The black bourgeoisie and reference group change: A content analysis ofEbony

Qualitative Sociology - This study is an analysis of the racial group identification pattern among the black bourgeoisie for the years 1950 through 1979. It is argued that the militant ideology of...     

Immigration cohorts and residential overcrowding in southern California

To what degree do immigrants reduce their high rates of residential overcrowding with increasing length of residence in the United States? This question is addressed through the application of a “double cohort” method that nests birth cohorts within immigration cohorts. This method enables duration of immigration effects to be separated from aging effects as cohorts pass through life course phases, when family sizes may be growing or shrinking. The analysis finds that cohort trends differ sharply from the cross-sectional pattern observed at a single point in time. Cohorts’ growth in income is found to contribute substantially to the decline in overcrowding over time. Cohort trends among Hispanic immigrants, however, diverge from those among others, indicating much less decrease in overcrowding and even increases over certain age spans.     

Planned change in the disability community

Planned change with people, who are physically or mentally disabled, as with other special populations, requires a range of skills and knowledge; several specific aspects of the change process are identified and discussed in this article: the characteristics of the change agent, the timing of the change event, and creating a vision for change. These aspects are illustrated through the writer's own experiences as a change agent working a long-range change event to improve access1 to mental health services in the US with and for people who are deaf and hard of hearing.     

Proper Perspective in American History

This article describes the instructional methods of four high school government teachers during their coverage of the 2008 presidential election. By analyzing the ways in which these teachers attempted to generate interest in the election and further their students’ conceptualization of politics, the author seeks to better understand political instruction at the secondary level. Overall, the author observed that the teachers were successful in capturing student interest in both politics and the election; however, the teachers often missed opportunities to foster this interest into a nuanced understanding of politics.     

Conceptual and design issues in instrument development for research with bereaved parents

Many childhood deaths in the United States occur in pediatric intensive care units (PICUs) and parents have special needs in this death context. As an interdisciplinary research team, we discuss conceptual and design issues encountered in creating a new instrument, the Bereaved Parent Needs Assessment-PICU, for assessing parents' needs in this setting. Using a qualitative approach, our team previously explored how the culture and related ways of providing care in one urban Midwestern children's hospital PICU affected parents' bereavement needs and experiences. We describe using this qualitative foundation in the development of a new quantitative instrument to more widely validate and measure bereaved parents' needs around the time of a child's death across multiple PICUs. We highlight a series of issues that warrant consideration in designing a research instrument for this vulnerable population including setting and context, format and content, temporality, recruitment, and content expertise.     

Regression coefficient analysis for correlated binomial outcomes

At present, the generalized estimating equation (GEE) and weighted least-squares (WLS) regression methods are the most widely used methods for analyzing correlated binomial data; both are easily implemented using existing software packages. We propose an alternative technique, i.e. regression coefficient analysis (RCA), for this type of data. In RCA, a regression equation is computed for each of n individuals; regression coefficients are averaged across the n equations to produce a regression equation, which predicts marginal probabilities and which can be tested to address hypotheses of different slopes between groups, slopes different from zero, different intercepts, etc. The method is computationally simple and can be performed using standard software. Simulations and examples are used to compare the power and robustness of RCA with those of the standard GEE and WLS methods. We find that RCA is comparable with the GEE method under the conditions tested, and suggest that RCA, within specified limitations, is a viable alternative to the GEE and WLS methods in the analysis of correlated binomial data.