Informant accuracy in social-network data V. An experimental attempt to predict actual communication from recall data

This paper seeks to discover whether the known inaccuracy of informant recall about their communication behavior can be accounted for by experimentally varying the time period over which recall takes place. The experiment took advantage of a new communications medium (computer conferencing) which enabled us to monitor automatically all the interactions involving a subset of the computer network. The experiment itself was administered entirely by the computer, which interviewed informants and recorded their responses. Variations in time period failed to account for much of the inaccuracy, which continues, as in previous experiments at an unacceptably high level. One positive finding did emerge: although the informants did not know with whom they communicated, the informants en masse seemed to know certain broad facts about the communication pattern. All other findings were negative. For example, it is impossible to predict the people an informant claimed to communicate with but did not; and it is impossible to predict who the five people are that an informant forgot to mention that she or he had communication with. Thus, despite their presumed good intentions, our findings here confirm what we have learned from six previous experiments: What people say about their communications bears no resemblance to their behavior. This suggests that other forms of data gathering, based on questions which require that informants recall their behavior, may well be suspect.     

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.     

Some evidence concerning the value hypothesis of intergenerational status transmission: A research note

This paper reports some evidence bearing on the value hypothesis of intergenerational status transmission. The point of departure is the studies of Kohn (1969, Class and Conformity: A Study in Values, Dorsey, Homewood, Ill.) and Wright and Wright (1976, American Sociological Review, 41, 527–537) on the social class related value orientations called “self-direction” and “conformity.” Our research examines whether children's valuations along this dimension are associated with the valuations of their parents, as the value hypothesis would argue. Key associations consistent with the hypothesis are found although there is, overall, considerable variation in children's valuations not related to variation in the valuations of their parents. Implications of the finding for future examination of the value hypothesis are discussed.     

The use of nativity data to estimate ethnic characteristics and patterns

Until recently, nativity data for the first and second generations (the foreign stock) have been the primary source of census information on white ethnic groups in the United States. With the development of an ancestry item, it is now possible to deal with all generations regardless of birthplace. The 1979 Current Population Survey provides a rare opportunity to cross-tabulate the results obtained from each system in order to determine the degree of overlap in the populations and the extent to which inferences about the social characteristics of ethnic groups are altered. The degree of overlap varies enormously among groups, but the results show that inferences based on nativity data are fairly close to those that would be obtained with the use of the ethnic ancestry item. This is an encouraging result for researchers obliged to use nativity data in working with earlier censuses.     

Correcting for ratio variable correlation: Examples using models of mortality

The major purpose of this paper is to examine one part of the ratio variable correlation problem, correlated denominators, using path models of young, middle-age, and older-age mortality, each with 11 sociodemographic and cause-of-death independent variables. The models are calculated using a traditional ratio approach and a residual variable approach for a sample of counties. The methodological discussion focuses on differences in coefficients for the two approaches in terms of significance, magnitude, and hypothesis support. It is concluded that the residual approach is worth pursuing as a viable statistical solution to the correlated denominators component of the ratio variable correlation problem.     

Psychophysical measurement and the validity of the modern economic approach: A presentation of methods and preliminary experiments

The modern economic approach to human behavior and social interaction argues that people maximize the subjective theoretical quantity utility. This primary presupposition has resisted all empirical tests and a consensus has developed that it is unfalsifiable. A promising new approach to the problem is introduced in the paper through research on the psychophysical measurement of the marginal utility of money and commitment. The research reported here suggests that the utility function for money conforms to the power law and has an exponent of about .43. The paper also examines the advisability of broadening the utility function to cover social variables. An operationalization of the concept of commitment was examined using psychophysical techniques with the result that people appear to have utility for commitment, that a power function is involved, and that the exponent is in the vicinity of .36.     

Economic and other determinants of annual change in U.S. fertility: 1917-1976

Decomposition of fertility into its age, period, and cohort components demonstrates the empirical importance of age and period. Of the two, less is known about the period dimension. A new measure of fertility, specific to race and birth order, is used to estimate the effects of annual change in unemployment, the marriage and unemployment rate, as well as annual change in contraceptive sterilization and change in the proportion of couples adopting the more effective (pill and IUD) methods introduced in the early 1960s, are all important determinants of fertility change, but their impact varies greatly by birth order.     

Wage change in the late career: A model for the outcomes of job sequences

This paper elaborates a model for the outcomes of job sequences and illustrates its utility by an empirical analysis of the determinants of wage change for men in their late careers. We argue that job sequences represent the basic components of careers and that a focus on these sequences is useful for explaining the determinants of socioeconomic inequality over the life cycle. Our model permits us to estimate the effects on wage change of a wide array of personal resources and measures of the opportunity structure. We further assess how these types of factors differentially affect wage change for various patterns of labor market behavior and for blacks vs whites. Our empirical analysis of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Middle-Aged Men suggests the importance of patterns of job sequences for wage change and for the explanation of racial differentials in career advancement.     

