DO CHANGING VALUES EXPLAIN THE NEW POLITICS? A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF THE POSTMATERIALIST THESIS

Many social scientists have argued that major political changes have occurred in the postindustrial societies of Western Europe, North America, and Australasia since the 1960s. These changes include partisan dealignment accompanied by a breakdown in traditional political orientations, the appearance of "new social movements," and increasing use of non-traditional forms of political action. One of the most influential account of the origins of the "New Politics" is Ronald Inglehart's "postmaterialist" thesis. Analyzing data from the Political Action surveys, we test two central propositions of the postmaterialist thesis: that postmaterialism constitutes an emerging and categorically distinct type of value commitment in these societies; and that a commitment to postmaterialism leads to a rejection of the state as a means of accomplishing policy objectives. Neither of these propositions is supported. The analyses instead provide evidence for an alternative account that we characterize as "value pluralism," and they show further that even citizens with postmaterialist values endorse the intervention of state institutions to achieve desired political outcomes.     

Multilevel Models in Family Research: Some Conceptual and Methodological Issues

Examining the impact of context on individual‐level outcomes has become an increasingly common undertaking in the social sciences. The growth in concern for identifying the effects of macrolevel characteristics has generated both theoretical and methodological advancements. In this issue of Journal of Marriage and Family, Butler (2002) researches whether the effect of welfare benefit levels on premarital childbearing varies by context, Hoffmann (2002) researches the effect of context on adolescent drug use, and Simons et al. (2002) examine how the relationship between parenting and child conduct varies by context. These articles are used as a background to discuss important theoretical and methodological issues surrounding the analysis of multilevel data. The authors present a simple analysis of data pertaining to age at first marriage taken from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and merged with census data to measure contextual effects as a pedagogical device for introducing readers to the benefits of multilevel modeling.     

Multilevel network interventions: Goals,actions, and outcomes

COVID-19 has resulted in dramatic and widespread social network interventions across the globe, with public health measures such as distancing and isolation key epidemiological responses to minimize transmission. Because these measures affect social interactions between people, the networked structure of daily lives is changed. Such largescale changes to social structures, present simultaneously across many different societies and touching many different people, give renewed significance to the conceptualization of social network interventions. As social network researchers, we need a framework for understanding and describing network interventions consistent with the COVID-19 experience, one that builds on past work but able to cast interventions across a broad societal framework. In this theoretical paper, we extend the conceptualization of social network interventions in these directions. We follow Valente (2012) with a tripartite categorization of interventions but add a multilevel dimension to capture hierarchical aspects that are a key feature of any society and implicit in any network. This multilevel dimension distinguishes goals, actions, and outcomes at different levels, from individuals to the whole of the society. We illustrate this extended taxonomy with a range of COVID-19 public health measures of different types and at multiple levels, and then show how past network intervention research in other domains can also be framed in this way. We discuss what counts as an effective network, an effective intervention, plausible causality, and careful selection and evaluation, as central to a full theory of network interventions.     

FAMILY, COMMUNITY, AND LIFESTYLE: ADOLESCENT VICTIMIZATION IN HELSINKI

The proximate correlates of adolescent victimization are well documented in the literature. The purpose of our research is to examine the more fundamental sources of this outcome. Focusing on two basic social contexts—the family and the residential community—we develop a theoretical model and test it empirically against a multilevel data set on juveniles living in Helsinki. Consistent with our hypothesis, we find that the family context is an important determinant of violent victimization. Much of this effect is mediated by involvement in delinquent lifestyles. We also find support for the assumption that community context matters to the risk of victimization independently of the family context and individual-level risk factors. Our research underscores the need for a multilevel approach in explanations of violent victimization.     

MATERIALISTIC VALUES IN HONG KONG AND GUANGZHOU: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF TWO CHINESE SOCIETIES

This article integrates two competing perspectives on value orientation. Inglehart's postmaterialism thesis stresses the permanent effects of childhood experience in which economic deprivation leads to materialism in adult life. The human development perspective, in contrast, emphasizes the evolution of a person's value system as life-cycle development unfolds new circumstances and possibilities. We adopt a developmental framework to test claims from these two perspectives. On the basis of micro-level data, we compare the materialistic values of two historically and culturally different Chinese societies, Hong Kong and Guangzhou. Findings support Inglehart's assertions that childhood experience has lasting effects and that rapid social changes create birth cohort differences in materialistic concerns. But life-cycle developments, such as education, marriage, and current social status, are equally important in influencing a person's value orientation. Both perspectives see only part of the picture, and an integrated approach is needed to better understand how people construct and maintain their value system.     

