Chance in Guttman scaling

In their recent paper (1977, Social Science Research, 6, 188–196), Kenny and Rubin offer an interpretation of “chance” in Guttman scaling. Their approach is based on the matrix of probabilities p_ij, giving the chance that the ith respondent passes the jth item. It is shown that their interpretation of chance in fact corresponds to a stochastic model of a perfect unidimensional scale. An alternative condition for chance based on the matrix of p_ij's is proposed. This is then proved to be equivalent to the usual interpretation.     

Inequality of educational opportunity in France and the United States

Unequality of educational opportunity is related to school structure. Comparison of the attainment process in France and the United States reveals the consequences of structure for individuals' attainments. Turner's (1960) typology of educational systems is applied. The French educational system is shown to be closer to Turner's “sponsorship system,” and that of the U. S. closer to the “contest” type. Inequality of educational opportunity, as indicated by the effect of father's occupational status on years of schooling completed, is greater in France than in the U. S. The difference is accounted for by school structural variables, indicating the importance of structure for inequality of opportunity. Other differences concerning the causes of educational attainment in France and the U. S. are also discussed.     

The scientist's mission and professional involvement: A quantitative revisitation to the sociology of science

“Basic science” and “applied science” are tired labels in the sociology of science due to their use as a priori specifications on empirically nonrecognizable ideal types. A modification of the Thurstone scale construction technique is used to indicate a scientist's attitude toward his work. A continuum is empirically generated and suggests a higher order theoretical concept that subsumes both basic and applied science. The continuum suggests the two-fold concept of the “scientific mission.” A scientist's mission is: (a) his position on the continuum reflecting his interests relative to others in his discipline, and (b) the size of the locus about his position indicating the breadth or diffuseness of his interest-space. Using multiple correlation, the scientist's mission is related to his degree of professional involvement as measured by a seven item index. The seven items are scaled using principal components factor analysis and are shown to be highly related and form a usable index.     

Sexual inequality in the workplace: An employer-specific analysis of pay differences

This paper reports an analysis of employer-specific sex differences in the processes governing the salary attainment of personnel of a large company. The two dominant theories of inequality both view discrimination as the operative cause of pay differences, but locate the structural source of discrimination at different points in the employer-employee exchange space. The wage discrimination hypothesis asserts that the economic disadvantage of women issues directly from the pay practices of employers, with women receiving “unequal pay for equal work.” The crowding, or employment segregation, hypothesis asserts that inequality issues from the employment practices of employers; disparities in the allocation of jobs and promotions results in segregation along sexual lines, with women relegated to lower-paying positions. The findings show that both wage discrimination and sexual segregation of the company's job and rank structures contribute to inequality, but that the latter is more important. The implications for the issue of discrimination are briefly discussed.     

Scaling the prestige,authority, and income potential of college curricula

This paper develops the concept of “targeted education,” a theoretical ranking of college curricula, into a multidimensional framework. The new scales, based on the traditional stratification dimensions, prestige, authority, and income, are then used in a study of sex differences in the process of occupational achievement among men and women with college degrees. The targeted education scales predict occupational prestige and wages 7 years after the college degree, and they point out interesting differences between male and female attainment processes. In general, targeted education has a greater quantitative impact for men's occupational outcomes than for women's prestige and income, but results also suggest significant qualitative differences between men and women. A large proportion of women target their education toward, and end up in, an under-employed labor pool for the primary and secondary school system.     

Employment among married female college graduates

This paper investigates the effect of attitudinal factors on the employment of white married female college graduates with and without children. A model of the employment status of these women 3 and 7 years after graduation is estimated using data from the NORC longitudinal study of 1961 college graduates. Taste for housework was found to affect the employment of nonmothers only, whereas “child care ideology” affected the employment of mothers. Husband's income had a negative effect on the wife's working both in 1964 and in 1968. Age of youngest child in 1964 had a positive, and number of children a negative, impact on a mother's working in 1964. The negative effect on employment status in 1968 of the birth of a child between 1964 and 1968 was much greater for those women for whom it was a first birth than for those who already had children.     

Size and duration of empires: Systematics of size

Areas of the world's three largest empires or states at any given time are listed at 100- or 50-year intervals, from 3000 b.c. on. Area measurement definitions and techniques are described. Major empire size has tended to increase, approaching the world's dry earth area in an approximately logistic way. This pattern suggests that a world state is still many centuries away. Sudden increases in empire size have occurred around 2800 b.c. due to emergence of cities, around 600 b.c. due to a power delegation breakthrough, and around 1600 a.d. due to a communication speed revolution. A graph of the world's largest empire areas throughout times offers somewhat novel perspectives on world history, making one realize the Western bias of many “world history” texts. Areas of 20 largest states that ever existed are listed. Subsequent papers will deal with historical periods in more detail.     

