Sunday, January 18, 2015

Journal of Marriage and Family 77(1)

Journal of Marriage and Family, February 2015: Volume 77, Issue 1



The Relationship Between Maternal Education and Children's Academic Outcomes: A Theoretical Framework
Jessica F. Harding, Pamela A. Morris and Diane Hughes

Exploring Ambivalence in Family Ties: Progress and Prospects
Ingrid Arnet Connidis

Challenges and Opportunities for Research on Same-Sex Relationships
Debra Umberson, Mieke Beth Thomeer, Rhiannon A. Kroeger, Amy C. Lodge and Minle Xu

Marginal Structural Models: An Application to Incarceration and Marriage During Young Adulthood
Valerio Bacak and Edward H. Kennedy

Families Under the Microscope: Repeated Sampling of Perceptions, Experiences, Biology, and Behavior
Rena L. Repetti, Bridget M. Reynolds and Meredith S. Sears

Measuring Constructs in Family Science: How Can Item Response Theory Improve Precision and Validity?
Rachel A. Gordon

Family Structure and Child Well-being: Integrating Family Complexity
Susan L. Brown, Wendy D. Manning and J. Bart Stykes

Investigating Family Shared Realities With Factor Mixture Modeling
W. Justin Dyer and Randal D. Day

Social Relations Model Analyses of Perceived Self-Control and Trust in Families
Asuman Buyukcan-Tetik, Catrin Finkenauer, Merel Siersema, Karin Vander Heyden and Lydia Krabbendam

Parental Responsibilities: Dilemmas of Measurement and Gender Equality
Andrea Doucet

Sampling Richness and Qualitative Integrity: Challenges for Research With Families
Kevin Roy, Anisa Zvonkovic, Abbie Goldberg, Elizabeth Sharp and Ralph LaRossa

Do Positive Feelings Hurt? Disaggregating Positive and Negative Components of Intergenerational Ambivalence
Megan Gilligan, J. Jill Suitor, Scott Feld and Karl Pillemer

Handling Missing Values in Longitudinal Panel Data With Multiple Imputation
Rebekah Young and David R. Johnson

The Analysis of Duocentric Social Networks: A Primer
David P. Kennedy, Grace L. Jackson, Harold D. Green, Thomas N. Bradbury and Benjamin R. Karney

Estimates and Meanings of Marital Separation
Dmitry Tumin, Siqi Han and Zhenchao Qian

Social Science Research 50

Social Science Research, Volume 50: March 2015
Barbara Barbosa Neves, Jaime R.S. Fonseca

Surgical sterilization, regret, and race: Contemporary patterns 
Karina M. Shreffler, Julia McQuillan, Arthur L. Greil, David R. Johnson

(Dis)placing trust: The long-term effects of job displacement on generalised trust over the adult lifecourse
James Laurence

Universalism under siege? Exploring the association between targeting, child benefits and child poverty across 26 countries
Wim Van Lancker, Natascha Van Mechelen

Career pathways for temporary workers: Exploring heterogeneous mobility dynamics with sequence analysis
Sylvia Fuller, Natasha Stecy-Hildebrandt

Neighbourhood effects on educational attainment of adolescents, buffered by personality and educational commitment
Jaap Nieuwenhuis, Pieter Hooimeijer, Wim Meeus

The increasing unemployment gap between the low and high educated in West Germany. Structural or cyclical crowding-out?
Markus Klein

State liberalism, female supervisors, and the gender wage gap
David J. Maume, Leah Ruppanner

Measuring the level of social support using latent class analysis
Letícia Marques Santos, Leila Denise A.F. Amorim, Darci Neves Santos, Maurício L. Barreto

The use of multilevel modeling and the level two residual file to explore the relationship between middle years programme student performance and diploma programme student performance
Melissa Gordon, Liz Bergeron

Liking and disliking minority-group classmates: Explaining the mixed findings for the influence of ethnic classroom composition on interethnic attitudes
Tobias H. Stark, Michael Mäs, Andreas Flache

Cultural capital in context: Heterogeneous returns to cultural capital across schooling environments
Ida Gran Andersen, Mads Meier Jæger

Material hardship and 529 college savings plan participation: The mitigating effects of Child Development Accounts
Nora Wikoff, Jin Huang, Youngmi Kim, Michael Sherraden

Occupational stratification, job-mismatches, and child poverty: Understanding the disadvantage of Black immigrants in the US
Kevin J.A. Thomas

