CHANGE IN SPOUSE AGE DIFFERENCE AT MARRIAGE: A CHALLENGE TO TRADITIONAL FAMILY AND SEX ROLES?

We speculate that four broad societal changes (postponement of marriage by large numbers of women, dispersion of divorce throughout the life cycle, more equitable distribution of power between men and women, and wide swings in fertility) should eventually affect male-female age difference at marriage—i.e., the age-mating gradient. Examination of age difference at marriage from 1930–1980 in a central Florida county shows a trend toward increasing percentages of women marrying men younger than themselves. Data on all marriages for 1985 for this same county ( N = 7,021) indicates a continuation of this trend. Previous investigation of the age-mating gradient disclosed that age at marriage and marriage parity are related to the percentage of marriages in which the age-mating gradient is "followed.' Using the proportion marrying mates older or younger by three or more years as a conservative measure of the violation of the age-mating gradient, we find that the persons most likely to deviate from the traditional age-mating gradient were men ages 24–29, women over 30, and those persons who were marrying for the second, third, or later time. Some suggested explanations for these patterns are offered.     

As balancing act and as game: How women and men science faculty experience the promotion process

Studies on the division of domestic labor find that women take on a greater proportion of domestic responsibilities; this has implications for both women and men who work in demanding jobs. In this study of women and men science faculty at a major research university, the authors find that women tend to relate their experiences of the promotion process to both their domestic and faculty roles, whereas men tend not to consider thant their domestic roles have any bearing on their experiences of the promotion process. Women view the promotion process in terms of the components that make demands on their time, and they suggest ways that the process could (and should) be changed. Men view the process as a challenging game, and they describe the promotion process, as it currently exists, as necessary and acceptable. The authors find that there are compelling reasons to reconsider the structure of the promotion process and to strengthen and expand the programmatic supports that address the needs of women. Ramona Gunter is a Ph.D. student in education policy studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has master's degrees in Education Policy Studies and Cultural Anthropology and a bachelor's degree in Mathematics and Physics. She has worked as a researcher studying math and science education since 1996. The focus of much of this work has been on student experiences in undergraduate math and science courses and gender differences. Her current work looks at the experiences of science faculty, academic staff, and graduate students in their work environments. Amy Stambach is associate professor of education policy studies and an affiliate of Department of Anthropology and the Women's Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison     

TOXIC CONTAMINATION AND COMMUNITIES:

The ecological-symbolic perspective posits that community response to toxic contamination is shaped by both the nature of the environmental disruption and the interpretive frames through which those disruptions are apprehended. Full utilization of this perspective has been hampered by the deterministic underpinnings of the current chronic technological disaster model, which presents local conflict as a virtually inevitable outcome of these events. We draw upon the more contingent framing of the ecological-symbolic perspective to analyze the experiences of two communities that displayed consensual response patterns. We identify ecological and organizational factors that facilitated an interpretive framing of "limited danger".     

Theoretical stances and environmental debates: Reconciling the physical and the symbolic

Several sociologists arc currently debating the relationship of sociology to the physical environment. Their debates beg a question of more general importance to sociology: How do we organize our thinking about phenomena that are at once physical or material and symbolic or ideal? Our intention is not to add another voice in favor of or opposed to theorizing material, physical, or organic characteristics, but to examine the process of thinking about environments and more generally the realist-idealist divide. Environment (like the body) is unlike typical social science concepts in so far as it is both physical and social. If, for example, status and role are purely social concepts, environment is always more than social. I low do sociologists approach what is always more than social in the study of physical environments? Theorizing environments, we propose, is fashioned by the analytic stance of the investigator as legislative, interpretive, or symbolic realist. The strengths and weaknesses of these stances are discussed, and throughout our discussion empirical work representing each ol them is introduced. A final inquiry examines how sociologists can approach these three stances. Two strategies are identified: to assume each stance mirrors the environment as it actually exists or assume the stances are terminologies for exploring various combinations of the physical-symbolic properties ol environments. A brief plea is made for the second strategy.     

Variable Selection for Qualitative Interactions

In this article we discuss variable selection for decision making with focus on decisions regarding when to provide treatment and which treatment to provide. Current variable selection techniques were developed for use in a supervised learning setting where the goal is prediction of the response. These techniques often downplay the importance of interaction variables that have small predictive ability but that are critical when the ultimate goal is decision making rather than prediction. We propose two new techniques designed specifically to find variables that aid in decision making. Simulation results are given along with an application of the methods on data from a randomized controlled trial for the treatment of depression.     

Log-ratios and the logarithmic mean

Logarithmically transformed ratios have an important role to play in some branches of statistics and economics. Focus of this paper is on an unfamiliar interpretation of these logratios, which are in fact absolute differences being divided by the logarithmic mean. It is demonstrated that familiarity with the logarithmic mean and its relation to more common mean values leads to view a problem from a new angle whenever logratios are involved. Examples investigated are Fisher’s z-transformation, the likelihood-ratio test of goodness-of-fit, Theil’s measure of inequality, and the log-ratio itself as one important device for measuring relative change within timeseries.     

Race,SES, and Obesity Among Men

Over the last decade, obesity has increased significantly among men but few national studies have empirically examined racial and socioeconomic differences in obesity among men. In this paper, we utilized logistic regression to evaluate the potential associations that race and socioeconomic status may have with obesity among men in the National Survey of American Life: an in-person household survey of non-institutionalized U.S. blacks and whites who lived in communities where at least 10% of the community residents were black Americans. A greater proportion of black men were likely to be obese than white men, but no interaction among race, SES, and obesity was detected when potential confounding variables were included. There was not a relationship between SES and obesity for white men, but there was an apparent positive relationship between SES and obesity for black men that did not remain significant in adjusted models. No relationship was found between age and obesity among black men, though white men who were 55 and older were more likely than those 18–34 to be obese in confounder adjusted models. Among white men, no relationships were found between obesity and education, household income, or marital status. Black men in the lowest income category were less likely to be obese than those in the highest income category, in bivariate but not adjusted models. These findings suggest that the way racial, economic, stress and behavioral factors combine to affect obesity in black and white men may be different.