Occupational Prestige Hierarchy: Methodological Artifact or Cultural Category System

Occupational prestige findings are among the most stable, replicable findings in all of sociology. Yet, the “cognitive reality” underlying these findings has never been clearly established. Based on the responses provided by students to three questionnaires and comparative data from the more recent NORC study of occupational prestige, the research described in this paper investigates two hypotheses: 1) the occupational rankings resulting from the five‐point scale used in the NORC studies reflect highly differentiated evaluations in the minds of respondents; and 2) occupational prestige rankings form a unidimensional scale. Both of these hypotheses were supported. Not only is the occupational prestige hierarchy highly differentiated in the minds of individuals, it is predominantly a single dimension about which there is substantial agreement. The implications of these findings are briefly discussed.     

Assessing the Unidimensionality of Psychological Scales: Using Multiple Criteria from Factor Analysis

Whenever one uses a composite scale score from item responses, one is tacitly assuming that the scale is dominantly unidimensional. Investigating the unidimensionality of item response data is an essential component of construct validity. Yet, there is no universally accepted technique or set of rules to determine the number of factors to retain when assessing the dimensionality of item response data. Typically factor analysis is used with the eigenvalues-greater-than-one rule, the ratio of first-to-second eigenvalues, parallel analysis, root-mean-square-error-of-approximation, or hypothesis testing approaches involving chi-square tests from Maximum Likelihood or Generalized Least Squares estimation. The purpose of this study was to investigate how these various procedures perform individually, and in combination, when assessing the unidimensionality of item response data via a computer simulated design. Conditions such as sample size, magnitude of communality, distribution of item responses, proportion of communality on second factor, and the number of items with non-zero loadings on the second factor were varied. Results indicate that there was no one individual decision-making method that identified unidimensionality under all conditions manipulated. Given the low communalities, all individual decision-making methods failed to detect unidimensionality for the combination where sample size was small, magnitude of communality was low, and item distributions were skewed. A set of guidelines and a new statistical methodology are provided for researchers.     

Strengthening Resource Mobilization Chains: Developing the Social Media Competencies of Community and Voluntary Organizations in New Zealand

There is potential for nonprofit organizations to increase effectiveness by mobilizing social media to help achieve goals. However, the sector is only just becoming aware of the possibilities for social media and lags behind other sectors in its use. We report a New Zealand initiative to enhance the capability of nonprofit organizations through action research that has implications for nonprofit organizations elsewhere. Borrowing from resource mobilization theory, we introduce the concept of resource mobilization chains to explain the requirements for and obstacles to taking advantage of social media. A survey and two in-depth case studies found that nonprofit organizations demonstrated extremely limited familiarity with and use of social media. Participants were enthusiastic about the potential of mobilizing social media to achieve organizational goals, but struggled to take concrete steps to implement their aspirations. Lack of resources was a key obstacle identified in both survey and case study research.     

Disparities in Human Papillomavirus Vaccine Literacy and Vaccine Completion Among Asian American Pacific Islander Undergraduates: Implications for Cancer Health Equity

Abstract

Purpose: Low rates of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination among young Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) women need to be addressed, particularly given the high incidence of cervical cancer in this population. The current study aims to investigate predictors of HPV vaccination in young AAPI and non-Latina white (NLW) women. Methods: A secondary data analysis was conducted of a health survey administered to college-aged women (N = 2,270) at a large public university in the Midwest. Andersen's behavioral model of health services utilization guided the study theoretically, and hierarchical logistic regression analysis was conducted to investigate research aim. Results: NLW women had a significantly higher rate of vaccine completion than AAPI women (NLW = 60.7%; AAPI = 38.6%). NLW women also scored higher on all 5 measures of HPV vaccine literacy than AAPI women. Both groups of undergraduate women reported that increasing age, knowledge about HPV, greater use of gynecological services, and knowing someone who had cancer were significant factors related to HPV vaccination completion. In the NLW group, father's income was also found to be a predictor of HPV vaccination completion. Conclusions: Rate and predictors of HPV vaccination completion vary between NLW and AAPI women. Greater promotion of HPV literacy and gynecological service use should be made to young AAPI women to increase their HPV uptake. Further research should examine sociocultural factors that could hinder or promote HPV vaccination in young AAPI women.     

Transitioning Through College With Diabetes: Themes Found in Online Forums

Abstract

Objective: Content analysis of Internet-based diabetes forum text was used to examine the experiences encountered by students with diabetes transitioning into and through college. Participants: Forum posts (N = 238) regarding attending college with diabetes were collected and analyzed. Methods: Thematic coding was used to identify prominent topics, followed by analysis of theme distribution across college transitional stages. Three students with diabetes were recruited to review results and corroborate findings. Results: Twenty thematic categories were identified. Preparation for college involved efforts to move toward autonomous diabetes management. Transitioning in was marked by adjusting to a college lifestyle, then working to manage issues such as busy schedules and alcohol use as continuing students, and turning attention toward future career options and finances while transitioning out. Conclusions: As they move into and through college, students with diabetes negotiate developmental and diabetes-specific tasks within an environment that presents unique logistical, lifestyle, and psychological challenges.     

Work and Family Research in the First Decade of the 21st Century

Scholarship on work and family topics expanded in scope and coverage during the 2000–2010 decade, spurred by an increased diversity of workplaces and of families, by methodological innovations, and by the growth of communities of scholars focused on the work‐family nexus. We discuss these developments as the backdrop for emergent work‐family research on six central topics: (a) gender, time, and the division of labor in the home; (b) paid work: too much or too little; (c) maternal employment and child outcomes; (d) work‐family conflict; (e) work, family, stress, and health; and (f) work‐family policy. We conclude with a discussion of trends important for research and suggestions about future directions in the work‐family arena.     

The Government Communication Decision Wheel: Toward a Public Relations Model for the Public Sector

We argue that the existing public relations and communication models do not adequately account for the unique environmental characteristics of the public sector. By reviewing the public sector environment literature, we identify 8 attributes that affect government public relations: politics, focus on serving the public, legal constraints, extreme media and public scrutiny, lack of managerial support for public relations practitioners, poor public perception of government communication, lagging professional development, and federalism. We then review 5 existing public relations models, arguing that none of these models fully incorporates the unique environmental characteristics of the public sector. We conclude by proposing a new model: the government communication decision wheel.     

Adolescent Adjustment and Patterns of Parents' Behaviors in Early and Middle Adolescence

In this study, we identified unique clusters of parenting behaviors based on parents' school involvement, community involvement, rule‐setting, and cognitive stimulation with data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics—Child Development Supplement. In early (n=668) and middle adolescence (n=634), parents who provided high cognitive stimulation (i.e., cognitive enrichment parents) or engaged in all parenting behaviors (i.e., engaged parents) had the highest family income, parent education, and percentage of European Americans. Adolescents of cognitive enrichment or engaged parents often evidenced the highest academic and social adjustment. Adolescents whose parents set a large number of rules (i.e., “Rule setters”) or were also heavily involved in the community (i.e., the “Managers” cluster) had the lowest adjustment.