Towards climate justice: How do the most vulnerable weigh environment–economy trade-offs?
Katrina Running

When everyone goes to college: The causal effect of college expansion on earnings
Seongsoo Choi

Status, emotional displays, and the relationally-based evaluation of criminals and their behavior
Lisa M. Dilks, Tucker S. McGrimmon, Shane R. Thye

Chips off the old blocks? The political participation patterns of parents and children in Italy
Giulia M. Dotti Sani, Mario Quaranta

The power of a paired t-test with a covariate
E.C. Hedberg, Stephanie Ayers

The impact of cumulative family risks on various levels of food insecurity
Daphne C. Hernandez

The often overlooked issue of statistical power: This and other issues regarding assessing importance weighting in quality of life measures
Chang-ming Hsieh

Work–family conflict in context: The impact of structural and perceived neighborhood disadvantage on work–family conflict
Marisa Young

Gender, trust and cooperation in environmental social dilemmas
Kyle Irwin, Kimberly Edwards, Jeffrey A. Tamburello

Growth curve analyses of the relationship between early maternal age and children’s mathematics and reading performance
D. Diego Torres

Extracurricular associations and college enrollment
Benjamin G. Gibbs, Lance D. Erickson, Mikaela J. Dufur, Aaron Miles

Instrumental variables estimates of peer effects in social networks
Weihua An

Sunday, January 11, 2015

Crime & Delinquency 61(1)

Crime & Delinquency, February 2015: Volume 61, Issue 1

An Examination of the Interaction Between Morality and Deterrence in Offending: A Research Note
Robert Svensson
This study examines whether deterrence and morality interact in the explanation of adolescent offending. On the basis of the Situational Action Theory, the author hypothesizes that deterrence is more effective in preventing offending among individuals with low levels of morality than among individuals with high levels of morality. To test this hypothesis, self-report data are used from a sample of young adolescents in Halmstad, Sweden (N = 891). The findings provide strong support for the hypothesis that the effect of deterrence (measured as the perceived risk of getting caught, that is, “certainty”) on offending is dependent on the individual’s level of morality, indicating that deterrence has a significantly stronger effect on offending for individuals with low levels of morality than for individuals with higher levels of morality.

An Examination of the Micro-Level Crime–Fear of Crime Link
Jihong Solomon Zhao, Brian Lawton, and Dennis Longmire
Since the late 1960s, crime has been hypothesized to be associated with fear of crime. However, little research has been available to test this assumption at the individual level of analysis. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between crime and fear of crime using data collected from a random telephone survey of local residents in the city of Houston. The authors investigate if there is an impact of an individual’s spatial proximity to crime on fear of crime also measured at the individual level. To be more specific, the authors examine the crime–fear of crime link using three types of crime—violent crime, property crime, and disorder crime. Both the residence of respondents and crime events are spatially located, allowing the authors to construct a buffer surrounding the respondent’s residence to obtain the number of crime incidents that occur within a 528-foot (1/10th of a mile) radius of the residence. In addition, the authors explore the relationship between spatial distribution of actual crime events and individual fear of crime at 0.5-mile radius and 1.0-mile radius of each respondent who participated in the telephone interview. The findings suggest that a person’s proximity to crime incidents has a significant impact on fear of crime among respondents interviewed. Furthermore, the magnitudes of coefficients show that different types of crime (violent crime, property crime, and disorder crime) have similar impacts on fear of crime.

Neighborhood Conditions and Fear of Crime: A Reconsideration of Sex Differences
Karen A. Snedker
Research indicates that men and women commonly express different amounts of fear about crime. This article explores the sex difference in fear of crime levels by assessing differences in fear of crime in relation to urban environments. Using data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics Criminal Victimization and Perceptions of Community Safety, the present analysis employs multinomial logistic regressions to examine gradations in two measures of fear of crime. Some aspects of the neighborhood environment do differentially influence men and women’s fear of crime levels, including serious crime in the neighborhood, physical and social disorder. Findings highlight that women’s greater fear of crime is partially due to higher perceived risks through signals of neighborhood conditions.

