The Theory That Won't Die: From Mass Society to the Decline of Social Capital

Though it lacks adequate empirical support, the hypothesis of declining social attachments as a source of American social problems persists. Both mass society theory in the mid-twentieth century and the theory of declining social capital in the late-twentieth century have had broad appeal. This paper demonstrates the continuities in argument and assumptions between these two theories as well as the modifications of the theory in the face of cultural change. It suggests that some of the weaknesses in the theory of decreasing social capital can be traced to the assumptions it shares with mass society theory—assumptions rooted in concerns about individualism.     

Perceived barriers to walking in the neighborhood environment: a survey of middle-aged and older adults

The authors investigated whether low levels of walking among older adults in the UK were associated with demographic and health characteristics, as well as perceived environmental attributes. Survey data were obtained from self-administered standard questionnaires given to 680 people age 50+ (mean age 64.4 yr) attending nationally led walking schemes. Items concerned with demographic characteristics and perceived barriers to neighborhood walking were analyzed using multiple logistic regression. Citing more than 1 environmental barrier to walking, versus not, was associated with significantly reduced levels of (leisure) walking (MET/hr) in the preceding week (Z = -2.35, p = .019), but physical activity levels overall did not differ significantly (Z = -0.71, p = .48). Citing a health-related barrier to walking significantly adversely affected overall physical activity levels (Z = -2.72, p = .006). The authors concluded that, among older people who favor walking, health problems might more seriously affect overall physical activity levels than perceived environmental barriers.     

Women's working conditions in hospital cleaning: a case study

Hospital cleaning work, as health care work, is mainly performed by women all over Europe. Hospital cleaning activities represent a poorly studied sector although very important also for patient's health. We applied the Method of Organizational Congruencies to study cleaning work in three typical hospital units (Emergency Room, Haematology, General Medicine) of a roman University hospital where 198 women cleaners work. We analyzed the 731 technical actions performed in the three shifts and the related Organizational Constraints (OC). Working outsourcing, no occupational risks training, washing personal equipment at home, standing, long walking, early morning and night shift in emergency room, high monotony (>10 actions per hour) contact with biological and chemicals materials, risk conditions of accidents, artificial lights, hot microclimate and working in a cure setting represent the main Organizational Constraints. Differences among the three Units are discussed together with the importance of considering cleaning hospital as a preventive action towards hospital clinical risk.     

Newborns' Mooney‐Face Perception

The aim of this study is to investigate whether newborns detect a face on the basis of a Gestalt representation based on first‐order relational information (i.e., the basic arrangement of face features) by using Mooney stimuli. The incomplete 2‐tone Mooney stimuli were used because they preclude focusing both on the local features (i.e., the fine details of the individual features) and on the second‐order relational information (i.e., the distance between the internal elements); therefore, face detection can rely only on a Gestalt representation of a face. Two experiments were carried out by using a preferential looking procedure. Experiment 1 demonstrated that newborns prefer upright Mooney faces to inverted Mooney faces (180° rotated). Experiment 2 showed that newborns prefer a Mooney face as compared to a Mooney‐like object equated for the number of elements in the upper part. Overall, the results indicate that newborns bind and organize the fragmentary parts of the Mooneized face stimulus into a whole and detect the first‐order relations of a face on the basis of holistic processing.     

The Impact of Negative Endorser Information and their Facial Appearance on Advertising Effectiveness for Profit and Not-for-Profit Organizations

This study compared consumer reactions to positive and negative information about endorsers. We analysed the effects of positive versus negative publicity about a fictitious male or female endorser with either a cold or warm facial appearance in two conditions: an ad for a profit organization and an ad for a nonprofit organization. The results show that consumers’ attitude toward the ad and the brand/charity organization is negatively affected by negative information about the endorser. Moreover, the impact of negative information of the same endorser is significantly greater for ads of profit organizations than for ads of not-for-profit organizations, especially for endorsers with a warm facial appearance. These results suggest that the risk of negative endorser information is much higher for profit organizations than for not-for-profit organizations.     

Variation in job opportunities for men and women in the Swiss labor market 1962–1989

For the period of the 1960s to the late 1980s, this paper examines variation in job opportunities for men and women in the occupationally segmented and highly gender-segregated Swiss labor market. Job opportunities are defined as the volume of job openings potentially accessible to individuals with given skills and other desired characteristics. They are conceptualized within the queuing approach, taking into account the structure and cyclical fluctuations of the Swiss labor market.     

Non-parametric Estimation for the Location of a Change-point in an Otherwise Smooth Hazard Function under Random Censoring

A non-parametric wavelet based estimator is proposed for the location of a change-point in an otherwise smooth hazard function under non-informative random right censoring. The proposed estimator is based on wavelet coefficients differences via an appropriate parametrization of the time-frequency plane. The study of the estimator is facilitated by the strong representation theorem for the Kaplan–Meier estimator established by Lo and Singh (1986). The performance of the estimator is checked via simulations and two real examples conclude the paper.     

Ecological inference techniques: an empirical evaluation using data describing gender and voter turnout at New Zealand elections, 1893–1919

Summary.  The difference, if any, between men's and women's voting patterns is of particular interest to historians of gender and politics. For elections that were held before the introduction of opinion surveying in the 1940s, little data are available with which to estimate such differences. We apply six methods for ecological inference to estimate men's and women's voting rates in New Zealand (NZ), 1893–1919. NZ is an interesting case-study, since it was the first self-governing country where women could vote. Furthermore, NZ officials recorded the voting rates of men and women at elections, making it possible to compare estimates produced by methods for ecological inference with known true values, thus testing the efficacy of different methods for ecological inference for this data set. We find that the most popular methods for ecological inference, namely Goodman's ecological regression and King's parametric method, give poor estimates, as does the much debated neighbourhood method. However, King's non-parametric method, Chambers and Steel's semiparametric method and the Steel, Beh and Chambers homogeneous approach all gave good estimates that were close to the known values, with the homogeneous approach performing best overall. The success of these methods in this example suggests that ecological inference may be a viable option when investigating gender and voting. Moreover, researchers using ecological inference in other fields may do well to consider a range of statistical methods. This work is a significant NZ contribution to historical politics and the first quantitative contribution, in the area of NZ gender and politics.