Latin American Psychology in the Interamerican Journal of Psychology in the 1990's

This paper reviews 119 articles by Latin American psychologists, which have been published between 1990–1998 in the Revista Interamericana de Psicologia/Interamerican Journal of Psychology (RIP, ISP). As the official publication of the Interamerican Society of Psychology, the journal plays a prominent role, especially in Latin American psychology. It is concluded that Latin American psychologists have been active in many research areas and are seeking solutions for many pressing societal problems. While interested in a variety of general theoretical issues, Latin American psychologists have focused above all on applied studies.     

Family Cohesion in the Lives of Mexican American and European American Parents

This study investigated similarities and differences in relations between stress and parenting behaviors for 509 Mexican American and European American fathers and mothers in Southern California. Our model posited that family cohesion mediates the relation between stressors and parenting behavior, and we found that family cohesion strongly mediated most of the relations between stress and parenting behaviors. Important ethnic and gender differences were evident. In contrast with other groups, Mexican American fathers reported higher levels of family cohesion when faced with economic pressures. Implications for future research on stress and parenting are discussed.     

Trends in author characteristics and diversity issues in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy from 1990 to 2000

In this article, we present an analysis and comparison of published articles in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy (JMFT) between 1990-1995 and 1996-2000. This study focused on trends in author gender, highest degree, and professional affiliation, and article content on issues of cultural and family diversity (race/ethnicity, class, religion/spirituality, gender, sexual orientation, and varied family forms). Key findings show a significant shift from 69% male first authors in 1990-1995 to equal gender representation in authorship for 1996-2000 articles, with a particular increase in female PhDs. Articles addressing diversity issues doubled from 15.6% of all 1990-1995 articles to 31% in 1996-2000. Of note, women authored 73% of the 1996-2000 articles on the wide range of diversity issues. Implications for the field are discussed.     

The Social Ecology of Child Development in the Mexican American Population

Abstract

This article explores the influence of contextual factors on the developmental outcomes of Mexican American children. The contextual structure of child development is conceptualized as a complex system of environments, including the socio-demographic, social service, academic, and parental home environments. Based on an extensive review of the current theoretical and empirical literature, we find that the disadvantaged social position of Mexican American children has detrimental implications for all other aspects of their environment, thus hindering their development. In addition, although Mexican American parents are highly competent in providing a nurturing and culturally-rich environment, there is a often a discontinuity between the home environment and both the academic and the social service environments.     

Measures of Assimilation in the Marriage Market: Mexican Americans 1970–1990

In 1965 the United States rewrote its immigration laws, and immigration increased sharply as a result. The immigrants and the children of immigrants from the post‐1965 period are slowly becoming more influential in U.S. life; the largest of these groups are the Mexican immigrants and the Mexican Americans. The rapid growth of Hispanic and Asian populations in the United States has led to a renewed interest in the question of assimilation; that is, will the new groups assimilate, and if so how long will it take? Will they become part of White America? Will some groups assimilate into the Black‐dominated urban underclass (a process Portes called segmented assimilation)? Will some groups remain permanently separate and socially isolated? In this article, I examine the behavior of Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants in the U.S. marriage market, using census data from 1970, 1980, and 1990. The findings are that Mexican Americans are assimilating with non‐Hispanic Whites over time, and the evidence tends to reject the segmented assimilation hypothesis. The interplay between intermarriage and endogamy is studied with log linear models; some variations by geography and U.S. nativity are noted.     

Factors influencing enrolment: A case study from Birth to Twenty, the 1990 birth cohort in Soweto–Johannesburg

Longitudinal studies offer significant advantages in rendering data commensurate with the complexity of human development. However, incomplete enrolment and attrition over time can introduce bias. Furthermore, there is a scarcity of evaluative information on cohorts in developing countries. This paper documents various strategies adopted to minimize loss to follow up and describes a retrospective analysis of a small group of families who were missed during initial enrolment and through several subsequent rounds of data collection of the Birth to Twenty (BT20) birth cohort in Soweto–Johannesburg, South Africa that began in 1990. A purposive case study approach was used, and 10 of the 119 families missed at enrolment were interviewed to investigate why these families were not enrolled into the study. The findings demonstrate that high mobility, both within urban areas and between urban and rural areas, are a major challenge for longitudinal studies in densely populated urban areas. In addition, enrolment was also affected by individuals changing their names, largely motivated to facilitate access to employment under Apartheid, as well as varying motivations for participating in research. Longitudinal studies in the developing country context must be mindful of the political, social and economic climate that influences enrolment and ongoing cohort maintenance.     

