PERCEIVED RECEPTIVITY OF SOCIOLOGY FACULTY AND ADMINISTRATION TOWARD MINORITIES OF RACE,RELIGION, AND SEXUAL ORIENTATIONS (2008 MSSA PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS)

The purpose of this research was to investigate whether sociologists in particular and institutions in general are perceived to make life easier for people who are different in terms of sexual orientation, race/ethnic identity, or religious affiliations by being more accepting and supportive. A sample of 74 heads of sociology departments was surveyed. T-tests were used to determine the level of support among departments and institutions. Results indicate that sociology department chairs in public colleges, those in nonreligious programs, and those in larger institutions were generally more supportive of minorities than those in private, religious, and/or smaller institutions.     

Community without Propinquity Revisited: Communications Technology and the Transformation of the Urban Public Sphere

Recent discussions of the Internet have touted "virtual community" and a capacity to enhance citizen power in democracies. The present essay (a) calls for a more rigorous understanding of community; (b) suggests that relationships forged with the aid of electronic technology may do more to foster "categorical identities" than they do dense, multiplex, and systematic networks of relationships; and (c) argues that an emphasis on community needs to be complemented by more direct attention to the social bases of discursive publics that engage people across lines of basic difference in collective identities. Previous protest movements have shown that communications media have an ambiguous mix of effects. They do facilitate popular mobilization, but they also make it easy for relatively ephemeral protest activity to outstrip organizational roots. They also encourage governments to avoid concentrating their power in specific spatial locations and thus make revolution in some ways more difficult.     

Beyond the problem of meaning: Robert Wuthnow's historical sociology of culture

An earlier version of this article was presented to the American Sociological Association, August 1990. I am grateful for comments there, and especially for helpful readings of the earlier version by Peter Bearman, Judith Bennett, Philip O'Connell, Loic Wacquant, and the Editors ofTheory and Society.     

Bird and mammal use of vernal pools along an urban development gradient

Vernal pools in the northeastern US are of conservation concern primarily because of their role as habitat for specialized pool-breeding amphibians, but their use by birds and mammals may also be of interest, especially from the perspective of the impact of urbanization. We describe camera-trapped wildlife (CTW) at 38 vernal pools along an urban development gradient in greater Bangor, Maine, USA. We detected 20 mammal and 39 bird taxa (29 contacted pool water; 39 detected at >1 site). Land cover type within 1000 m (%), within-pool vegetation (%), and amphibian egg mass numbers explained a substantial portion of the variance (40.8%) in CTW assemblage composition. Submerged vegetation within pools and cover by water and impervious surfaces within 1000 m of pools were key site characteristics defining assemblages. We scored the urban-affiliation of taxa and modeled the relationship between weighted assemblage scores for each site and impervious cover. Impervious cover within 1000 m of pools was positively (p?<?0.01) related to site urban-affiliation scores. Use probability for red fox increased and snowshoe hare decreased with impervious cover at 1000 m. These results indicate that within-pool vegetation and land cover types at 1000 m influenced bird and mammal assemblages that used study pools and greater impervious cover at 100 and 1000 m was correlated with a shift in assemblages from being dominated by urban-avoider to urban-adapted species. We encourage land use planners and managers to consider the influence of land use practices within 1000 m of vernal pools on birds and mammals, especially near amphibian breeding pools.     

Predictors of victim-perpetrator relationship stability following a sexual assault: a brief report

The researchers assessed the predictors of victim-perpetrator relationship stability following a sexual assault. Participants included 254 women sexually assaulted by a friend, casual dating partner, or steady dating partner. Results suggested that most victim-perpetrator relationships (75%) continued following the sexual assault. Greater trauma symptomatology, less perpetrator blame, and nondisclosure of the assault by victims predicted relationship continuation with the perpetrator. Additionally, the odds of continuing the relationship were greater following acts of sexual coercion than following acts of completed rape. Close relationships (steady dating partner) were more likely to continue following the sexual assault than less close relationships (friends and casual dating partners). Unexpectedly, the odds of relationship stability were greater for women without histories of childhood sexual abuse than women with histories of childhood sexual abuse. Implications for future research and intervention are discussed.     

A prospective study of sexual assault and alcohol use among first-year college women

This study prospectively examined the relation between alcohol use and sexual assault in a sample (N = 319) of first-year college women. Both frequency of drinking and frequency of binge drinking were measured. Over the course of their freshman year, 19.3% reported experiencing at least one sexual assault. Frequent binge drinking and frequent drinking predicted a subsequent sexual assault; however, experiencing a sexual assault did not predict changes in alcohol use. Frequent binge drinking demonstrated a stronger association with sexual assault than did frequent drinking. Findings help clarify the relation between alcohol use and sexual assault in college women and call for continued differentiation in assessment of alcohol use.     

High dimensional variable selection with clustered data: an application of random multivariate survival forests for detection of outlier medical device components

In many medical studies patients are nested or clustered within doctor. With many explanatory variables, variable selection with clustered data can be challenging. We propose a method for variable selection based on random forest that addresses clustered data through stratified binary splits. Our motivating example involves the detection orthopedic device components from a large pool of candidates, where each patient belongs to a surgeon. Simulations compare the performance of survival forests grown using the stratified logrank statistic to conventional and robust logrank statistics, as well as a method to select variables using a threshold value based on a variable's empirical null distribution. The stratified logrank test performs superior to conventional and robust methods when data are generated to have cluster-specific effects, and when cluster sizes are sufficiently large, perform comparably to the splitting alternatives in the absence of cluster-specific effects. Thresholding was effective at distinguishing between important and unimportant variables.     

The return migration patterns of Canadian seniors: insights from the 1991 cancer cohort study

Journal of Population Research - Roughly one-fifth of all Canadians leave their birth province, usually as young adults, to seek opportunities in other parts of the country (or beyond, although we...