Changes following Premarital Education for Couples with Differing Degrees of Future Marital Risk

The present study explored changes in individuals' relationship cognitions and behaviors following premarital education for couples with different risk profiles. The sample consisted of 63 couples who completed the PREPARE program and were classified for future marital risk based on dyadic information. A significant interaction effect was found between risk and time, with individuals in relationships classified as high risk exhibiting greater change at 4 weeks postprogram compared to low‐risk individuals. Perceived helpfulness of topics also varied by couple type. Findings provide support for adapting premarital education programs for high‐risk couples and offer clinicians and educators specific insights for areas of emphasis when working with different types of couples.     

Do Open Educational Resources Help Contingent Sociology Faculty Acquire Teaching Resources and Form Collegial Relationships?

Access to resources and social relationships are important for teacher development. Unfortunately, within higher education contingent faculty often are under resourced and poorly integrated into their department’s social network. This shortfall could be addressed by Open Educational Resources (OERs), which are websites that freely distribute pedagogical resources and provide a platform for educators to form collegial relationships. The current research focuses on the OERs that have formed around American sociology to assess the characteristics of the faculty who use them, the pedagogical resources they acquire from them, and how often their users form collegial relationships online. Analysis of an online survey of 275 sociology OER users finds that contingent faculty are acquiring resources from the sites. While only a small percentage of faculty are forming collegial relationships via these sites, they are doing so without occupational status, gender, or racial differences.     

Known-unknowns: Matthew Arnold,F. R. Leavis,and the government of culture

This essay reflects on the lives of two people whose publications, pedagogy, lectures, and crucially, whose experiences helped set the terms of the debate about so-called high culture in Cultural Studies: Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) and Frank Raymond (F. R.) Leavis (1895–1978). Who was Matthew Arnold? F. R. Leavis? What were the conditions of possibility of their work and words – that is, for the practices and positions for which they advocated? What new questions might emerge by sharing in detailed and perhaps unexpected stories of individuals who, presently, seem to function in Cultural Studies mainly as known-unknowns? The argument is that the details of both Arnold and Leavis’ lives are integral to understanding the conditions of possibility of their work, both individually and collectively, and indeed to more fully appreciating the meaning and implications their work holds for Cultural Studies. Apropos, this piece refines the methodology of keywords introduced by Raymond Williams [1958. Culture and society, 1780–1950. New York, NY: Columbia University Press; 1983.     

Inequalities for sums of squares of reranked differences involving ties and missing data

An inequality for the sum of squares of rank differences associated with Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient, when ties and missing data are present in both rankings, was established numerically in Loukas and Papaioannou (1991 Loukas, S., Papaioannou, T. (1991). Rank correlation inequalities with ties and missing data. Stat. Probab. Lett. 11:53–56.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). That inequality is improved and generalized.     

class in America: Qualitative distinctions and quantitative data

Recognizing the need for an objective basis for choosing political strategies within the context of the debates concerning the intermediary strata in modern capitalistic societies, this article examines both qualitative theoretical distinctions and quantitative data as a means to clarify issues and to defend alternative positions. Noting that the question of class is essentially qualitative, but that attempts to delineate classes in societies are based on quantitative dimensions (i.e. numbers of people in each class, political attitudes, etc.) the article seeks to test qualitative definitions of class in terms of these quantitative dimensions.     

Envisioning emerging nanotechnologies: a three-year panel study of South Carolina citizens

This article reports results from a three-year panel study of a nonrandom sample of 76 South Carolina citizens, recruited from a variety of walks of life, and their impressions of emerging nanotechnology. This discussion focuses on material from depth interviews conducted alongside a baseline opinion and awareness inventory at the beginning of the study, the most intensive data-gathering phase. These results are placed in the context of data from three additional surveys conducted at about equal intervals over the three years, plus exit interviews from 21 of the 34 individuals who completed the entire study. The results give insight into popular thinking about technology but little indication of strong emerging concerns, a trajectory of amplification of those concerns, or opinion polarization over time, despite some awareness of risks and potential ethical dimensions. Nanotechnology may stand out more as an example of risk attenuation than of risk amplification, consistent with most results from national surveys.     

Family cap provisions and changes in births and abortions

As part of welfare reform efforts in the 1990s, 23 states implemented family caps, provisions that deny or reduce cash assistance to welfare recipients who have additional births. We use birth and abortion records from 24 states to estimate effects of family caps on birth and abortion rates. We use age, marital status, and completed schooling to identify women at high risk for use of public assistance, and parity (number of previous live births) to identify those most directly affected by the family cap. In family cap states, birth rates fell more and abortion rates rose more among high-risk women with at least one previous live birth compared to similar childless women, consistent with an effect of the family cap. However, this parity-specific pattern of births and abortions also occurred in states that implemented welfare reform with no family cap. Thus, the effects of welfare reform may have differed between mothers and childless women, but there is little evidence of an independent effect of the family cap.     

Redundancy in Designs

The author contends that a previous Risk Analysis article overemphasized the pitfalls of incorporating redundancy into designs. Relevant aspects of that article are reviewed and commented upon, then the potentials and pitfalls of redundancy in systems and procedures are more broadly discussed. To provide a solid foundation for that discussion, some definitions for systems risk analysis terminology are presented. It is shown that pairs and larger sets of related failures (the physical causes of shortfalls in redundancy effectiveness) can be divided into two types: (1) cascading/induced failures and (2) common-external-cause failures. Each type has its own physical characteristics and implications for mathematical modeling. Service experience with large-commercial-airplane jet-engine propulsion systems is used to illustrate the two types of related failures. Finally, an overview is provided of event-sequence analysis, an alternative approach to systems risk analysis. When the possibility of related failures of mutually-redundant system elements must be accounted for, event-sequence analysis can usually do that better than fault-tree analysis.     

The Development of Theory and Treatment with Substance Abusing Female Juvenile Offenders

Little is known regarding the specific treatment needs of those female juvenile offenders with a history of substance abuse. While social scientists have advanced distinct theories regarding adolescent substance use and juvenile delinquency, minimal work has been conducted to integrate or link these two. In attempting to further explore their interrelationships, this article will review and incorporate the relevant theoretical and practice milestones in three areas: (1) substance abuse and women, (2) substance abuse and adolescents, and (3) substance abuse and juvenile delinquency, leading to the development of new theory and practice relevant to the female substance abusing juvenile offender population. The authors propose some practice considerations for current interventions with this population and discuss implications for future research and exploration.