Systematic Generation of Theory in Family Sociology*

This paper describes a procedure for facilitating the generation of theory useful to family sociologists. This procedure is based upon a linguistic model, and it utilizes the metaphor of literary genre as a guide. A distinction is made between the construction and the generation of sociological theory. The suggestion is made that the generation perspective may enhance the ability of theorists to find subtle interconnections among phenomena and thereby to extend fields of sociological knowledge along novel paths. The procedure itself depends first upon the construction of a binary lexicon. One such lexicon consists of one matrix of concepts describing social structure from the perspective of stabilization of social relations and a complementary matrix describing structure from the perspective of destabilization. From these matrices, one concept is chosen as a metonym or as a metaphor to act as a basis for deriving connections among the other concepts in the matrices. The manipulation of concepts from both matrices permits the development of propositions suggesting ironies and contradictions in social relations. Examples of the use of this procedure are presented, and some unresolved problems are described.     

Adolescents' beliefs about marijuana use: a comparison of regular users, past users and never/occasional users

A questionnaire investigating adolescents' opinions and experiences regarding marijuana use was administered to 163 adolescents and young adults (96 boys and 67 girls) aged 13 to 20 (mean age = 16.8, s.d. = 1.5). Items referred to marijuana and other substances' dangerousness, representations regarding the positive and negative consequences of marijuana use. Responses were compared according to marijuana use status (classified into never/occasional use, current regular use and past regular use). Results show that adolescents' opinions differ according to their experience with marijuana use. Current regular users evaluate marijuana as less dangerous, but alcohol and heroin as more dangerous in comparison with never/occasional and past users. Current and past users are more likely to define marijuana as a medical drug and a plant used in agriculture, and less likely to define it as an illegal drug. Current and past users evaluate marijuana use as a way to cope with stress, to relax to a greater extent than do never/occasional users do. The latter attribute more negative consequences to marijuana use such as diminished driving ability and school performance and a pathway to hard drugs.     

Force steadiness in the lower extremities as an independent predictor of functional performance in older women

The relationship between isometric force control and functional performance is unknown. Submaximal steadiness and accuracy were measured during a constant force-matching task at 50% of maximal isometric voluntary contraction (MVC) of the knee extensors in 19 older women (70-89 years). Other variables included MVC, rate of torque development, and EMG activity. Functional performance was assessed during maximal performance of walking endurance, chair rising, and stair climbing. Isometric steadiness (but not accuracy) was found to independently predict chair-rise time and stair-climbing power and explained more variance in these tasks than any other variable. Walking endurance was related to muscle strength but not steadiness. These results suggest that steadiness is an independent predictor of brief, stressful functional-performance tasks in older women with mild functional impairment. Thus, improving steadiness might help reduce functional limitations or disability in older adults.     

Emergent Indicators Lock and Unlock Public Organizations: An Ethic of Commitment

This article focuses on management indicators, their emergence, theirs functions and their impact for a public action. It does so through an analysis of the implementation of indicators in three forest management units in Belgium, France and Luxembourg. M. Crozier theory and M. Callon theory are crossed to drawn attention to the manner in which, at the micro-level, indicators are worked out. We argue that these emergent measurements are vectors of a particular ethic of behavior. Our aim is to contribute to the study of indicators in three aspects. First, it offers a more detailed understanding of the double nature of indicators: they constrain action and, at the same time, support actors autonomy. Second, it illustrates the major functions of indicators but also theirs paradoxes: actually, indicators lock and unlock organizations. Third, it brings to light the practical rationality and the ethic of commitment connected to indicators.     

The impartial culture maximizes the probability of majority cycles

Many papers have studied the probability of majority cycles, also called the Condorcet paradox, using the impartial culture or related distributional assumptions. While it is widely acknowledged that the impartial culture is unrealistic, conclusions drawn from the impartial culture are nevertheless still widely advertised and reproduced in textbooks. We demonstrate that the impartial culture is the worst case scenario among a very broad range of possible voter preference distributions. More specifically, any deviation from the impartial culture over linear orders reduces the probability of majority cycles in infinite samples unless the culture from which we sample is itself inherently intransitive. We prove this statement for the case of three candidates and we provide arguments for the conjecture that it extends to any number of candidates.All three authors thank the Fuqua School of Business for supporting their research collaboration. Regenwetter and Grofman gratefully acknowledge the precious support of the National Science Foundation through grant #SBR-9730076 on Probabilistic Models of Social Choice (Methodology, Measurement and Statistics program). We are grateful to the referees and we thank Saa Peke for critical comments on an earlier draft. Grofman thanks Scott L. Feld for numerous reminders about the implausibility of the impartial culture assumption which helped lead to this paper.     

An axiomatic characterization of Borda's k-choice function

This paper presents an extension of Borda's choice function to k-choice function (the k-choice set may be understood as the set of equally best elites of k alternatives). Young's axiomatic conditions are then generalized to k-choice functions and a simple combinatorial proof is exposed for the axiomatic characterization of Borda's k-choice function.