A simultaneous-equations model of the relationship between public sector bargaining legislation and unionization

This paper estimates a simultaneous-equations model with public sector bargaining laws and union membership treated as jointly-determined variables. The extent of public sector unionization has a significant positive influence on the passage of prolabor bargaining legislation and bargaining legislation has strong, independent effects on the extent of public sector unionization. We gratefully acknowledge the research support provided by Minbo Kim and Parisun Chantonahom.     

Racial differences in urban neighboring

Despite mixed expectations generated by existing theories and evidence, this analysis documents clear racial differences in urban neighboring behavior. Using data from a survey of Nashville, Tennessee, residents, we show that blacks interact with their neighbors more often than whites do, and in a greater variety of ways. The only noteworthy similarity between the two groups is the positive impact of neighboring on feelings of community affect. Overall, our results support the view that neighbor relations — like other kinds of informal participation — have helped blacks cope with constrained social opportunities and provided them with access to resources unavailable through formal institutional channels.Revised version of a paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, San Francisco, August 1989.     

The changing character of industrial relations: Comment

Readers wishing to correspond with Mr. O’Connell may do so through the editorial office of the Journal.     

Dimensions of Participation in a Professional Social-Movement Organization

Differential participation after recruitment remains a black box in the social-movement and voluntary-association literatures. This paper identifies several dimensions of membership participation in a professional social-movement organization (SMO) with a national membership and analyzes the determinants of differential involvement in these forms. In general, members' ideological beliefs, social and organizational ties, perceptions about their SMO, and communication with SMO officials all predict participation across the various forms. Our findings extend previous work on differential participation in three ways. First, we statistically isolate cultural dimensions of postrecruitment participation and, in so doing, complement recent ethnographic research. Second, our findings suggest that the distinct dimensions of external and internal participation found by Knoke (1988) in a national sample of voluntary associations may not generalize to national SMOs studied individually. Third, our results indicate that models combining ideological and microstructural factors should explain the multiple forms of participation in SMOs lacking these distinct dimensions.     

Farmers,the Practice of Farming and the Future of Agroforestry: An Application of Bourdieu's Concepts of Field and Habitus

Abstract Agroforestry, the practice of raising crops and trees together in ways that are mutually beneficial, provides farmers with an alternative to more conventional farming practices. In this paper, we apply Bourdieu's concepts of “field” and “habitus” in an attempt to better understand the practice of farming and the role that agroforestry may have in farming systems. Analysis is based on qualitative and quantitative interviews of farmers and other key informants in two regions, Fox‐Wyaconda Watershed in northeast Missouri and Scott County in southeast Missouri. Within the field of farming, farmers emphasized the importance of economic, family and rental relations. Important habitus considerations include different interpretations of what constitutes farming and what constitutes forestry. Based on Bourdieu's theoretical framework, we offer three alternative paths of social change that may lead to more widespread utilization of agroforestry.     

Costs and Rewards of Children: The Effects of Becoming a Parent on Adults' Lives

How do new parents differ from their childless counterparts in social and psychological resources, daily strains, and psychological well‐being? Using a nationally representative panel of 1,933 adults who were childless at the first interview, we compare 6 indicators of adults' lives for those who became parents and those remaining childless several years later, controlling for earlier states. Becoming a parent is both detrimental and rewarding. With the exception of social integration, which is greater for all groups of new parents compared with their childless counterparts, the effects of parental status on adults' lives vary markedly by gender and marital status. Unmarried parents report lower self‐efficacy and higher depression than their childless counterparts. Married mothers' lives are marked by more housework and more marital conflict but less depression than their childless counterparts. Parental status has little influence on the lives of married men.     

What Do Grandmothers Think about Self‐esteem? American and Taiwanese Folk Theories Revisited

The study investigates European American and Taiwanese grandmothers’ folk theories of childrearing and self‐esteem, building on an earlier comparison of mothers from the same families. Adopting methods that privilege local meanings, we bring grandmothers’ voices into the conversation about childrearing, thereby contributing to a deeper understanding of intergenerational nuances in folk theories. In each cultural case, 16 grandmothers of 3‐year‐olds participated in in‐depth interviews that were customized according to local communicative norms. Although self‐esteem emerged as a central organizing concept in the folk theories of European American mothers, grandmothers spoke in two voices, either echoing their daughters or invoking a counter‐discourse of wariness towards self‐esteem. By contrast, Taiwanese mothers and grandmothers resembled one another—but differed from their American counterparts—in treating self‐esteem as peripheral in childrearing. Results contribute to the growing consensus that self‐esteem is a culture‐specific childrearing goal and suggest that the European American tendency to valorize self‐esteem varies by generation.     

Assessing accuracy of a continuous screening test in the presence of verification bias

Summary.  In studies to assess the accuracy of a screening test, often definitive disease assessment is too invasive or expensive to be ascertained on all the study subjects. Although it may be more ethical or cost effective to ascertain the true disease status with a higher rate in study subjects where the screening test or additional information is suggestive of disease, estimates of accuracy can be biased in a study with such a design. This bias is known as verification bias. Verification bias correction methods that accommodate screening tests with binary or ordinal responses have been developed; however, no verification bias correction methods exist for tests with continuous results. We propose and compare imputation and reweighting bias-corrected estimators of true and false positive rates, receiver operating characteristic curves and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve for continuous tests. Distribution theory and simulation studies are used to compare the proposed estimators with respect to bias, relative efficiency and robustness to model misspecification. The bias correction estimators proposed are applied to data from a study of screening tests for neonatal hearing loss.     

Semi-parametric estimation of ROC curves based on binomial regression modelling

This paper presents a method of estimating a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve when the underlying diagnostic variable X is continuous and fully observed. The new method is based on modelling the probability of response given X , rather than the distribution of X given response. The method offers advantages in modelling flexibility and computational simplicity. The resulting ROC curve estimates are semi-parametric and can, in principle, take an infinite variety of shapes. Moreover, model selection can be based on standard methods within the binomial regression framework. Statistical accuracy of the curve estimate is provided by a simply implemented bootstrap approach.