Problem-Oriented Policing in Colorado Springs: A Content Analysis of 753 Cases
Edward R. Maguire, Craig D. Uchida, and Kimberly D. Hassell
Problem-oriented policing (POP) has generated substantial attention from practitioners, scholars, and policy makers. A growing body of research is beginning to cast doubt on the extent to which this reform has been implemented in police agencies as prescribed by reformers. This study presents findings from an analysis of POP in the Colorado Springs Police Department, one of the national leaders of POP in the United States. The principal form of evidence is a systematic content analysis of case summaries and reports completed by police officers in 753 POP cases in Colorado Springs. The results point to a set of common roadblocks in the implementation of POP, as well as more general patterns that seem to influence the implementation of police reform.

Sentencing Asian Offenders in State Courts: The Influence of a Prevalent Stereotype
Travis W. Franklin and Noelle E. Fearn
A significant body of literature has developed to explain the controversial issue of sentencing disparity among various racial/ethnic groups. According to the focal concerns perspective, judges may rely on race-based stereotypes, among other factors, in reaching sentencing outcomes. This contention has received support by the empirical literature when examining sentencing differences that emerge between similarly situated White, Black, and Hispanic offenders. Unfortunately, very little research has addressed the relative treatment of Asian offenders to determine whether stereotypes that commonly target these individuals—particularly the “model minority” stereotype—emerge as a potential extralegal factor in judicial sentencing decisions. To address this shortcoming, the current study employs a large sample of offenders processed by state courts to examine the sentencing of Asians relative to White, Black, and Hispanic offenders. Findings are consistent with a focal concerns/model minority perspective and indicate that Asians are, in fact, treated more leniently than other racial/ethnic groups at the incarceration decision. This extralegal disparity, however, does not emerge during the sentence length decision. Implications for theory, policy, and future research are discussed.

The Relationship Between Citizen Perceptions of Collective Efficacy and Neighborhood Violent Crime
Todd A. Armstrong, Charles M. Katz, and Stephen M. Schnebly
The current work assesses the relationship between respondent perceptions of collective efficacy and neighborhood violence. Data used in the analysis combined a community survey from Mesa, Arizona, with census data. Factor analysis provided mixed evidence regarding the factor structure of collective efficacy; therefore, separate regression models were used to test the influence of collective efficacy, social cohesion, and willingness to intervene on levels of neighborhood violence. Analyses found that community structural characteristics including concentrated disadvantage and residential instability significantly predicted perceptions of collective efficacy, social cohesion, and willingness to intervene. In turn each of these variables was related to violent crime after controlling for levels of concentrated disadvantage, residential instability, and individual demographic characteristics. When social cohesion and willingness to intervene were included in a single regression model, only social cohesion was predictive of neighborhood violence. Social cohesion and violent crime had reciprocal effects that were both negative and statistically significant.

Adjusting for Unit Non-Response in Surveys Through Weighting
Danielle Marie Carkin and Paul E. Tracy
Unit non-response is a serious problem in survey research. This article validates the necessity of adjusting for unit non-response in disproportionate stratified sampling designs through the use of sample weights. Using data from the 1958 Birth Cohort study, we demonstrate that sample data which are affected by unit non-response can be a poor representation of population parameters. These non-response effects can be addressed through the application of sample weights.

Sunday, January 4, 2015

Sociological Theory 32(4)

Sociological Theory, December 2014: Volume 32, Issue 4

Formation Stories and Causality in Sociology
Daniel Hirschman and Isaac Ariail Reed
Sociologists have long been interested in understanding the emergence of new social kinds. We argue that sociologists’ formation stories have been mischaracterized as noncausal, descriptive, or interpretive. Traditional “forcing-cause” accounts describe regularized relations between fixed entities with specific properties. The three dominant approaches to causality—variable causality, treatments and manipulations, and mechanisms—all refer to forcing causes. But formation stories do not fit the forcing-causes framework because accounts of formation violate the assumptions that ground forcing-cause accounts and instead emphasize eventfulness, assemblage, and self-representation. Yet these accounts are, we argue, fundamentally causal. In particular, formation stories provide the historical, empirical boundaries for the functioning of forcing-cause accounts. We catalog the breadth of formation stories in sociology and use examples from diverse literatures to highlight how thinking of formation stories as causal accounts can improve our understanding of the relationship of history and culture to causal analysis.