On a dynamic response model of W. F. Kempf

Kempf's model was used by W. F. Kempf and P. Hampapa (1977, “Conditional inference for the dynamic test model,” in Mathematical Models for Social Psychology (W. F. Kempf and B. H. Repp, Eds.), Chap. 3, pp. 81–100, Wiley, New York) to analyze the cross-classification of responses to four items on sex typing of children's household chores from the 1971 Detroit Area Study. The model alters the simple Rasch measurement model for dichotomous items to include transfer effects, so that responses are allowed to be serially dependent (G. Rasch, 1966, “An individualistic approach to item analysis,” in Readings in Mathematical Social Science (P. F. Lazarsfeld and N. W. Henry, Eds.), pp. 89–107, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1980; Probabilistic Models for Some Intelligence and Attainment Tests, expanded ed., Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago). Although Kempf and Hampapa did not find strong reason to reject the dynamic model, the present analysis indicates that it should be rejected in favor of a two-dimensional Rasch model.     

Analyzing social processes: Life tables and proportional hazards models

A number of techniques useful in describing and modeling social processes are detailed. Emphasis is placed on the analysis of changes in categorical variables as they occur in continuous time. The procedures considered are mainly non-parametric, although parametric alternatives do exist when the appropriate distributional assumptions are met. Specifically, life tables and proportional hazards models are discussed and illustrated through an analysis of first live birth intervals for a sample of white American women. The generality of proportional hazards models is outlined by considering extensions of the basic model to include competing risks, time-dependent covariates, and repeatable events.     

Minority group status and the wages of Indian and black males

Using the 1976 Survey of Income and Education the differences in the wages of Indian, black, and white males are examined. The results indicate that the differences in characteristics between Indians and whites largely account for the difference in the average wage of these two groups. On the other hand, minority status, as well as characteristics, are important in understanding the differences in the average wage of blacks and whites. These findings illustrate the importance of understanding the different historical experiences of minority groups to an understanding of current racial inequality.     

The success of protest groups: Multivariate analyses

This paper reviews earlier research and presents new analytical findings regarding the outcomes of social movements. Using the resource mobilization/management approach, empirical propositions that seek to explain protest group success or failure are tested. Based upon data gathered from a sample of 53 US protest groups, the causal models explained the majority of the variance in degree of success between these groups. Our findings indicate that protest groups which threaten to replace or destroy established groups are usually unsuccessful, and those having many strong alliances tend to be more successful than groups fighting alone. The use of violence does not greatly aid the prediction of group outcome because of the unpredictable, ambivalent reaction to violence by established groups.     

Life events and psychological well-being: A reexamination of theoretical and methodological issues

Longitudinal data, taken from the Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics, are used to examine the effect of specific life events on changes in psychological well-being. The paper deals with methodological criticisms raised against past research on life events and addresses several theoretical questions regarding the types of events that are most stressful. The findings indicate that a wide variety of events, including employment related events, residential moves, and household composition changes, are associated with negative changes in psychological well-being and that the context in which events occur is a major factor in determining their effect on psychological status.     

Some cross-population comparisons of family bias in the effects of schooling on occupational status

It is a truism of research on social stratification that the effects of socioeconomic or family background on educational attainment and adult success lead to biases in the simple regressions of occupational status (or other putative outcomes of schooling) on educational attainment. The present analysis compares findings of family bias in the effects of schooling on occupational status across samples of siblings drawn from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study and from Olneck's sample of brothers from Kalamazoo, Michigan. The comparative analysis shows that family bias in the effect of schooling on occupational status may be much less than is commonly believed and that very large samples may be needed to measure it reliably. Moreover, the analysis suggests that estimates of family bias are very sensitive to the specification of response variability in schooling. The analysis also illustrates some useful methods for cross-population comparison of structural equation models.     

“Mainstreaming” content analysis in social science: Methodological advantages,obstacles, and solutions

The history of content analysis is reviewed and reasons for its continuing underutilization are identified. The technique's isolation from mainstream social science results in low-quality studies and methodological underdevelopment. Still, advantages of the method indicate it has great potential for social science. Specific suggestions are made for applying established research techniques to content analysis. Sampling, research design, reliability and validity assessment, concept operationalization, and related principles and techniques are illustrated with a content analysis study of religious belief popularization. The relative merits of coding manifest content versus latent, thematic analysis are assessed. Manifest characteristics can be coded more reliably but thematic indicators provide greater measurement efficiency in the example. Implications for computerized coding are discussed. Inference from communication texts and the value of empirically studying communication patterns for social scientific objectives are presented as complementing research on individuals and social structures.     

Educational indicators and occupational achievement

Many sociological and economic studies assume that the variable, Highest Grade Completed in School, is by itself an adequate measure of people's education for the purpose of explaining their occupational achievement. Use of Highest Grade Completed as the sole measure of education has at least two major shortcomings. It assumes people have (1) learned the same amount of (2) the same thing in an academic year. Supplementary education indicators are identified and tested to see if they have a substantial impact on occupational prestige or earnings. Background social statuses and Highest Grade Completed are controlled for in this test. Only measures of subject matter studied in high school or college have a statistically significant relationship with occupational achievement net of Highest Grade Completed and social background variables. Highest Grade Completed is quite adequate in measuring the impact of education on occupational achievement without help from the measures of subject matter studied.