Institutional Expectations,Opportunities, and Interest in the Professoriate: A Mixed-Methods Examination of Satisfaction Among Doctoral Students in Social Work

ABSTRACT

This article explores doctoral student satisfaction as related to interest in the professoriate and as influenced by issues of social justice, according to a national student survey. Results indicate that 85% of respondents were satisfied or very satisfied with their doctoral education. Most satisfying aspects were individualization or independence, collegiality or collaboration, praxis or translation, and reaching or achieving milestones. Least satisfying aspects were educational environments or climates, course quality, mentorship quality, and finances. Eighty percent reported that satisfaction was “explained by social justice training opportunities and a sense of a socially just institution.” At research-intensive universities, satisfaction predicted interest in the professoriate. Understanding student satisfaction may improve doctoral education and the faculty pipeline.     

ASSESSING ENVIRONMENTAL INEQUALITY: HOW THE CONCLUSIONS WE DRAW VARY ACCORDING TO THE DEFINITIONS WE EMPLOY

ABSTRACT

This article demonstrates that the conclusions environmental inequality researchers draw vary according to the definitions of environmental inequality they employ and that researchers can use a single set of results to test for the existence of multiple forms of environmental inequality. In order to illustrate these points, I set forth five definitions of environmental inequality, list the kinds of evidence we must obtain in order to determine whether each form of environmental inequality exists, and show how conclusions drawn from several recent environmental inequality studies vary depending on the definition of environmental inequality we employ. My goal is not to show that any one definition is superior to the others; nor am I trying to generalize from the studies reported here to a broader set of research findings. Instead, my goal is to a) show that we can use a single set of results to address a variety of environmental justice concerns and b) demonstrate that our interpretations of environmental inequality research have been too narrowly focused on one set of environmental inequality outcomes.     

Measurement for evaluation

Problems of measurement in management science are discussed in the context of methods of evaluation. Different approaches to evaluation are compared in terms of the level of measurement required and the process of generating numerical values. It is suggested that the difficulties of measuring are not always appreciated and that soundly-based measures are products of theories developed and tested within a consensus on basic constructs. Conclusions are drawn for the practitioner to set his level of measurement in terms of consensual understanding and suggestions are made for research.     

Bringing the Polluters Back In: Environmental Inequality and the Organization of Chemical Production

Environmental justice scholars have suggested that because chemical plants and other hazardous facilities emit more pollutants where they face the least resistance, disadvantaged communities face a special health risk. In trying to determine whether race or income has the bigger impact on a neighborhood's exposure to pollution, however, scholars tend to overlook the facilities themselves and the effect of their characteristics on emissions. In particular, how do the characteristics of facilities and their surrounding communities jointly shape pollution outcomes? We propose a new line of environmental justice research that focuses on facilities and how their features combine with communities' features to create dangerous emissions. Using novel fuzzy-set analysis techniques and the EPA's newly developed Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators, we test the influence of facility and community factors on chemical plants' health-threatening emissions. Contrary to the idea that community characteristics have singular, linear effects, findings show that facility and community factors combine in a variety of ways to produce risky emissions. We speculate that as chemical firms experiment with different ways of producing goods and externalizing pollution costs, new "recipes of risk" are likely to emerge. The question, then, will no longer be whether race or income matters most, but in which of these recipes do they matter and how.     

Estimation for High‐Dimensional Linear Mixed‐Effects Models Using ℓ1‐Penalization

Abstract. We propose an ?₁‐penalized estimation procedure for high‐dimensional linear mixed‐effects models. The models are useful whenever there is a grouping structure among high‐dimensional observations, that is, for clustered data. We prove a consistency and an oracle optimality result and we develop an algorithm with provable numerical convergence. Furthermore, we demonstrate the performance of the method on simulated and a real high‐dimensional data set.     

Siting Praxeology. The Methodological Significance of “Public” in Theories of Social Practices

The concept of “site” is at the center of current debates in theories of social practices as well as in cultural anthropology. It is unclear, however, how to assess the associated methodological assumption that overriding social structures or cultural formations can manifest themselves in sites. The article draws on the conception of social practices and introduces the notion of “publicness” in order to explicate how and why sociality and social structures can be accessed through “siting”. Sites as well as social practices, it is claimed, have to be conceptualized as essentially public and thus principally observable phenomena. This assumption of publicness implicit to both site ontology and theories of social practices is unfolded on the basis of a praxeological reformulation of the paradigm of joint attention elaborated in developmental psychology. To avoid presentist misinterpretations, we then conceptualize sociality as chains of practices across time and space, drawing on the works of Theodore Schatzki, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Anthony Giddens and Bruno Latour. The public carriers of practices (artifacts, symbols, media, bodies) and the translocal structures they establish acquire particular significance in these approaches. In a further step, we present some methodological consequences of the “publicness assumption” and support our arguments by referring to Pierre Bourdieu's study on Distinction.     

“Pretty Pressure” From Peers,Parents, and the Media: A Longitudinal Study of Appearance‐Based Rejection Sensitivity

Drawing from the tripartite sociocultural model of body image, the researchers examined whether direct messages and modeling from peers, parents, and media were concurrently and prospectively associated with appearance‐based rejection sensitivity (appearance‐RS) in young adolescents (M_age = 12.0 years). Appearance‐RS was higher among those who concurrently reported more appearance‐related teasing and pressure by peers, more parent teasing, and greater acceptance of media appearance ideals. In prospective analyses, greater increases in appearance‐RS over 1 year were found for adolescents who perceived higher levels of parental appearance‐related teasing and negative attitudes about their own appearance. Moderation analyses indicated the positive prospective association between parental negative appearance attitudes and appearance‐RS was found in younger but not older participants. Gender did not moderate associations.