THE MEANING OF UNCERTAINTY AND THE UNCERTAINTY OF MEANING

The interrelation between “processes” and “structures” is addressed in this article with a discussion of quantum theory and classical physics, on the one hand and pragmatic theories of meaning and structuralist ones, on the other. It is concluded that just as quantum theory needs the apparatus of classical physics to establish its own phenomena, pragmatic theories need structuralist apparatus to establish their own. It is argued that both in the case of quanta as in that of meaning, measurement procedures create similar relations of uncertainty: Heisenberg relations in physics and Meadian relations in sociopsychology.     

NETWORK AND MEANING: AN INTERACTIONIST APPROACH TO STRUCTURE*

Social network is a concept interactionists might use to link individual behavior to the larger social system. A symbolic interactionist formulation of network would: 1) approximate the original, anthropological usage better than the current structural conception does, 2) offer symbolic interactionists a unit of social organization better suited to their perspective than the small group, and 3) allow symbolic interactionists to deal with “macro” sociological concerns. Network is conceived of as a set of relationships which people imbue with meaning and use for personal or collective purposes. By emphasizing subjective meaning and the investigation of multi-purpose and weak ties, the interactionist formulation provides theoretical insights into those aspects of society which “structural” approaches overlook.     

THE MEANING OF WORK AND HOME

In contemporary society, work and home represent the two most significant domains in the life of a working individual. Changes in family structures and technological changes (e.g. mobile phones and portable computers) that enable job tasks to be performed in a variety of locations have blurred the boundaries between work and home. This all suggests that the meaning that people may have attached to these domains has changed also. The present research uses in-depth qualitative interviews with 10 employees from an Information Technology company to explore the meaning of each persons work and home domain, and the ways in which they interact. Interviews were transcribed into text documents and analysed. Frequency of word use provided a socio-linguistic profile of the words that participants used when asked to talk about their work and home domains. Content analysis of the sentences relating to work and home provided a measure of how frequently respondents talked about their home-life when asked about work, and vice versa. In addition, each participant filled out an adapted version of the PANAS, which assessed affective state in both the work and home domains specifically. Results are discussed in relation to the generation of future hypotheses.     

VALIDATION OF A DIARY MEASURE OF CHILDREN'S PHYSICAL ACTIVITIES

This study compares levels of physical activity of 9–14-year-old children from a self-reported time diary with those measured using an accelerometer. Children (N = 92) wore an accelerometer for one weekend day and completed a 24-hour time diary for that day. The time children spent in moderate to vigorous physical activity from time diaries was moderately highly correlated with the measured results. Self-reported and objective measures of intensity were correlated, but the correlation varied substantially by activity and characteristics of the family. This study provides empirical evidence to support the validity of time-diary estimates when accelerometer data are not available.     

A MODEL OF FERTILITY AND CHILDREN'S SCHOOLING

A model of fertility and child schooling is developed using the Quality-Quantity Interaction framework proposed by Becker et al. The relationship between fertility and child schooling is shown to depend on the financial constraints faced by households and whether marginal parent-child transfers are in the form of schooling.
Empirical results confirm that fertility and schooling are simultaneously determined. Due to this interaction, fertility is observed to be negatively related to income and independent of mother's education. However, holding child schooling constant, fertility is positively related to both income and mother's education. These results imply that numbers of children are not an inferior commodity and that the growth of women's productivity is not biased against fertility.     

CORRELATES OF CHILDREN'S SOCIAL ADJUSTMENT FOLLOWING DIVORCE

This study examines family correlates of children's social adjustment following divorce. Data concerning 411 children were collected from interviews wlth 206 randomly selected custodial parents. A social adjustment scale completed by the custodial parent served as the criterion measure of children's adjustment. The most significant factor related to children's satisfactory social adjustment was a positive relationship with the custodial parent. Other significant correlates included the custodial parent's own ability to maintain emotional and social adjustment, that parent's age and number of previous marriages, the children's current reaction to the divorce, and parental satisfaction with dating and friends.     

