Immigrants' Language Skills: The Australian Experience in a Longitudinal Survey

This article is concerned with the determinants of English language proficiency (speaking, reading and writing) among immigrants. It presents a model of immigrant destination language proficiency based on economic incentives, exposure to the destination language, and efficiency in second language acquisition. A unique data set, the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Australia, is used to test the model. This survey had three waves, at about six months, eighteen months and three‐and‐a‐half years after immigration. The analyses are performed by wave, type of language skill and gender using probit analysis. Bivariate probit analysis is used across waves. The hypotheses are supported by the data. The bivariate probit analysis indicates a positive correlation in the unexplained component that declines with time between waves, suggesting a “regression to the mean” in the unobserved components of English language proficiency.     

The Spread of Disability Living Allowance

This article examines the spread of Disability Living Allowance across a group of low income households in an industrial town in North West England from the introduction of the new benefits in 1992 until the Spring of 1996. We focus on the changes over time of the incidence of Disability Living Allowance in the low income population and look at the relative spread of different elements of the benefit. We speculate on whether the new benefits have provided the most effective way of fulfilling the aims of the White Paper, The Way Ahead , and discuss the implications for social and medical models of disability.     

Sociology as giant killer: What should we do with Goliath’s armor?

This paper argues that economic theories and econometric methods can constitute useful tools for the sociological study of employment and gender. Work by the author and by Paula England is used to illustrate this point. His research interests include labor markets, economic sociology, statistical methods, and policy analysis. This article is based on a paper presented at the Southern Sociological Association meetings held in Nashville, Tennessee, March 1988.     

Estate Inheritance: A Sociological Lacuna*

Estate inheritance, a frequently mentioned but rarely examined feature of stratification systems, has been a neglected area of research in sociology. In this paper, several possible causes of the sociological neglect are discussed. The treatment of inheritance patterns in functionalist and conflict theories of stratification is analyzed, and an overview of existing research on inheritance is presented. Finally, a conflict theory of stratification that incorporates the phenomenon of inheritance is proposed, and avenues for further research are suggested.     

Editorial

Publication of these conference papers on the theme of communitydevelopment in the ‘new’ Europe comes at a particularlysignificant moment as the people of different ‘old’European nation states     

THE McMASTER FAMILY ASSESSMENT DEVICE: RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY*

This paper reports a series of studies investigating the reliability and validity of the McMaster Family Assessment Device (FAD). The results indicated that the FAD has: (a) adequate test-retest reliability, (b) low correlations with social desirability, (c) moderate correlations with other self-report measures of family functioning, and (d) differentiates significantly between clinician-rated healthy and unhealthy families. Cut-off scores for identifying healthy and unhealthy families also were developed which have adequate sensitivity and specificity. Additionally, the relationships between the FAD, Family Unit Inventory, and FACES-II suggests that the cohension and adaptability scales from the FACES-II have a linear relationship with health/pathology.