Stratification in American Science*

Although differential ranking in science is not readily visible to lay observers, American science is, in fact, sharply graded. Rewards and facilities for research are concentrated among relatively few investigators and organizations. This distinctive pattern of stratification, at odds with the egalitarian ethos of science, is not solely attributable to the distribution of talent in the scientific community. There is however a high correlation between assessed contributions to science and investigators' scientific standing. The present pattern of stratification is the outcome of processes of allocation of men and resources among various sectors of science which include selective recruitment and socialization of young investigators, differential access to publication and research facilities, and differential recognition of scientists' contributions through citations to their work and honorific awards. In a time when the legitimacy of reward systems in many social institutions is routinely challenged, scientists are apt to accept their own as just and correct.     

Micro and Macro Level Implications for a Sociology of Virtue: the Case of Draft Protesters to the Vietnam War*

On the basis of data from draft protesters to the Vietnam War it is suggested that an actively pursued and morally enhancing identity is the “pay off” of some deviant acts. These qualities of such deviance, called virtuous deviance, play havoc with labelling theory's passivity and character-degrading assumptions. The study of such acts may be called a sociology of virtue. A distinction between two kinds of protesters (refusers and resisters), which reflects different commitments to risk, suggests guiding hypotheses for that study: From the point of view of the actor, virtue may be self-constructed and autonomously implemented. Yet, escalations of commitment to virtue may require interpersonal corroboration and support. From the point of view of the normative order, such acts firm up moral boundaries, defining what it means to be moral.     

Some partially variance balanced structurally incomplete row-column designs

Earlier results by the authors are used to provide the intrablock analysis for row-column designs that have observations at nodes of the row-column lattice, the design being structurally incomplete when some nodes are empty. Construction, properties, and intrablock analyses of some special b× b row-column designs with b empty nodes taken along the principal diagonal of the lattice are developed. The designs discussed have m > 1 associate classes and are said to be partially variance balanced. The special designs fall in two classes and are shown to be nearly optimal in a specified class of designs. A small catalog of designs constructed is provided and they should be useful when empty nodes do not represent wasted experimental units, perhaps because the row and column assignments of treatments are sequenced.     

Railroad Construction and Antebellum Slave Prices*

Slave prices rose rapidly to historic highs in the late‐antebellum South. The boom in railroad construction in the South helps explain this large increase in slave prices. The economic connection between railroads and slave prices reconciles the views of traditional economic historians who thought slavery was economically irrational and the views of the new economic historians who have concluded that slavery was highly profitable. It was the massive public subsidies to railroads that explain it was public policy that provided the stimulant to slave prices, not the “peculiar” culture of the antebellum South or the planter efficient management of slave labor.     

THE IMPACT ON FAMILIES OF REPORTED CHILD ABUSE OR NEGLECT

In order to evaluate the impact upon children and families of reported child abuse and neglect and the subsequent interventions, the casenotes of a random sample of substantiated cases (N=151) dealt with by the South Australian child protection agency were searched. The goal was to identify information concerning service delivery and changes for family members in the ensuing six months. Results relevant to both of these are presented and evaluated. An important corollary finding of this work was the absence of detailed information about outcome in the casenotes. We argue that this absence of feedback to child protection workers and policy-makers is likely to have detrimental effects on both worker morale and the quality of the services provided.     

Researching Vulnerable Groups: Ethical Issues and the Effective Conduct of Research in Local Authorities

The Data Protection Act 1998 and Research Governance Frameworkfor Health and Social Care (Department of Health, 2003a) havebrought consideration of ethical issues in the conduct of researchinto sharper focus. This paper, based primarily on the authors’experiences of conducting research on children in need and outcomesfor vulnerable children, examines the impact these changes havehad on the research process. The difficulties experienced byresearchers in gaining access to research participants in orderto develop evidence-based policy and practice are explored.Finally, the paper outlines some practical steps that can betaken to facilitate the effective conduct of research.     

A Systematic Review of Interventions for Elder Abuse

The purpose of this study was to use rigorous systematic review methods to summarize the effectiveness of interventions for elder abuse. Only eight studies met our inclusion criteria. Evidence regarding the recurrence of abuse following intervention was limited, but the interventions for which this outcome was reported failed to reduce, and may have even increased, the likelihood of recurrence. Elder abuse interventions had no significant effect on case resolution and at-risk caregiver outcomes, and had mixed results regarding professional knowledge and behavior related to elder abuse. The included studies had important methodological limitations that limit our ability to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of these interventions.     

Report on matching procedures of a dual record system in the southern Philippines

There are generally three stages to the development of rules for matching vital events data from two sources covering the same population: (a) establishing a set of “true” matches and nonmatches; (b) determining the best tolerance limits for each single characteristic which might be used in matching; and (c) experimenting to determine the set or sets of characteristics and the weights to be used in classifying a pair of records as matched or nonmatched. Specific examples, based on early matching experiments with data from the dual record system of the Mindanao Center for Population Studies (MCPS), are presented. Successive application of different sets of characteristics (differential valence rule) to the remaining unmatched events produced an acceptable rule for matching in this study.