Parental divorce and partnership dissolution in adulthood: Evidence from a British cohort study

From a longitudinal survey of a British cohort born in 1958 this study finds that, by age 33, off-spring of parents who divorced are more likely to have dissolved their first partnerships. This finding persists after taking into account age at first partnership, type of first partnership (marital, pre-marital cohabiting union, and cohabiting union), and indicators of class background and childhood and adolescent school achievement and behaviour problems. Some of these factors are associated with partnership dissolution in their own right, but the association between parental divorce and second generation partnership dissolution is largely independent of them. Demographic factors, including type of and age at first partnership, were important links between parental divorce and partnership dissolution. Moreover, the estimated effects of parental divorce were substantially reduced when the demographic variables were taken into account, suggesting that cohabitation and early partnership may be important pathways through which a parental divorce, or the unmeasured characteristics correlated with it, affect partnership dissolution.     

ETIENNE BALIBAR and IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN (eds.), Race,Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities

Book reviewed in this article: VIC SATZEWICH, Racism and the Incorporation of Foreign Labour: Farm Labour Migration to Canada Since 1945     

The Taking of a Position: A Reinterpretation of the Elaboration Likelihood Model

This article explains how data associated with attitude change and persuasion in mainstream psychology and social psychology can be reinterpreted as evidence of the agentive ability of taking a position. A critical review is made of the elaboration likelihood model and a position model is adapted from positioning theory. The postulates of the elaboration likelihood model are then subjected to critical scrutiny by means of comparison with our position model. In this way regularities associated with attitude change and persuasion are interpreted as evidence of a deliberative process, involving negotiation and the use of supporting and opposing arguments. We present this as evidence of the commonly held agentive ability to position oneself and anticipate the positions of others.     

Response-Order Effects and the Early Gallup Split-Ballots

A meta-analysis of split-ballots conducted by the Gallup Organizationin the 1930s, 1940s, and early 1950s shows that response-ordereffects were generally small in magnitude when averaged acrossa great variety of topics and questions—and as comparedwith many of those reported in the response-effects literaturetoday. When analyzed by various question characteristics, theresults provided some support for predictions derived from currentcognitive models of response-order effects, particularly thosefrom satisficing theory. As predicted, questions asked orallywere more likely to generate a statistically significant patternof recency effects if the response alternatives or the questionsas a whole were longer rather than shorter. Other predictedpatterns of primacy and recency effects failed to materialize,however, perhaps largely because of the inherent design limitationsand partial confounding of question attributes in any such secondaryanalysis of archival survey data, but perhaps, too, becauseof simple chance variations. The data from these early experimentsnonetheless provide a partial, albeit limited, test of rivalhypotheses and explanations of response-order effects in theliterature.     

RELIABILITY OF STATED PREFERENCES FOR CHOLERA AND TYPHOID VACCINES WITH TIME TO THINK IN HUE,VIETNAM

We examine the effect of giving respondents time to think about their stated choices (SC) in a survey of cholera and typhoid vaccine preferences in Hue, Vietnam. Because neither vaccine is widely available in Vietnam, we used the SC approach (a stated preference technique) and gave half of our respondents overnight to think about their choices to make the hypothetical valuation scenario as similar to a real‐life choice situation as possible. Respondents who were given extra time made fewer choices that violated internal validity tests of utility theory, and had lower average willingness to pay (WTP), confirming a result found in similar studies in the contingent valuation literature. (JEL D12, I18, C25)     

THE EFFECT OF DIRECT TO CONSUMER TELEVISION ADVERTISING ON THE TIMING OF TREATMENT

We examine how direct to consumer advertising affects the delay between diagnosis and pharmacological treatment for patients suffering from a common chronic disease. The primary data for this study consist of patients diagnosed with osteoarthritis (N = 18,235) taken from a geographically diverse national research network of 72 primary care practices with 348 physicians in 27 states over the 1999–2002 time period. Brand‐specific advertising data were collected for local and network television at the monthly level for the nearest media markets to the practices. Results of duration models of delay to treatment suggest advertising does affect the length of time that patients and physicians wait to initiate therapy. This evidence suggests that these effects may be welfare enhancing in that advertising tends to encourage more rapid adoption among patients who are good clinical candidates for the therapy and leads to less rapid adoption among some patients who are poor clinical candidates. (JEL D12, I11)     

Inspiration*

Au lieu d'écrire, la plupart des sociologues se conferment encore à l'orthodoxie de l'auteur et de l'éloquence en faisant des comptes rendus, en recopiant ou en prenant des notes. En évoquant des expériences d'ecriture bien connues, liées à la mort du sujet connaissant et de l'auteur éloquent, nous voulons montrer que le modèle expressif est seulement persuasif si nous réprimons ce que nos corps écrivants savent de l'inspiration, de la communion, de la méditation, de l'annonciation, du génie, de la prophétie, des anges, des fantômes, de la possession, de l'intuition, de la passion, du ravissement et de l'extase. Ces injonctions transformatives, que les écrivains expérimentent chaque jour, sont les fondements de la créativité et de la socialité. Elles viennent appuyer l'hypothèse de Levinas voulant que la possession ou l'enthousiasme soient dissimulés au coeur de l'écriture et d'autres activity, qu'un délire plus profond que la pensee sous-tende la pensée. Instead of writing, most sociologists still adhere to an authorial and expressive orthodoxy by writing up, writing out or writing down. By evoking familiar writerly experiences of the death of the knowing subject and the expressive author, I want to show that the expressive model is only persuasive if we repress what our writing bodies know of inspiration, communion, muses, annunciation, genius, prophecy, angels, ghosts, possession, intuition, passion, rapture and ecstasy. These transformative summonses, experienced daily by writers, are the bases of creativity and sociality. They support Levinas' suggestion that enthusiasm or possession are concealed at the heart of writing and other activities, that “a delirium more profound than thought” supports thought.