Family Experiences of Competition and Adolescent Performance

The authors examined how mothers' and fathers' feelings of competition at home and work affect their relationships with their daughters and sons using time‐diary data from a national sample of 220 families. Multivariate analyses revealed 3 relationships between parents' feelings of competitiveness at work and home and feelings of competition experienced by their children at school and home: (a) parents' and adolescents' competitiveness varied across home, work, and school—with mothers and fathers reporting similar levels of competition at work but daughters feeling more competitive at school than sons; (b) parents' competition at work was associated with similar activities; however, daughters' and sons' competition at school varied by activities; and (c) mothers' competition was associated with strategies for college enrollment and varied by gender, most notably with respect to daughters' academic progress. The results suggest how parents' competitive disposition may motivate their children's academic performance, especially between working mothers and their daughters.     

A comparative study of crisis communication strategies between Mainland China and Taiwan: The melamine-tainted milk powder crisis in the Chinese context

The purpose of this paper is twofold: (1) to identify and compare the crisis communication strategies (CCSs) that organizations used to respond to a congenetic melamine-tainted milk crisis in two Chinese societies (i.e., Mainland China and Taiwan), and (2) to explore the underlying political and media system reasons that led to the differences. Content analysis and discourse analysis of media coverage were used. The most significant finding is that Sanlu (a Mainland China-based organization) and KingCar (a Taiwan-based organization) demonstrated inverse pattern of the CCS adoption. Specifically, according to Coombs’ (1998) defense-accommodation continuum, Sanlu's CCSs moved from defensive to accommodative pole as time went by whereas, in contrast, KingCar started with accommodative strategies and moved towards the defensive pole gradually. Besides, the results showed that both organizations adopted denial, corrective action and apology strategies. However, on the Sanlu part, the most frequently used strategy was denial, while KingCar used justification most often. Moreover, this paper suggests that besides cultural dynamics, political and media systems also play a part in corporate selection of CCSs, and they are among the most important factors that should be taken into account to explain the differences in societies even with an identical traditional culture.     

How young Chinese depend on the media during public health crises? A comparative perspective

Under the framework of media system dependency theory, this study investigates and compares traditional media dependency and Internet dependency in public health crisis situations in the context of Mainland China. 373 college students participated in the survey. Empirical data demonstrated that, during public health crises: (1) traditional media and the Internet play different roles for individuals; (2) higher level of threat perception leads to more intense Internet dependency, but does not do the same to traditional media dependency; (3) individuals’ Internet dependency intensity is higher than their traditional media dependency intensity; and (4) the Internet may influence the behavior of young Chinese more directly.     

Nominal comparability is not enough: (In-)equivalence of construct validity of cross-national measures of educational attainment in the European Social Survey

Educational attainment is a core social background variable covered in each and every survey of individuals. Since educational institutions and qualifications are difficult to compare across countries, cross-national surveys pose a particular challenge to the measurement of educational attainment. This study performs a comparative construct validation of a number of cross-national measures of education using the European Social Survey. The measures comprise two versions of the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED), the education scheme developed in the project ‘Comparative Analysis of Social Mobility in Industrial Nations’ (CASMIN) and hypothetical as well as actual years of education. The first ISCED measure corresponds to the well-known main ISCED levels. The second one, the European Survey Version of ISCED (ES-ISCED) developed for this study, represents an effort to reflect different types of education within levels of education by considering ISCED sub-dimensions, most importantly ‘programme orientation’. Using linear regression models, it is shown how much explanatory power educational attainment loses when different cross-national variables are used, as compared to country-specific educational attainment variables (CSEVs), and how these losses vary across measures and countries. The dependent variable used for the construct validation is social status as measured by the International Socio-Economic Index (ISEI). Results suggest that harmonisation always entails some loss of explanatory power for at least a few countries. However, there are clear performance differences between the comparable measures in terms of both the average amount of losses as well as the distribution of losses across countries. The use of actual years of education as well as the levels-only ISCED strongly attenuates the education-social status association on average, but also to very different degrees across countries. CASMIN and ES-ISCED fare considerably better: they show the lowest losses of explanatory power and the lowest variation of losses across countries. Hypothetical years of education lie in between. Some practical implications are then proposed, e.g. on how to implement cross-national measures of educational attainment in international surveys.     

Career Pathways into Retirement in the UK: Linking Older Women's Pasts to the Present

Understanding of how women's experiences in retirement are shaped by their pre‐retirement lives is limited. In this paper we utilize an innovative mix of measures to examine the link between career histories and expectations and experiences of retirement. Analysis of timeline data capturing the long working lives of a sample of older women identifies five different pathways into retirement. We explore these trajectories in detail to determine how they are shaped and their links to different outcomes in later life. The analysis shows how different career histories unfold and how they shape expectations and experiences of retirement. Long, professional career pathways leave women feeling enabled in retirement, women following more fragmented pathways are more constrained, and some trajectories, including pathways involving transitions into professional careers in later life, can leave older women financially and emotionally vulnerable in older age.     

From Affirmative Action to Diversity: Critical Reflections on Graduate Education in Sociology

This article explores the contradictory results of the shift from a race‐conscious affirmative action discourse to a broader “diversity embrace” that advocates tolerance, equality, and respect for cultural differences on university campuses. Drawing on critical race theory and research on the practice of affirmative action in organizations, we argue that the diversity embrace subsumes recognition of racialized histories, social relations, and practices in favor of a “color‐blind” rhetoric that reinforces negative assumptions about the academic merit and worthiness of underrepresented minority students (URM). Our review of the status and condition of URM graduate students in sociology departments reveals that minority inclusion is part of a larger strategy that emphasizes individual and group differences rather than corrective action for past discrimination. We find that access and inclusion in graduate programs in sociology have been uneven with relatively few departments producing a majority of URM sociology doctorates. The diversity embrace obscures their continual low representation in graduate programs, fosters professionalization practices detrimental to these students, and undermines efforts to create a “critical mass” of faculty of color. Such practices constitute a racial project that preserves White privilege at the individual and institutional levels.     

Impact of the National Minimum Wage on Disabled People

The survey reported here found disparities in the impact of the introduction of the National Minimum Wage on disabled people. These were associated with age, gender, impairment and type of employment setting. The main determinant of whether individuals gained from the NMW was their status as claimants of welfare benefits. We also found evidence that paid hours had been reduced to implement the NMW with no net increase in earnings, possibly to enable people to retain benefits entitlements. We make recommendations about how the anomalies can be tackled. It may be unrealistic to expect the Act to have been implemented fully so soon after it became law and some of the anomalies found may eventually disappear. However, many of the inequalities uncovered by this survey are not addressed by the NMW, specifically those inequalities associated with impairment and gender.     

The Sociology of Mental Health: A Brief Review of Major Approaches

The article emphasises the importance of making sense of the theoretical debate in the sociology of mental health in order to 'position' the wide range of studies that have contributed to this field within three main approaches. The article indicates ways in which various studies have proved highly influential and continue to form the basis for research, policy and practice. Sociological concepts such as stigma continue to resonate as they highlight the sense in which negative social attitudes often make life harder for those who are already experiencing distress. The politics of risk in mental health, which has become a particularly powerful force in recent years, has made the prevailing climate more and not less stigmatising for those identified with 'mental illness'. The article concludes by arguing that the sociology of mental health continues to offer the conceptual and theoretical foundation from which negative associations can be challenged and overturned.