Electoral Support for Community Growth Management Policy*

Objectives. This study seeks to explain the variation in voter support for growth management policy. Interest group theory of local politics and property rights is used as a theoretical framework to explore how competing pro‐growth and anti‐growth interests influence the level of electoral support at the ballot box. Methods. Survey data collected from local planning officials in Massachusetts are analyzed using a two‐stage Heckman selection model. Results. The results indicate that development competition has a negative effect and controversy over development a positive effect on the probability of a community placing growth management policy on the local ballot. The analysis further indicates that environmental interests and suburban communities have a positive influence on the percentage of votes cast in favor of conservation‐oriented growth management policy. Neighborhood‐based interests, on the other hand, have a negative influence on voter support. Conclusions. The findings suggest that compared to the normal legislative process, ballot‐box voting allows anti‐growth and localized interests the opportunity to craft proposals and then mobilize support for policy changes.     

The promises of practice

Practice has become a topic of increasing empirical and conceptual concern within sociology and neighbouring fields. ‘Practice’ can refer to a location or it can refer to action. It is possible to be ‘in practice’, to ‘have a practice’ or to be ‘constituted by practice’. Practice can be a cause, an effect or an explanation. Within science and technology studies (STS), the practice orientation is simultaneously analytical – in the form of various practice theories – and empirical, in that research objects are often defined as ‘practices’. Focusing on a range of examples, especially ethnomethodological, this paper examines some implications and problems that follow when practice slides unnoticed between empirical and conceptual registers. Arguing that a reconsideration of practice thinking is important in order to retain its vigour, we outline a view of practice as a ‘factish’, at once conceptual and empirical, which facilitates analyses of practical ontologies and their transformations. This informs a final discussion of the politics and promises of practice.     

Self‐Regulation Across Adolescence: Exploring the Structure of Selection,Optimization, and Compensation

Intentional self‐regulation (ISR) is thought to undergo significant development during the second decade of life, but our understanding of ISR's development during this period remains incomplete. We discuss the development of ISR as operationalized by Freund & Baltes's (2002) measure of selection, optimization, and compensation (SOC). We use data from 5,471 youth that had participated in the 4‐H Study of Positive Youth Development in Grades 5 through 12. Using exploratory factor analyses, our findings suggest that the SOC questionnaire adheres to a stable three‐factor structure across adolescence, with factors representing selection, intentional self‐regulation, and a reverse‐coded method factor. We discuss the implications of our findings for future research.     

An Age–Period–Cohort Analysis of Political Tolerance in the United States

We employ hierarchical age–period–cohort models and the 1974–2010 General Social Survey data to examine changes in the political tolerance of gays and lesbians, communists, racists, and anti‐religionists. Results show period‐based growth in political tolerance, cohort‐based growth in tolerance of anti‐religionists, baby boomers are particularly tolerant, and political tolerance is associated with changes in college education. The findings suggest that liberalizing trends in political tolerance are largely motivated by changes among Americans as a whole, not cohort replacement, that baby boomers are unique in their social and political perspectives, and that aggregate changes in higher education are correlated with changes in political tolerance.     

Inheritance in Australia: family and charitable distributions from personal estates

This article provides unique empirical evidence of post mortem giving in Australia, through a random sample of probate records in Victoria in 2006. The records show that decedents overwhelmingly leave their estates to their immediate family; first spouses, and then children in equal measure. They also show that there is a significant discrepancy between common practice in the transmission of estates and intestacy laws; that about one in five decedents exercise some measure of testamentary freedom; that about one in twenty decedents leave a charitable bequest; that more than two in three charitable bequests are left by decedents without surviving children; and that (unlike in the United States) wealthier decedents leave a smaller proportion of their estates to charity than their less wealthy counterparts. The article provides an empirical foundation for debates around the relationship between charitable giving and social capital, civil society and the role of government in advanced capitalist societies.     

Communicating About Xenotransplantation: Models and Scenarios

Xenotransplantation entails using organs from genetically modified animals as a way to solve the shortage of human organs for transplantation. As with other novel technologies, if xenotransplantation is to be judged fairly, proponents must explain its complex, uncertain, and unfamiliar risks and benefits. Xenotransplantation's risks include the possibility of a recombinant virus infecting human transplant recipients, potentially causing an epidemic of an unfamiliar disease. Using materials vetted by scientific experts, we communicated the variables and relationships determining this risk in three formally equivalent formats: (a) a graphic model, (b) scenarios structured by the graphic model, and (c) both the model and the scenarios. Participants were randomly assigned to receiving one set of materials. They rated them as equally clear and studied them equally long, suggesting similar ease of cognitive processing. Compared to participants receiving the scenarios, those who received the graphic model better identified causes and effects of the risk, and saw less risk of xenotransplantation. Participants who received both the model and the scenarios generally showed intermediate responses. The study demonstrates a general procedure for developing and evaluating formally equivalent graphic and scenario communications regarding highly uncertain risks. In this application to xenotransplantation, presenting a graphic representation improved people's understanding of the risk.     

Re-imagining Relevance: A Response to Starkey and Madan

Starkey and Madan (2001) propose that changing conditions of knowledge production mean that business schools face an increasing relevance gap which, if they do not respond, will be filled by management consultants and corporate universities. In this response, I question the core assumptions of their analysis, suggesting that they misunderstand both the historical role and present practices of universities and business schools. In particular they fail to understand the complexities of knowledge production, its relationship to practice and the importance of 'independence' which is the unique contribution that universities make to society. I argue that their proposal to bridge the relevance gap would, if adopted, have the effect of leaving business schools with no defensible social role. Thus, ironically, their 'solution' to the challenges facing business schools would in fact exacerbate the problems they currently face.     

Associations of Childhood Religious Attendance,Family Structure,and Nonmarital Fertility Across Cohorts

This article considers associations among childhood family structure, childhood religious service attendance, and the probability of having a nonmarital first birth before age 30 for non‐Hispanic White women born 1944 to 1964 using data from the 1988 and 1995 waves of the National Survey of Family Growth (N = 5,995). We found that attending religious services weekly during childhood and growing up in a 2‐biological‐parent family were associated with lower odds of having had a nonmarital first birth. These associations were quite stable across cohorts, although religious attendance was less associated with nonmarital fertility for the youngest cohort. We estimate that changes in these childhood experiences account for 22% of the increase in nonmarital first births across these cohorts.     

Modeling multiple‐response categorical data from complex surveys

Although “choose all that apply” questions are common in modern surveys, methods for analyzing associations among responses to such questions have only recently been developed. These methods are generally valid only for simple random sampling, but these types of questions often appear in surveys conducted under more complex sampling plans. The purpose of this article is to provide statistical analysis methods that can be applied to “choose all that apply” questions in complex survey sampling situations. Loglinear models are developed to incorporate the multiple responses inherent in these types of questions. Statistics to compare models and to measure association are proposed and their asymptotic distributions are derived. Monte Carlo simulations show that tests based on adjusted Pearson statistics generally hold their correct size when comparing models. These simulations also show that confidence intervals for odds ratios estimated from loglinear models have good coverage properties, while being shorter than those constructed using empirical estimates. Furthermore, the methods are shown to be applicable to more general problems of modeling associations between elements of two or more binary vectors. The proposed analysis methods are applied to data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. The Canadian Journal of Statistics © 2009 Statistical Society of Canada