Socio-economic status and high-school friendship choice: Elmtown's youth revisited

Whereas Hollingshead's 1942 study of Elmtown High found socio-economic status homophily to be a prime criterion in students' friendship and dating choices, the present study, a secondary analysis of James Coleman's 1958 Elmtown data, finds socio-economic status homophily unimportant for friendship and dating choices. This decline in status homophily occurred at a time when class distinctions were becoming blurred in Elmtown and the “rating-and-dating” system was losing in national importance. Status homophily is not a constant, but a variable: clear class distinctions facilitate status homophily, while shifting class and occupational systems make for class-heterogeneous social networks.     

The reversal small-world experiment

This paper is an attempt to examine and define the world network of a typical individual by discovering how many of his or her acquaintances could be used as first steps in a small-world procedure, and for what reasons. The town and occupation of each target was provided, together with the ethnic background, where this could not be inferred from the name. Starters were instructed in the small-world experiment and asked to write down their choice, amongst the people they knew, for the first link in a potential chain from them to each of 1267 targets. Starters provided information on each choice made (e.g. mother, cousin, friend, acquaintance, etc.) together with the sex of the choice) and the reason that choice had been made. The reason could be in one or more of four categories: something about the location of the target caused the starter to think of his or her choice; the occupation of the target was responsible for the choice; the ethnicity of the target; or some other, unspecified, reason.Six main conclusions may be drawn from the data: (1) A mean of 210 choices per starter account for the “world” (i.e. the 1267 targets). This number is probably an underestimate. Only 35 choices are necessary to account for half the world, however. Of the 210, 95 (45%) were chosen most often for location reasons, 99 (47%) were chosen most often for occupation reasons, and only 7% of the choices were mainly based on ethnicity or other reasons. (2) Choices were mainly friends and acquaintances, with strong cleavage by sex. For any given target, the type of choice used by the majority of starters was a friend or acquaintance, and not family. For any given target, the most likely sex of the choice (i.e. over all starters) can be predicted accurately on 82% of occasions. This sex tends to be male, unless both starter and target are female, or if the target has a low-status occupation. Additionally, any given starter is most likely to pick a male choice for any target, except for the female starter-female target combination, when female choices are more likely. This was correct on 64% of occasions. (3) Location was the usual reason for choice (out of the four categories), with occupation second, and ethnicity or other reasons rarely used. This most popular reason for choice may be correctly predicted for any given target 81% of the time. (4) The decision as to which choice was made appears to depend primarily on the occupation of the target, and secondly on the distance (near/far) from Morgantown, West Virginia, where the experiment took place. (5) The expression “having one's man in …” can be partially quantified. We may define a choice to “handle” a state in the U.S. if he or she was chosen for two-thirds or more of the targets in that state for which choices were made on the basis of location. Then, for any starter, on average, half the states are each handled by a single choice. (6) The accuracy of starters' recall about their networks is low, in the sense that their recall is incorrect more often than it is correct (i.e. their recall could not be put to any other use with any reliability). This confirms previous experiments on informant accuracy.     

Evaluations of utility residential conservation programs in the Pacific Northwest: A critical review

Pacific Northwest utilities have sponsored the nation's earliest and most thorough residential conservation programs. The Northwest region also leads in the quality, quantity, and usefulness of utility-sponsored program evaluations. This article critically reviews the methods and findings of four major Northwest utility program evaluations. Recommendations for future evaluation and program management efforts also are discussed.     

A revised behavioral model of consumer durable demand

A general model of consumer demand for durable goods has recently been proposed by Pickering (1978,1981). Of particular note is the use of expectations of both personal financial and general economic conditions to capture the consumer's willingness to buy. However, it is argued first that these two expectations have Jointly interdependent rather than unique contributions to consumer confidence. In addition, it is proposed that the concept of expectations should be extended to specific product attributes as well. Pickering's model is subsequently revised to incorporate the conceptual modifications.     

