Collecting text messages from college students: Evaluating a novel methodology

Social interaction, particularly in older adolescents, increasingly involves computer‐mediated communication. Although studies of public computer‐mediated communication are increasingly common, studies of private text messaging remain rare. As approaches for obtaining such data evolve with technological advances, developmental scientists need designs in which to use such approaches that reduce sampling biases in both participants and text messages. In this study (n = 854; 46% male; 22% African American, 60% European American), we examined selection biases in the participant sample (i.e., factors associated with actual participation), procedural biases in the participant sample (i.e., factors related to failed data capture due to technological or procedural issues), and selection biases in the sample of text messages (i.e., based on self‐reported reasons for texting). Findings from our study suggest that studying human interaction directly through analysis of text message data is not only feasible, but also may be successfully undertaken with minimal biases regarding sample selection and text message selection among those who are engaged in research and engaged in text messaging outside of the study context. However, biases may occur depending on the type of platform (iPhone vs. Android) used by participants for texting.     

他们不再是孩子了——关于“新失业群体”现状的社会学报告

近些年来在关于下岗失业问题的研究中形成的一个思维定势是,人们所说的失业下岗往往针对的仅是国有企业的失业下岗人员,至多将原来集体企业的失业下岗人员包括在内。但事实上,在我们的社会中,还存在另外一个数目庞大的失业群体,这个群体至今很少受到人们的关注,他们就是在本文中我们称之为“新失业群体”的这么一批人。对于他们,我们既缺少一个经验层面上的全面描述,更没有在政策层面上对他们进行充分的讨论,至于理论层面的梳理,就更是凤毛麟角了。本研究试图为改变这一现状做一个初步的尝试,不过,首先,我们必须阐明我们所使用的概念及意义…     

Branded: The Economic Geographies of Streets Named in Honor of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King,Jr.*

Objectives. We investigate the economic geographies of streets named for Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK Streets), which are an increasingly common means by which various community members across the United States are attempting to commemorate the slain civil rights leader. It is our intent to characterize these negatively “branded” spaces in order to challenge some of the common perceptions about them and inform current and future MLK Street naming debates. Methods. We statistically analyze nonresidential establishments located on streets named for King in terms of scale (as measured by annual sales and employment) and industrial classification. To our knowledge, this is the first such analysis conducted at the national level. Results. Establishments located on MLK Streets do not systematically exhibit economic marginality. Establishments located on these streets do systematically exhibit unique local functions and industrial composition. Conclusion. In the absence of empirically‐driven research, the negative stereotypes that surround MLK Streets have gone unchallenged and are proliferating. The research reported here calls into question a number of these stereotypes and should inform the public, city councils, and other local policymakers, who are increasingly being faced with contentious MLK Street naming debates.     

Educational inequality across three generations in Australia

The transfer of advantage and disadvantage across multiple generations is receiving increasing attention in the international literature; however, transfers of resources across multiple generations in Australian families are less well understood. Using a longitudinal dataset of Australian children, we have the opportunity to not only investigate the transfer of educational resources across three generations in Australia, but also investigate the gendered nature of these transfers, which has been a limitation of other studies. We find no evidence of individual grandparent education effects on numeracy and reading scores for grandchildren in Year 3, independent of parent educational attainment and other covariates. However, significant effects on numeracy and reading scores were observed for children in families where both the grandmother and grandfather in maternal and paternal grandparent sets had high educational attainment (a diploma or university qualification), and where either or both the mother and father had a university qualification. These results suggest that the contribution of grandparents to the academic achievement of grandchildren cannot be fully explained by the parent generation and that the concentration of human capital in families contributes to educational inequalities across multiple generations that can be observed by eight years of age.     

Relations Between Alphabetized Name Order and Nomination Counts in Peer Nomination Measures

Peer nominations, a central method for measuring peer relationships in developmental research, typically involve asking children or adolescents to choose peers who fit various criteria from an alphabetized roster of classmates or grade‐mates. Although such measures have been used for decades, very little research has investigated the effects of alphabetical name order on the number of nominations received by peers. This study collected peer nominations for 20 items among 607 eighth grade participants in two schools. Regression analyses showed that earlier name order significantly predicted higher nomination counts for eight of the items, and explained over 5 percent of the variance in four affective variables (friendship, acceptance, acquaintanceship, and received liking). Across variables, name order effects were negatively correlated with internal reliability of nominations, implying that order effects may be related to the consensus of the peer group. Name order also had a minimal effect on inter‐correlations among a subset of variables. Implications and concrete recommendations for controlling and reducing name order effects in future research are discussed.     

Populism as a fantasmatic rupture in the post-political order: integrating Laclau with Glynos and Stavrakakis

ABSTRACT

The recent challenges of populist movements to the ‘post-democratic horizon’ in Greece and elsewhere have highlighted its possibilities as a political force able to mount a challenge to the technocratic logics of the neoliberal consensus. The theoretical perspective of Ernesto Laclau, which focuses on the rhetorical act of naming ‘the people’ and extrinsic representative form over intrinsic content, thus becomes increasingly valuable to explore such possibilities and to account for the current ubiquity of populist articulations both here in New Zealand and further afield. However, the need to clarify and iron out any inconsistencies in Laclau’s approach also increases, and the main task of this article is to raise the consideration of how it could be supplemented by, and articulated with, the Lacanian psychoanalytic concepts of fantasy and jouissance. Analysis of a selection of John Key’s populist articulations in the New Zealand media, and photographs from Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) protests, reveal that both forms of populist articulation, while constructing very different visions of ‘the people’, hinge on the fantasmatic representation of an other; an antagonistic power who steals our enjoyment. However, I conclude that a normative assessment of populist articulations is both possible and necessary.