Social Context at Work: A Multilevel Analysis of Job Satisfaction

Analyzing data on classified employees working in 18 departments in a university, this paper uses hierarchical linear models to explore the effects of social context on workers' job satisfaction. Drawing on organizational demographers' claims that satisfying social relations in the workplace have demographic sources and that workers are more satisfied in demographically homogeneous work units, we examine the effects of department-level sex and race heterogeneity on workers' feelings about their jobs. Our results show that satisfaction levels are lower in more sex- and race-heterogeneous departments, as hypothesized. In addition, we found that satisfaction is higher in departments with higher average levels of job tenure, though the individual-level effect of tenure on job satisfaction was not statistically significant. Our results provide support for a social-relational view of work and demonstrate the usefulness of multilevel models as an analytic strategy for examining these issues.     

PRO-ENVIRONMENTAL BEHAVIOR IN AN URBAN SOCIAL STRUCTURAL CONTEXT

Research into environmental concern and behavior has been extensive in the past few decades. The connection between the two, as well as other related variables, has however remained somewhat elusive. This study attempts to refine our understanding of how concern for the environment is related to pro-environmental behavior such as buying ecologically friendly products, driving less, conserving resources at home, recycling, etc., by considering the role played by social structural context and self-efficacy. Furthermore, through principle component analysis a particular dimension of pro-environmental behavior is identified so as to produce more robust and consistent results. Social structural context and self-efficacy are found to be powerful mediators of the relationship between environmental concern and pro-environmental behavior. Lastly, social structural context, as measured by the availability of curbside recycling, is shown to act as a gateway to additional pro-environmental behaviors beyond recycling.     

Analysing networks of networks

We consider data with multiple observations or reports on a network in the case when these networks themselves are connected through some form of network ties. We could take the example of a cognitive social structure where there is another type of tie connecting the actors that provide the reports; or the study of interpersonal spillover effects from one cultural domain to another facilitated by the social ties. Another example is when the individual semantic structures are represented as semantic networks of a group of actors and connected through these actors’ social ties to constitute knowledge of a social group. How to jointly represent the two types of networks is not trivial as the layers and not the nodes of the layers of the reported networks are coupled through a network on the reports. We propose to transform the different multiple networks using line graphs, where actors are affiliated with ties represented as nodes, and represent the totality of the different types of ties as a multilevel network. This affords studying the associations between the social network and the reports as well as the alignment of the reports to a criterion graph. We illustrate how the procedure can be applied to studying the social construction of knowledge in local flood management groups. Here we use multilevel exponential random graph models but the representation also lends itself to stochastic actor-oriented models, multilevel blockmodels, and any model capable of handling multilevel networks.     

Sustainability and Disaster Planning: What Are the Connections?

In this article, we examine the connections between resiliency and sustainability by asking: Can disaster planning lead to more sustainability actions? In a survey we conducted of 1,899 cities, towns, and counties across the United States in 2015, we found that disaster plans are three times more common than sustainability plans. Our regression models find both types of plans lead to sustainability action as does regional collaboration across the rural‐urban interface. However, we find that hazard mitigation planning may be done without including sustainability staff, citizens, and other officials. After controlling for motivations, capacity, and cooperation, we find that rural communities are more likely to have sustainability plans than suburbs, though their level of sustainability action is lower due to capacity constraints. Our models of multilevel governance find local motivations balance sustainability’s concept of environmental protection, economic development, and social equity—and are more important drivers of action than grassroots or higher‐level government funding and policy. This bodes well in a context where federal government leadership on sustainability is absent.     

Subjective well‐being in the new China: religion,social capital,and social status

We present the first nationally representative evidence on the relationship between religion and subjective well‐being for the case of China. Research on Western societies tends to find a positive association between being religious and level of well‐being. China provides an interesting critical case as the religious population is growing rapidly and the religious and socioeconomic environments are profoundly different from Western societies, implying different mechanisms might be at work. We hypothesize to find a positive association between religion and well‐being in China too, but argue social capital, for which strong evidence is often found in Western societies, is unlikely to be an important mechanism because religion in China is generally non‐congregational. Instead, we argue that the private and subjective dimension of religion matters for well‐being in China by helping adherents have an improved sense of social status relative to the non‐religious in the context of rapid social change and growing inequality. Our results generally support these predictions.     

