Getting Paid in Smiles: The Gendering of Child Care Work

Based on four and a half years of participant‐observation field research and focused interviews with men and women child care workers, the author examines the occupational processes of the entry and tenure of workers, paying particular attention to gender as it manifests in the meanings and actions involved in becoming and continuing as a child care worker. As men and women workers go about the business of becoming and being child care workers, they become active agents in the reproduction of child care as low‐wage, low‐status, women's work. Through the construction of particular gendered “accounts” and “vocabularies of motive,” workers play a key role in sustaining the status of child care as a gendered occupation.     

A Trivariate Distribution for the Height,Weight, and Fat of Adult Men*

Using exploratory data analysis, probability plots, scatterplots, and computer animations to rotate and visualize the data, we fit a trivariate Normal distribution to data for the height, the natural logarithm of body weight, and the body fat for 646 men between the ages of 50 and 80 years as reported by the medical staff of the U.S. Veterans Administration's “Normative Aging Study” in Boston, MA. Although these data do not include any children, women, or young men, the measurements represent the best data that we could find through a 4-year search. We believe that these data are well measured and reliable for men in the specified age range and that these data reveal an interesting statistical pattern for use in probabilistic PBPK models.     

Risk of Disclosure, Perceptions of Risk, and Concerns about Privacy and Confidentiality as Factors in Survey Participation

This article reports on a web-based vignette experiment investigating how likely subjects would be to participate in surveys varying in topic sensitivity and risk of disclosure. A total of 3,672 participants each responded to a series of eight vignettes, along with a variety of background questions, concerns about confidentiality, trust in various institutions, and the like.Vignettes were randomly assigned to respondents, such that each respondent was exposed to four levels of disclosure risk for each level of topic sensitivity (high versus low). Half the sample was assigned to receive a confidentiality statement for all eight vignettes, while the other half received no mention of confidentiality in the vignettes. The order of presentation of vignettes was randomized for each respondent.Respondents were also asked for their subjective perceptions of risk, harm, and social as well as personal benefits for one of the eight vignettes. Adding these questions permits us to examine how objective risk information presented by the researcher relates to the subjective perception of risk by the participant, and to assess the importance of both for their willingness to participate in the surveys described.Under conditions resembling those of real surveys, objective risk information does not affect willingness to participate. On the other hand, topic sensitivity does have such effects, as do general attitudes toward privacy and survey organizations as well as subjective perceptions of risk, harm, and benefits. We discuss the limitations and implications of these findings.     

Branded: The Economic Geographies of Streets Named in Honor of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King,Jr.*

Objectives. We investigate the economic geographies of streets named for Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK Streets), which are an increasingly common means by which various community members across the United States are attempting to commemorate the slain civil rights leader. It is our intent to characterize these negatively “branded” spaces in order to challenge some of the common perceptions about them and inform current and future MLK Street naming debates. Methods. We statistically analyze nonresidential establishments located on streets named for King in terms of scale (as measured by annual sales and employment) and industrial classification. To our knowledge, this is the first such analysis conducted at the national level. Results. Establishments located on MLK Streets do not systematically exhibit economic marginality. Establishments located on these streets do systematically exhibit unique local functions and industrial composition. Conclusion. In the absence of empirically‐driven research, the negative stereotypes that surround MLK Streets have gone unchallenged and are proliferating. The research reported here calls into question a number of these stereotypes and should inform the public, city councils, and other local policymakers, who are increasingly being faced with contentious MLK Street naming debates.     

