The dynamics of Young Men's career aspirations

Career aspirations have assumed a central place in our understanding of the process of social mobility, yet aspirations themselves have been subject to remarkably little scrutiny. We conduct an empirical analysis of the dynamics of aspirations in a cohort using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Men. Our results indicate that (1) occupational aspirations decline with age; (2) the overwhelming majority of young men have high aspirations at some point; (3) occupational aspirations, highly unstable among teenagers, become more stable with age; and (4) differences by race and social origin grow with age, reflecting growing race and social class differences in educational attainment.An earlier draft of this paper was presented at the American Sociologial Association Annual Meeting, San Francisco, August 1989.     

Presidential Address: The Faculty Time Divide

The time demands of academic life are examined, drawing on data from a large national sample of faculty. I outline the divide between full-time faculty, who work long hours irrespective of rank or institution type, and part-time faculty, who work at low pay with little job security, status, recognition, or fringe benefits. The expectations of academic life in dual-career couples are hard to reconcile with the demands of parenting. This is a common problem because assistant professors are generally too old to wait until they have tenure to have children. The segmentation of academic life into an overworked core and a marginalized periphery tends to perpetuate gender inequality.     

A Critique of the Concept of Social Exclusion and its Utility for Australian Social Housing Policy

The paper reviews the usefulness of the concept of social exclusion for Australian social housing policy. We draw on recent theoretical and empirical research from Europe and the UK to develop a critique of the concept of social exclusion. It is argued that any assessment of social exclusion needs to distinguish between its utility as an academic explanatory concept and its political deployment to justify new forms of policy intervention. Policy targeting anti‐social behaviour through increasingly more punitive means, for instance, is often justified on the basis that it ameliorates the problems of social exclusion experienced by tenants residing in public housing estates. We conclude that, in spite of the limitations of social exclusion as an analytical concept, for political and pragmatic reasons it is likely to become an important component of the emerging Australian housing policy agenda.     

Theory-Based Community Practice for HIV Prevention in Midlife and Older Women

ABSTRACT

In the last decade there has been a significant increase in HIV transmission among midlife and older women, particularly those from racial/ethnic minority communities. Although the number of women aged 50 and older diagnosed with HIV infection in the United States is increasing, they are rarely included in community HIV prevention strategies. This article presents integrating social capital with social justice themes into a socioecological framework for community practice that can significantly impact the efficacy of HIV prevention programs for midlife and older women. It also reviews the research and program implications for including midlife and older women in community interventions to halt the spread of HIV infection in this at-risk group. Suggestions for HIV prevention community practice with this underserved population are presented.     

Undocumented Acts: Migration,Community and Audience in Two Chicana Plays

Abstract

The 1980 Refugee Act endeavoured to provide effective settlement for refugees entering the United States. But most South American refugees escaping from dictatorships and civil wars were denied political asylum. This article explores the representation of migration and border crossing in Latina (1980 Sánchez-Scott, Milcha, with Jeremy Blahnik. 1980. “Latina.” In Necessary Theatre Six Plays about the Chicano Experience, edited by Jorge Huerta, 85–141. Houston: Arte Publico Press. [Google Scholar]), a play by Milcha Sánchez Scott that stages the difficulties associated with this journey. In 2010 Senate Bill 1070, one of the strictest anti-immigration legislative acts to be enforced, encouraged racial profiling in the identification of border crossers in the state of Arizona. Detained in the Desert (2011), a play by Josefina L?pez, is a Chicana response to the passing of SB 1070, and contributes to a deeper understanding of the fraught experiences of migrant women’s lives. The study of the plays places an emphasis on transnational community building and audience engagement and builds on a range of recent critical work by border theorists and scholars such as Alicia Schmidt Camacho and Deborah Boehm, and theatre and performance critics such as Diana Taylor.     