The moral middle-class in market socialism: An investigation into the personhood of women working in NGOs in Vietnam

The paper uncovers the values that Vietnamese women produce and accumulate from the NGO sector to acquire a morality central to their middle-class identity. They present an idea of a moral middle-class that conforms to the neoliberal criteria of self-reliance and self-optimisation within the economic segment, in which values are generated in the forms of sacrifice and giving away. I argue that this idea is associated with a mode of governmentality whereby the socialist state shapes the moral subject for the sake of governance in the context of marketisation. Morality, as a governing device, motivates and polices women's compliance with their subordinate position. This paper presents findings that illustrate the slipperiness of the notion of middle-class between theories and practices and from women's perspectives. Perceived in part in terms of women's sacrifices, this study illustrates how middle-class identity is negotiated through moral, gender and class divisions in a post-socialist society.     

Behavioral implications of shortlisting procedures

We consider two-stage “shortlisting procedures” in which the menu of alternatives is first pruned by some process or criterion and then a binary relation is maximized. Given a particular first-stage process, our main result supplies a necessary and sufficient condition for choice data to be consistent with a procedure in the designated class. This result applies to any class of procedures with a certain lattice structure, including the cases of “consideration filters,” “satisficing with salience effects,” and “rational shortlist methods.” The theory avoids background assumptions made for mathematical convenience; in this and other respects following Richter’s classical analysis of preference-maximizing choice in the absence of shortlisting.     

Case study as a research method to study life histories of elderly people: Some ideas and a case study of a case study

The article explores conditions under which life history interviewing, based on case study research, may become a valuable research instrument. Validity and reliability of case study as a form of qualitative research are discussed. It is shown that neither triangulation nor internal consistency methods can guarantee a single interpretation. As an example a case study of Zina, an immigrant from Russia, is used, and two explanations of her behavior are proposed. The choice between them is made through construction of a holistic image of Zina, which essentially means introduction of a new dimension—theory, worldview—as a criterion of validity and reliability of case studies. Relations of a case study to a theory are discussed, and the conclusion is made that a case study enables a researcher to utilize the most the diversity of life histories of elderly people.     

Hybridising the cultural identity of Mulan from a Chinese ballad to American films

Hybridisation refers to the fusion of diverse cultural elements which generates new cultural forms that are distinct yet interconnected with one another. Previous studies affirmed that hybridisation has become part of an ongoing trend in transnational culture, emerging from a Third Space where diverse cultural elements enmesh. This study aims to explore how Mulan's cultural identity is hybridised when the folklore flows from China to America, becoming entangled within a conflict of Chinese-Western transcultural clashes. Using Jameson's cultural identity model, the paper analyses Mulan's cultural identity in three texts which are the original The Ballad of Mulan, Disney's animated movie Mulan (1998) and its subsequent life-action installment Mulan (2020). Components measuring the protagonist's cultural identity comprising vocation, class, geography, philosophy, language, biological traits with cultural aspects are compared. The findings show that the movies have particularly hybridise the protagonist's cultural identity from the aspects of geography, philosophy, and language. This results in a hybrid cultural identity with transnational markers in Mulan. The significance of the research thus lies in its contribution towards highlighting how Chinese figures are increasingly hybridised by Western influences as the Chinese culture continues to transcend transnational borders.     

Learning Skinner’s Verbal Operants: Comparing an Online Stimulus Equivalence Procedure to an Assigned Reading

The purpose of the present study was to compare the effects of an online stimulus equivalence procedure to that of an assigned reading when learning Skinner’s taxonomy of verbal behavior. Twenty-six graduate students participated via an online learning management system. One group was exposed to an online stimulus equivalence procedure (equivalence group) that was designed to teach relations among the names, antecedents, consequences, and examples of each elementary verbal operant. A comparison group (reading group) read a chapter from a popular textbook. Tests for the emergence of selection-based and topography-based intraverbal responses were then conducted, as were tests for generalization and maintenance. Overall, results suggest that the online equivalence procedure was not significantly more effective in promoting topography-based responses than the assigned reading. However, performance on selection-based tests was enhanced by the online equivalence procedure as was performance on topography-based tests when participants were required to provide operant names in response to consequences or examples. On average, the equivalence group performed at a level that was 10 percentage points (i.e., a full letter grade) above that of the reading group. The viability of the equivalence-based procedure is discussed in relation to the assigned reading.     

