Presidential Address On THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION REVISITED

This article offers a critical reading of C. Wright Mills's The Sociological Imagination (1959). Such a reading reveals the need to reassess the basis, practice, purpose, and impact of sociology. Accordingly, interpretive materials drawn from stories about and by alcoholics and a new cultural grouping, Adult Children of Alcoholics, are used to illustrate the foundations of a minimalist sociology.
Know that the … sociological imagination has its chance to make a difference in the quality of life in our time. (Mills 1959, p. 226)     

Using process data to explain outcomes. An illustration from the Child and Adolescent Trial for Cardiovascular Health (CATCH)

The purpose of this article is to illustrate the use of process evaluation for understanding study outcomes. Data from the Child and Adolescent Trial for Cardiovascular Health (CATCH), a large school-based field trial, are used. Teacher characteristics, measures of classroom curriculum implementation, and competing influences are linked to changes in dietary knowledge, intentions, and self-efficacy of students in the intervention schools. Multiple regression analyses indicate that teacher characteristics did not predict program implementation. Teacher characteristics and program fidelity, or the number of modifications made to the classroom curriculum during implementation, had direct and independent effects on student outcomes.     

The MHSIP mental health report card. A consumer-oriented approach to monitoring the quality of mental health plans. Mental Health Statistics Improvement Program

Health care report cards have been endorsed as a mechanism for efficiently comparing key quantifiable aspects of performance across a range of health systems or plans. There are challenges in determining what to measure; how to gather and analyze data; and how to report, interpret, and use findings. Mental health has received little attention, and a consumer perspective is typically not included. The proposed MHSIP mental health report card (MMHRC) addresses these concerns. General issues for report cards are discussed, and the MMHRC is described in terms of content, data sources and quality, and analysis and reporting.     

ON SEMIOTICS AND SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM

The place of semiotics within symbolic interactionist thought is discussed. The works of Barthes and Baudrillard are examined in terms of their implications for (1) an interactionist theory of the cultural object and (2) an interpretation of consumer relations in the postmodern period. The narrative texts of advertisements for Jack Daniel's Whiskey ** 1 Grateful acknowledgment and appreciation is given to the Jack Daniel Distillery for permission to use their advertising text as it appears on their product.
and Dewar's White Label Scotch *** 2 Grateful acknowledgment and appreciation is given to Dewar's for permission to use their advertising profile of Gary Jobson.
are analyzed in terms of the political economy of the sign suggested by Baudrillard and Barthes. The implications of this analysis for the symbolic interactionist theory of the object and language are discussed. The subject matter that now confronts us supersedes symbolic interaction; rather it is the process surrounding the autonomization of signs; signs that stand for—and refer to—nothing but themselves.     

Fertility Intentions, Career Considerations and Subsequent Births: The Moderating Effects of Women’s Work Hours

Prior research indicates a negative relationship between women’s labor force participation and fertility at the individual level in the United States, but little is known about the reasons for this relationship beyond work hours. We employed discrete event history models using panel data from the National Survey of Families and Households (N = 2,411) and found that the importance of career considerations mediates the work hours/fertility relationship. Further, fertility intentions and the importance of career considerations were more predictive of birth outcomes as women’s work hours increase. Ultimately, our findings challenge the assumption that working more hours is the direct cause for employed women having fewer children and highlight the importance of career and fertility preferences in fertility outcomes.     

Bite Mark Evidence in Crimes Against Persons

Abstract

Bite marks are often found on victims of homicide, sex crimes, and child abuse. Since this type of physical evidence often links victims and assailants, it is essential that bite mark evidence be recognized and properly preserved. The superior courts of several states and United States military courts have accepted this evidence as admissible.

This article is intended to familiarize college and university health workers and security personnel with the appearance of bite marks as they may be found on victims. Further, it describes techniques of photography and related procedures, necessary for the preservation of this essential evidence. Photographs of actual bite marks and diagrams illustrating correct techniques for photography are included. This article is intended to alert college health and security personnel that early recognition and preservation of bite mark evidence is essential to investigative procedures.     

Unemployment in South Africa: A survey of research

This paper attempts to summarise the results of recent research into unemployment (predominantly Black) in South Africa. It refers to the prospect of improved data from the newly initiated ‘Current Population Survey ‐ Bantu’, but in the main concentrates on what we know on the basis of currently available information. After an examination of conceptual and empirical difficulties in the way of measurement it summarises (i) the macro‐estimates of Sadie, van der Merwe, Simkins, Loots and Knight and (ii) the results of some small‐scale investigations into unemployment. It then deals with suggested explanations of long‐term unemployment, with remedial policies (in both of which fields much remains to be done) and with directions in which further research is required.     

The applicability of social control theory in understanding adolescent alcohol use

Utilizing panel data on 345 high school students, this study investigates the efficacy of social control theory in accounting for adolescent orientations toward alcohol use. The findings suggest that the differing informal control mechanisms under consideration place varying constraining influences upon adolescent alcohol use, and upon problems which arise in the lives of adolescents as a consequence of their drinking, throughout the three high, school years. Similarly, alcohol use and its attendant problems are generally found to be associated with a decrease in the strength of adolescents’ bonds to conventionality, though these influences differ in degree from year to year as well.