Researching community,work and family with an interpreter

Community, work and family have been studied as practice and experience on an international scale. This work has included research with ethnic minority groups, usually practised by 'insiders' who share their participants' ethnicity, culture and first language. Many of these people live and work in extended family networks, part of a relatively small community embedded within a larger one. Generally, researchers do not have the language skills necessary to communicate with a linguistically diverse population. However, there has been a call to give a voice to, and hence empower, minority groups through the research process. It is in this context that a consideration of the use of interpreters in research on community, work and family can be made. Within this paper we present exploratory suggestions, drawn from our own research, for the appropriate use of an interpreter. This includes a discussion of the practical considerations and implications involved in this research activity, as well as more conceptual issues. Finally, the ways in which this research activity should be documented to reflect concerns in current qualitative methodological debates are considered. La communauté, le travail et la famille sont des sujets qui ont été étudiés, tant au niveau de la pratique que de l'expérience, à l'échelon international. Cette étude a envelopéune recherche parmi les groupes éthniques en minorité, dans l'ensemble vécue par des gens qui connaissent les choses de l'intérieur et qui partagent l'identité éthnique, la culture et la langue maternelle. Nombreux, parmi eux, sont des gens qui vivent et travaillent dans le cadre de familles étendues et font partie d'une petite communauté au sein d'une communaute plus grande. Dans l'ensemble, les chercheurs n'ont pas les competences linguistiques nécessaires pour communiquer avec une population de langues diverses. Cependant, il s'est avéré qu'il est plus que nécessaire de donner la parole et, de là, donner le pouvoir, aux groupes minoritaires au travers de la procedure du travail de recherche. C'est dans ce contexte que la considération de l'utilité de faire appel à des interprètes dans le domaine de la recherche qui embrasse la communauté, le travail et la famille, peut etre faite. Dans ce papier, nous soumettons des suggestions exploratoires, tirées de notre propre recherche, pour l'utilisation appropriée d'un interprete. Cela inclue une discussion sur les considerations pratiques et les implications contenues dans l'activite de cette recherche, y compris des activités conceptuelles. Pour finir, nous considérons la manière dans laquelle cette recherche devrait être documentée afin de refléter les débats méthodologiques qualitatifs en cours.     

A note on connectedness in fixed effects manova and gmanova models withmissing cells

Murray and Smith (1985) and Hocking (1985) give a generalized definition and test of connectedness in the case of missing cells using the univariate cell-means model with linear restrictions on the cell-means. The test of connectedness is here extended to multivariate fixed effects models, including the usual MANOVA model with linear restrictions, the MANOVA model with double linear restrictions, and the GMANOVA model.     

THE STRENGTH OF WEAK INDICATORS: A Response to Gilles, Brown, Geletta, and Dalecki

This article responds to Gilles, Brown, Geletta, and Dalecki's (1990) claim that the Legitimate Violence Index (LVX) is invalid because of problems with eight of its twelve indicators and because it is confounded with region and population density.     

Combining forecast quantiles using quantile regression: Investigating the derived weights, estimator bias and imposing constraints

SUMMARY A novel proposal for combining forecast distributions is to use quantile regression to combine quantile estimates. We consider the usefulness of the resultant linear combining weights. If the quantile estimates are unbiased, then there is strong intuitive appeal for omitting the constant and constraining the weights to sum to unity in the quantile regression. However, we show that suppressing the constant renders one of the main attractive features of quantile regression invalid. We establish necessary and sufficient conditions for unbiasedness of a quantile estimate, and show that a combination with zero constant and weights that sum to unity is not necessarily unbiased.     

Georg Simmel and Erving Goffman: Legitimators of the Sociological Investigation of Human Experience

By originating and developing the sociological investigation of human experience, Georg Simmel and Erving Goffman have shifted social phenomena at the edge of awareness to the center of attention, and have legitimated their study for contemporary sociologists. Both Simmel and Goffman describe these subtle social phenomena by distinguishing their perceptual boundaries and crossover elements, pointing out their common features when their statuses differ, and reversing their traditional location in means-end and cause-effect chains. But Durkheim's influence on Goffman's basic conceptions of interaction, individual, and society differentiated his interpretation of these social phenomena from Simmel's. Moreover, Simmel's and Goffman's explanations of these social phenomena evolve in different directions, revealing the antithetical goals toward which spiritual transcendental Simmelians and cynical reductive Goffmanians would lead sociology.