Who Gets Custody Now? Dramatic Changes in Children’s Living Arrangements After Divorce

This article reexamines the living arrangements of children following their parents’ divorce, using Wisconsin Court Records, updating an analysis that showed relatively small but significant increases in shared custody in the late 1980s and early 1990s. These changes have accelerated markedly in the intervening years: between 1988 and 2008, the proportion of mothers granted sole physical custody fell substantially, the proportion of parents sharing custody increased dramatically, and father–sole custody remained relatively stable. We explore changes in the correlates of alternative custody outcomes, showing that some results from the earlier analysis still hold (for example, cases with higher total family income are more likely to have shared custody), but other differences have lessened (shared-custody cases have become less distinctive as they have become more common). Despite the considerable changes in marriage and divorce patterns over this period, we do not find strong evidence that the changes in custody are related to changes in the characteristics of families experiencing a divorce; rather, changes in custody may be the result of changes in social norms and the process by which custody is determined.     

Deriving Behavior Model Parameters from Survey Data: Self‐Protective Behavior Adoption During the 2009–2010 Influenza A(H1N1) Pandemic

In this paper, we demonstrate how public opinion surveys can be designed to collect information pertinent to computational behavior modeling, and we present the results of a public opinion and behavior survey conducted during the 2009–2010 H1N1 influenza pandemic. The results are used to parameterize the Health Belief Model of individual health‐protective decision making. Survey subjects were asked questions about their perceptions of the then‐circulating influenza and attitudes towards two personal protective behaviors: vaccination and avoidance of crowds. We empirically address two important issues in applying the Health Belief Model of behavior to computational infectious disease simulation: (1) the factors dynamically influencing the states of the Health Belief Model variables and (2) the appropriateness of the Health Belief Model in describing self‐protective behavior in the context of pandemic influenza.     

What are Research Expectations? A Comparative Study of Different Academic Disciplines

This paper is intended to assist professors, administrators, librarians and other members of university level committees that must consider research expectations and research quality in academic fields that they lack. While this is not a problem for field experts, it is a difficulty when people are asked to make decisions in areas of study other than their own. This is commonly the case for senior university professors, librarians and administrators in regards to university wide decisions. The paper investigates this gap, through a study of 27 academic fields in 348 highly regarded universities. We find that there are almost always statistically significant differences in activity between academic fields, regardless of the metric one considers. However, it is possible to understand these differences by comparing the distribution of a known academic field to that of a field that one is not familiar with. Tables and information are provided to assist in the comparison of different fields of study on metrics such as: departmental publications and researcher level metrics of publications, citations, H-index, and total number of co-authors. The information can also be used to support decisions associated with promotion to senior posts such as endowed chairs and professorships. Information regarding specific universities and researchers are included in the data supplement.     

Decency and the Liberal International (Dis)Order: Moral Limits and the Possibilities of a Global Pluralist Politics

This article analyzes the tension between the liberal ideals of freedom and equality and cultural difference. It argues that decency has become intertwined with the fragility of the liberal international order by providing a problematic threshold of international justice. The idea is that as global pressures mount for protecting the human dignity of persons/peoples, they also congeal or harden decency’s political and social constraints (impartiality, neutrality, and basic rights enforcement) on engaging others. Decency as a moral threshold of international justice, the article claims, has become static or a self-reinforcing limitation. This contradictory decency/dignity dynamic of the liberal international order not only explains how states have aggressively asserted their interests by absorbing these constraints, but also how politics can limit the pragmatic potential to bridge the various social gaps in values and belief systems. This article seeks to conceptualize a pluralist ethos that shows how such constraints can be reimagined as, or turned into, the conditions of possibility/freedom that transition us to a global pluralist politics. It concludes with a discussion of the refugee crisis and Islamism, showing how both cases resonate the felt stigmatization and alienation within the liberal international order.     

A Unified Way to Represent and Compute the Cumulative Distribution Function for Noncentral t,F, and χ2

This short article shows an unified approach to representing and computing the cumulative distribution function for noncentral t, F, and χ². Unlike the existing algorithms, which involve different expansion and/or recurrence, the new approach consistently represents all the three noncentral cumulative distribution functions as the integral of the normal cumulative distribution function and χ² density function.     

Stop the Beat: Quiet Regulation and Cultural Conflict1

This article explores a recent conflict over the youth phenomenon known as “raving” in the City of Chicago. By interviewing participants involved in the conflict, I set out to understand the extent to which the crackdown on raves in Chicago was similar to earlier social reactions to jazz, comic books, rock and roll, and Dead Head culture, as well as to more recent conflicts over punk, rap music, and raves in other cities. While most previous research on cultural conflict has focused on moral crusades, campaigns, and panics, the Chicago conflict represents an example of “quiet regulation.” Opponents refrained from highly visible, morally charged attacks; instead, in the absence of media hype and visible public discourse, public officials justified the crackdown in highly bureaucratic terms—avoiding risk, collecting taxes, enforcing codes. Nonetheless, they also drew on cultural schemas that linked raves and raving with drugs, sex, and deviance. As a result, officials selected a course of regulation that criminalized DJs and discredited the artform. In the absence of a highly visible moral campaign, the rave participants were unable to mobilize and resist the regulation and defend their lifestyle. Sociologists must move beyond highly visible campaigns and crusades and pay greater attention to quiet regulation, both because such regulation is likely to increase in the future and because it has significant consequences for power, cultural expression, and identity.     

A new goodness of fit test for the equality of multinomial cell probabilities versus trend alternatives

In this paper, a new test statistic is presented for testing the null hypothesis of equal multinomial cell probabilities versus various trend alternatives. Exact asymptotic critical values are obtained, The power of the test is compared with several other statistics considered by Choulakian et al (1995), The test is shown to have better power for certain trend alternatives.     

Neo‐liberalism by Decay? The Evolution of the Czech Welfare State

In this article we analyse the evolution of the Czech welfare state and we examine the factors explaining its path. We show that although the Czech welfare regime exhibits a 'mixed profile' that includes conservative and universalist elements, it is increasingly moving in a more liberal, residualist direction – not because of conscious steps but rather through decay. Governments have often zig-zagged in their policies and resorted to symbolic reforms at times rather than implementing ideologically based, consistent policies. We argue that historical and sociological institutionalism combined with a social-capital approach can explain this decay better than the more common arguments about economic pressures combined with ideological hegemony or the protest-avoidance strategy. In particular, the social capital approach adds to our institutional framework by explaining why cutbacks in welfare programmes have not met much opposition, even though public opinion surveys consistently show support for more generous welfare policies, and why policies have deviated so much from political rhetoric.     

从"权利"到"仪式":南非的艾滋病行动主义

在本文中,我考察了南非HIV/AIDS行动主义的道德政治如何有助于公民身份(citizen-ship)新形式的出现,这种新形式既与基于权利(rights-based)的斗争相关,又与个体HIV/AIDS患者对病痛和污名化(stigmatization)极端体验的共享意义相关。我指出,可以确定的是,正是晚期艾滋病患者"接近死亡"的绝境体验、以及与这种疾病晚期阶段相连的巨大污名和"社会死亡",为HIV/AIDS的幸存者对"新生命"和社会行动主义的委身提供了平台。行动主义者的干预和对这些创伤经验的重述也推动了HIV/AIDS对行动主义的委身和社会底层的动员。此外,污名和社会死亡的巨大否定性也驱使行动主义者重建对HIV检测呈阳性人群新的、正面的身份认同,并促使他们思考,作为一名公民-行动主义者和一项社会运动的成员意味着什么。