Die Analyse sozialer Kontexte

Individual behaviour is always embedded in social contexts such as networks, companies, neighbourhoods. They constitute a central condition to explain individual behaviour. We discuss major problems of context analysis. We first define context to then explore how contexts affect behaviour—the social mechanisms. We specify a multilevel model to demonstrate theoretical problems linking levels and the associated problems of adequate statistical modelling. An example is the explanation of individual behaviour by country level data.We then discuss cross pressures between contexts; here, we show how similar theoretical approaches of Simmel and Lazarsfeld are. Finally, we turn to two other problems of context analyses: non-linear effects and selection bias. We resume our arguments by suggesting a preliminary theory of contexts and strategies for future research.     

Die intra-individuelle Stabilität gesellschaftlicher Wertorientierungen

In empirical social research very little is known about the internal stability of social value orientations. The main reason for this is a shortage of long-time panel studies including usable value indicators. Beyond this background we analyse the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) which enables us to examine the internal stability of Inglehart’s postmaterialism across a time span of at least twelve years. By using multi-level-models for panel data we can demonstrate the existence of cohort effects as well as life cycle effects among the two youngest birth cohorts and among respondents with higher education.     

Toward a Sociology of Nature

Although we often believe that nature stands apart from social life, our experience of nature is profoundly social. This paper unpacks this paradox in order to (1) explain sociology's neglect of the environment and (2) introduce the articles in this special issue on “the sociology of nature.” I argue that sociology's disinterest in the biophysical world is a legacy of its classical concern with tracing society's “Great Transformation” from gemeinschaft to gesellschaft: while early anthropologists studied “primitive” societies that allegedly had not yet completed “the passage from nature to culture” (Lévi‐Strauss 1963 : 99), pioneering sociologists presumed that industrialization and urbanization liberated “modern” society from nature and therefore focused their attention on “urbanism as a way of life” (Wirth 1938 ). As exemplified by the articles in this symposium, environmental sociology critiques the nature‐culture and town‐country dualisms. One of environmental sociology's core contributions has been demonstrating that nature is just as much a social construction as race or gender; however, its more profound challenge to the discipline lies in its refutation of the sociological axiom that social facts can be explained purely through reference to other social facts. “Environmental facts” are a constitutive feature of social life, not merely an effect of it.     

Bildungschancen von Grundschülern: Die Bedeutung des Klassen- und Schulkontextes am Übergang auf die Sekundarstufe I

Do context characteristics of class and school have an impact on elementary school pupils’ educational opportunities in addition to the confirmed individual effects of social origin and academic performance? The paper investigates the influence of the contextual performance- and SES-level as well as of the ethnic composition of the context on the probability of (1) obtaining a recommendation for higher secondary schools (Gymnasium) and (2) effectively attending a higher secondary school. To this end, we base our theoretical framework on the distinction between primary and secondary effects, as introduced by Boudon (1974), and extend it by a contextual perspective, as well as the related decisions of parents and teachers. The analyses are based on a survey of all 4^th graders of elementary schools in the city of Wiesbaden (Germany) during the school year 2006/07. The context effects are modelled by using logistic multilevel models. The results show that the affiliation to both school- and class context explains about 10 per cent of the total variance of academic achievement. Additionally, there is evidence that the context effects significantly influence the individual educational opportunities in particular when the individual marks are controlled for (secondary context effects). Furthermore, especially the SES-related context composition influences the educational outcomes when controlling for relevant individual variables. With respect to the accomplished transitions to the Gymnasium, the performance level of the school also has significant impact. Contrary to previous studies, we could not detect any effect of the ethnic composition of the context when SES is controlled for. While there are effects of the class context as well as of the school context with the educational recommendation as dependent variable, only the school context is of relevance concerning the effectively attained school transition.     

A Social Capital Basis for Environmental Concern: Evidence from Northern New England*

This study, based on a random‐digit‐dialing telephone survey of adults in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, uses ordinary least squares regression to examine a relatively neglected element in the sociological literature on environmental concern, namely, the influence of an individual's social capital on the formation of environmental attitudes. We argue that it is those individuals with a greater diversity of social connections who are most likely to be influenced by ecological perspectives grounded in conservation and environmental protection. Controlling for other theoretically relevant variables, we regress an index of environmental concern that gives special emphasis to environmental‐economic trade‐offs on our measures of relational and community social capital. While confirming much of the earlier work in this area, our model provides evidence that connections to other people play an important role in determining individual concern for the environment. Specifically, the number of respondents' “weak ties”—that is, not their closest relationships—and the average occupational status of respondents' social ties, in general, were both positively correlated with environmental concern. Additionally, one of our three measures of community social capital, the number of visits from friends over the past month, was statistically significant and negatively correlated with environmental concern.     

