Your picture is your bait: use and meaning of cyberspace among gay men

The Internet is seen by many as a form of cyberspace or environment in which to interact and socialise. This research project drew from the data of a quantitative and qualitative study of gay men in Perth, Western Australia. We examined gay men's usage patterns of chat rooms and other social aspects of the Internet to meet sexual partners. We then reviewed in detail the meanings gay men have for the various Internet environments, and the range of friendship, relationship, casual, or esoteric sex-seeking goals. We argue that gay men view and engage with the Internet differently from how they view and engage with other more traditional gay spaces. This different approach influences how interaction between the men, either online or face-to-face, progresses and how assumptions and expectations are built. This has implications for how sexual health promotion interventions determine the appropriate role and relationship they have with these online social spaces.     

Police-reported intimate partner violence during pregnancy: who is at risk?

The objective of this retrospective cohort study was to determine risk factors for police-reported intimate partner violence (IPV) during pregnancy among Seattle residents with a registered live birth or fetal death in Washington State. Logistic regression was used to calculate adjusted odds ratios (aOR) and 95% confidence intervals for the association between demographic, behavioral, and obstetric history risk factors and any, physical, and non-physical police-reported IPV. Significant risk factors for any police-reported IPV during pregnancy included unmarried status (aOR 2.36), public health program use (aOR 1.33), smoking or alcohol use during pregnancy (aORs 1.45 and 1.80, respectively), previous live birth (aOR 1.39), and previous spontaneous or induced abortion (aORs 1.39 and 1.34, respectively). Risk factors for physical IPV varied only slightly from those for any IPV, and fewer factors were associated with nonphysical IPV. Demographic, behavioral, and obstetric history risk factors are potential markers of IPV risk during pregnancy.     

The Dramaturgical Model of Behavior: Its Strengths and Weaknesses*

By means of the dramaturgical model we freshly illuminate social behavior as role-like “performances” in which persons manage the impressions that others get of them. This impression management involves the concealment of data in a “dramatic” struggle with those others who wish to penetrate one's “mask.” But the chief limitations of the dramaturgical model are that it excites the invalid inferences that offstage “roles” are more like stage actors' roles than they really are, and that the person is nothing but these “roles.” The differences between onstage and offstage behavior are kept in view when the metaphorical concept of “role playing” is re-connected to its source in role playing onstage. Through an analysis of theatre and the concepts of appearance and time we conclude that while we must appear to others in a “role-like” way offstage in order to be ourselves, we are nevertheless involved in world-time offstage in a way that fundamentally distinguishes our “role-playing” from an actor's role playing. We are our “roles”, but not just our “roles.”     

Normative,Preferential, and Belief Modes in Adolescent Prejudice*

The concept of attitude often subsumes normative, preferential, and belief components; some attitude scales are composed of items exhibiting two or more of these modalities. Beliefs may, in turn, be classified as reports, stereotypes, consequences, and intentions. This article shows that attitude questions in different modes have differing origins and implications, and that it is an error to continue to use an attitude concept and attitude scales that are modally ambiguous. As well, it is an error to use factor analyses and lack of co-scalability as the only criteria for assessing modality differences within attitude scales. In support of this argument we show that adolescents respond differently to attitude questions concerning school integration that are phrased in the normative, preferential, and belief modes, although these same questions are also found to co-scale. A distinction is made between two ways of learning attitudes: through personal experience and through information from others. On the basis of this distinction, parallel results were predicted and found for preferences and intentions. These differed from results that we predicted and found for norms and stereotypes.     

Race,Region, and Earnings: Blacks and Whites in the South

Abstract Using data from the 1980 Public-Use Micro Sample (PUMS) A-file, we examine the effect of region on black and white earnings within the Black Belt and the rest of the South. We find that Black Belt residence depresses earnings for both blacks and whites, more or less equally. There was no support for the hypothesis that there would be a greater penalty to being black in the Black Belt, compared to being black in the non-Black Belt South. It is the additive effects of race and region that lead to lower earnings for Black Belt blacks. We conclude that region is a useful theoretical concept which needs to be more adequately theorized and incorporated into sociological analyses.     

The impact of institutional changes on corporate governance mechanisms in transition economies

We examine how institutional changes affect corporate governance in transition economies. We develop a transition model that specifies three stages of the transition process including the early, intermediate, and late. We develop a framework for assessing the effectiveness of widely recognized corporate governance mechanisms (CGMs) in and across these stages. Our general proposition is that as transition economies move from early, to intermediate, to late stages, effective CGMs tend to be those that are based on state administrative control power, social networks and private orders, and market forces and formal institutions, respectively. Our study has contributions and implications regarding the transition economies and the impacts of institutions on corporate governance.