Marital Decision Making: Congruence of Spouses' Responses*

The relationship between spouse's perceptions concerning who makes decisions and the importance of decisions was investigated through interviews with 140 couples. A positive relationship was found between the husbands' decision-making scores and the importance of decisions. In addition, the paper emphasizes the need to (1) analyze decision-making and importance of decisions within couples rather than among all husbands and all wives separately and (2) collect data from both spouses.     

Methods for comparing policies using multiple criteria: an urban example

This paper looks at a variety of methods that can be used in evaluating a set of alternate policies using multiple criteria. The methods examined are the structural mapping of indifferences, utility values, lexicographic ordering, factor analysis, concordance analysis and multidimension scaling. Each method is tested using hypothetical data for a problem in which alternative policies are proposed for allocating monies to housing and health projects in a town. The aim is to try to reveal as objectively as possible, a set of preferred alternatives from which one can be chosen in the political decision-making process. After describing and testing the methods individually, they are compared both on the basis of their results and on the principles involved in their approach. Conclusions about the validity of each method are given, and it is emphasized that all methods should only be used as aids in the choice of an optimal policy.     

Abuse and deaf children: Some factors to consider

Deaf children are uniquely disadvantaged in terms of access to information on safety and abuse. This is often due to misunderstood linguistic and cultural needs which relate to the deaf community. Consequently, a greater number of children who are deaf are placed in potentially abusive situations when compared to their non-deaf peer group. A high percentage of deaf children have also acquired negative self-concepts. This is often due to external influences such as educational experiences and family communication. Many deaf children believe that abuse is part of their being deaf. The implications of this are that deaf children are at risk of neglect and abuse as well as long-term damage to their emotional development and self-esteem. A number of survivors of physical and sexual abuse have been referred to the National Centre for Mental Health and Deafness, Preston. Some of these referrals have been inappropriate and due to a dearth of local resources. Extremely little support is available for deaf people who have been or are being abused. There are few appropriately trained counsellors equipped with the necessary skills in communicating with deaf people and even fewer trained in deaf awareness. A number of risk factors have been identified and are illustrated in this article. Three case studies are described to highlight the issues involved.     

Soft Regionalism in Action: Examining Voluntary Regional Councils’ Structures,Processes and Programs

In the United States, the voluntary regional council is the dominant organizational form used by local, state and federal agencies to address regional issues. However, research addressing the details of their operations including their structures, processes and programs has been limited. This article reports on a survey of thirty of these regional councils that are located in large metropolitan areas. The findings indicate that these councils reflect a form of “soft regionalism.” Primarily, they facilitate, coordinate and energize, but they don’t have the more expansive capabilities of consolidations, regional governments and annexations.     

The effects of governing board configuration on profound organizational change in hospitals

This study extends the literature on governing boards and organizational change by examining how governing board configurations have influenced profound organizational change in U.S. hospitals, and the conditions under which such change occurs. Hospitals governed by boards that more closely resembled a corporate governance model were more likely to experience positive changes such as diversification and merger and less likely to undergo negative changes such as closure. Organizational performance influenced change, but largely independent of governance configurations. Only in the case of closure did we find that governance configuration operated jointly with organizational performance.     

British sociology and public intellectuals: consumer society and imperial decline

The following is the lecture given for the BJS 2005 Public Sociology Debate given at the London School of Economics and Political Science on ll October 2005. This lecture on the character of British sociology provides a pretext for a more general inquiry into public intellectual life in postwar Britain. The argument put forward falls into several distinctive sections. First, British social science has depended heavily on the migration of intellectuals, especially Jewish intellectuals who were refugees from fascism. Second, intellectual innovation requires massive, disruptive, violent change. Third, British sociology did nevertheless give rise to a distinctive tradition of social criticism in which one can argue there were (typically home-grown) public intellectuals. The main theme of their social criticism was to consider the constraining and divisive impact of social class, race and gender on the enjoyment of expanding social citizenship. Fourth, postwar British sociology came to be dominated by the analysis of an affluent consumer society. Finally, the main failure of British sociology in this postwar period was the absence of any sustained, macro-sociological analysis of the historical decline of Britain as a world power in the twentieth century.     

Classical sociology and cosmopolitanism: a critical defence of the social

It is frequently argued that classical sociology, if not sociology as a whole, cannot provide any significant insight into globalization, primarily because its assumptions about the nation-state, national cultures and national societies are no longer relevant to a global world. Sociology cannot consequently contribute to a normative debate about cosmopolitanism, which invites us to consider loyalties and identities that reach beyond the nation-state. My argument considers four principal topics. First, I defend the classical legacy by arguing that classical sociology involved the study of 'the social' not national societies. This argument is illustration by reference to Emile Durkheim and Talcott Parsons. Secondly, Durkheim specifically developed the notion of a cosmopolitan sociology to challenge the nationalist assumptions of his day. Thirdly, I attempt to develop a critical version of Max Weber's verstehende soziologie to consider the conditions for critical recognition theory in sociology as a necessary precondition of cosmopolitanism. Finally, I consider the limitations of some contemporary versions of global sociology in the example of 'flexible citizenship' to provide an empirical case study of the limitations of globalization processes and 'sociology beyond society'. While many institutions have become global, some cannot make this transition. Hence, we should consider the limitations on as well as the opportunities for cosmopolitan sociology.     

Guilty or not? A path model of women's sexual force fantasies

This study estimated a path model of women's forceful sexual fantasies. Constructs examined were childhood sexual abuse, feminist beliefs, sexual guilt, erotophilia, and sexual experience. The study clarifies how these factors mediate one another in relationship to forceful sexual fantasies, and is first to examine the effects of feminist beliefs on forceful sexual fantasy. Adult women (N = 261) participated by completing an online survey. A path from sex guilt to forceful sexual fantasy, mediated by erotophilia, was found, wherein low levels of sex guilt and high levels of erotophilia were found to predict forceful sexual fantasy. A direct path between childhood sexual abuse and forceful sexual fantasy was also found. The resulting model is discussed in relation to previously-proposed theories on the role of force in women's sexual fantasies.