Beauty Goes Down to the Core: Attractiveness Biases Moral Character Attributions

Journal of Nonverbal Behavior - Physical attractiveness is a heuristic that is often used as an indicator of desirable traits. In two studies (N?=?1254), we tested whether facial...     

Migradollars and mortality: The effects of migration on infant survival in Mexico

We apply multilevel methods to data from Mexico to examine how village migration patterns affect infant survival outcomes in origins. We argue that migration is a cumulative process with varying health effects at different stages of its progression, and test several related hypotheses. Findings suggest higher rates of infant mortality in communities experiencing intense U.S. migration. However, two factors diminish the disruptive effects of migration: migradollars, or migrant remittances to villages, and the institutionalization of migration over time. Mortality risks are low when remittances are high and decrease as migration becomes increasingly salient to livelihoods of communities. Together, the findings indicate eventual benefits to all infants, irrespective of household migration experience, as a result of the development of social and economic processes related to U.S. migration.     

The Ovulation Method of Contraception

The ovulation method of contraception is based on an interpretation of the patient's vaginal mucus discharge. The only major trial of it shows a failure rate of at least 25.4 pregnancies per 100 woman years: from these figures about 25 per cent of women using it in any one year would become pregnant. Despite this failure rate, the ovulation method continues to receive considerable government support.     

Perceptions of Substance Abuse on College Campuses: Proximity to the Problem,Stigma, and Health Promotion

For college students recovering from substance addiction, the path to sobriety is fraught with challenges. Many campuses offer recovery support resources, but students indicate stigma associated with recovery prevents them from using these services. This problem could be ameliorated through communication campaigns addressing misperceptions of substance abuse and recovery. The purpose of this study was to understand how students’ perceptions of addiction and recovery vary based on their experience and background. A quantitative survey was employed to examine stigma beliefs among 2 subpopulations of college students at a large Southwestern university. Findings indicate students with exposure to issues surrounding substance abuse and recovery held fewer stigmatized beliefs, emphasizing the importance of identifying and researching a target audience before developing a health promotion campaign.     

“STREETVILLE FOREVER”: ETHNICITY,COLLECTIVE ACTION,AND THE STATE

Contemporary state policies in European and American societies mark a shift from older forms of governance focussed on the centrally concentrated state toward strategies that aim to limit governmental intervention by getting people to govern themselves. This means that individuals and communities are charged with carrying out roles and functions that were traditionally performed by the state. In this article I examine the conditions in which local people in an urban neighbourhood in the United Kingdom who were the objects of this new mode of governance came to negotiate and resist its policies and structures. Residents and community workers came together in opposition to the local Council to make demands that they considered to be of interest to the members of their neighbourhood across ethnic, racial, gender, and class boundaries. In so doing they crafted a multiracial neighbourhood identity that was more inclusive than the categories deployed by the state. This examination of collective initiatives that resist and challenge the state's strategies for local governance illuminates some of the complexities, contradictions, and limits of the contemporary state.     

Ethnographic Approaches to Race,Genetics and Genealogy

In recent years, there has been a technological advance and commercial boom in genetic technologies and projects, including a renewed scientific interest in the biological status and genetic constitution of race. This article provides an overview of sociological approaches to the study of race and genetics, and argues that these analyses should pay detailed critical attention to laypeople's engagements with the new genetic technologies. Drawing upon growing bodies of ethnographic literature within anthropology, geography and sociology, this paper unravels the complex and ambivalent ways in which laypeople think about the biological and genetic constitution of racial identities. Two specific bodies of literature are examined. First, the new kinship studies within anthropology that explores laypeople's engagements with the new reproductive technologies, such as in vitro fertilization. Second, laypeople's uses of genealogical technologies that claim to trace family ancestries, including racial descent and ethnic origins.     

Ethical Challenges in International HIV Prevention Research

Members of an HIV-prevention research network were asked to describe ethical challenges faced in their work. Major themes included acceptable standards of care for participants, defining research of relevance to host countries, reducing risks related to stigma, designing research that meets local needs without contributing to an inadequate status quo, and ensuring informed consent for complex research with potentially vulnerable participants. The challenges are interrelated and highlight the need for innovative, practical strategies to be incorporated into the planning, design, and conduct of HIV prevention trials. Research in applied ethics to support decision-making about HIV prevention research is needed, along with ethics training, mechanisms to support community-wide benefit from research, and expanded dialog on the ethics surrounding HIV prevention and public health research.     

Personality and coping as moderators of work stress processes: Models,methods and measures

Abstract

This article reviews the role of individual differences in work stress processes, with particular reference to personality and coping as moderator variables. Vulnerability/resilience and person-environment fit (congruence) models of moderator effects are contrasted and relevant issues of methodology and analysis are outlined. Personality traits (locus of control, hardiness, Type A, optimism, and neuroticism) that act as moderators of stress/strain relations are reviewed; the characteristics and limitations of available measures are described. Associations between personality and coping, inventories for the assessment of coping, and the dimensions of coping behaviour, are then considered. The implications of structural and transactional models of stress for coping assessment are discussed with reference to dispositional versus situational approaches and other psychometric issues. The need for research into coping flexibility and consistency is emphasized. No attempt is made to provide a comprehensive account of empirical research into individual difference moderator effects, but relevant review articles are cited, together with some recent studies. Finally, several areas which would merit further attention (including specificity of moderator effects, conjunctive and disjunctive patterns, and moderation of relations between objective and perceived stressors) are identified.     

Nonresponse in the American Time Use Survey: Who Is Missing from the Data and How Much Does It Matter?

This article examines nonresponse in a large government survey,the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), which interviews personsin households previously interviewed in the Current PopulationSurvey. The response rate for the ATUS has been below 60 percentfor the first two years of its existence, raising questionsabout whether the results can be generalized to the target population.The article begins with an analysis of the types of nonresponseencountered in the ATUS. Noncontact accounts for roughly 60percent of ATUS nonresponse, with refusals accounting for roughly40 percent. We find little support for the hypothesis that busypeople are less likely to respond to the ATUS but find considerablesupport for the hypothesis that people who are weakly integratedinto their communities are less likely to respond, mostly becausethey are less likely to be contacted. When we compare aggregateestimates of time use calculated using the ATUS base weightswithout any adjustment for nonresponse, estimates calculatedusing the ATUS final weights with a nonresponse adjustment,and estimates calculated using weights that incorporate ourown nonresponse adjustment based on a propensity model, we findsome modest differences, but the three sets of estimates arebroadly similar. The article ends with suggestions for furtherresearch and analysis.