Estimation of sampling effort for catching enough bats

How many bats must you catch to find out how many species of them are flying around? South Dakota is evidently well infested with small flying mammals. Weiming Ke and Brandon T. Bales of South Dakota State University spent many happy night-time hours with their nets….     

Utilizing relationship matrices to better understand the diversity of household arrangements among romantic couples: A cross-country example

Changes in families over the past thirty years have created methodological challenges for research on family variation. Some argue that standard survey methods used for collecting data on families have been outpaced by the transformation of families and hence estimates of family variation are maccurate and opportunities for cross-country comparisons of family variation are hampered. This situation is rectifiable through greater use of relationship matrices. This underused data collection method can precisely portray family variation and facilitate cross-country comparisons. To illustrate the method’s usefulness for family research, relationship matrices data on young persons from Australia and the United States are exploited to: depict individuals’ living arrangements; identify patterns in partnering and childbearing; describe demographic diversity across types of couples; and compare family variation across countries.     

How data type affects conclusions about individual mobility

This paper investigates the implications of using different types of panel data to study individual mobility by means of empirical analyses of data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics on intercounty migration of white male heads of household in 1975–1980. While event history data are clearly superior to panel data for studying individual mobility, often event history data are unavailable. We examine the consequences of different panel designs (varying number and spacing of waves) and of different timings of the measurements of explanatory variables. The results indicate that: (1) measuring the covariates at the end of an interval can be misleading, especially if these covariates are likely to change during the interval as a consequence of mobility; (2) a study of the mobility of a group of individuals during a single short interval can lead to different conclusions from a study of the mobility of the same group of individuals during a single long interval; and (3) multiwave panel data have clear advantages over data from a single short interval or a single long interval.     

The Development and Validation of the Couple and Relationship Education Attitudes Index: Results from Two Studies

As relationship educators work to reach more participants for their programs, they often face challenges with recruitment and retention. The theory of planned behavior, along with research, posits that attitudes are often predictive of behavior, and that attitudes toward education and help-seeking can be varied by unique contexts. This paper reports on the development and validation of an index that measures attitudes toward couple relationship education (CRE). The two scales within this index (benefits of CRE & CRE is not a good fit) assess how comfortable individuals are with CRE. The results from two studies support the validation of the index and show how CRE attitudes are linked to relational factors and a measure of intentions to attend CRE, using the scales within the index. Implications for researchers and practitioners are discussed.     

Getting Angry to Get Ahead: Black College Men,Emotional Performance,and Encouraging Respectable Masculinity

This article draws on two years of ethnographic fieldwork to explore how a group of black men on a college campus displayed anger in order to encourage other black men to adopt a respectable form of masculinity. Although prior research suggests that black men may work to avoid public displays of anger to evade negative stereotypes of black men, we uncover the contexts in which black men were comfortable expressing feelings of anger, frustration, annoyance, and irritation. Specifically, group leaders displayed these emotions when they observed recruits to their group engaging in actions or behaviors that threatened to reinforce certain stereotypes about black men.     

Following the "Mail Hawks": Alternative Measures of Public Opinion on Vietnam in the Johnson White House

Scholars argue that public opinion grew in importance duringthe Vietnam conflict, yet most find President Johnson was notresponsive to public opinion during the War. We amplify thesetheories by demonstrating the practical value of public opinionmail sent to the White House on Vietnam, reshaping theoriesabout the constraining role of public opinion in foreign policy.We find that the White House mail, but not opinion polling,favoring escalation of the War had a significant and positiveimpact on President Johnson's policy rhetoric. From these andsimilar findings, we conclude that the Johnson Administrationfollowed core "hawkish" political allies (those individualsdesiring a rapid escalation and quick end to the war) ratherthan those approving of a withdrawal, suggesting mail-gaugedopinion from electoral partners (and core political allies morebroadly) has value in foreign policy making.