Realized Potential or Lost Talent: High School Variables and Bachelor's Degree Completion

This study examined how background and high school variables affected participants in either realizing their potential by completing a bachelor's degree or experiencing lost talent by not completing a bachelor's degree. A sample of participants who had demonstrated above average cognitive ability and had high postsecondary educational goals when in 8th grade was selected from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (national longitudinal data from 1988 to 2000; National Education, 2002). Several background and high school variables had strong effects on degree completion. Results were used to develop the Realized Potential or Lost Talent model. Implications for helping young people in their educational‐career development are included.     

The Relation of Patterns of Coping of Inner–City Youth to Psychopathology Symptoms

This study provides empirical verification that variations in patterns of coping can explain current and future functioning of youth. The study evaluated the methods and styles of coping of inner–city youth and their relation to age, gender, ethnicity, stress levels, and internalizing and externalizing symptom levels. Three hundred seventy–two 12– to 16–year–old adolescents from inner–city schools (67.0% African American, 24.4% Hispanic; 53.41% males) participated. One hundred forty–nine were also included in a follow–up evaluation of the prospective relation of coping to functioning. A seven–factor model of coping methods was identified and found to be applicable across age groups, genders, and ethnic groups. The model was robust over time. Coping methods were categorized through cluster analysis into five styles. Styles were found to relate somewhat to demographic characteristics and stress levels. Controlling for demographic characteristics and stress levels, coping style related concurrently and prospectively to internalizing and externalizing symptom levels. Except in one instance, age, ethnicity, and gender did not interact with coping in predicting symptoms. Implications for further coping research and risk and intervention design are discussed.     

Education in the Context of Conflict and Instability: The Palestinian Case

This paper draws on the results of a study carried out in the West Bank, in 1999, to explore the role of education as a coping strategy among the children of Palestinian refugees, and to examine how the state of being refugees affects perceptions of the value and importance of education. The paper first reviews the background to the development of a formal education system in Palestine and considers the different approaches to education in different political contexts, with ensuing particular reference to the West Bank. The findings of the regional study are then reported, with special reference to the various functions of education as a coping strategy—remedial, incentive‐mobilizing and identity‐building. Education, for those who have lost their property and whose identity is under threat, emerges as a key channel for maintaining consciousness of collective rights.     

The free triple assumption

Many impossibility results, like Arrow's Theorem, can be strengthened by using a domain constraint that is substantially weaker than the usual domain condition.     

Risking the qualitative study of risk

The topic of risk has received extensive coverage in recent years. Hundreds of articles and numerous books have dealt with risk in occupations, safety, medicine, public health, and environmental pollution. However, in qualitative studies the subjective assessment of risk in everyday life have been badly neglected. Some of the reasons for this neglect, and its consequences for risk research, have been outlined in this paper.     

The dynamics of Young Men's career aspirations

Career aspirations have assumed a central place in our understanding of the process of social mobility, yet aspirations themselves have been subject to remarkably little scrutiny. We conduct an empirical analysis of the dynamics of aspirations in a cohort using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Men. Our results indicate that (1) occupational aspirations decline with age; (2) the overwhelming majority of young men have high aspirations at some point; (3) occupational aspirations, highly unstable among teenagers, become more stable with age; and (4) differences by race and social origin grow with age, reflecting growing race and social class differences in educational attainment.An earlier draft of this paper was presented at the American Sociologial Association Annual Meeting, San Francisco, August 1989.     

Methods for the estimation of failure distributions and rates from automobile warranty data

We consider the occurrence of warranty claims for automobiles when both age and mileage accumulation may affect failure. The presence of both age and mileage limits on warranties creates interesting problems for the analysis of failures. We propose a family of models that relates failure to time and mileage accumulation. Methods for fitting the models based on warranty data and supplementary information about mileage accumulation are presented and illustrated on some real data. The general problem of modelling failures in equipment when both time and usage are factors is discussed.     

Loss of efficiency in spoilt experiments

For a wide class of experimental designs, the loss of efficiency that results from missing data is shown to be an approximately linear function of the number of missing data.     

Presidential Address: The Faculty Time Divide

The time demands of academic life are examined, drawing on data from a large national sample of faculty. I outline the divide between full-time faculty, who work long hours irrespective of rank or institution type, and part-time faculty, who work at low pay with little job security, status, recognition, or fringe benefits. The expectations of academic life in dual-career couples are hard to reconcile with the demands of parenting. This is a common problem because assistant professors are generally too old to wait until they have tenure to have children. The segmentation of academic life into an overworked core and a marginalized periphery tends to perpetuate gender inequality.