Enduring Illusions: The Social Organization of Secrecy and Deception
David R. Gibson
Sociologists theorize that people comply with the dictates of states and other organizations out of self-interest or because of the perceived legitimacy of those in authority. Some organizations, however, are based on lies, or secrets, and it would seem that these should be very short-lived, given how easy it is for the truth to escape. This article lays the foundations of a sociology of deception, focusing on lies and secrets successfully maintained for years or even decades. The ideas of Goffman and Simmel provide a theoretical starting point. Then Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme is considered as a case study. Drawing on that and other examples, the article culminates in a theory that distinguishes between barriers to knowing, barriers to asking, barriers to telling, barriers to perceiving, barriers to believing, and barriers to acting. Together, these may counter the natural entropic tendency for information to leak and diffuse, in part because the effectiveness of one sort of barrier may offset imperfections in others.

The High of Cultural Experience: Toward a Microsociology of Cultural Consumption
Claudio Benzecry and Randall Collins
Does the experience of cultural consumption have its own sui generis attraction and value in itself, or is it an index of external social ranking? Four criteria are proposed that are observable in microsociological detail: (1) bodily self-absorption in the cultural experience, creating an intense internal interaction ritual; (2) collective effervescence among the audience; (3) Goffmanian front-stage self-presentation in settings of cultural consumption; and (4) verbal discourse during and around the cultural experience. Data from highly committed opera fanatics in Buenos Aires are used to document the extreme pole of cultural consumption that rejects external social hierarchies in favor of pure musical experience. This individualized and internal style of music consumption resembles religious mysticism, and what Weber in his typology of orientations to religious experience called virtuoso religiosity, as distinct from typical social class orientations to religion and to music.

The Socioemotional Foundations of Suicide: A Microsociological View of Durkheim’s Suicide
Seth Abrutyn and Anna S. Mueller
Durkheim’s theory of suicide remains one of the quintessential “classic” theories in sociology. Since the 1960s and 1970s, however, it has been challenged on theoretical and empirical grounds. Rather than defend Durkheim’s theory on its own terms, this paper elaborates his typology of suicide by sketching suicide’s socioemotional structure. We integrate social psychological, psychological, and psychiatric advances in emotion research and argue that (1) egoistic, or attachment-based suicides, are driven primarily by sadness/hopelessness; (2) anomic/fatalistic, or regulative suicides, are driven by shame; and (3) mixed-types exist and are useful for developing a more robust and complex multilevel model.

The Birth of the Gods: Robertson Smith and Durkheim’s Turn to Religion as the Basis of Social Integration
Alexandra Maryanski
Emile Durkheim’s ideas on religion have long served as foundational blocks for sociological theories. Yet, a mystery remains over where Durkheim’s insights into religion came from and especially the event that opened his eyes to religion’s importance in social life. Durkheim never supplied details on this conversion, but he did credit Robertson Smith for his new understanding. Did Smith really play the key role in Durkheim’s turn to religion? This essay examines Durkheim’s revelation in 1895 by starting from a novel angle—the first edition of The Division of Labor and his original stage model with the “cult of nature” as the starting point for religion. Tracing the implications of his initial choice of naturism as the elementary religion, a choice he would later soundly reject as “the product of [a] delirious interpretation,” offers new insights into why Durkheim found Smith’s ideas so inspirational. It also sheds light on why Durkheim overhauled his theory of solidarity, discarding his famous distinction between mechanical and organic solidarity. In Robertson Smith’s work, Durkheim discovered a more inclusive and enduring basis of solidarity in the social universe.

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 52(1)

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, February 2015: Volume 52, Issue 1

Burglar Target Selection: A Cross-national Comparison
Michael Townsley, Daniel Birks, Wim Bernasco, Stijn Ruiter, Shane D. Johnson, Gentry White, and Scott Baum
Objectives: This study builds on research undertaken by Bernasco and Nieuwbeerta and explores the generalizability of a theoretically derived offender target selection model in three cross-national study regions. Methods: Taking a discrete spatial choice approach, we estimate the impact of both environment- and offender-level factors on residential burglary placement in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Combining cleared burglary data from all study regions in a single statistical model, we make statistical comparisons between environments. Results: In all three study regions, the likelihood an offender selects an area for burglary is positively influenced by proximity to their home, the proportion of easily accessible targets, and the total number of targets available. Furthermore, in two of the three study regions, juvenile offenders under the legal driving age are significantly more influenced by target proximity than adult offenders. Post hoc tests indicate the magnitudes of these impacts vary significantly between study regions. Conclusions: While burglary target selection strategies are consistent with opportunity-based explanations of offending, the impact of environmental context is significant. As such, the approach undertaken in combining observations from multiple study regions may aid criminology scholars in assessing the generalizability of observed findings across multiple environments.

