Social Competence in Preschool Children: Replication of Results and Clarification of a Hierarchical Measurement Model

This study tested assumptions and conclusions reached in an earlier confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) study of the social competence (SC) construct for preschool children. Two samples (total N = 408; a new Portuguese sample and one from US samples that had participated in the original study) contributed data. Seven SC indicators were tested for mean differences across age, sex, and sample. Significant sex differences were found for peer acceptance (favoring girls) and for initiating affectively neutral interactions (boys had higher rates), and the sex by sample interaction also was significant for initiating interactions (i.e., effect significant only in the Portuguese sample). In CFAs, the hypothesized structure of SC fits the data and was invariant across sample and age within sample in both measurement and structural tests. The model was invariant at the measurement level for sex within sample tests, but not at the structural level. The results replicate and extend understandings of SC reported in the original study.     

Bounding Disagreements About Treatment Effects: A Case Study of Sentencing and Recidivism

Empirical inference on treatment effects is a core objective of social science research. The conventional practice is to obtain point estimates of treatment effects using models that make strong and thereby controversial assumptions about treatment selection and outcomes. In this paper we obtain bounds under weak nonparametric assumptions and explore how the bounds vary with the assumptions imposed. This mode of analysis clarifies the source of common disagreements about the magnitudes and signs of treatment effects. We use a treatment question facing the juvenile justice system to showcase the value of the approach in empirical social science research. We compare the impacts on recidivism of the two main sentencing options available to judges: confinement in residential treatment facilities and diversion to nonresidential treatment.     

THE U.S. PRODUCTIVITY SLOWDOWN: A PEAK THROUGH THE STRUCTURAL BREAK WINDOW

This paper provides a formal test of the null hypothesis of a unit root in the log-level of labor productivity against the alternative of linear trend stationarity with a one-time structural break in the level and slope of the trend at an a priori unknown date. Using some newly developed time series tests, we show that the log-level of productivity is more accurately modeled as following a deterministic trend with a regime shift rather than as a unit root process. Some implications of the results for detrending and for testing cointegration relationships between productivity and other variables are discussed. ( JEL C22. O40)     

Zentrum und Peripherie im globalen Wissenschaftssystem

We use an experimental design to analyse the effect of symbolic capital of a nation’s higher education system and of single universities on students’ opportunities for international mobility. Fake applications of international doctoral students were sent to German sociology professors, who were asked to serve as supervisors during a research visit in Germany. Our fake applicants come from four different universities: Yale, Pennsylvania State University, National University Singapore, and Vietnam National University Hanoi. The results show that applicants from both US institutions get more positive, more informative and more personal feedback than applicants from Singapore and Vietnam. Moreover, the symbolic capital of a university seems more important than the quality of a specific department, which is problematic in normative terms.     

The Distribution of Returns to Education for People with Disabilities

This article takes a first look at the distribution of returns to education for people with disabilities, a particularly disadvantaged group whose labor market performances have not been well studied or documented. Using a nonparametric approach, we uncover significant heterogeneity in the returns to education for these workers, which is drastically masked by conventional parametric methods. Based on these estimates, we construct the Sharpe ratio of human capital investment (taking into account its substantial risk), and our results corroborate the claimed importance of human capital in improving these workers’ wages. Our stochastic dominance tests show that the returns to education for workers with disabilities, as a group, may have been affected more adversely in the most recent recession, relative to their non-disabled counterparts.     

Accountability and the Camera Perspective Bias in Videotaped Confessions

Prior research indicates that altering the perspective from which a videotaped confession is recorded influences assessments of the confession's voluntariness. The present study examined whether increasing decision makers' sense of accountability attenuates this biasing effect of camera perspective. Participants in a high-accountability (but not a low-accountability) condition were told that they would have to justify their judgments concerning the voluntary status of a video-taped confession to a trial judge. Although supplementary measures indicated that high-accountability participants processed information contained in the video-taped confession more carefully and thoroughly, the camera perspective bias persisted. This result adds to a growing body of work indicating that the criminal justice system needs to be seriously concerned with how it acquires and utilizes videotaped confession evidence.     

THE OTHER CHILD STUDY: Figuring Children as Consumers in Market Research, 1910s–1990s

This article examines how notions of the child were constructed in marketing research literature from the 1910s through the 1990s. Drawing on children's industry trade literature, market reports and books, I argue that children have become increasingly portrayed as individualized, autonomous consumers. Over this time period, the desire for consumer products becomes figured by industry observers and researchers as a mode of children's self expression.'The analytic isolation of the child in the persona of a consumer authorizes a new morality for consumption by construing children's desire for goods as preexistent and thus natural.     

Sharing beyond Slacktivism: the effect of socially observable prosocial media sharing on subsequent offline helping behavior

New forms of youth social and political participation have been termed ‘Slacktivism’ – low-cost online forms of social engagement that decrease subsequent offline participation. Previous experimental work has provided support for a ‘Slacktivism effect,’ but it is unclear if this theoretical model applies to youth media sharing on social networking sites. This study uses a novel sharing simulation paradigm to test the effect of publicly vs. anonymously sharing a social cause video on subsequent willingness to engage in offline helping behavior. Results show that publicly (as compared to anonymously) sharing a selected video on one’s own Facebook wall led to a greater willingness to volunteer for an issue-related cause. Participants’ existing use of social media for engagement in social issues/causes moderated the effect, such that only participants low in use of social media for social engagement were susceptible to the sharing manipulation. Implications for reconceptualizing media sharing as a unique form of online participation beyond ‘Slacktivism’ are discussed.     

Middle-class Latin@ Identity: Building a Theoretical and Conceptual Framework

Middle-class Latin@ identity is a rare discussion in the racial/ethnic studies and identity literatures. Often the Latin@ middle class is invisible as much of the research focuses on the poor, working class and immigrant populations. This article provides a discussion of literature that addresses the shape of middle-class Latin@ identity. It then moves to provide a theoretical and conceptual framework of strategies of identity negotiation for middle-class Latin@s based on this existing literature. Ultimately, it provides a much needed shift in both the identity and race/ethnic studies literatures by balancing structural and agentic elements of conceptualizing how middle-class Latin@ people’s identities are maintained, constructed, and negotiated.