HERBERT BLUMER: A PILGRIMAGE WITH PRAGMATISM

This article is an examination of Herbert Blumer's lifelong effort to perpetuate pragmatism raises serious questions about the future of the social sciences. He tried, through critical analyses, to tell social scientists how to make their fields scientific. Opposition to this effort was overwhelming and eventually weakened his own perspective and thus his influence in the discipline. The story of Blumer provides several lessons for future social scientists. It is intended that these lessons to be useful to those who still believe in a scientific social science.     

Some theoretical considerations on confidential adoption part IV: Countertransference

Psychological self-awareness is as essential to the maturation of one's professional self as is the development of theoretical and clinical expertise in child placement. This paper represents a first published attempt at examining countertransference in adoption. The focus is within the context of confidential adoptions, which the authors believe is more child-focused and intrapsychically based than the current experimentation with open adoptions. A distinction is made between countertransference and non-countertransference issues. Countertransference responses are divided into Racker's three categories: the concordant; the complementary; and the disjunctive. Clinical data illustrates these responses in actual practice from the perspective of confidential adoptions.This paper was presented in 1985 before the Illinois Infant Mental Health Association, National Society of Clinical Social Workers, and the National Association of Social Workers National Professional Symposium.This is the last of a series. Parts I, II, and III were published in Vol. 2, Nos. 1, 2, and 3.     

Statistical Properties of Model-Based Signal Extraction Diagnostic Tests

The problem of choosing the loss function in the Bayesian problem of many hypotheses testing is considered. It is shown that linear and quadratic loss functions are the most-used ones. For any kind of loss function, the risk function in the Bayesian problem of many hypotheses testing contains the errors of two kinds. The Bayesian decision rule minimizes the total effect of these errors. The share of each of them in the optimal value of risk function is unknown. When solving many important problems, the results caused by different errors significantly differ from each other. Therefore, it is necessary to guarantee the limitation on the most undesirable kind of these errors and to minimize the errors of the second kind. For solving these problems, this article are states and solves conditional Bayesian tasks of testing many hypotheses. The results of sensitivity analysis of the classical and conditional Bayesian problems are given and their advantages and drawbacks are considered.     

Aquatic landscape change,extirpations, and introductions in the Chicago Region

Urban Ecosystems - Prior to European settlement, swamps, marshes, lakes, and streams were the major landscape features of the Chicago region. Much of this has been altered or lost in the past...     

Surplus Chinese Men: Demographic Determinants of the Sex Ratio at Marriageable Ages in China

We explore the demographic factors contributing to China's unbalanced sex ratio at marriagable ages. We develop a stable population model of the sex ratio at marriagable ages, and compare a series of population projections with alternative underlying assumptions about the key demographic inputs. The stable population model demonstrates that several demographic factors interact to influence the sex ratio at marriagable ages, including the sex ratio at birth, population growth, the age gap of marriage partners, and the sex ratio of survival from birth to marriageable age. The population projections further demonstrate that policies that seek to reduce the sex ratio at birth and the age gap at marriage and, to a lesser extent, increase fertility would be most effective at alleviating the problem. But no demographic changes are likely to occur quickly enough to balance the sex ratio at marriagable ages in the near future.     

Using alcohol to sell cigarettes to young adults: a content analysis of cigarette advertisements

OBJECTIVE: Advertising influences the health-related behaviors of college-aged individuals. Cigarette manufacturers aggressively market to young adults and may exploit their affinity for alcohol when creating advertisements designed to increase cigarettes' appeal. Internal tobacco industry documents reveal that cigarette manufacturers understood the popularity of alcohol among young adults and sought to produce pertinent marketing strategies. METHODS: The authors conducted a content analysis of cigarette and alcohol advertisements in young adult-oriented magazines to investigate portrayed associations between cigarettes and alcohol. RESULTS: The content analysis revealed that 32 of 114 cigarette advertisements referenced alcohol and that those advertisements were more likely than others to portray active smoking. Conversely, 0 of 317 alcohol advertisements referenced cigarettes, and alcohol advertisements were only slightly more likely than cigarette advertisements to feature alcohol-related settings. CONCLUSIONS: Such advertising may detrimentally affect smoking patterns of college students. An understanding of these strategies can benefit on-campus tobacco control efforts.     

Testing for Measurement Invariance in the Satisfaction with Life Scale: A Comparison of Russians and North Americans

This study examined the comparability of Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS) [Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985, Social Indicators Research, 34: 7–32] scores across U.S. and Russian student and community groups. Criteria for weak measurement invariance were met when comparing U.S. and Russian groups (combining student and community samples). Criteria for weak and strong measurement invariance were met when comparing the U.S. and Russian student samples. However, when comparing the U.S. and Russian community samples, the results showed a significant statistic for a baseline model, indicating a lack of comparability across samples. The costs of failing to meet criteria for weak, strong, and strict measurement invariance are discussed. An erratum to this article is available at .