THE MEANING OF RACE TO EMPLOYERS:

The unemployment problems of blacks in the United States have been the subject of considerable research in the social sciences since the 1980s. One way of studying the barriers to employment faced by blacks has been to interview employers, face to face, and directly ask them about their racial attitudes. These studies have concluded that a majority of employers believe that blacks, compared with other racial and ethnic groups, are uncooperative, unreliable, and lack sufficient skills for entry-level employment. The present study critically reexamines employer racial attitudes toward blacks and other groups through a case study of employer hiring in the electronics industry in Los Angeles. Using a different set of interview questions, employers reported (1) that blacks are reluctant to accept unskilled jobs due to a higher reservation wage, not because they lacked skills or a work ethic, (2) that employer racial attitudes varied by level of occupational skill, and (3) that affirmative action regulations modified the hiring process such that employers were less likely to rely on negative racial stereotypes in their hiring and more likely to rely on objective criteria when screening job seekers. I conclude by suggesting that employer racial attitudes are dynamic and, in large measure, shaped by institutional relationships within the workplace.     

THE MEANING OF OCCUPATIONAL PRESTIGE SCORES:

This research reexamines the meaning of occupational prestige scores from the social psychological perspective of identity theory. Using comparable data for Canada and the United States, it analyzes the degree to which the education and income levels of occupations influence occupational prestige judgements by evoking affective associations (feelings about the goodness, powerfulness, and liveliness of occupational identities), as well as the extent to which these social sentiments are independent determinants of prestige. There has been a longstanding controversy about the normative content of occupational prestige scores. We find that moral worthiness (as measured by the Evaluation dimension of the semantic differential) is a determinant of the prestige of occupations with low and middle but not high levels of education and income. We also find that the impact of education on prestige scores is direct and cognitive, while a considerable proportion of the total effect of income is processed through feelings about the potency of occupations. The results for the two countries are very similar. One exception is that moral worthiness is a more important determinant of prestige in the United States than in Canada. We connect this finding to the literature comparing value differences between the two countries.     

THE SUPPLY OF CHILDREN'S TIME TO DISABLED ELDERLY PARENTS

This study develops and tests a model of supply of children's time to disabled elderly parents, using data from the National Long-Term Care Survey. The model, which assumes strategic behavior among relatives, offers predictions about effects of changes in the price of paid personal care, parent's wealth, kid's wage rates, public in-kind subsidies of personal care, and parent's relative bargaining power on care provided by children. Although several statistically significant relationships are obtained, the evidence does not generally indicate that children's provision of care to parents is guided by a strategic bequest motive.     

TREATMENT OF CHILDREN'S FEARS: A STRATEGIC UTILIZATION APPROACH

The Sufi teaching story of the Watermelon Hunter perhaps teaches us much of what we need to know about Milton Erickson's strategic utilization approach to therapy:
Once upon a time there was a man who strayed from his own country into the Land of Fools. He saw a number of people running in fear from a field where they had been trying to harvest wheat. They reported to this man that there was a monster in the field. Upon closer observation, the traveler saw that it was only a watermelon. The traveler offered to kill this monster for them, and he cut the watermelon from the stalk and ate it. The people then became more afraid of him than of the monster and drove him away from their village.
It happened later that another man wandered into the Land of Fools, and the same thing began to take place. This man agreed, however, that it was a monster and led them tiptoeing away from it. He spent a long time with them and lived with them in their houses until he could slowly teach them the facts that would help them to loose their terror of melons. Eventually, they even grew melons for their own pleasure. (Shah, 1970)     

ACCESSING CHILDREN'S PERCEPTIONS OF THEIR FAMILY: CIRCULAR QUESTIONING REVISITED

Children are sometimes excluded from family therapy because of the lack of techniques for fully incorporating children in family sessions. Circular questioning, a technique developed by the Milan team of family therapists, is modified for use with children of varying developmental levels. Five types of circular questions are presented and modifications of each type are discussed. Each modification is further illustrated with a case study. Practical considerations when conducting circular questioning sessions with children are addressed. These modifications of circular questioning with children facilitate the participation and inclusion of children in family therapy.     

