What to do instead of significance testing? Calculating the ‘number of counterfactual cases needed to disturb a finding’

This brief paper introduces a new approach to assessing the trustworthiness of research comparisons when expressed numerically. The ‘number needed to disturb’ a research finding would be the number of counterfactual values that can be added to the smallest arm of any comparison before the difference or ‘effect’ size disappears, minus the number of cases missing key values. This way of presenting the security of findings has several advantages over the use of significance tests, effect sizes and confidence intervals. It is not predicated on random sampling, full response or any specific distribution of data. It bundles together the sample size, magnitude of the finding and the level of attrition in a way that is standardised and therefore comparable between studies.     

The burden of acting wise: sanctioned success and ambivalence about hard work at an elite school in the Netherlands

Sam and his classmates despise ‘nerds’: they say working hard in school makes a student unpopular, and that they purposefully do only the minimum to pass. Research suggests that such ‘oppositional’ attitudes are prevalent among working class students and/or ethnoracial minorities. Like most of his classmates, however, Sam is white, hails from a privileged background, and attends a selective school in the Netherlands. Deeply ambivalent about working hard and ‘acting wise’, Sam and the others constituting his adolescent society are thoroughly caught up in peer dynamics which sanction success and promote mediocrity. We link these anti-school peer dynamics to the institutional configuration of education in the Netherlands, characterized by rigid tracking at the end of primary school and non-selective universities: state structures and policies contribute to these privileged students’ rationale for ‘taking it easy’ and doing poorly in school.     

Dimensions of Job Quality,Mechanisms, and Subjective Well‐Being in the United States

How does job quality predict subjective well‐being in the United States? Prior research suggests that various job quality dimensions such as job security and individual task discretion affect subjective well‐being, but the theoretical mechanisms are implied rather than tested and aspects of job quality are rarely tested together. I use structural equation modeling and General Social Survey data to assess the impact of five job quality dimensions—individual task discretion, monetary compensation, job security, low work intensity, and safe work conditions—on subjective well‐being. Then, I show that job quality influences subjective well‐being by improving social life, altering class identification, affecting physical health, and increasing amounts of leisure time. Finally, while I find that job quality dimensions do have statistically significant effects on subjective well‐being, the way in which job quality affects subjective well‐being differs by job dimension. In other words, job quality has a statistically significant impact on subjective well‐being, but different job quality domains are connected to subjective well‐being in different ways.     

The Blurring Hypothesis Reconsidered: How Sector Still Matters to Practitioners

This article asks: Is sector still a useful concept for social science research on nonprofit organizations and related fields, such as social entrepreneurship? We answer that it is relevant to practitioners for whom sector boundaries remain an important orienting feature of their organizational worldviews. This observation is at odds with the recent scholarship on “blurring” sector boundaries, much of which suggests that sector is increasingly an outdated concept. Data from one uniquely blended space—the fair trade industry—coupled with insights from Scott’s (Institutions and organizations: ideas, interests, and identities, 2014) theory about the three pillars of institutions suggest that sector remains meaningful despite developments that appear to render it obsolete.     

Using a Book Group to Facilitate Student Learning About Social Work

The focus of this short paper is the increasingly popular format of the book group. This format has been used on an undergraduate social work programme in the UK with the aim of engaging students, as some enjoy reading fiction for pleasure but find it harder to read social science. The BA Social Work Book Group has met regularly to discuss non-social science books, such as novels and autobiographies. A specific example is presented of a best-selling novel with significant social work content (J.K. Rowling's The Casual Vacancy) and the book group's discussion of this. The strengths and limitations of book groups in social work education are drawn out.     

The influence of three genes on whether adolescents use contraception, USA 1994-2002

In a further contribution to recent investigations of the relevance of genetic processes for demographic outcomes, we investigate genetic associations with whether adolescents use contraception. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we find that variants in the dopamine transporter gene DAT1, the dopamine receptor gene DRD2, and the monoamine oxidase gene MAOA are associated with unprotected sexual intercourse. Consistent with previous analyses of these data, the genotypes DRD2*A1/A2, DRD2*A2/A2, DAT1*9R/10R, and MAOA*2R/ are associated with higher odds of unprotected sexual intercourse than other genotypes at these loci. The DRD2 associations apply to both men and women, whereas the other associations apply to women only. These results are robust to controls for population stratification by continental ancestry, do not vary by contraceptive type, and are consistent with previous research showing that these genetic variants are associated with higher rates of impulsivity.     

Publish or Perish: How Are Research and Reputation Related?

A study of twenty-seven fields in 350 highly ranked universities examines the relationship between reputation and rank. We find that many metrics associated with research prowess significantly correlate to university reputation. However, the next logical step– looking at the relationship that links different academic fields with the reputation of the university–did not always offer the expected results. The phrase “publish or perish” clearly has very different meanings in different fields.     

Recommendations on the statistical analysis of the Comet assay

In 2010, the Statisticians in the Pharmaceutical Industry (PSI) Toxicology Special Interest Group met to discuss the design and analysis of the Comet assay. The Comet assay is one potential component of the package of safety studies required by regulatory bodies. As these studies usually involve a three-way nested experimental design and as the distribution of the measured response is usually either lognormal or lognormal plus a point mass at zero, the analysis is not straightforward. This has led to many different types of analysis being proposed in the literature, with several different methods applied within the pharmaceutical industry itself. This article summarises the PSI Toxicology Group's discussions and recommendations around these issues.