Parental education, children's performance and the transition to higher secondary education: trends in primary and secondary effects over five Dutch school cohorts (1965–99)

According to Boudon, social background affects educational transitions as a result of differences in children's academic performance (primary effects) and differences in transition probabilities given children's level of academic performance (secondary effects). This study addresses historical changes in both primary and secondary effects on the educational transition from primary school to higher secondary education in the Netherlands. In addition, it considers changes over time in the relative importance of these effects. The study compares five cohorts of Dutch pupils, specifically those enrolling in secondary education in 1965, 1977, 1989, 1993 and 1999, and it employs counterfactual analyses. The main findings are that secondary effects have been stable and primary effects have fluctuated to some extent. As a result, the proportion of the total effect of social background accounted for by primary effects has increased somewhat, from 53 per cent to 58 per cent.     

Disentangling the Frequency and Severity of Bullying and Victimization in the Association with Empathy

This study disentangled the frequency and perceived severity of experienced bullying and victimization by investigating their associations with cognitive and affective empathy. Participants were 800 children (7–12 years old) from third‐ to fifth‐grade classrooms who completed self‐report measures of the frequency and perceived severity of their bullying and victimization and of cognitive and affective empathy. Results showed that the frequency and perceived severity of bullying were moderately correlated in the entire sample but unrelated within the subsample of bullies. Frequency and perceived severity of victimization were significantly and positively correlated in the entire sample (moderate effect) and the subsample of victims (small effect). Frequent, but not severe, bullies reported less cognitive empathy than non‐bullies whereas both frequent and severe victims reported more affective empathy than non‐victims. Within subsamples of bullies and victims, frequency of bullying was negatively associated with cognitive and affective empathy, and perceived severity of bullying was positively associated with affective empathy. Frequency of victimization was not associated with cognitive and affective empathy, but perceived severity of victimization was positively associated with both forms of empathy.     

Religious involvement, religious context, and self-assessed health in Europe

In the present study, the authors examine the extent to which effects of individual religious involvement on self-assessed health are influenced by the religious context (i.e., religious involvement at the country level). The authors test their expectations using individual level data (N = 127,257) on 28 countries from the European Social Surveys (2002-2008). Results of multilevel analyses show that individual religious attendance is positively related to self-assessed health in Europe. Protestants appear to feel healthier than Catholics. Moreover, modeling cross-level interactions demonstrates that religious denominations at the national level are influential: The health advantage of Protestants as compared to Catholics is greater as the percentage of Protestants in a country is higher, yet smaller as countries have a higher percentage of Catholics. The association between religious attendance and self-assessed health does not depend on the national level of religious attendance.     

Neuroticism, Education and Self-Assessed Health in the General Population of the United States. Can Smoking Behaviour Explain the Associations?

In this study we investigate the interrelation between neuroticism, education, smoking and health. Two lines of research are brought together: one studying the relationship between neuroticism and health and the other studying the association between education and health. As lower educated people more often score high on neuroticism, we study the relationships of education and neuroticism with health simultaneously. Moreover, we hypothesize that smoking behaviour is a common explanatory factor in these associations. A 1996 US general population sample is employed to test the hypotheses. The associations between education and neuroticism on the one hand and self-assessed health on the other hand proved to be substantially smaller when education and neuroticism are mutually controlled for. Yet, the hypothesis that smoking behaviour provides an explanation for educational differences in health was only supported for men.     

Social stratification and attitudes: a comparative analysis of the effects of class and education in Europe

A classic topic in the sociology of inequality lies in the subjective consequences of people's stratification position. Many studies have shown that education and occupational class have significant effects on attitudes, but little is known about how the magnitude of these effects depends on the societal context. There has been debate in the scholarly literature, with some authors arguing that effects of class and education are less important when societies are more developed, whereas other authors argue that effects are either stable (for class) or increasing (for education). We use a meta-analytical design to address this debate. More specifically we examine the effects of class and education for a broad range of attitudes (21 scales) in 22 European countries using data from the 1999 wave of the European Values Study. We pool summary-measures of association (Eta-values) into a new dataset and analyse these Eta-values (N = 453) applying multilevel models with characteristics of countries and characteristics of attitudes as the independent variables. Our results show that there is no evidence that the effects of class on attitudes are lower when countries are more modern, but we do find larger effects of education in more modern countries.     

Bullying Involvement and Empathy: Child and Target Characteristics

This study investigated how the bullying involvement of a child and a target peer are related to empathy. The role of gender was also considered. We hypothesized that empathy primarily varies depending on the bullying role of the target peer. Participants were 264 7–12‐year‐old children (M_age = 10.02, SD = 1.00; 50% girls) from 33 classrooms who had been selected based on their bullying involvement (bully, victim, bully/victim, noninvolved) in the classroom. Participants completed a cognitive and affective empathy measure for each selected target classmate. We found no differences in cognitive and affective empathy for all targets combined based on children's own bullying involvement. However, when incorporating the targets’ bullying involvement, bullies, victims, and bully/victims showed less empathy for each other than for noninvolved peers. Noninvolved children did not differentiate between bullies, victims and bully/victims. Girls reported more cognitive and affective empathy for girls than boys, whereas boys did not differentiate between girls and boys. The results indicated that children's empathy for peers depends primarily on the characteristics of the peer, such as the peer's bullying role and gender.     

Antagonists in Mutual Antipathies: A Person‐Oriented Approach

This study investigated the heterogeneity of mutual antipathy relationships. Separate cluster analyses of peer interactions of early adolescents (mean age 11 years) and adolescents (mean age of 14) yielded 3 types of individuals in each age group, namely Prosocial, Antisocial, and Withdrawn. Prevalence analysis of the 6 possible combinations of types of individuals constituting mutual antipathy dyads yielded antipathy dyad types. The majority of these dyads consisted of a combination of 2 dissimilar types of individuals. Implications of the high prevalence of the Antisocial–Withdrawn antipathy dyad type are discussed.     

Immigrants' health in Europe: a cross-classified multilevel approach to examine origin country, destination country, and community effects

In this study, we examined origin, destination, and community effects on first- and second-generation immigrants' health in Europe. We used information from the European Social Surveys (2002–2008) on 19,210 immigrants from 123 countries of origin, living in 31 European countries. Cross-classified multilevel regression analyses reveal that political suppression in the origin country and living in countries with large numbers of immigrant peers have a detrimental influence on immigrants' health. Originating from predominantly Islamic countries and good average health among natives in the destination country appear to be beneficial. Additionally, the results point toward health selection mechanisms into migration.