清晰论证:G.A.柯亨的非劳动价值论的剥削论证何以可能

G．A．柯亨认为在马克思的著作中,劳动价值论存在两种表述方式,其通俗表述是“劳动且只有劳动创造价值”,而其严格表述是“社会必要劳动时间决定价值”。柯亨论证说依据严格表述,通俗表述是错误的;而依据价值的约定定义,严格表述也是错误的。所以,柯亨认为以劳动价值论为基础的剥削论证是不成功的,他提出了以“只有工人生产了拥有价值的产品”为基础的清晰论证来代替劳动价值论的剥削论证。柯亨的这个新论证也存在问题,所以后来柯亨的剥削批判是以“自我所有”为论说对象的。     

The Mapping of family-composition preferences: A scaling analysis

When subjects express preference for one type of family composition over another, their judgments have the useful property that they can be referred to the ‘objective’ characteristics defining the stimuli. Pair comparison preference data from the Bollen-Delbeke study are “internally” analyzed according to the Carroll-Chang “Points of View” vector model and Coombs' Unfolding (distance) model. The distance model was found to give a better fit. Secondly, the models are compared within the framework of Carroll's Preference Mapping hierarchy of models, referring the data to the ‘objective’ structure underlying the stimuli. The simple distance model is found to give a much better fit.The methodological and substantive implications of this finding are discussed.¹     

Family structure and the reproduction of inequality: Parents’ contribution to children’s college costs

This article examines the role of family structure in the financial support parents provide for their children’s college education. Data are from the Health and Retirement Study. We focus on aspects of family structure that affect parental support and estimate shared family variance in investments as well as within-family variation using a multilevel model. Family membership accounts for about 60% of the variance in payment of college costs. Small family size, living with both biological parents (compared to one biological parent and a stepparent), higher parental education, and having older parents are associated with greater parental expenditures.     

Deception in simple voting games

The calculations of sophisticated voters who successively eliminate undesirable strategies are analyzed in three-person voting games in which one voter with complete information can, as a deceiver, induce the other two voters with incomplete information to vote in such a way as to ensure a better outcome than the deceiver could ensure in a game of complete information. Deception which is “tacit,” wherein a deceiver votes consistently with his announced preference scale, is distinguished from deception which is “revealed,” wherein a deceiver's action deviates from his announced preference scale. Among the conclusions drawn from the study is that revealed deception is generally a more potent tool than tacit deception in securing a more-preferred outcome, and deception opportunities are greater the more disagreement there is among the nondeceivers.     

The analysis of ordinal dispersion: A comparison of Leik's “D” with a variance formula

The frequency of ordinal data and the importance of attitudinal consensus in social research motivated Leik [Leik, R. L. (1966), Pacific Sociological Review 9, 85–90] to formulate a simple, effective measure of ordinal dispersion, but he did not provide a method for its statistical analysis, and its operational interpretation for nonextremal values is unclear. Leik's D is an equal-interval, “folded” scoring vector inner dot-product, scalar transformation of the vector of ordered relative frequencies. The folding point is the median category. The metric analog of D is the difference between the random variable's expected values above and below the median. An equal-interval, pure variance measure of ordinal dispersion is posited and compared to D. They correlate closely but not perfectly, and D has a serious problem when an extremal category has more than half the total cases. Both formulas are easily generalized to non-equal-interval scorings. A general linear model for categorical data permits easy statistical comparisons of D, but not the variance. D tends to underestimate the degree of significant dispersion in comparison to the variance formula, it is suggested.     

Demographic components of growth in white,black, and Puerto Rican female-headed families: Comparison of the Cutright and Ross/Sawhill methodologies

This study examines the methodological differences between Cutright's (1974, Journal of Marriage and the Family36, 714–721) and Ross and Sawhill's (1975, Time of Transition: The Growth of Families Headed by Women. The Urban Institute, Washington, D.C.) analyses of demographic components of growth in the number of female-headed families and replicates their procedures within a comparable time/age framework in order to resolve their contradictory findings. The analysis suggests that while changes in living arrangements and population are the two major factors accounting for changes in the number of White female-headed families between 1940 and 1970, marital instability is the major factor responsible for the increase in the number of White female-headed families between 1960 and 1970. Cutright's analysis of long-term changes for nonwhites is debatable. The relative importance of demographic factors in explaining the absolute increase in female-headed families between 1960 and 1970 clearly varies by ethnic/racial group.     

Family structure and the intergenerational transmission of educational advantage

I examine whether the effect of parents’ education on children’s educational achievement and attainment varies by family structure and, if so, whether this can be explained by differential parenting practices. Using data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988, I find that as parents’ education increases, children in single mother families experience a lower boost in their achievement test scores, likelihood of attending any post-secondary schooling, likelihood of completing a 4-year college degree, and years of completed schooling relative to children living with both biological parents. Differences in parents’ educational expectations, intergenerational closure, and children’s involvement in structured leisure activities partially explain these status transmission differences by family structure. The findings imply that, among children with highly educated parents, children of single mothers are less likely to be highly educated themselves relative to children who grow up with both biological parents.     

