Racial stability: A community decision

The development of the issue of racial stability is traced in a Chicago suburb through analysis of key actors, organizations, and rules of the political process. A transition from race to class and form the community level to a consortium of municipalities is observed and explained through reference to demographic, ideological, geographic, and strategic factors. The experience of this suburb is argued to represent a pattern which may be useful in other suburban venues.     

The race relations “Problematic” in American sociology: Revisiting Niemonen’s case study and critique

Using articles drawn from the years 1996-1999, this paper updates and expands Jack Niemonen’s 1997 TAS analysis of the articles dealing with race and ethnicity in the four core sociology journals. We found a greater rate of publication and several new substantive areas incorporating race and ethnicity, but many of the patterns Niemonen identified remain in place. These articles are highly quantitative, rely heavily on U.S. Census categories, tend to explain racial and ethnic phenomenon as by-products of broader social forces (such as class-based stratification), and subsume these analyses under the headings of alternative subfields. Niemonen used these findings to offer a powerful critique of the status of race and ethnicity in sociology, the under-development of the racial and ethnic relations “problematic,” and its marginalization within the discipline as a whole. To reassess these interpretations and conclusions, we examined the relationships between methodology and substance, and compared the main sample with a subset of more specialized articles focused on race and ethnicity. We found a close connection between quantitative methods and the use of Census definitions of race and ethnicity, but surprisingly few differences between the race and ethnic subset and the more inclusive main sample appeared. These findings allow us to offer support and some important qualifications to Niemonen’s original conclusions. We would like to thank Jordan Bartlett for serving as our research assistant on this project, and the members of the Fall 2000 Race Theory Seminar at the University of Minnesota (Sociology 8211) who participated in and gave commentary on a preliminary version of this study. Thanks also to Professor Jack Niemonen who communicated at length with us about his coding procedures and even consented to code a number of articles for us.     

Undergraduate research experience as preparation for graduate school

Graduate students learn to be sociologists in part by doing research. Many undergraduate institutions whose roles have been primarily defined by teaching have inadequately addressed the need of their students to obtain research experience. When such opportunities are available, and when they are properly structured and coordinated with the undergraduate curriculum, advantages accrue to both students and the profession. This paper examines curricular and extracurricular ways to strengthen undergraduate research opportunities as preparation for graduate school. It is suggested that such preparation is also beneficial to many students who do not go on to graduate school. His primary research areas are methodology and urban sociology. He is currently working on models of urban housing markets and neighborhood change and is editing a book on those topics with Donald J. Bogue. This research was supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation (8852039).     

Probleme eines Feldzugangs zu Eliten

While young researchers in the field of social sciences are taught how to identify potential target groups for their interviews as well as to identify the appropriate survey and interpretation techniques, the actual access to the field poses a difficult problem (there is great potential for frustration when some requests for interviews are rejected). Usually, the specific motives for such a non-response stay unresolved. Access is even harder when the target group includes representatives of elite groups (e. g. top managers) - a group that is characterised by intense time pressure and typical behaviour patterns (both are factors which increase the difficulty of access to that group). This article aims to give a detailed outline of this problem from contribution and status related perspectives and to provide solutions for young researchers to enable them experiencing the field entry process (as far as putting a foot in the manager’s office) as challenging, but controllable.     

Identity development and self-esteem of young adolescents in foster care

For adolescents in foster care progress towards achieving the developmental tasks of adolescence may be more challenging because of the additional stress of being separated from their birth families. Examined in this study is the influence of identification with birth family on the ability of 116 youth in foster care, in a midwestern state, to develop a self-identity and positive self-esteem.     

Determinanten der Lebensqualität psychisch kranker Personen

Not only chronic mental disease, but also psycho-social factors limit the quality of life (QoL) of mentally ill persons. From three theoretical explanation models of QoL — the medical model, labeling theory, and stress process model — we deduced three hypotheses. To test our hypotheses, we re-analysed data from the study “Social integration and quality of life of mentally ill people”. Data were derived from structured interviews with 305 in-patients in psychiatric institutions in the Canton of Zurich (Switzerland), and completed with few informations from their doctors’ files. Various QoL dimensions entered the statistical analyses as dependent variables. Results indicate varied explanation power of the models under investigation depending on the dimension of QoL: psychic symptoms highly influence the health-related QoL, but have only small effects on social and material QoL. Social as well as material QoL are strongly influenced by social support as well as, though to a lesser extent, by life stress events. Chronification of mental illness and perceived discrimination because of the mental disease indirectly affect QoL through reduced social support and increased psychic symptoms. From our results we conclude that social integration and rehabilitation of mentally ill people require a bio-psycho-social treatment approach.     

A learning collaborative approach to training school-based health providers in evidence-based mental health treatment

Collaborative care models among pediatric primary care and child and adolescent mental health providers are increasingly emphasized to improve quality of and access to mental health services. The current case example of a multi-site clinical training opportunity in school-based collaborative care settings illustrates the success of a learning collaborative approach to improve children's mental health care in schools. Quality improvement data from participating sites indicated an increase in use of evidence-based practices (i.e., “core skills”) and an improvement in quality service delivery indicators for children's mental health (i.e., screening, risk assessment, diagnostic processes, associated diagnostic coding, use of core skills, associated procedural coding, and follow-up assessment and referral) over time. Clinician self-report and chart review data are supplemented by qualitative data from site leader interviews conducted following completion of the project. Implications for mental health workforce development to improve the quality of care to children and adolescents in schools and other community mental health settings are discussed.     

PEOPLE AND PLACES: WELFARE REFORM AND THE SEPARATE EFFECT OF CASELOAD CHARACTERISTICS AND LOCAL CONDITIONS

An intersectional feminist approach informs qualitative content analyses of gender and trade advocacy websites in order to gain insights into the relation between trade liberalization and women in the global South. Findings include these websites are advocating for more representation in policymaking institutions spanning the global and local divide; emphasizing the need for networks within and outside institutions; and advocating for alternatives to free trade. The diverse and often contradictory understandings and strategies displayed by these websites arise from concern with giving voice to local needs and women in the South. These findings underscore the contributions a feminist approach makes to global political economy research by bringing attention to the heterogeneity of global political economic processes and power relations, and providing insights as to how global counter-hegemonic efforts can embrace diversity rather than being homogenizing.     

DO LAB EXPERIMENTS MISREPRESENT SOCIAL PREFERENCES? THE CASE OF SELF‐SELECTED STUDENT SAMPLES

Social preference research has received considerable attention among economists in recent years. However, the empirical foundation of social preferences is largely based on laboratory experiments with self‐selected students as participants. This is potentially problematic as students participating in experiments may behave systematically different than nonparticipating students or nonstudents. In this paper we empirically investigate whether laboratory experiments with student samples misrepresent the importance of social preferences. Our first study shows that students who exhibit stronger prosocial inclinations in an unrelated field donation are not more likely to participate in experiments. This suggests that self‐selection of more prosocial students into experiments is not a major issue. Our second study compares the behavior of students and participants recruited from the general population in a trust experiment. In general, we find very similar behavioral patterns for the two groups, but nonstudents make significantly more generous repayments suggesting that results from student samples might be seen as a lower bound for the importance of prosocial behavior.