Consequences of Expected and Observed Victim Resistance for Offender Violence during Robbery Events
Marie Rosenkrantz Lindegaard, Wim Bernasco, and Scott Jacques
Objectives: Drawing on the rational choice perspective, this study aims at explaining why some robberies take place with physical force while others occur only with threat. The focus is how expected and observed victim resistance impact physical force by robbers. Methods: We draw on quantitative and qualitative data obtained from 104 robbers who described 143 robbery events. Based on the coding of behavioral sequences between offenders and victims, we distinguish between the use of physical force at the onset from the use of physical force during the progression of the event. Results: At the onset of robberies, physical force of offenders is influenced by whether they judge the victim to be street credible. During the progression of robberies, offenders are more likely to use physical force against a resistant than against a compliant victim. Conclusions: At the onset of the robbery, offender violence is related to expected victim resistance; during the progression, it is related to observed victim resistance. Future research should focus on behavioral sequences within robbery events including the meaning of victim characteristics and victim behavior in different phases of the event.

Racial, Ethnic, and Immigrant Threat: Is There a New Criminal Threat on State Sentencing?
Ben Feldmeyer, Patricia Y. Warren, Sonja E. Siennick, and Malisa Neptune
Objectives: The racial threat perspective argues that racial minorities are subjected to greater punishment in places with large or growing minority populations. However, prior research has focused largely on Black populations while devoting limited attention to potential “Latino threat” or “immigrant threat” effects. To address these gaps, this study explores the effects of racial, ethnic, and immigrant threat on sentence disposition (jail, prison, or community corrections) and sentence length. Methods: Using 2000 through 2006 data from the Florida Department of Corrections Guideline database, we use multilevel modeling techniques to explore the effects of racial, ethnic, and immigrant threat on state criminal sentencing. Results: The results provide support for racial/ethnic threat theory among Black but not Latino defendants. Black defendants are more likely to be sentenced to prison and are given longer sentences in counties with growing Black populations. In contrast, Latino sentences are not significantly influenced by Latino population growth. Results provide no support for immigrant threat positions. Conclusions: Overall, our findings offer a complex picture for racial/ethnic and immigrant threat. However, one pattern remains clear. Within Florida courts, Black defendants continue to be the prime targets for effects of racial threat and resulting disadvantages in criminal sentencing.

What Works for Whom? The Effects of Gender Responsive Programming on Girls and Boys in Secure Detention
Jacob C. Day, Margaret A. Zahn, and Lisa P. Tichavsky
Objectives: This study investigates whether gender responsive programming is effective at reducing recidivism relative to traditional, reinforcement-based programming for both girls and boys in secure detention. Methods: Event-history analysis is used to examine recidivism outcomes for two propensity score matched samples of girls (n = 148) and boys (n = 140) released from gender responsive versus traditional detention facilities in Connecticut. The contingent effects of trauma, depression/anxiety, alcohol/drug abuse, anger/irritability, and somatic complaints are also examined. Results: Compared to traditional programming, gender responsive programming for youth in secure detention is associated with a lower risk of recidivism for girls with gender-sensitive risk factors but a higher risk of recidivism among girls who do not display these risk factors. Gender responsive programs are no more or less effective at reducing recidivism for boys, regardless of whether they display risk factors commonly associated with girls’ delinquency and confinement. Conclusions: The results suggest that girls in secure detention require different approaches depending on their histories of trauma and associated mental and physical health issues. While girls who follow gendered pathways into detention benefit from the relational approach employed in gender responsive programs, girls without such issues benefit more from traditional reinforcement programming.

Marriage and County-level Crime Rates: A Research Note
Michael Rocque, Chad Posick, Steven E. Barkan, and Ray Paternoster
Objectives: To determine whether the relationship between marriage and crime extends beyond the individual level of analysis by examining the relationship between marriage rates and crime rates at the county level. Methods: Linear regression analyses of marriage rates on various types of crime, including violent, property, drug, and juvenile crime arrest rates. Results: The analyses suggest that marriage rates are inversely related to rates of violent crime, property crime, drug use, and juvenile violence. Conclusions: This research note suggests that the relationship between marriage and crime is more far reaching than previous studies have indicated. Final remarks address the implications of the findings for theoretical work on crime causation and for public policy.