“The Compass of Our Life”: A Qualitative Study of Marriage and Faith Among Chinese Immigrants

Twenty highly religious Chinese Christian married couples (n = 40) were interviewed to examine how religious faith influenced their perceptions of marriage and family life. Most participants held advanced graduate degrees (14 PhD and 13 MS degrees). Their ages ranged from 28 to 66, and the number of children ranged from one to four. Grounded theory methods (including open coding and axial coding) were applied to analyze the data. Based on the interview data three emergent themes were identified: (1) Moving from atheism to theism (“God is love”), (2) changing perceptions of marriage (“Marriage is established by God”), and (3) a new priority (“Put God first”). Supporting qualitative data are presented in connection with each theme. Implications for research and practice related to Chinese immigrants’ marriage and family in the United States are discussed.     

A Bayesian estimate of the concordance correlation coefficient with skewed data

Concordance correlation coefficient (CCC) is one of the most popular scaled indices used to evaluate agreement. Most commonly, it is used under the assumption that data is normally distributed. This assumption, however, does not apply to skewed data sets. While methods for the estimation of the CCC of skewed data sets have been introduced and studied, the Bayesian approach and its comparison with the previous methods has been lacking. In this study, we propose a Bayesian method for the estimation of the CCC of skewed data sets and compare it with the best method previously investigated. The proposed method has certain advantages. It tends to outperform the best method studied before when the variation of the data is mainly from the random subject effect instead of error. Furthermore, it allows for greater flexibility in application by enabling incorporation of missing data, confounding covariates, and replications, which was not considered previously. The superiority of this new approach is demonstrated using simulation as well as real‐life biomarker data sets used in an electroencephalography clinical study. The implementation of the Bayesian method is accessible through the Comprehensive R Archive Network. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Model of Choice for Public Policy

Punctuated equilibrium is supposed to be a viable alternativeto incrementalism, and, indeed, the authors of the model havesometimes made such claims. But punctuated equilibrium was developedto explain change in policy subsystems and does not serve asa complete model of policy choice in the same way that incrementalismhas served. This article develops a full-blown and viable modelof choice for public policy based on disproportionate informationprocessing. Its dynamics are based in the allocation of politicalattention to policy topics and the manner in which politicalsystems process information. The model leads directly to outcomesthat are consistent with punctuated equilibrium and are notgenerally consistent with incrementalism. Incrementalism, however,may be deduced from the model as a special case. The model isbest tested using stochastic process approaches. Incrementalismlogically must yield a normal distribution of outcomes, butdisproportionate information processing yields leptokurtic outcomes.Adding institutional constraints only makes the stochastic processimplications more severe. To support our arguments, we presentboth static and dynamic simulations of these processes. We alsoshow that these simulations are consistent with observationsof U.S. government budgets.     

Young children's perceptions and beliefs about hypothetical shy,unsociable, and socially avoidant peers at school

The aim of this study was to explore young children's perceptions, beliefs, and anticipated outcomes about different types of social withdrawal (shyness, unsociability, social avoidance). Participants were N = 212 children (n = 110 boys) aged 2.55–6.37 years (M = 4.86, SD = 0.89) recruited from three preschools and kindergartens in Italy. Children were interviewed individually and asked about hypothetical peers displaying different types of social withdrawal (i.e., shy, unsociable, socially avoidant) and for comparison purposes, aggressive and socially competent behaviors were also assessed. Among the three vignettes depicting types of withdrawn children, children rated the hypothetical shy peer as having the highest social motivations, the unsociable peer as receiving the least sympathy from others, and the avoidant peer as being the least intelligent and least liked by the teacher. In addition, girls reported wanting to play more with the shy peer than boys, and kindergarteners reported a higher affiliative preference for all subtypes of socially withdrawn peers than preschoolers. These findings suggest that Italian young children have a quite sophisticated ability to differentiate among the different social motivations and emotions that may underlie social withdrawal.     

Friendship in children with internalizing and externalizing problems: A preliminary investigation with the Pictorial Assessment of Interpersonal Relationships

This study examined the relationship between friendship representation and internalizing and externalizing problems in school-aged children. One hundred Caucasian 6–7 year-old children (50 males and 50 females) and their mothers took part in the study. The Draw-a-Man Test, the Pictorial Assessment of Interpersonal Relationships, and the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL/6-18) were used. Children with internalizing problems, externalizing problems, comorbid internalizing and externalizing problems, and a control group were compared on their pictorial representations of friendship. Results showed that children with externalizing problems included more pictorial indices of each friend's autonomy and a larger imbalance of importance between them; children with internalizing problems drew themselves as less similar to their friends. In conclusion, children's pictorial representation allows exploring some aspects of their tacit knowledge about the relationship with a best friend, which is not easily expressed verbally by young children. Finally, the implications of these findings for theoretical and empirical research development on friendship are discussed.     

Kosovo – Winning its Independence but Losing its People? Recent Evidence on Emigration Intentions and Preparedness to Migrate

Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia in February 2008, but substantial proportions of its population are expressing their lack of confidence by preparing to emigrate. In this paper, we present evidence from a customized post‐independence survey (1,367 face‐to face interviews) on emigration intentions in Kosovo, carried out in June 2008. Thirty per cent of the respondents from the Albanian‐speaking majority have taken concrete steps to move abroad, and emigration intentions have again risen to their pre‐independence peak. Strikingly, it is the better educated and those with higher incomes that are more likely to exit. Ethnic Serbs (the largest minority group) are less likely to emigrate than Kosovo’s ethnic majority.     

Gerechtigkeit in der Sozialpolitik – Aufgaben und Befunde einer kritischen Soziologie der Moral

In a modern differentiated society interpretations of social justice occur necessarily manifold; they cannot be derived from an absolute point of reference. The following article takes up this thought of Günther Dux in terms of justice. It is argued—in difference to philosophy—that the strength of sociological justice research lies in the empirical reconstruction of images of social justice. It will be outlined which ideas of social justice in regard to a reform of the welfare state are currently dominating. In social political reform debates it is observable these days that there is no longer a mere normative dispute about justice and moral. The issue is rather finding productivist justice solutions, which enable the concomitance of economic efficiency and fair distribution solution.     

Gesellschaftliche Verfasstheit im Feld des Sehens — Deutungsabsichten und verborgene AutorInnenschaft

In a way, museums and exhibitions can be taken as symptoms of knowledge and image construction. Exhibitions as places of (visual) representations reflect current cultural narrations and images of society — the conscious and the hidden or unconscious ones. In general, these narratives which are mediated on a visual level are neither reflected nor identified as social constructions. In this context, I tried to analyze displays of four exhibitions focusing on the categories gender and “the other”, on the way these categories are addressed or left out and by which visual means. The central idea of this investigation of the production of meanings within complex exhibiting procedures is to turn the means of staging themselves into an object of analysis, that is, to find out which methods of production consciously or unconsciously transmit which contents. The aim of this paper is to reveal (hidden) discourses that are produced and mediated through visual methods, to heighten the awareness of processes in visual culture by which cultural and social codes are accredited and approved of and to claim responsibility for these representations.