The role of affective choice mode in the consumer purchase of expressive products

Based on Zajonc's (1980) thesis, a concept of Affective Choice Mode is developed. It is argued that when products are expressive (i.e., they are sought for psycho-social goals rather than for utilitarian goals), then the predominant mode of consumer brand selection is the affective choice mode. This mode is contrasted with the traditionally assumed information processing mode. Using survey data from 192 consumers and employing LISREL analyses it is shown that (a) although involvement leads to information processing, (b) expressiveness makes affective choice mode more likely, which in turn (c) suppresses information processing. Research and managerial implications of the present work are discussed.     

A simple procedure for finding equitable allocations of indivisible goods

The paper investigates how far a particular procedure, called the “descending demand procedure,” can take us in finding equitable allocations of indivisible goods. Both interpersonal and intrapersonal criteria of equitability are considered. It is shown that the procedure generally fares well on an interpersonal criterion of “balancedness”; specifically, the resulting allocations are Pareto-optimal and maximize the well-being of the worst-off individual. As a criterion of intrapersonal equitability, the property of envy-freeness is considered. To accommodate envy-freeness, a modification of the basic procedure is suggested. With two individuals, the modified procedure is shown to select the envy-free allocations that are balanced, i.e. the allocations that maximize the well-being of the worse-off individual among all envy-free allocations. Received: 3 March 2000/Accepted: 27 November 2000     

Marital relationships and purchasing decisions — to buy or not to buy,that is the question

Wives and husbands from 47 households rated their wellbeing in situations, where they imagined either to buy or not to buy a desired product, with their spouse either agreeing or disagreeing with the purchase. The product was female-specific for wives and male-specific for husbands. For 23 households the product was relatively cheap, for 24 households the subjects imagined to desire an expensive commodity. The approach was similar to Kelley and Thibaut's (1978) analysis of interdependence matrices. The data, in general, support the following hypotheses: (a) When the partner objects the purchase, the utility of the product will outweigh the perceived social costs more for husbands than for wives, especially in male-dominated families; (b) the wife's wellbeing with purchase decisions will depend more than her husband's wellbeing upon the partner's agreement, especially in male-dominated families, (c) the husband's wellbeing in conflict (buying a product despite the partner's objection) will be positively related with his dominance and vice versa; (d) mutual appraisal of situations will correspond higher in happy than in unhappy couples.The results are discussed with respect to differences in male and female strategies to cope with authority and social emotions in buying decisions. Shortcomings of economic theories on determinants of family consumer decisions are pointed out.     

Health and social support networks: A case for improving interpersonal communication

Presented here is an analysis of research findings documenting the apparently obvious hypothesis that people need people and that when ties between people are interrupted or modified consequences on people's health and wellbeing can often be observed. Ways in which social support networks contribute to people's health and societal characteristics that inhibit development of such networks are discussed. Some approaches that emphasize the importance of networks are suggested.     

A test of structural features of granovetter's strength of weak ties theory

Granovetter's ‘strength of weak ties’ theory offers a satisfying approach to the study of integration in networks of face-to-face interaction consisting of multiple subgroups. The present paper tests five hypotheses of this theory in the setting of a multidisciplinary social network of biological scientists. Considerable support for the theory is indicated: the local bridges and intergroup ties in the network are disproportionately weak ties.     

ON THE ASSIGNMENT OF INDIVIDUALS TO LATENT CLASSES

Consider an m-way cross-classification table (for m = 3, 4, … ) of m dichotomous variables that describes (1) the 2 ^m possible response patterns to a set of m questions (where the response to each question is binary), and (2) the number of individuals whose responses to the m questions can be described by a particular response pattern, for each of the 2 ^m possible response patterns. Consider the situation where the data in the cross-classification table are analyzed using a particular latent class model having T latent classes (for T = 2, 3, …), and where this model fits the data well. With this latent class model, it is possible to estimate, for an individual who has a particular response pattern, what is the conditional probability that this individual is in a particular latent class, for each of the T latent classes. In this article, the following question is considered: For an individual who has a particular response pattern, can we use the corresponding estimated conditional probabilities to assign this individual to one of the T latent classes? Two different assignment procedures are considered here, and for each of these procedures, two different criteria are introduced to help assess when the assignment procedure is satisfactory and when it is not. In addition, we describe here the particular framework and context in which the two assignment procedures, and the two criteria, are considered. For illustrative purposes, the latent class analysis of a classic set of data, a four-way cross-classification of some survey data, obtained in a two-wave panel study, is discussed; and the two different criteria introduced herein are applied in this analysis to each of the two assignment procedures .     