NEW TRENDS IN THE DOCTOR-PATIENT RELATIONSHIP: IMPACTS OF MANAGED CARE ON THE GROWTH OF A CONSUMER PROTECTIONS MODEL

Managed care is prompting a large revision not only in the ways doctors are employed and paid but also in the essence of the relationship between doctors and patients. In medical sociology, a discipline with a long-standing focus on scrutinizing the role of both the physician and the patient, there has already been discussion of a shift from the doctor as more all knowing to a less dominant position vis-a-vis both the patient and delivery of care. Patients are aware of shifts that place physicians in an environment characterized by new roles and responsibilities, such as acting as a gatekeeper. Limitations on health care coverage and the rethinking of roles have led to a depiction of the patient as the consumer of care and the managed care plan's becoming the commercial enterprise from which a service is obtained. The model of the patient as consumer of medically related goods and services appears to be growing, as does a model of the physician as one who contracts for a specified range of services for specific patients. In this article, trends in and problems with contemporary managed care are raised. Calls for patients' rights legislation may be among the health trends of the new millennium.     

Asymptotic Variance of Semiparametric Estimators With Generated Regressors

We study the asymptotic distribution of three‐step estimators of a finite‐dimensional parameter vector where the second step consists of one or more nonparametric regressions on a regressor that is estimated in the first step. The first‐step estimator is either parametric or nonparametric. Using Newey's (1994) path‐derivative method, we derive the contribution of the first‐step estimator to the influence function. In this derivation, it is important to account for the dual role that the first‐step estimator plays in the second‐step nonparametric regression, that is, that of conditioning variable and that of argument.     

Methodological and Validity Issues Involved in the Collection of Sensitive Information From Children in Foster Care

ABSTRACT

The Illinois Child Well-Being Study (ICWBS) established a red-flag reporting system (RFRS) embedded in the Audio Computer Assisted Self Interview (ACASI) portion of its child survey to flag reports of violence toward the child, suicidality, neglect, and/or sexual exploitation. When those RFRS questions were positively answered, the reported incident was relayed to the child's caseworker and investigated. This study describes the RFRS, the analysis of the children's reports, and a content analysis of the caseworkers' investigation. In this study, 166 children were interviewed and 28 children reported 36 RFRS incidents. On investigation, only 6 RFRS incidents were verified; most RFRS incidents were reported in error. The results of this study may help researchers using similar RFRS protocols.     

The impact of respondents and interviewers on interview speed in face-to-face interviews

In surveys carried out by interviewers trained according to the key principle of standardized interviewing it is assumed that the interviewer has only limited impact on the time a respondent needs to answer questions. In the paper the effects of interviewers and respondent characteristics on interview speed are analyzed simultaneously by means of a three-level random coefficient model. Data from the fifth round of the European Social Survey (ESS) are used. In twelve participating countries (CAPI) timers were implemented at several places in the questionnaire. Based on this time information the interview speed (number of questions asked per minute) was measured for each respondent during five modules of the questionnaire. The results support most of the expectations concerning the effects of the respondent characteristics. However, the results also indicate that, for all countries, interviewers strongly determine the interview speed and that interview length is not a simple linear function of the number of questions in a questionnaire.     

Relationship between participation in communities of practice and organizational socialization in the early careers of South Korean IT employees

This paper focuses on the relationship between participation in communities of practice (CoP) and organizational socialization of informational technology employees in their early careers. In this paper, the authors limited their research to CoP, which were recognized and supported by the organization. Results showed that participation in CoP was more strongly related to adjustment (job satisfaction, organizational commitment and intention to remain) than to learning (sense of belonging to the organization and role comprehension) when the characteristics of CoP and the degree of participation were controlled. The intensity of participation in CoP was significantly related to the socialization outcomes while there were no relationships between the length of participation and the socialization outcomes. Recommendations for future research include the use of objective rather than self-reported data, longitudinal research, the identification of other variables related to learning in CoP, and consideration of variations in national and organizational culture.