Have We Put an End to Social Promotion? Changes in School Progress among Children Aged 6 to 17 from 1972 to 2005

We examine trends over time in the proportion of children below the modal grade for their age (BMG), a proxy for grade retention, and in the effects of its demographic and socioeconomic correlates. We estimate a logistic regression model with partial constraints predicting BMG using the annual October school enrollment supplements of the Current Population Survey. This model identifies systematic variation in the effects of social background across age and time from 1972 to 2005. While the effects of socioeconomic background variables on progress through school have become increasingly powerful as children grow older, that typical pattern has been attenuated across the past three decades by a steady secular decline in the influence of those variables across all ages. A great deal of concern has been expressed about rising levels of economic and social inequality in the United States since the middle 1970s, and about the potential intergenerational effects of such inequality. However, there has been an opposite trend in the effects of social origins on being BMG. A trend is not a law, and there is reason to be concerned about the recent deceleration of the secular decline in effects of social background on being BMG.     

Measuring Social Capital with Aggregated Indicators: A Case of Ecological Fallacy?

Social capital has become a highly successful concept in social science despite widely perceived shortcomings in conceptualization and operationalization. The latter is frequently performed as a principal component analysis of individual survey data with subsequent aggregation to regional or national levels. The central focus of this paper is the interpretation of the diverging correlations observed between the dimensions elaborated on an individual and an aggregate level. We illustrate that the correlations of regionally aggregated components are the result of an improper application of a single-level model to a multilevel structure. This mechanism is demonstrated empirically by adopting results from the European Social Survey and elaborating dimensions of social capital from both individual and aggregate survey data for European regions. The findings clearly indicate that the observed ecological correlations are not simply spurious or inconsistent due to an ecological fallacy condition, but rather reflect the influence of regional driving forces. Researchers need to be more careful in taking account of the multilevel nature of the data in order to produce valid results. In fact, the often applied procedure of individual factorization and subsequent aggregation of data provides a mixture of the two level effects with potentially misleading implications.     

Using anchoring vignettes to assess group differences in general self-rated health

This article addresses a potentially serious problem with the widely used self-rated health (SRH) survey item: that different groups have systematically different ways of using the item's response categories. Analyses based on unadjusted SRH may thus yield misleading results. The authors evaluate anchoring vignettes as a possible solution to this problem. Using vignettes specifically designed to calibrate the SRH item and data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS; N = 2,625), the authors show how demographic and health-related factors, including sex and education, predict differences in rating styles. Such differences, when not adjusted for statistically, may be sufficiently large to lead to mistakes in rank orderings of groups. In the present sample, unadjusted models show that women have better SRH than men, but this difference disappears in models adjusting for women's greater health-optimism. Anchoring vignettes appear a promising tool for improving intergroup comparability of SRH.     

A Factor Analytic Study of Four Listening Tests

This paper describes the nature and assessment of an interactive videodisc instructional program on listening. The program is available to other educational institutions seeking to expand cost-effective listening instruction to students. Formative evaluations indicate that students enjoyed the Level III interactive multimedia instruction (IMI). Results of a dummy variable regression analysis indicate that students receiving IMI in listening achieved significantly higher immediate cognitive test scores and listening gain scores than did students in the control group. Regression analysis indicated no significant effect of reported GPA, year in school, previous listening instruction, or time-on-task on listening test gain scores of the IMI treatment group. However, significant effects on cognitive test scores were found for reported GPA, previous listening instruction, time-on-task, and senior versus non-senior standing.     

Critical Perspectives on Hate Speech: The Centrality of ‘Dialogic Listening’

This article examines the study of listening as a cognitive process tied to memory and information processing. In examining the study of listening as a cognitive process, the authors discuss creating a theory of listening and the progress of that endeavor. Finally, they address whether or not researchers can create a theory about any concept as abstract as cognitive process or listening.     

On Population Problems and Population Policy

Abstract

Taking the position that too little attention has been given to the systematic study of the nature of, and dangers in, the relationship between sponsors of evaluation research and social scientists, this paper offers statements of situations, relationships, and conditions one should avoid or foster in doing such research. Suggestions are given concerning how sociologists might control the misuses of data.     

Recent developments in longitudinal studies of aging in the United States

We review recent developments in longitudinal studies of aging, focusing on the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) and the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). Both studies are part of a trend toward biosocial surveys in which biological measurement is joined with traditional survey techniques, and a related trend toward greater harmonization across studies. Both studies have collected DNA samples and are working toward genotyping that would allow broadly based association studies. Increased attention to psychological measurement of personality and of cognitive ability using adaptive testing structures has also been shared across the studies. The HRS has expanded its economic measurement to longitudinal studies of consumption and to broader-based measurement of pension and Social Security wealth. It has added biomarkers of cardiovascular risk. The WLS has developed an integrated approach to the study of death and bereavement and an innovative use of high school yearbook photographs to capture information about health in early life of its participants.