Biracial Identity Theory and Research Juxtaposed with Narrative Accounts of a Biracial Individual

With the increase in mixed-racial parentage in North America comes increased scholarly activity intended to bring greater understanding to the biracial experience. Such efforts, while undoubtedly informative and helpful, fall short when set aside the actual narrative accounts of a biracial individual’s life experience. In this paper I first explore the typical, negative, portrayal of the biracial experience found within social scientific literature, and then compare this with the narrative accounts of a biracial individual. Through this exercise it is shown that factors such as the specific racial parentage and socio-cultural context can have a positive effect on what usually is viewed as a problematic psychosocial experience.     

Semi-parametric analysis of multi-rater data

Datasets that are subjectively labeled by a number of experts are becoming more common in tasks such as biological text annotation where class definitions are necessarily somewhat subjective. Standard classification and regression models are not suited to multiple labels and typically a pre-processing step (normally assigning the majority class) is performed. We propose Bayesian models for classification and ordinal regression that naturally incorporate multiple expert opinions in defining predictive distributions. The models make use of Gaussian process priors, resulting in great flexibility and particular suitability to text based problems where the number of covariates can be far greater than the number of data instances. We show that using all labels rather than just the majority improves performance on a recent biological dataset.     

Investigating the Moderating Effects of Leader–Member Exchange in the Psychological Contract Breach–Employee Performance Relationship: A Test of Two Competing Perspectives

Leader–member exchange (LMX) has been characterized as a form of social support capable of buffering the effects of negative work experiences. However, employees with high‐quality relationships with leaders in the organization may have stronger negative reactions when psychological contracts are breached. Thus, while a social support perspective would suggest that LMX minimizes the adverse impact of psychological contract breach on employee performance, a betrayal perspective proposes that high LMX would aggravate the negative effects. Using cross‐sectional and longitudinal research designs, results across three samples provided support for the betrayal perspective. That is, breach had a stronger negative relationship with organizational citizenship behaviours and in‐role performance under conditions of high LMX. Implications of these results and future research directions are discussed.     

The education of the American political elite: 1949–2001

The two primary objectives of the paper are to develop a more complete and precise profile of the educational experiences of national political leaders and to use that profile to illuminate several significant aspects of the American educational system and process. The universe of the study consists of 578 presidents, vice-presidents, cabinet members, Supreme Court Justices, and congressional leaders in office from the beginning of the first full Truman administration in early 1949 through the end of the second Clinton administration in early 2001. Among the principal conclusions are that a graduate or professional degree is a prerequisite for attaining high-public office and that political elites are more extensively, but less exclusively, educated than top leaders of other sectors of American society. Twelve American universities, and one foreign institution, have had a consistently disproportionate impact on elite education for a long period of time. Having a law school significantly enhances an institution's contribution to elite education. The training of the American political elite is characterized by both institutional pluralism and homogeneity.     

Practitioner accounts of responding to parent abuse – a case study in ad hoc delivery,perverse outcomes and a policy silence

Parent abuse is becoming recognized as a serious problem in some families. It can have a damaging impact on physical and mental health, family relationships and employment and has been found to be implicated in other past, current and future forms of family abuse and violence. For this reason, many frontline practitioners who work with troubled families frequently find incidents of parent abuse in their caseloads, but we know little of how they respond to it. This study used in‐depth interviews with nine practitioners who work in a range of agencies in one large county in England and explored how they each identify, conceptualize, explain and respond to parent abuse. In a context where there is no national guidance regarding how agencies should respond to this problem, this study finds that practitioners must ‘make do’ without appropriate resources or policy guidance to help them. The study concludes with suggestions for change for the benefit of families who seek support but who currently find little effective response.     

Some Like It Mellow: On Gay Men Complicating Pornography Discourses

Despite the proliferation of writing on pornography generally, much of the literature that focuses on gay pornography specifically conforms to either a pro- or anti-porn framework. This overly simplistic dichotomy positions pornography as a homogeneous construct, albeit one that is either “good” or “bad.” Even theorists who situate pornography on a continuum, with erotica at one end and hardcore at the other, tend to reify these discourses. Further, it is not uncommon for researchers to draw conclusions about the effects of pornography consumption without defining exactly what pornography is. This ethnographic research draws on qualitative interviews with 20 consumers’ of gay pornography in Toronto, Canada. By using a thematic analysis to document the ways in which gay men define, distinguish, and conceptualize gay pornography, five definitional categories were developed: Mellow; Commercial; Raunch; Amateur; and Bareback. These broad conceptualizations are discussed in reference to writing on gay pornography. Our research results emphasize the importance of clear definitions of pornography within pornography research.     

Brahmin Left versus Merchant Right? Education,class, multiparty competition,and redistribution in Western Europe

In this article, we revisit the main claims of Part Four of Thomas Piketty's Capital and Ideology and especially the changing support coalitions for parties of the left. Piketty's core argument in this part of the book is that the left now represents the highly educated and that, as a result, the redistributive preferences of the working class do not find representation in today's party systems. We address these claims building on existing political science research that has investigated the transformation of politics in advanced capitalist societies. We argue, first, that the educational divide cannot be adequately analyzed by looking at a left and a right bloc, but crucially needs to pay attention to the rise of green/left‐libertarian and radical right parties. Second, we contend that the new middle classes that support parties of the left are largely in favor of economic redistribution. Analyzing data from the European Social Survey in 11 West European countries from 2002 to 2018, we show that the effect of education on voting left or right is indeed largely driven by green/left‐libertarian and radical right parties, while there is little empirical evidence that social democratic parties represent the educational elite. We also find that redistributive preferences remain at the heart of voting behavior and that, especially for educated voters, these preferences determine whether someone votes for a party of the left rather than the right.