Socioeconomic inequality and adjustments in children’s perceptions of their agency as they age in South Korea

This paper explores how children's perceptions of their agency, as something that is closely associated with its exercise, appear in relation to social structural factors, especially their socioeconomic positions, as they age. Using data from 862 10–18 years old in South Korea, we examine how children's expressed optimism about their ability to achieve their occupational choices can conceal the impact of structural factors on their ‘choices’ and dispositions for (non‐)action over time. Based on the findings, we argue for a more careful interpretation of children's sense of agency that recognises its propensity to continuously adjust in contexts of structural inequality.     

Editors’ introduction to the special issue on the sociology of digital technology

Theory and Society - An increasing number of sociologists today are examining the social production of digital technology. Although younger researchers may be digital natives and write from...     

From comedy targets to comedy-makers: disability and comedy in live performance

The stand-up comedy landscape has been transformed in recent years with an increased number of disabled comedians performing. Using semi-structured interviews with disabled comedians, this article provides a thematic analysis of the material and ideological motives, intentions and lived experiences of disabled comedians. Two themes are discussed: comedy management and control; and affirming disability through comedy. These themes are characterised by complexity and contradictions. The article concludes that, although not a straightforward process, stand-up comedy enacted by disabled comedians is potentially a powerful tool through which hegemonic norms around disability can be challenged and renegotiated.     

A Probabilistic Model of the Economic Risk to Britain's Railway Network from Bridge Scour During Floods

Scour (localized erosion by water) is an important risk to bridges, and hence many infrastructure networks, around the world. In Britain, scour has caused the failure of railway bridges crossing rivers in more than 50 flood events. These events have been investigated in detail, providing a data set with which we develop and test a model to quantify scour risk. The risk analysis is formulated in terms of a generic, transferrable infrastructure network risk model. For some bridge failures, the severity of the causative flood was recorded or can be reconstructed. These data are combined with the background failure rate, and records of bridges that have not failed, to construct fragility curves that quantify the failure probability conditional on the severity of a flood event. The fragility curves generated are to some extent sensitive to the way in which these data are incorporated into the statistical analysis. The new fragility analysis is tested using flood events simulated from a spatial joint probability model for extreme river flows for all river gauging sites in Britain. The combined models appear robust in comparison with historical observations of the expected number of bridge failures in a flood event. The analysis is used to estimate the probability of single or multiple bridge failures in Britain's rail network. Combined with a model for passenger journey disruption in the event of bridge failure, we calculate a system‐wide estimate for the risk of scour failures in terms of passenger journey disruptions and associated economic costs.     

Assessing Young Caregivers’ Feelings About Helping: Pilot Test of a New Scale

Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal - Millions of young people under age 18 assist family members with basic activities of daily living. Current research focuses on how caregiving contributes...     

Pathways to a Stable Union? Pregnancy and Childbearing Among Cohabiting and Married Couples

This study analyzes the stability of cohabiting and marital unions following a first birth. But unlike previous research, it compares the subsequent trajectories of unions that began with a pregnancy to those in which conceptions came after coresidence. The U.S. data from the 2006–2010 and 2011–2013 cross-sectional files of the National Survey of Family Growth indicate that roughly 1-in-5 first births were associated with rapid transitions from conception into either cohabitation or marriage. Moving in together following a pregnancy—especially an unintended one—is unlikely to lead to marital success or union stability. Compared with marital unions, dissolution rates following birth were particularly high for couples who entered a cohabiting union following conception. Only a small minority of these couples married (i.e., less than one-third), and these marriages experienced high dissolution rates. The results also suggest that the most committed cohabiting couples got married after finding themselves pregnant, leaving behind the most dissolution-prone cohabiting couples. The American family system is being transformed by newly emerging patterns of fertility among cohabiting couples.     

Toward an agency-centered iterative approach to social movement repression

There is a significant amount of research that analyzes the consequences of repression on social movement mobilization. Yet most studies do not examine the strategic agency of protesters, who can avoid, minimize, or transform punitive sanctions. In this article, I call for an agency-centered approach that highlights the iterative dynamics between protesters and agents of repression, emphasizing that the consequences of repression are largely shaped by activists' responses. Reviewing the literature on this topic, I summarize common methods of repression used by both the state and private citizens—such as information gathering, planting provocateurs, legal harassment, and direct violence. I also discuss movement counter-methods for muting the impact of repression, which include tactical shifts, decentralized organizational structures, and obstructing surveillance technologies, among others. While researchers have documented typical methods of social control, we must also capture protesters' tool kit of strategic responses that enable movements to persist during periods of repression.     

Resource use of rural low-income families caring for children with disabilities

The Personal Responsibility Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, Pub.L. 104-193 (PRWORA) was passed creating the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program. Since the passage of PRWORA, many families were able to leave the welfare rolls while those remaining on welfare were likely composed of families facing barriers to leaving, such as caring for children with disabilities. This project addresses the gaps in knowledge regarding low-income families caring for children with disabilities by conducting qualitative research investigating the resources used by these families to find and keep employment and child care. The study used a sample from a research project entitled ‘Rural Families Speak’ and examined the data of 26 families caring for children with disabilities. Analysis resulted in policy recommendations for increasing the efficacy of the programs designed to help these families.     

Bias and precision of measures of survival gain from right‐censored data

In cost‐effectiveness analyses of drugs or health technologies, estimates of life years saved or quality‐adjusted life years saved are required. Randomised controlled trials can provide an estimate of the average treatment effect; for survival data, the treatment effect is the difference in mean survival. However, typically not all patients will have reached the endpoint of interest at the close‐out of a trial, making it difficult to estimate the difference in mean survival. In this situation, it is common to report the more readily estimable difference in median survival. Alternative approaches to estimating the mean have also been proposed. We conducted a simulation study to investigate the bias and precision of the three most commonly used sample measures of absolute survival gain – difference in median, restricted mean and extended mean survival – when used as estimates of the true mean difference, under different censoring proportions, while assuming a range of survival patterns, represented by Weibull survival distributions with constant, increasing and decreasing hazards. Our study showed that the three commonly used methods tended to underestimate the true treatment effect; consequently, the incremental cost‐effectiveness ratio (ICER) would be overestimated. Of the three methods, the least biased is the extended mean survival, which perhaps should be used as the point estimate of the treatment effect to be inputted into the ICER, while the other two approaches could be used in sensitivity analyses. More work on the trade‐offs between simple extrapolation using the exponential distribution and more complicated extrapolation using other methods would be valuable. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.