On the Marriageability of Men

The “marriageability of men” is an argument used in sociological research to understand demographic changes in marriage and to analyze social dynamics associated with gender, race, class, family, the workplace, incarceration, and more. While some are marrying later and others are foregoing marriage altogether, a lack of marriageable men is often part of the argument concerning new patterns of family formation in the United States. Research mobilizing the marriageability of men hypothesis spans a great deal of subfields of sociological research, not all in conversation with one another – and not all explicitly making use of the term. This article collects these diverse strands of thought and presents an argument for how and why men are less marriageable, what this means, and why it means different things for different groups of men and women. Racialized and classed conceptions of masculinity create different kinds of struggles for different groups of men and work against their marriageability for different reasons. We discuss the impact of incarceration, new struggles in a service economy, and shifts in women's perceptions and expectations of what qualifies men as “marriageable.”     

Policy reforms and changing intergenerational support of elderly in India

Journal of Population Research - Post 2005 in India, a number of public policy initiatives were introduced to strengthen existing programs for welfare of the ever-increasing population aged...     

A Mother's Value Lies in Her Sexuality: The Simpsons,Family Guy,and South Park and the Preservation of Traditional Sex Roles

This article examines the relationship between being a sexual woman and a good mother in The Simpsons, Family Guy, and South Park. Considering the sexual criticisms of women in the “Mommy Wars” which continue to be fought across the United States, we find that these three programs reproduce conservative assumptions about women's sexuality and motherhood. Through critical constructionist theories of humor and motherhood, mothers from each program are analyzed and the relationship between their sexuality and motherliness is examined in detail. We conclude with a discussion of the social constrictions of reality that humorous popular culture both exposes and reproduces.     

Are Overall Journal Rankings a Good Mapping for Article Quality in Specialty Fields?

Overall journal rankings, which are generated with sample articles in different research fields, are commonly used to measure the research productivity of academic economists. In this article, we investigate a growing concern in the profession that the use of the overall journal rankings to evaluate scholars’ relative research productivity may exhibit a downward bias toward researchers in some specialty fields if their respective field journals are under-ranked in the overall journals rankings. To address this concern, we constructed new journal rankings based on the intellectual influence of research in 8 specialty fields using a sample consisting of 26,401 articles published across 60 economics journals from 1998 to 2007. We made various comparisons between the newly constructed journal rankings in specialty fields and the traditional overall journal ranking. Our results show that the overall journal ranking provides a considerably good mapping for the article quality in specialty fields. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.     

Color-Blind Racial Attitudes in White Social Workers: A Cross-Sectional Study

Focusing on the results of one hypothesis in a larger study, this article examines level of social work education and color-blind racial attitudes in White social workers. Participants (n = 179) who were members of the National Association of Social Workers and self-identified as White, responded to an online survey and completed the Color-Blind Racial Attitudes Scale (CoBRAS). Color-blind racial attitudes have been linked to prejudice in other studies. BSW-level practitioners were found to be less aware of racial privilege and blatant racial issues. The article addresses the findings and explores the implications for social work educators and social work practitioners.     

Comparison of Six Dose-Response Models for Use with Food-Borne Pathogens

Food-related illness in the United States is estimated to affect over six million people per year and cost the economy several billion dollars. These illnesses and costs could be reduced if minimum infectious doses were established and used as the basis of regulations and monitoring. However, standard methodologies for dose-response assessment are not yet formulated for microbial risk assessment. The objective of this study was to compare dose-response models for food-borne pathogens and determine which models were most appropriate for a range of pathogens. The statistical models proposed in the literature and chosen for comparison purposes were log-normal, log-logistic, exponential, -Poisson and Weibull-Gamma. These were fit to four data sets also taken from published literature, Shigella flexneri, Shigella dysenteriae,Campylobacter jejuni, and Salmonella typhosa, using the method of maximum likelihood. The Weibull-gamma, the only model with three parameters, was also the only model capable of fitting all the data sets examined using the maximum likelihood estimation for comparisons. Infectious doses were also calculated using each model. Within any given data set, the infectious dose estimated to affect one percent of the population ranged from one order of magnitude to as much as nine orders of magnitude, illustrating the differences in extrapolation of the dose response models. More data are needed to compare models and examine extrapolation from high to low doses for food-borne pathogens.     

Detecting multiple change points in piecewise constant hazard functions

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) suggests a sudden reduction in prostate cancer mortality rates, likely due to highly successful treatments and screening methods for early diagnosis. We are interested in understanding the impact of medical breakthroughs, treatments, or interventions, on the survival experience for a population. For this purpose, estimating the underlying hazard function, with possible time change points, would be of substantial interest, as it will provide a general picture of the survival trend and when this trend is disrupted. Increasing attention has been given to testing the assumption of a constant failure rate against a failure rate that changes at a single point in time. We expand the set of alternatives to allow for the consideration of multiple change-points, and propose a model selection algorithm using sequential testing for the piecewise constant hazard model. These methods are data driven and allow us to estimate not only the number of change points in the hazard function but where those changes occur. Such an analysis allows for better understanding of how changing medical practice affects the survival experience for a patient population. We test for change points in prostate cancer mortality rates using the NCI Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results dataset.     

Still fighting the good fight: An analysis of student activism and institutional response

The current study employs content analysis of news coverage on recent campus protests (the University of Missouri, the University of Cincinnati, Harvard School of Law, and Ithaca College). Using the contingency theory of conflict management as a theoretical framework, the study sought both parties’ (institution and student activist group) stances along the continuum of pure advocacy to pure accommodation. The study also examined whether recent student groups applied radical activist strategies, and if institutions employed conflict resolution strategies.Results indicate both parties were advocating, with only institutions moving along the continuum from advocacy to pure accommodation. Students were found to execute radical activist strategies and institutions’ responses were dominantly unconditionally constructive.