The Statistics and Registration Service Act

"When we first saw the draft act, we were dismayed." The new Act for the independence of official statistics has now passed into law. Is the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) still dismayed? Tim Holt , President of the RSS, explains the Act, its workings, how parts of it have been changed for the better and what concerns still remain.     

Representations of Labour: Visual Sociology and Work

This paper explores the potential that visual methods, approaches, and resources offer to the sociologist of work. It looks at the way work is represented in a range of publications and asks questions about what the visual can add to our understanding of the workplace, workers, and work processes. It argues that we need to develop and expand a sociological language of the visual in order to better understand cultural and other aspects of work and employment.     

Transformative power: a study in a human service organization

This article focuses upon the relationship between power and organizational change. It specifically considers the question of under what conditions and utilising what tactics can people be induced to see their organizational existence in new ways. At the same time it focuses upon the basis of resistance to the methods employed within the organization and in so doing delineates the limits of such transformative power. For these purposes, it draws upon a three-year study conducted in the probation service and employs Callon's concept of a sociology of translation alongside the ideas of Weber and Foucault. The argument then extends beyond the probation service to note that the form and methods of these tactics are currently being employed throughout the public sector.     

University Administrators as Information Tacticians: Understanding Transparency as Selective Concealment and Instrumental Disclosure

Despite its burgeoning popularity, the concept of administrative transparency has received little attention from interpretivist sociologists. Symbolic interactionism offers a theoretical and methodological agenda for understanding administrative transparency that departs from the more common quantitative‐ and factor‐based approaches. With an emphasis on educational administration, this article defines and examines how university administrators accomplish transparency in their everyday activities. Data from in‐depth semistructured interviews identify administrative transparency as a reflexive act of concealment and disclosure. These activities are further described by what are identified as silent budgetary bargaining and opportunistic budgeting.     

Authors’ response: on the role of data,statistics and decisions in a pandemic

AStA Advances in Statistical Analysis -     

The nostalgia for permanence at work? The end of work and its commentators

This article examines a contemporary trend in the sociology of work that is labelled here the ‘end of work’ debate after Jeremy Rifkin's book of the same name. It explores this trend, suggesting that marked similarities exist between a range of authors in Europe and North America who propose that work regimes and the meaning derived from them are changing fundamentally. This literature is then placed in the context of an older canon on decline in work and employment. Using the insights of newer qualitative studies that have emerged over the last decade it is suggested that much of the ‘end of work’ type of writing over‐generalises a complex situation, suggesting that sociology needs to incorporate macro theorisation with detailed empirical research if it is to properly understand changes in the contemporary world of work.     

Marital stability throughout the child-rearing years

Although there is evidence that the number and ages of children influence marital stability, studies have not systematically tracked the risk of marital disruption throughout the child-rearing years. This study uses marital and fertility histories from the June 1985 Current Population Survey to examine this issue. Continuous-time regression models with ages and numbers of children as time-varying covariates are estimated. Net of controls for age at marriage, year of marriage, education, and marital duration, stability increases with family size up to the third child but starts to decline as family size reaches five or more children. Aging of children is disruptive until the youngest child reaches adulthood, after which marriages become much more stable. Arrival and aging of children is an important dynamic with strong implications for marital stability.     

A Career Readiness Typology and Typal Membership in Middle School

This study explored a career readiness typology of 629 8th‐grade students using the Career Factors Inventory. Data revealed developmentally appropriate elevated needs for information, specifically self‐knowledge. In addition, cluster analysis demonstrated the heterogeneity of career development needs of 8th‐grade students. Typal membership revealed little variance on sociodemographic factors. Career development implications are presented.