Advancing Social Capital Measurement: Using General Social Survey Cycles to Develop an Efficient Survey Instrument

The General Social Survey (GSS) has provided significant insight about the state of societies around the world through the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP). Although broadly applicable, in this study the context for developing a new social capital survey instrument covers the Canadian GSS since 1985. Questions in the GSS are often used by researchers who are interested in specific questions or themes for use in some form of re-sampling. Given significant social and relational themes, GSS cycles from 1985 to 2013 were reviewed using a social capital framework to produce a new Social Capital GSS survey instrument. A process of vetting and sorting questions led to development of a 41 question instrument that includes 16 demographic and context variables and 25 social network and trust variables. After testing and refinement, the instrument was used with a randomly sampled group across selected East Hamilton Census Tracts that are differentiated by median income and a standard deviation above and below respectively (n?=?97).     

Building an Orthodox empire: Archpriest Ioann Vostorgov and Russian missionary aspirations in Asia

Using the example of Archpriest Ioann Vostorgov, this article analyzes how during the final decade of the Russian empire, the colonization of Siberia, Central Asia, and the Far East, as well as the state’s engagement in East Asia, created new opportunities for Orthodox clergymen to participate in Russian imperial aspirations in the region. Asia had captured the imagination of Vostorgov, providing him with a backdrop for articulating the pivotal role that the Orthodox Church would perform in forging the future empire and a new world order. Facing an environment of porous borders, hostile neighbours, along with dizzying religious and ethnic diversity, Vostorgov supported the resettlement of Orthodox peasants and the intensification of missionary work, both inside and outside of Russia’s borders, which he believed would secure the future of the empire.     

The Good, the Bad, and the Regulator: An Experimental Test of Two Conditional Audit Schemes

Conditional audit rules are designed to achieve regulatory compliance with fewer inspections than required by random auditing. A regulator places individuals into audit pools that differ in probability of audit or severity of fine and specifies transition rules between pools. Future pool assignment is conditional on current audit results. We conduct an experiment to compare two specific schemes—Harrington's Past-Compliance Targeting and Friesen's Optimal Targeting—against random auditing. We find a production possibility frontier between compliance and minimizing inspections. Optimal targeting generates the lowest inspection rates as predicted, but random auditing the highest compliance. Past-compliance targeting is intermediate.     

Measuring facial movement

A procedure has been developed for measuring visibly different facial movements. The Facial Action Code was derived from an analysis of the anatomical basis of facial movement. The method can be used to describe any facial movement (observed in photographs, motion picture film or videotape) in terms of anatomically based action units. The development of the method is explained, contrasting it to other methods of measuring facial behavior. An example of how facial behavior is measured is provided, and ideas about research applications are discussed.The research reported here was supported by a grant from NIMH, MH 167845. The authors are grateful to Wade Seaford, Dickinson College, for encouraging us to build our measurement system on the basis of specific muscular action. He convinced us that it would allow more precision, and that learning the anatomy would not be an overwhelming obstacle. Neither he nor we realized, however, how detailed and elaborate this undertaking would be. Seaford (1976) recently advanced some of the arguments we have made here about the value of an anatomically based measurement system. We are grateful also to those who first learned FAC and gave us many helpful suggestions as to how to improve the manual. We thank Linda Camras, Joe Hager, Harriet Oster, and Maureen O'Sullivan also for their comments on this report.     

The Intentions of Parents in Influencing the Career Development of Their Children

Parents' intentions associated with critical incidents they undertake in the career development of their children are examined from an intentional action perspective. From interviews with 207 parents, 1,772 critical incidents were identified. Approximately half of the incidents contributed to the construction of 10 categories representing the intentions of parents; the remainder was used to substantiate the categories. The categories illustrate that parents, although not necessarily attempting to influence particular occupational choice, are active agents in influencing their children in a broad range of areas in career development.     

Framing Symbols and Space: Counterrecruitment and Resistance to the U.S. Military in Public Education

Despite recent federal laws providing military recruiters unprecedented access to public schools and student information, sociologists have given scant attention to the militarization of education or the military counterrecruitment movement in the United States. Semistructured in‐depth interviews with counterrecruiters reveal five framing campaigns used to resist the armed forces' efforts to dominate the symbolic discourse in public schools: 1) the rendition of information, 2) educational space, 3) heroic military narrative, 4) educational mission, and 5) vocational vision. Analysis examining the interaction of space and social movement framing reveals how counterrecruiters compete with military recruiters over the U.S. public education's foundational values and symbols. This article advances our understanding of the counterrecruitment movement in U.S. public schools and how space influences social movement framing through the concepts of spatial legitimacy, spatial authorities, and spatial protocols.     

Does image size affect judgments of the face?

Whether the video-image of the face was larger than life or about one-fifth life size made no difference in observers' judgments of emotions, attitudes, and personality traits.This research was supported by a grant from NIMH, MH 11976. The preparation of this report was supported by a grant from the Harry F. Guggenheim Foundation, and by a Research Scientist Award, MH 06092 from NIMH.     

Invited article: Face,voice, and body in detecting deceit

Studies based on mean accuracy of a group of subjects suggest that most observers do no better than chance in detecting the lies of others. We argue that a case-by-case methodology, like that used in polygraphy studies may be more useful. Three behavioral measures (two kinds of smiles and pitch) were used to make predictions about the lying or truthfulness of each of 31 subjects. A case-by-case analysis of the hits and misses achieved in this way yielded an over-all accuracy of 86%. The effect on lie detection accuracy of individual differences in the use and control of different behavioral channels is discussed.Paul Ekman's work is supported by a Research Scientist Award from the National Institute of Mental Health (MH 06092).