Peer modeling and college men's sexually impositional behavior in the laboratory

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of peer modeling on sexually impositional behavior in the laboratory. Male participants with and without a self-reported history of sexually aggressive behavior viewed video clips depicting nonaggressive and sexually aggressive behavior and then chose one of the clips to show to a female confederate. Half of the participants were first exposed to a male confederate who showed the sexually aggressive video clip to a female confederate. The other half of the participants were exposed to a male confederate who showed a nonaggressive video clip to a female confederate. Exposure to a male confederate who showed a sexually aggressive video clip to a female was associated with participants choosing to engage in this same behavior. A self-reported history of sexually aggressive behavior was also associated with participants showing the sexually aggressive video clip in spite of believing the effect on the female viewer would be negative.     

The Role of Religion in the Origins and Adaptation of Immigrant Groups in the United States1

The classical model of the role of religion in the lives of immigrants to the United States, formulated in the writings of Will Herberg and Oscar Handlin, emphasized cultural continuity and the psychological benefits of religious faith following the trauma of immigration. Although this perspective captures an important reason for the centrality of religion in most immigrant communities (but not for all immigrants), the classical model does not address the equally important socioeconomic role of churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques in American society. The creation of an immigrant church or temple often provided ethnic communities with refuge from the hostility and discrimination from the broader society as well as opportunities for economic mobility and social recognition. In turn, the successive waves of immigrants have probably shaped the character as well as the content of American religious institutions.     

Immigration and the American industrial revolution from 1880 to 1920

In this study, we measure the contribution of immigrants and their descendents to the growth and industrial transformation of the American workforce in the age of mass immigration from 1880 to 1920. The size and selectivity of the immigrant community, as well as their disproportionate residence in large cities, meant they were the mainstay of the American industrial workforce. Immigrants and their children comprised over half of manufacturing workers in 1920, and if the third generation (the grandchildren of immigrants) are included, then more than two-thirds of workers in the manufacturing sector were of recent immigrant stock. Although higher wages and better working conditions might have encouraged more long-resident native-born workers to the industrial economy, the scale and pace of the American industrial revolution might well have slowed. The closing of the door to mass immigration in the 1920s did lead to increased recruitment of native born workers, particularly from the South, to northern industrial cities in the middle decades of the 20th century.     

The impact of the promise of scholarships and altering school structure on college plans, preparation, and enrollment

The Washington State Achiever (WSA) program was a large-scale educational intervention of scholarships, mentoring, and school redesign designed to encourage students from moderate and low income families to attend college in Washington State. Using a quasi-experimental design based on pre- and post-intervention surveys of high school seniors in program and non-program schools, we find a significant WSA effect on educational outcomes, net of the demographic and socioeconomic composition of students across schools. Across the three intervention high schools, the program is strongly significant in one school, significant after a lag in another school, and not significant in a third. We speculate about the potential reasons for the differential program effect across high schools.     

The 9th grade shock and the high school dropout crisis

Retrospective questions on educational attainment in national surveys and censuses tend to over-estimate high school graduation rates by 15-20% points relative to administrative records. Administrative data on educational enrollment are, however, only available at the aggregate level (state, school district, and school levels) and the recording of inter-school transfers are generally incomplete. With access to linked individual-level administrative records from a very large “West Coast metropolitan school district” we track patterns of high school attrition and on-time high school graduation of individual students. Even with adjustments for the omission of out-of-district transfers (estimates of omission are presented), the results of this study show that failure in high school, as indexed by retention and attrition, are almost as common as on-time high school graduation. In addition to the usual risk factors of disadvantaged background, we find that the “9th grade shock”—an unpredicted decline in academic performance upon entering high school—is a key mechanism behind the continuing crisis of high school attrition.     

Dequantifying diversity: affirmative action and admissions at the University of Michigan

Theory and Society - To explore the limits of quantification as a form of rationalization, we examine a rare case of dequantification: race-based affirmative action in undergraduate admissions at...     

The timing of entry into motherhood in Asia: A comparative perspective

Abstract This paper examines the determinants of age at first birth from an explicitly comparative perspective in the following Asian societies: Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan and Thailand. The key structural variables have the same (or similar) effects in each of the groups examined. Education through primary school and beyond has a strong delaying effect on age at first birth in all eight populations. Difference of rural-urban origin does not affect the timing of motherhood in any of these societies. We also find a remarkably strong effect of shared cultural heritage. All the Confucian groups tend to behave similarly, as do the Muslim and Hindu groups.     

The two generation urbanite hypothesis revisited

It is generally accepted that socioeconomic differentials in fertility are minimal among urban couples with nonfarm origins -- two generation urbanites. In this paper, we replicate Duncan's (1965) analysis to see if the two generation urbanite hypothesis holds for more recent cohorts of American women. In four cohorts of women, drawn from three recent fertility surveys, we find no support for the two generation urbanite hypothesis. It appears that the links between farm background, socioeconomic status and fertility were different for the low fertility cohorts of women born in the early 1900's and the more recent cohorts of women who experienced the baby boom.