Fitting In: Socio-Economic Attainment Patterns of Foreign-Born Egyptians in the United States

This paper analyzes socio-economic attainment patterns of foreign-born Egyptians in the United States, as tabulated in the 1980 U. S. Census. This is achieved first through an examination of their earnings, followed by an analysis of the rate at which their human capital characteristics are converted into wages.
The findings suggest that this more recent immigrant group has likely attained higher earnings largely because of their skills and educational levels. Thus, while assimilation theory posits the crucial importance of time as a linkage to higher socio-economic attainment, this may not necessarily be the case for these immigrant men and women.     

CALIBRATING MEASURES OF FAMILY ACTIVITIES BETWEEN LARGE- AND SMALL-SCALE DATA SETS

Two studies of working families are combined to demonstrate a strategy for producing reliable estimates from the combination of self-reported (large N) and observational (small N) data. Both studies examine where and how dual-career families spend time at home. The 500 Family Study is sociological and uses self-reported time diary data from a national sample; the CELF study is anthropological and uses observational scan sampling data from a regional sample of 32 families. The data are combined as if they constitute one sample, and an analytic solution for establishing the reliability of the resulting composite estimates of time use is provided. Merging the data sets provides validation for each study, neither of which is without potential methodological weaknesses. The advantages of combining data from the independent data collection methods are discussed, and selected substantive findings on families' activities are highlighted, illustrating similarities and differences between findings in the independent and combined data sets. Results show that working families spend significant time in a small spectrum of home spaces, particularly kitchens and living rooms, with leisure activities prevailing, but mothers, fathers, and children differ in where and how they spend their time. Overall, a template for merging data from different disciplines and methods is provided.     

Domestic Violence Service Providers’ Needs and Perceptions of Technology: A Qualitative Study

There is growing recognition of the need to better understand the intersections between the work of domestic violence service providers and technology. Professionals who work with clients impacted by domestic violence are increasingly using technologies across different aspects of their work, including communicating with other professionals and seeking information and resources via the Internet. The current study used qualitative data from two sources—individual interviews and two focus groups—to learn about domestic violence service providers’ needs and perceptions related to technology use. The results provide insights about technologies used currently, expected benefits of future technological advances, barriers to using technology, and participants’ self-rated levels of comfort with technology.     

Speed Mentoring in Teaching and Learning: Young people with experience of the care system mentor social work students

The value of listening and talking to young people with experience of the care system has been recognised as a vital and positive contribution to social work students' learning. A model of co-production was used to develop a series of speed mentoring events whereby social work students placed in local authority children and family settings were mentored by young people with experience of the care system. This tentative review of this small-scale project shares the authors' critical reflections on the value and reliability of this model, for evaluating the outcomes of co-productive mentoring relationships between young people and social work students. The reversal of the power dynamic between student and service user contributed to the unsettling of assumptions about each other and empathy for each other's role. The student authors reflect on learning about the child's experience that has influenced their practice. The mentor authors welcomed the opportunity to participate in the development of ‘young people friendly’ social workers. Suggestions are made as to how this model could be developed to contribute to a more systematic approach to the role of service users in mentoring, advising and contributing to the supervision process of students and social workers.     

Rights for All: A Response to Blau

Most of the world's nations have revised their constitutions to protect the human rights of their citizens. Yet there has been no national discussion in this country to write human rights into our own constitution. Building on Blau's (2015) call to action, this work explores ways in which sociologists can align the principles of our profession to the advancement of human society and the protection of human rights.     

On reflexivity and the conduct of the self in everyday life: reflections on Bourdieu and Archer

This article provides a critique of the concept of reflexivity in social theory today and argues against the tendency to define agency exclusively in terms of reflexivity. Margaret Archer, in particular, is highlighted as a key proponent of this thesis. Archer argues that late modernity is characterized by reflexivity but, in our view, this position neglects the impact of more enduring aspects of agency, such as the routinization of social life and the role of the taken‐for‐granted. These concepts were pivotal to Bourdieu and Giddens' theorization of everyday life and action and to Foucault's understanding of technologies of the self. We offer Bourdieu's habitus as a more nuanced approach to theorizing agency, and provide an alternative account of reflexivity. Whilst accepting that reflexivity is a core aspect of agency, we argue that it operates to a backdrop of the routinization of social life and operates from within and not outside of habitus. We highlight the role of the breach in reflexivity, suggesting that it opens up a critical window for agents to initiate change. The article suggests caution in over‐ascribing reflexivity to agency, instead arguing that achieving reflexivity and change is a difficult and fraught process, which has emotional and moral consequences. The effect of this is that people often prefer the status quo, rather than to risk change and uncertainty.     

Likelihood analysis for a class of beta mixed models

Beta regression is a suitable choice for modelling continuous response variables taking values on the unit interval. Data structures such as hierarchical, repeated measures and longitudinal typically induce extra variability and/or dependence and can be accounted for by the inclusion of random effects. In this sense, Statistical inference typically requires numerical methods, possibly combined with sampling algorithms. A class of Beta mixed models is adopted for the analysis of two real problems with grouped data structures. We focus on likelihood inference and describe the implemented algorithms. The first is a study on the life quality index of industry workers with data collected according to an hierarchical sampling scheme. The second is a study assessing the impact of hydroelectric power plants upon measures of water quality indexes up, downstream and at the reservoirs of the dammed rivers, with a nested and longitudinal data structure. Results from different algorithms are reported for comparison including from data-cloning, an alternative to numerical approximations which also allows assessing identifiability. Confidence intervals based on profiled likelihoods are compared with those obtained by asymptotic quadratic approximations, showing relevant differences for parameters related to the random effects. In both cases, the scientific hypothesis of interest was investigated by comparing alternative models, leading to relevant interpretations of the results within each context.     

The Multi-method Comprehensive Review: Synthesis and Analysis when Scholarship is International,Interdisciplinary, and Immense

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - This article presents a new strategy for reviewing large, multidisciplinary academic literatures: a multi-method...