ANOTHER LOOK AT THE STRATIFICATION OF EDUCATIONAL TRANSITIONS: THE LOGISTIC RESPONSE MODEL WITH PARTIAL PROPORTIONALITY CONSTRAINTS

In this paper we reanalyze Robert D. Mare's highly influential work on educational transitions among American men born in the first half of the 20th century. Contrary to previous belief, Mare found that the effects of socioeconomic background variables decline regularly across educational transitions in conditional logistic regression analyses. We have reconfirmed Mare's findings and tested them by introducing a modified logistic response model that constrains selected social background effects to vary proportionally across educational transitions. We refer to our preferred model as the logistic response model with partial proportionality constraints (LRPPC). The model can easily be estimated in Stata or using other standard statistical software. Partial proportionality constraints may also prove useful in interpopulation comparisons based on other linear models.     

Theory as Fantasy: Emotional Dimensions to Grounded Theory

In this paper we discuss emotions and fantasies that inform and influence the project of theory building. Our argument is that theory building can be improved by engaging directly with emotions and with fantasies that are defensively and creatively generated by the researcher. Once acknowledged, these can be transformed into ideas and insights. We provide an example of the emotional dynamics surrounding a novice researcher's use of grounded theory within her doctoral research. We highlight three distinctive researcher fantasies of containment, coherence and purity associated with her experience of the method. We discuss how engagement with these fantasies deepened the researcher's analysis and thereby enhanced the process of building theory from the data. Therefore, our paper contributes to an understanding of how fantasies mobilized by such an open‐ended research method can help to refine our thinking about emerging theory.     

Morphology: A tool for exploring new technology

New products, new services and new approaches to doing business may be essential in order to return to a period of long term economic prosperity. A particularly powerful approach to innovation is the technique called ‘morphology’. Kondratieff's use of the morphology technique to analyse business cycles, and also an original use of morphology to analyse the categories of existence, are here applied to deduce office worker archetypes and significant business management issues as a function of economic phase. The economic phases of prosperity, recession, depression and recovery are related to the following business management issues: productivity, time management, innovation and management by objectives. These issues correspond, respectively, to the following office worker archetypes: information worker, skill worker, knowledge worker and decision maker.     

Assumptions of social mobility research in the U.S.: The case of occupational status

This paper examines the theoretical and empirical basis for common rank-orderings of occupational roles by raters throughout the world. From an illustrative comparison of occupational stratification in Australia and the United States we conclude tentatively that (1) commonalities in the socioeconomic characteristics of occupational roles provide the basis for interplace consistencies in “prestige” scores, (2) the structure of occupational mobility in the U.S. and Australia is largely similar, (3) this similar structure of occupational stratification manifests a common socioeconomic process which defines a (the?) major component of occupational mobility in capitalist, industrial (only?) societies. We infer that “prestige” scores for occupations are fallible estimates of the socioeconomic statuses of occupation, within the context of mobility processes in (at least) the U.S. and Australia.     

Bad news indeed for Ryff’s six-factor model of well-being

Springer and Hauser (An Assessment of the Construct Validity of Ryff’s Scales of Psychological Well-Being: Method, Mode, and Measurement Effects. 2006. Social Science Research 35) tested one key aspect of the validity of Ryff’s six-factor model of psychological well-being (RPWB), namely, whether there is substantial independent variation among the six factors. In several large and heterogeneous samples, under a variety of model specifications, and using various sets of RPWB items, we found very high factor correlations among the dimensions of well-being, especially personal growth, purpose in life, self-acceptance, and environmental mastery. That is, the six-factor model makes theoretical claims that do not yield large or consistent empirical distinctions when standard measures and instrumentation are used. Where Ryff and Singer’s comment (Best News Yet on the Six-Factor Model of Well-Being. 2006. Social Science Research 35) refers directly to that analysis, their methodological discussion is most often irrelevant or incorrect. Their text largely ignores and fails to challenge our strong empirical findings about the factorial structure of well-being. In this response, we reinforce these findings and their implications for the (in)validity of the six-factor well-being model as implemented by Ryff. We also explain why Ryff and Singer’s lengthy review of studies that show differential relationships of RPWB factors with other variables should be interpreted with far greater caution than Ryff and Singer recognize. We offer recommendations for analyzing RPWB items in surveys that have already been conducted, but we also emphasize the need for a thorough rethinking of the measurement and dimensionality of psychological well-being.