The Role of <Emphasis Type="Italic">New Zealand Sociology</Emphasis> in Developing New Zealand Sociology

Journals may set themselves one or several of a range of missions, but often a national Sociology Association’s journal is concerned to be a vehicle assisting in the shaping of that country’s ‘national sociology’, while maintaining some openness to international sociology. This personalised case study of New Zealand’s sociology journal discusses the extent to which this mission has been achieved over the last decade and more generally over the journal’s history, and the nitty-gritty of challenges and operational issues involved in carrying this out.     

CASH INFLOWS AND BUBBLES IN ASSET MARKETS WITH CONSTANT FUNDAMENTAL VALUES

Previous experimental research on asset markets has reported that the level of cash available to traders does not affect asset prices when fundamentals follow a time trajectory that is constant over time. This contrasts with other research indicating that greater cash levels increase prices when fundamental values are decreasing over time. We report a new experiment in which we show that greater initial cash levels are indeed associated with higher prices when fundamental values are constant over time. Thus, high cash levels will lead to bubbles, if the cash is introduced before the market opens. Our results reconcile the two previous sets of findings. (JEL C90, D03, G02, G12)     

Doubling up when times are tough: A study of obligations to share a home in response to economic hardship

This study uses a factorial vignette design embedded in an Internet survey to investigate attitudes toward an adult child and parent living together in response to economic hardship. Over half of Americans said the desirability of intergenerational co-residence depends on particularistic aspects of the family, notably the quality of family relationships. Support for co-residence is greatest when the adult child is single rather than partnered. Support is weaker if the adult child is cohabiting rather than married to the partner, although groups with greater exposure to cohabitation make less of a distinction between cohabitation and marriage. Presence of a grandchild does not affect views about co-residence. There is more support for sharing a home when a mother needs a place to live than when the adult child does. Responses to open-ended questions show that individuals invoke both universalistic family obligations and particularistic qualities of family relationships to explain their attitudes.     

USING AN UNCERTAINTY MODEL TO ASSESS SALES RESPONSE TO ADVERTISING*

Implications of a probabilistic “random walk” model of incremental sales response to advertising are developed for various timing patterns of advertising expenditures. Maximum likelihood procedures for assessing advertising effectiveness and for estimating a decay (forgetting) rate are developed and applied to artificial data of known configuration and are used to assess the impact over time of a brochure program on mail-order sales. Results are also compared to those from alternative models involving various lag patterns in advertising effects.     

Powerblindness

In the land of the blind, the one‐eyed man may be king. But positions of power may produce their own forms of blindness. This paper reviews multiple theoretical approaches to the concept of powerblindness and categorizes these literatures into five forms through which powerblindness operates: powerblind identity (failure to notice that one belongs to a privileged group), powerblind egalitarianism (belief that all groups are equal in power), powerblind hierarchy (emphasis on one's own subordinate position), powerblind exception (the claim that one is less privileged than others in one's group), and powerblind justification (belief that present‐day hierarchy is merited or inevitable). The paper identifies studies offering evidence for each, drawing on social‐psychological experiments, survey data, and qualitative research, suggesting that power and knowledge do not necessarily go hand in hand – some forms of knowledge about the social order may be more visible to people with less power than to people with more.     

Caregiver Emotional Expressiveness,Child Emotion Regulation,and Child Behavior Problems among Head Start Families

The present study examined the relationships between caregivers' self‐reported positive and negative emotional expressiveness, observer assessments of children's emotion regulation, and teachers' reports of children's internalizing and externalizing behaviors in a sample of 97 primarily African American and Hispanic Head Start families. Results indicated that higher caregiver negativity and lower child emotion regulation independently predicted more internalizing behavior problems in children. Additionally, children's externalizing behavior problems were negatively predicted by caregivers' self‐reports of positive emotional expressiveness. Importantly, results also suggested that caregivers' emotional expressiveness and children's behavioral problems may be non‐linearly related, and that child gender may play an important moderating role. These results emphasize the importance of family emotional climate and child emotion regulation in the behavioral development of preschool‐age children, and highlight the need for improved theoretical and practical understanding of socioemotional development in diverse populations.     

SELF-CONTROL,POLITICAL IDEOLOGY,AND MISBEHAVIOR: UNPACKING THE EFFECTS OF CONSERVATIVE IDENTITY

Survey data collected from a southwestern metropolitan area indicate that self-defined politically conservative individuals are less inclined to commit criminal or deviant acts than their liberal or moderate counterparts; however, results from multivariate analyses indicate that measures of self-control and pressure to conform all reduce the effects of political conservatism to nonsignificance. In general, the relationship between political ideology and misbehavior appears to be partly spurious and partly indirectly attributable to the effects of other social and situational factors. Moreover, responsiveness to pressures to conform is not due to self-control. The results provide some challenge to traditional interpretations of misbehavior but they also confirm an important part played by structural/contextual variables.     

Hispanic Fertility,Religion and Religiousness in the U.S.

Is the higher fertility of Hispanics in the United States due to their religion and/or to their greater religiousness? Evidence from national survey data indicates no difference in fertility between Protestant and Catholic Hispanic women but Hispanics are more religious than non-Hispanics in terms of the perceived importance of religion in their personal lives. Religiousness is associated with higher fertility but Hispanic fertility is higher than non-Hispanic fertility regardless of religion or religiousness. Ethnic differences in education and income in turn are more important for fertility than the religious dimension.     

Precise Simulated Percentiles in a Pinch

A percentile point simulation algorithm is presented. The algorithm is useful when computer storage and time considerations are at a premium. The algorithm employs various time- and storage-saving ideas, including a “pinching” mechanism that reduces the proportion of simulated values stored as the number of iterations is increased. Algorithm output includes a measure of precision as well as the simulated percentile point. The simulation can be stopped when the desired degree of precision has been attained.