EXAMINING THE EXTERNALITY OF UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE ON CHILDREN'S EDUCATIONAL ACHIEVEMENT

I exploit differences in the generosity of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits across states and over time to investigate the link between UI and children's academic achievement. Estimates show that a 1% increase in maximum weekly UI benefits reduces the probability that a child repeats a grade by around 0.03 percentage points. The effect is concentrated among children of low‐ and middle‐income families. This paper's findings, which are the first in the literature to show evidence of a positive effect of UI on children's educational outcomes, provide insight into the role of UI in the human capital accumulation of children. (JEL I20, I38, J65)     

THE VOICES OF CHILDREN: PREADOLESCENT CHILDREN'S EXPERIENCES IN FAMILY THERAPY

Although family therapists often include children in therapy sessions, they rarely consider the child's wishes regarding participation or ask children for their impressions of therapy. In this study, 16 children between the ages of 5 and 13 who had participated in at least four family therapy sessions were interviewed to determine their perspectives on the experience. The children made it clear that they wished to be involved in a meaningful way in therapy and that they wanted to come to sessions even when they were not the focus. Feedback from these children is used to suggest ways family therapists might enhance their effectiveness with families with children.     

RATING SCALES NUMERIC VALUES MAY CHANGE THE MEANING OF SCALE LABELS

Three experiments indicate that the numeric values providedas part of a rating scale may influence respondents' interpretationof the endpoint labels. In experiment 1, a representative sampleof German adults rated their success in life along an 11-pointrating scale, with the endpoints labeled "not at all successful"and "extremely successful." When the numeric values ranged from0 ("not at all successful") to 10 ("extremely successful"),34 percent of the respondents endorsed values between 0 and5. However, only 13 percent endorsed formally equivalent valuesbetween –5 and 0, when the scale ranged from –5("not at all successful") to +5 ("extremely successful"). Experiment2 provided an extended conceptual replication of this finding,and experiment 3 demonstrates that recipients of a respondent'sreport draw different inferences from formally equivalent butnumerically different values. In combination, the findings indicatethat respondents use the numeric values to disambiguate themeaning of scale labels, resulting in different interpretationsand, accordingly, different subjective scale anchors.     

THE EFFECTS OF FINANCIAL AND RECOGNITION INCENTIVES ACROSS WORK CONTEXTS: THE ROLE OF MEANING

We manipulate workers' perceived meaning of a job in a field experiment and interact meaning of work with both financial and recognition incentives. Results show that workers exert more effort when meaning is high. Money has a positive effect on performance that is independent of meaning. In contrast, meaning and recognition interact negatively. Our results provide new insights into the stability of incentive effects across important work contexts. They also suggest that meaning and worker recognition may operate via the same motivational channel. (JEL C93, J33, M12, M52)     

GENDER IDENTITY EXPANSION AND NEGOTIATION IN THE TOXIC WASTE MOVEMENT

Symbolic interactionism contends that identities are contextual, negotiated, shifting, and potentially transformed through activism. The research presented here suggests that gender identities of some women activists may undergo expansion as a consequence of activism, a shift premised on the empowering experiences of new activits in open organizational structures. Their gender identity expansion involves building on but not abandoning a previous definition of their womanhood. In this case study of a grassroots organization in the toxic waste movement, women activits negotiated expanded gender identities with their family members in a conflict-laden process. Some managed their reconfigured identity by closeting their new identity in certain interactional contexts and by using token gestures of their previous gender identity to mask the amount and significance of change. Others experienced frequent identity shifts as they moved between gender identity configurations. All of this underscores that identity is an ongoing, interactions accomplishment, continuously negotiated and renegotiated with varying degrees and contexts of change.     

COMMUNITY,COMMUNICATION, AND MEANING: THEORIES OF BUCHLER AND HABERMAS

The scope of Jürgen Habermas's “universal pragmatics” and communicative interaction theory are critically assessed in this article. Habermas's pragmatics are seen to reveal different assumptions than those of Peirce or Mead. This difference yields different assumptions about the research program embodied in Habermas's work. The ideas of Justis Buchler are presented in order to develop a comprehensive theory of meaning and community. This article provides the basis for an assessment of linguistic rationality, meaning, and human interests in daily life.