Income tax evasion dynamics: Evidence from an agent-based econophysics model

We analyze income tax evasion dynamics in a standard model of statistical mechanics, the Ising model of ferromagnetism. However, in contrast to previous research, we use an inhomogeneous multi-dimensional Ising model where the local degrees of freedom (agents) are subject to a specific social temperature and coupled to external fields which govern their social behavior. This new modeling frame allows for analyzing large societies of four different and interacting agent types. As a second novelty, our model may reproduce results from agent-based models that incorporate standard Allingham and Sandmo tax evasion features as well as results from existing two-dimensional Ising based tax evasion models. In this way, such kind of models may become more relevant and useful in economics as well as social psychology. We finally use our model for analyzing income tax evasion dynamics under different enforcement scenarios and point to some policy implications that may also be of interest for psychological research on tax compliance.     

Rural Environmental Concern: Effects of Position,Partisanship, and Place

The social bases of environmental concern in rural America resemble those for the nation as a whole, but also reflect the influence of place. Some general place characteristics, such as rates of population growth or resource‐industry employment, predict responses across a number of environmental issues. Other unique or distinctive aspects of local society and environment matter as well. We extend earlier work on both kinds of place effects, first by analyzing survey data from northeast Oregon. Results emphasize that “environmental concern” has several dimensions. Second, we contextualize the Oregon results using surveys from other regions. Analysis of an integrated dataset (up to 12,000 interviews in 38 U.S. counties) shows effects from respondent characteristics and political views, and from county rates of population growth and resource‐based employment. There also are significant place‐to‐place variations that are not explained by variables in the models. To understand some of these we return to the local scale. In northeast Oregon, residents describe how perceptions of fire danger from unmanaged forest lands shape their response to the word conservation. Their local interpretation contrasts with more general and urban connotations of this term, underlining the importance of place for understanding rural environmental concern.     

Social europe,social citizenship,and social services

The article begins by considering moves to establish Social Europe, alongside the European Unions single market, and the emphasis within the formulation of Social Europe on an employment-based model of social citizenship. This employment-based model is considered to be too limited for application to the social services. Accordingly, two other models are placed within the context of continuing European debate. These models are termed state clienthood and state-sponsored consumerism. The social democratic model of state cli-enthood is considered to be flawed by its neglect of the power exercised by the state over users of social services and by its lack of concern with individual needs. The potential of state-sponsored consumerism to open up questions concerning the rights of users of social services and responsiveness to their individual needs is explored and the conclusion is reached that, despite its inauspicious beginnings as part of the New Rights reform programme, this model has possibilities for enhancing social citizenship. Procedural rights offered by state-sponsored consumerism not only can extend social citizenship within existing social services provision but also can serve as a precursor to the wider participation of citizens in the social services, as the site of a continuing struggle around their rights.     

MULTILEVEL COVARIANCE STRUCTURE ANALYSIS BY FITTING MULTIPLE SINGLE-LEVEL MODELS

Data in social and behavioral sciences are often hierarchically organized. Multilevel statistical procedures have been developed to analyze such data while taking into account the dependence of observations. When simultaneously evaluating models at all levels, a significant statistic provides no information on the level at which the model is misspecified. Model misspecification can exist at one or several levels simultaneously. When one level is misspecified, the other levels may be affected even when they are correctly specified. Motivated by these observations, we propose to separate a multilevel covariance structure into multiple single-level covariance structure models and to fit these single-level models as in conventional covariance structure analysis. A procedure for segregating the multilevel model into single-level models is developed. Five test statistics for evaluating a model at each level are provided. Standard error formulas for the separate estimators are also provided, and their efficiency is compared to simultaneous estimators. Empirical and Monte Carlo results demonstrate the advantages of the segregated procedure over the simultaneous procedure. Computer programs that will allow the developed procedure to be used in practice are also presented.     

The contextual effect of trust on perceived support: Evidence from Roma and non-Roma in East-Central Europe

In recent years, trust has been conceptualized as an important source of social capital, setting off cross-disciplinary research on both the benefits and predictors of trust at the individual and contextual level. In this paper, we turn to the individual outcomes of living in a trustful context, and explore the relationship between trust, itself one of the main components of social capital, and social support, seen as one of the most important effects of social capital. In particular, we ask how social capital—and the relationship between trust and social support—functions in the context of unequal societies. We model perceived support as an outcome across three levels, from no support to proximate to distal support, and using a cross-national study of Roma and non-Roma across 12 European countries, we track the relationship between trust and support across both mainstream and marginalized populations. Our findings suggest that living in contexts with more trust has protective effects particularly for members of marginalized groups: the Roma are more likely to have distal support in contexts with higher trust. We conclude that contextual trust helps to broaden the circle of support beyond family and friends; thus, trust can indeed be a synthetic force that binds individuals together in broadened structures of support.