobs and a substantially reduced number of work hours are in store for many employees in the postindustrial society. Whether or not their jobs ever provided such things, they will increasingly be searching the world of leisure for ways to express their abilities, fulfill their potential, and identify themselves as unique human beings. Serious leisure is a main route open to people with these goals. Its three types—amateurism, hobbyist pursuits, and career volunteering—are defined, described, and interrelated. They are contrasted throughout with unserious or casual leisure, on the one hand, and work, on the other. The intermediate position of serious leisure between these two extremes relegates its current participants to the status of marginal men and women of leisure.
The argument that mass media exert a direct causal influence upon perceptions of crime is critically examined. Employing data collected in the province of Alberta in 1979, an attempt is made to detect relationships involving respondents' patterns of newspaper and television consumption and their views on crime. Consistent with earlier research findings, the analysis of the Alberta data reveals no evidence of a significant media effect. Some of the issues that must be considered if such findings are to be reconciled with the commonsense expectation of a direct effect of media consumption upon perceptions of crime are discussed.
This article examines and critically evaluates a recent review in this journal of theoretical trends and themes in sociological writings about Chicanos. In the process it attempts to draw a critical distinction between the sociology of Chicanos and Chicano sociology. A basic thesis advanced is that if the sociology of Chicanos is to grow and develop as a distinct area of study it must eschew majority perspectives and work toward the development of a Chicano paradigm that will not only enhance understanding of Chicano experience but, hopefully, work to end the subordinate condition of Chicanos.
Equipment costs make the stratification pyramid in astronomy unusually steep. Consequently, the allocation of rewards operates very much to the accumulative advantage of those already successful, causing extreme competition in forms deleterious to the research needs of the field: Needed basic research becomes a zone of avoidance and valuable data are ignored because originality and novelty are rewarded, while research requiring error-prone measurements lacks scientific prestige. The effects of the accumulative advantage are enhanced by the Matthew Effect, the disproportionate recognition of achievement by the prestigious and the withholding of recognition from those journals, research specialties, research methods, institutions, and researchers not already prestigious. Procedures engendered under these conditions reflect distortions of scientific judgment and disruption of scientific cooperation.
This research developed an abstract conceptualization of the social structure of scientific research teams and empirically investigated its utility. Two typologies formed the basis of the conceptualization: A typology of teams and a typology of leadership roles. The concepts were operationalized using questions on a self-administered questionnaire and indices derived from those questions. The responses of 150 principal investigators of research teams with annual budgets of more than $100,000 were analyzed by fitting “logit” models to three-variable tables. These models, based on log-linear analysis, employed the two typologies as both independent and dependent variables. When the typologies were treated as independent variables, each of twenty-six other features of team operation was introduced as a dependent variable. The typologies successfully predicted the dependent variable in twenty of these twenty-six analyses.
The assumption that energy development causes social disruption in western communities is based on undocumented assertions, questionable interpretations of evidence, and superficial analyses. Theory used implicitly in research on western communities that are affected by energy development is inconsistent with the history of the region and with recent developments in community research. The literature provides suggestions for research, but improvements in theory and methodology will be needed if responsible contributions to energy development policy are to be made in this research.