Latin American Immigration,Maternal Education,and Approaches to Managing Children's Schooling in the United States

Concerted cultivation is the active parental management of children's educations that, because it differs by race/ethnicity, nativity, and socioeconomic status, plays a role in early educational disparities. Analyses of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Kindergarten Cohort (n = 10,913) revealed that foreign‐born Latina mothers were generally less likely to engage in school‐based activities, enroll children in extracurricular activities, or provide educational materials at home when children were at the start of elementary school than were U.S.‐born White, African American, and Latina mothers, in part because of their lower educational attainment. Within the foreign‐born Latina sample, the link between maternal education and the three concerted cultivation behaviors did not vary by whether the education was attained in the United States or Latin America. Higher maternal education appeared to matter somewhat more to parenting when children were girls and had higher achievement.     

Migration from Latin American countries to the United States: the economic,social and reproductive lives of Hispanic female immigrants, 1980

The authors describe the socioeconomic characteristics and fertility patterns of female immigrants from Latin America to the United States, with a focus on reasons for fertility differentials. "Using the one per cent public use sample from the 1970 and 1980 United States census, we first compare changes in socio economic characteristics from 1970 to 1980, and then examine the determinants of fertility of female immigrants to the United States, aged 16-49, from four Latin American areas or countries of birth.... The findings...suggest that there are direct effects of demographic, assimilation, and socioeconomic variables beyond those mediated by the variables in each of these sets. Further, regardless of the model, the effect of the clusters of demographic characteristics is most apparent. Age categories and marital status are the strongest indexed determinants of immigrant fertility.... The effect of education and employment is strong. Among assimilation variables, duration of residence and language ability are significant determinants of Hispanic immigrant fertility." (SUMMARY IN FRE AND SPA)     

The challenge of new gatekeepers for public relations. A comparative analysis of the role of social media influencers for European and Latin American professionals

Social media influencers (SMIs) have become a primary stakeholder group for communication professionals. However, this phenomenon still lacks a coherent body of theory and significant gaps exist in knowledge of how organisations perceive and identify them in the context of public relations, specially through empirical and cross-cultural studies. This comparative research includes European (n = 2710) and Latin American (n = 914) professionals working on different hierarchical levels, both in communication departments and agencies. Despite the massive implementation of social media channels, only a minority of Latin American and European professionals use specific strategies to identify and engage with SMIs. Practitioners prefer traditional identification indicators: personal reputation, the relevance of topics covered, and the quality of the content shared online.     

Families in the Middle and Later Years: A Review and Critique of Research in the 1990s

Research on families in the middle and later years came into its own during the 1990s, documenting the complexity, malleability, and variety of older family connections. We examined 908 articles on family gerontology topics, observing 4 trends: Conceptually, an appreciation for pluralism and resilience as individuals and families age is apparent. Theoretically, life course, feminist, socioemotional selectivity, and family solidarity theories are increasingly applied to intergenerational family relations. Methodologically, new interest in qualitative methods for studying diverse groups has improved the depth with which aging studies can account for variability in old age; new quantitative methodologies have allowed greater sophistication in dealing with longitudinal data. Substantively, there is greater understanding of family caregiving, social support, parent‐child relationships, marital transitions, and grandparenting relationships. The field is poised to take even greater risks in fulfilling the promise of studying linked lives over time.     

Environmental communication in and about China: a review of the Chinese-language literature

This article offers a review of the Chinese-language literature on environmental communication in mainland China. In particular, it discusses the main features, promises, and limitations of the relevant literature. All academic papers matching particular keywords for environmental communication in seven top-ranking Chinese-language media and communication journals (four in mainland China, one in Hong Kong, and two in Taiwan) were collected and analysed quantitatively. The first section of the article presents the findings of the quantitative analysis based on several aspects, including the journals’ main interests, distribution of publications over time, types of topics, research methods, leading authors in the field, their choices of research methods and topics, and the inclusion of English-language literature. The article turns to qualitatively examining the wider available Chinese-language literature on environmental communication. It then evaluates the current status of and challenges to Chinese-language research in this field and suggests some directions for future research.     