Linking economics with psychology an economist's view

This article deals with some mutual prejudices between economists and other social scientists. By means of a rather new instrument of research, the so-called Income Evaluation Question (IEQ). it is shown that norms with respect to income can be measured quantitatively. It is basically an attitude question. The results are used to derive equivalence scales for family size and climate differences. In the psychological field they are used to estimate the impact of past experiences and the anticipated future on present norms. In the sociological field we mention an application to derive the impact of the social reference group of an individual on the individual's norms. The examples show that research instruments from the psychologist's list of instruments may be fruitfully combined with economic model building to shed some light on central problems in the social sciences, economics included.     

The operation was a success but the patient died: A critique of “the implementation and evaluation of a problem-solving training program for adolescents”

This critique examines George S. Tellado's account of his evaluation of a problem-solving program for adolescents in a public junior high school in Pennsylvania. The program was apparently successful (i.e., it was shown by the evaluation to improve students' problem-solving capacities), and the evaluation was, for the most part, technically sound, but the program did not survive. This critique suggests that by examining the problem-solving program as an organizational change intervention, several problems can be uncovered regarding the program's design, implementation, evaluation, and institutionalization. In particular, it appears that the school system's staff did not have sufficient ownership of the program to understand it or to wish to carry it on after the program's originator and evaluator were no longer present. This article addresses these problems in detail and recommends techniques from the field of organizational change consultation to increase the likelihood that such programs will live on into the future.     

New ways of looking at management information systems in human service delivery

The functional aspects of management information systems (MIS's) in human-service delivery agencies are critically examined from the viewpoint of a behavioral systems analysis model. This model distinguishes between MIS as an information-gatherer and as a system to control agency behavior and administrative decision-making. The choice of a particular MIS involves the consideration of the agency 's informational objectives, the extent to which the MIS exerts control over the decision-making process, and its cost-effectiveness. The behavior-analytic approach to MIS requires an evaluation of the way in which the system affects the behavior of agency personnel and, ultimately the clients.     

Toward overcoming problems in evaluation research: A beginning perspective on power

An information feedback model and an ideology of evaluation is posed. The authors' experiences in actually doing evaluation research are then contrasted with the model and ideology. Suggestions are made for closing the gap between reality and the model, primarily by altering the structural constraints that present obstacles to achieving the model. The authors assume that impact on policy is the appropriate criterion for the success of an evlauation, and they conclude that political constraints are primary in preventing evaluation research from having this impact. It is proposed that evaluators need to develop more explicitly political ways of acquiring power of their own in order to maximize such impact. Some ways social researchers might conceptualize and construct an appropriate base of power are considered.     

The Validation of Screening Tests: Meet the New Screen same as the Old Screen?

The focus of this report is to examine the process of validation of new screening tests designed to detect the problem gambler in research and practice settings. A hierarchical or phases of evaluation model is presented as a conceptual framework to describe the basic features of the validation process and its implications for application and interpretation of test results. The report describes a number of threats to validity in the form of sources of unintended bias that when unrecognized may lead to incorrect interpretations of study results and the drawing of incorrect conclusions about the usefulness of the new screening tests. Examples drawn from the gambling literature on problem gambling are used to illustrate some of the more important concepts including spectrum bias and clinical variation in test accuracy. The concept of zones of severity and the bias inherent in selecting criterion thresholds are reviewed. A definition of reference or study gold standard is provided. The use of 2-stage designs to establish validity by efficiently using reference standards to determine indices of accuracy and prevalence is recommended.