Notes on authors

Social network analysis (SNA), a method which can be used to explore networks in various contexts, has received increasing attention. Drawing on the development of European smoke-free policy, this paper explores how a mixed-method approach to SNA can be utilised to investigate a complex policy network. Textual data from public documents, consultation submissions and websites were extracted, converted and analysed using plagiarism detection software and quantitative network analysis and qualitative data from public documents and 35 interviews were thematically analysed. While the quantitative analysis enabled understanding of the network’s structure and components, the qualitative analysis provided in-depth information about specific actors’ positions, relationships and interactions. The paper establishes that SNA is suited to empirically testing and analysing networks in EU policy-making. It contributes to methodological debates about the antagonism between qualitative and quantitative approaches and demonstrates that qualitative and quantitative network analysis can offer a powerful tool for policy analysis.     

Transforming Politics: Power and Resistance

Masked activists, self-identifying as anarchists, taking from supermarkets and handing goods to passers-by are the topic of this profile. Over 50 such acts have occurred across Greece since the onset of the financial, political and social crisis in 2008. We present a snapshot of the phenomenon of collective expropriation and position it within a context of further market-oriented forms of resistance to ‘austerity politics’.     

High school graduation rates among children of same-sex households

Almost all studies of same-sex parenting have concluded there is “no difference” in a range of outcome measures for children who live in a household with same-sex parents compared to children living with married opposite-sex parents. Recently, some work based on the US census has suggested otherwise, but those studies have considerable drawbacks. Here, a 20 % sample of the 2006 Canada census is used to identify self-reported children living with same-sex parents, and to examine the association of household type with children’s high school graduation rates. This large random sample allows for control of parental marital status, distinguishes between gay and lesbian families, and is large enough to evaluate differences in gender between parents and children. Children living with gay and lesbian families in 2006 were about 65 % as likely to graduate compared to children living in opposite sex marriage families. Daughters of same-sex parents do considerably worse than sons.     

Social Movements and Tactical Choice

For much of the past 40 years, the study of social movement tactics has viewed organizers' choices as driven by a desire to maximize efficacy and efficiency within a context of scarce resources and structural constraints. As sociologists increasingly turned toward culture, a new orientation emerged to view tactical choice as a process of gathering, interpreting, and evaluating information within dynamic, uncertain, and often‐contradictory contexts. The importance of the cultural turn has been amply demonstrated in studies of such things as identities, emotions, and collective action frames, but the full implications of its insights continue to be discovered. Four insights in particular warrant greater attention: many core concepts in the study of social movements have an interpretive, subjective, and contingent nature; tactics are a means of communication; social structures are imbued with culture, and culture is thoroughly structured; and social movements sometimes behave irrationally, and what appears to be irrational behavior often is in fact rational. I briefly discuss three areas of scholarship – collective identities, diffusion, and institutional fields – that demonstrate innovative ways that sociologists continue to combine and incorporate these insights and point the way toward a more sophisticated understanding of social movements and tactical choice.     

A Framework for Time Varying Parameter Regression Modeling

A framework for time varying parameter regression models is developed and employed in modeling and forecasting price expectations, using the Livingston data. Alternative model formulations, which include various choices for both the stochastic processes generating the varying parameters and the sets of explanatory variables, are examined and compared by using this framework. These models, some of which have appeared elsewhere and some of which are new, are estimated and used to assess the expectations formation process.     

An efficient cross-validation algorithm for window width selection for nonparametric kernel regression

This paper presents an approach to cross-validated window width choice which greatly reduces computation time, which can be used regardless of the nature of the kernel function, and which avoids the use of the Fast Fourier Transform. This approach is developed for window width selection in the context of kernel estimation of an unknown conditional mean.     

The Infrequency of Family Violence

We examined the frequency of domestic violence and verbal altercations relative to the level of domestic conflict using survey data from the United States and Korea. We found evidence that individuals are generally less likely to use violence during an altercation if the antagonist is a family member than if the antagonist is a stranger. People apparently have stronger inhibitions about hitting family members than about hitting strangers, and, as a result, domestic violence is infrequent relative to the level of domestic conflict. In addition, verbal altercations are more likely to occur in conflicts with partners and children than in conflicts involving strangers, suggesting that the relaxation of rules of politeness contributes to the expression of grievances and ultimately the use of violence in these relationships.     

Avian population dynamics and human induced change in an urban environment

The predominantly urban boroughs of Warrington and Halton straddle the river Mersey in northwest England. Since the 1970s there has been a major change in land-use associated with both innovative town design and the decline of manufacturing and chemical industries in the boroughs. Also, co-ordinated programmes have directly addressed air and water pollution. The breeding birds of the two boroughs were surveyed in 1978–84 and 2004–06 as part of the bird atlases of Cheshire and Wirral, based on tetrads (2 × 2 km squares). We divided the breeding species into eight guilds based on broad ecological characteristics of habitat or food, omitting the generalists and colonial species, and compared the change between our two atlases in the number of occupied tetrads in Halton and Warrington and in the rest of the county. Four of our eight guilds have fared significantly better within our study area: waterbirds (24 species), those feeding on invertebrates (16 species), woodland specialists (21 species) and the two species that decorate their nests with lichens. The remaining four guilds showed no difference between Halton and Warrington and the rest of Cheshire and Wirral: raptors (5 species) have increased throughout, while breeding waders (7 species), farmland seedeaters (7 species) and aerial insectivores (5 species) have declined throughout. We interpret these results in relation to improved quality of water and air and changing patterns of land-use in the urban greenspace, especially an increase in woodland cover and connectivity.