The Evolution of Skill-Biased Effects on American Wages in the 1980s and 1990s

This study estimates the contributions of skill-biased technological change and international trade to the rise in the skill premium during the 1980s and 90s using the Feenstra and Hanson (Q J Econ 114(3):907–940, 1999) two-stage methodology. Newly available data on high-technology capital provide separate measures of computer and software investment. New estimates suggest that investment in software contributed to a substantial portion of the observed increase in the skill premium while investment in computers lead to a reduction in the rate of skill premium growth. Contrary to the findings of Feenstra and Hanson for the 1980s, neither software nor computers had a significant effect on wages during the 1980s. Foreign outsourcing does not appear to have significantly affected wages during the 1990s. The contribution to theory is that software is more complementary to increases in worker productivity due to human skills. Computers, on the other hand, reduced the growth of wage inequality by giving unskilled labor a more efficient set of tools with which to work.

Prevalence of Child Sexual Abuse in the Nordic Countries: A Literature Review

This review examined child sexual abuse in the Nordic countries focusing on prevalence rates and victims’ age and relationship to the perpetrator. The results show a prevalence of child sexual abuse (broadly defined) between 3–23% for boys and 11–36% for girls. The prevalence rates for contact abuse were 1–12% for boys and 6–30% for girls, while 0.3–6.8% of the boys and 1.1–13.5% of the girls reported penetrating abuse. The findings suggest an increased risk of abuse from early adolescence. In adolescence, peers may constitute the largest group of perpetrators. The results highlight the need for preventive efforts also targeting peer abuse. Future research should include cross-national and repeated studies using comparable methodology.     

Five decades of Mexican public relations in the United States: from propaganda to strategic counsel

This article describes U.S. public relations for Mexico through a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of 940 Foreign Agents Registration Act listings from 1942 to 1991.The research delineates the shift from government to industry representation, the move from press agentry and public information to more research and counsel, centralization trends, and the evolving roles of U.S. public relations from technicians to public relations managers. The continuing robust technician role is confirmed.     

From the attic of theAmerican Journal of Sociology: Unusual contributions to American sociology, 1895–1935

This study examines articles published in theAmerican Journal of Sociology (AJS) from its inception in 1895 through 1935 in a search for contributions that have escaped the attention of most contemporary sociologists. The articles reviewed here provide a glimpse of a less well-known, and sometimes more unseemly, side of American sociological history. My primary focus is on the criticism of the emergent discipline, the extraordinary diversity of thought found in the earlyAJS, and antiquated or prescient ideas, particularly in the fields of deviance, race, and gender.     

A baseline summary of framing research in public relations from 1990 to 2009

The present study examines the conceptualization of a frame, theoretical origins, analytical foci, and methods in framing research in public relations from 1990 to 2009. The most dominant type of a frame is construction of reality in communication found in 95% of 40 studies. Researchers compare public relations messages with news coverage, and also analyze public relations messages. Qualitative content analysis is more popular than quantitative content analysis or experiment.     

The Sociology of Adolescence and Youth in the 1990s: A Critical Commentary

The 1990s saw considerable advances in the state of research on adolescence and youth. This article provides a critical commentary on a subset of this research, focusing on the causes and consequences of the lengthened period in which the transition to adulthood occurs. It provides a brief history of adolescence research, identifying a select set of topics, themes, and research problems that will guide research on adolescence and youth over the next decade. These research foci, which include peer group relations, biological influences on adolescence, employment experiences, increased autonomy, and racial and gender differences, are described as representing either continuities or advances in adolescence research. The strengths and shortcomings of this research are detailed. The paper concludes by suggesting promising areas for future research and by providing guidelines for undertaking such research.     

Trends in the Research Productivity of Newly Hired Assistant Professors at Research Departments from 2007 to 2012

Has the sociology job market for assistant professors at research universities become more competitive in recent years? One approach to addressing this question is to consider the research productivity of new hires. This study reports on trends in research productivity and the proportion of hires that are ABDs from 2007 to 2012 using data collected from the CVs of 334 assistant professors employed at the top 98 sociology departments. The analysis reveals a substantial increase in the median number of publications, median number of peer-reviewed publications, and the median number of first- or sole-authored peer-reviewed publications over the past 6 years among newly hired professors. This is in part due to a decrease in the proportion of assistant professors hired out of graduate school (i.e., ABDs) and the fact that ABDs have fewer publications on average than non-ABDs. The article concludes with a consideration of the mechanisms that might underlie these trends and notes important limitations concerning selectivity that pertain to the analysis.