Chips off the old blocks? The political participation patterns of parents and children in Italy

This article studies the relationship between the political participation of parents and children in Italy, a country for which no empirical evidence on the topic is available and that has particular characteristics in terms of household dynamics and patterns of political participation. The analyses are based on a sample of 12,802 children from 14 to 19 years old and their parents, drawn from the “Multipurpose survey – Aspects of daily life”, collected by the Italian National Institute of Statistics. The results show that the political participation of children is strongly associated with that of their parents; that maternal participation is of somewhat greater relevance to the participation of both sons and daughters compared to that of fathers; and that the parents’ level of education is not associated with the likelihood of the child participating, net of parental participation.     

直觉、距离与审美创造——克罗齐与朱光潜早期美学思想

朱光潜早期美学思想的形成与发展与克罗齐的美学思想有着密切的关联 ,他以“形象的直觉”为核心的美学经验论直接脱胎于克罗齐的相关美学观点。朱光潜早期美学思想在“艺术的独立性”和“为艺术而艺术”等方面 ,与克罗齐美学思想产生了共鸣。但也是因为这一点 ,使得他与克罗齐在“艺术的独立性如何实现”的问题上分道扬镳。     

Further contributions to scaling of paired comparisons and ranking

A method is described which, on the basis of Mosteller's modification of Thurstone's “Case V,” estimates interval scales from observations given on an ordinal scale. The approach differs from previous analyses in the way it determines sample sizes, provides confidence limits for the estimates, permits verification of statistical hypotheses regarding the interval scales, and proposes an internal-consistency statistic suitable for all situations. The superiority of the approach is demonstrated in numerical examples. A computer routine is given in the Appendix.     

Components of change in the number of female family heads ages 15 to 44, an update and reanalysis: United States, 1940 to 1983

We review the literature dealing with the various components of change in the number of female family heads and conclude that P. Cutright's (1974, Journal of Marriage and the Family 36, 714–721) four components of change in the number of ever-married female family heads can be usefully applied to a reanalysis of decade-by-decade changes in this quantity among white and nonwhite women ages 15–44, from 1940 through 1980. However, we substantially revise and update Cutright's (1974) original data. Our findings include the fact that while the relative importance of the various components of increases in ever-married female family headship vary from decade to decade, overall trends are fairly similar for white and nonwhite women. Moreover, the rapid rise between 1970 and 1980 in the number of white and nonwhite female family heads among the never-married (single) continued through the 1980 to 1983 period. A decade ago, Cutright (1974) predicted that a change in the number of female family heads from 1970 on would reflect little more than changes in the numbers of ever- and never-married women ages 15–44. We discuss this inaccurate prediction and conclude that wishful thinking is a poor guide in forecasting the future.     

21世纪孟子学研究的新展望

孟子学研究颇获海内外学者重视。以往的研究方法有:“内在研究”集中在性善论、身心关系论、知言养气论等三大议题之上,采取一种“即心言心”的进路,将孟子的“心”视为具有“自我立法”能力的、自给自足的、具有自主性的“道德主体”,肯定“心”之独立自主性,对孟子思想的历史与文化的脉络性掌握,常有未达之憾;“外在研究”注重在历史文化脉络中解读孟子学的内涵,将孟子思想置于政治与历史的具体情境之中考察,使孟子学中的诸多概念或理念,取得了鲜活的具体感,不再是抽象的概念,潜藏着某种未经明言的人性论预设:认为人是在具体的、特定的历史条件之中创造历史、进行思考活动,人不是遗世而独立的山林逸士,将孟子“脉络化”于历史情境中的研究进路,推至极端,就有所蔽。未来的孟子学研究必须“内”“外”兼顾,得其全貌。三个可能的研究新方向是:孟子思想中的身心关系论与修养工夫论;东亚孟子学的发展及其思想的同调与异趣;全球化时代孟子思想的普世价值。     

An experimental investigation of the free-rider problem

An experiment was conducted to test propositions drawn from a theory of rational decision-making propounded by Mancur Olson in The Logic of Collective Action. From Olson's theory it was hypothesized that: (1) Given only a public good to be achieved, the contributions from individuals in an operational equivalent of a large group will be smaller than the contributions from individuals in a small group. (2) Given that certain individuals' actions are not effective toward obtaining a public good, the contributions from those individuals in a condition in which a private good is also provided-but made contingent upon the individuals making a contribution to the public good-will be larger than the contribution from those individuals in a condition in which no private good is provided. Because Olson's theory presumes an informational input from a group context, two propositions regarding reference groups and individuals were also tested: (3) Individuals will contribute less toward a group goal when their actions are anonymous than when their performances are reviewed by a reference person. (4) Individuals who perceive that many of the members of their reference group are making large contributions toward a group goal will themselves make larger contributions than individuals who perceive that many of their reference group are making small contributions, ceteris paribus. (This last proposition is potentially inconsistent with Olson's theory.) The results of the experiment support propositions (1) and (2) and partially support proposition (3) but the results do not support proposition (4).The experiment demonstrates that the so-called free-rider phenomenon may be produced in the laboratory under controlled conditions and also that the extent of the phenomenon may be varied under laboratory conditions. Further the experiment suggests that the amount of contributions which group members are willing to make may be only indirectly affected by the size of the group through the medium of “perceived effectiveness” of an individual's contributory efforts.