Have the core discussion networks of Americans changed in the past two decades? In 1985, the General Social Survey (GSS) collected the first nationally representative data on the confidants with whom ...Americans discuss important matters. In the 2004 GSS the authors replicated those questions to assess social change in core network structures. Discussion networks are smaller in 2004 than in 1985. The number of people saying there is no one with whom they discuss important matters nearly tripled. The mean network size decreases by about a third (one confidant), from 2.94 in 1985 to 2.08 in 2004. The modal respondent now reports having no confidant; the modal respondent in 1985 had three confidants. Both kin and non-kin confidants were lost in the past two decades, but the greater decrease of non-kin ties leads to more confidant networks centered on spouses and parents, with fewer contacts through voluntary associations and neighborhoods. Most people have densely interconnected confidants similar to them. Some changes reflect the changing demographics of the U.S. population. Educational heterogeneity of social ties has decreased, racial heterogeneity has increased. The data may overestimate the number of social isolates, but these shrinking networks reflect an important social change in America.
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BFBNIB, CEKLJ, INZLJ, NMLJ, NUK, ODKLJ, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, ZRSKP
The purpose of our research was to determine if attending a U.K. livestock show changed attendees' attitudes about agriculture and to compare those changes in attitudes to attendees of a U.S. state ...fair similar in size and dynamic. The sample was livestock show attendees at the Great Yorkshire Show (GYS). The mixed-method design included a then and now semantic differential scale with bipolar adjective pairs to measure attendees' attitudes about agriculture before and after the experience and qualitative interviews with photo elicitation to learn about how attendees developed attitudes about agriculture. Participants had positive attitudes about agriculture before they attended the Show and had more positive attitudes after attending. Participants had more positive attitudes before and after attending the Show than did California State Fair attendees. In addition, participants lacked prior experiences with agriculture, but attending the GYS provided them the opportunity to develop positive attitudes through cognitive, behavioral, and environmental factors. Fair attendance should be promoted because they provide unique opportunities for experiential learning and U.S. fairs should adopt experiential tactics used at the GYS. Further research is needed to better understand how GYS attendees developed positive attitudes about agriculture prior to attending the Show and what elements of the GYS experience were most infuential to attendees' attitude development. Keywords attitudes; agriculture; California State Fair; Great Yorkshire Livestock Show; mixed methods
The purpose of this study was to identify changes in family conflict and abuse dynamics during COVID-19 stay-at-home orders from the perspectives of youth calling a national child abuse hotline. We ...analyzed text and chat transcripts from Childhelp’s National Child Abuse Hotline from May–June 2020 that were flagged as coming from a child with a COVID-19-related concern (N = 105). Thematic analysis was used to identify COVID-19 related influences of family conflict as well as how COVID-19 constraints influenced coping and survival for youth reporting distress or maltreatment to the hotline. Family conflict most commonly disclosed stemmed from parental or child mental health concerns, often manifesting in escalated child risk taking behaviors, parental substance use, and violence in the home. Conflict was also mentioned surrounding caregiver issues with child productivity while sheltering-in-place, commonly related to school or chores. Youth often voiced feeling unable to find relief from family conflict, exacerbated from physical distance from alternative social supports, technological isolation, and limited contact with typical safe places or supportive adults. To cope and survive, youth and crisis counselors found creative home-based coping skills and alternative reporting mechanisms. Understanding the unique impact of COVID-19 on youth in homes with family conflict and abuse can point to areas for intervention to ensure we are protecting the most vulnerable as many continue to shelter-in-place. In particular, this study revealed the importance of online hotlines and reporting mechanisms to allow more youth to seek out the help and professional support they need.
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DOBA, EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, IZUM, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, ODKLJ, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, PRFLJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, VSZLJ, ZAGLJ
The changing face of qualitative research has opened up discourses on the validity and rigour of research processes and products. A current debate is whether the criteria traditionally used to judge ...the rigour of quantitative research are appropriate to assess the academic integrity of qualitative research including autoethnography. The purpose of this article is to appraise views on the academic rigour, validity and scientific accountability of research in general and autoethnographic research in particular. The researcher reports on issues of rigour in conducting autoethnographic research from her own experience and that of published autoethnographic researchers. The issue of relevant appraisal criteria against which the research integrity and rigour of autoethnographic studies can be assessed is investigated. It is concluded that the academic rigour of autoethnographic studies should be established to enhance its credibility and value and that the criteria used need to be judiciously determined and applied.
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BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The concept of identity has become increasingly prominent in the social sciences and humanities. Analysis of the development of social identities is an important focus of scholarly research, and ...scholars using social identities as the building blocks of social, political, and economic life have attempted to account for a number of discrete outcomes by treating identities as causal factors. The dominant implication of the vast literature on identity is that social identities are among the most important social facts of the world in which we live. Abdelal, Herrera, Johnston, and McDermott have brought together leading scholars from a variety of disciplines to consider the conceptual and methodological challenges associated with treating identity as a variable, offer a synthetic theoretical framework, and demonstrate the possibilities offered by various methods of measurement. The book represents a collection of empirically-grounded theoretical discussions of a range of methodological techniques for the study of identities.
Drawn from the stress process model, the pandemic has imposed substantial stress to individual economic and mental well-being and has brought unprecedented disruptions to social life. In light of ...social distancing measures, and in particular physical distancing because of lockdown policies, the use of digital technologies has been regarded as the alternative to maintain economic and social activities. This paper aims to describe the design and implementation of an online survey created as an urgent, international response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The online survey described here responds to the need of understanding the effects of the pandemic on social interactions/relations and to provide findings on the extent to which digital technology is being utilized by citizens across different communities and countries around the world. It also aims to analyze the association of use of digital technologies with psychological well-being and levels of loneliness. The data will be based on the ongoing survey (comprised of several existing and validated instruments on digital use, psychological well-being and loneliness), open for 3 months after roll out (ends September) across 11 countries (Austria, France, Germany, India, Malta, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Turkey, and UK). Participants include residents aged 18 years and older in the countries and snowball sampling is employed via social media platforms. We anticipate that the findings of the survey will provide useful and much needed information on the prevalence of use and intensities of digital technologies among different age groups, gender, socioeconomic groups in a comparative perspective. Moreover, we expect that the future analysis of the data collected will show that different types of digital technologies and intensities of use are associated with psychological well-being and loneliness. To conclude, these findings from the study are expected to bring in our understanding the role of digital technologies in affecting individual social and emotional connections during a crisis.
This article reviews new scholarship on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender families. The past decade witnessed rapid expansion of data and strong research designs. The most notable advance was ...in studies on variation among mostly planned lesbian comother families. Cumulative evidence suggests that although many of these families have comparatively high levels of shared labor and parental investment, they may not be as ' ' genderless ' ' as previously depicted. Gay men f s diverse paths to family formation and planned parenthood have also been explored, but almost no research studies their children's experiences. Conceptualizations of sexual orientation expanded to include bisexuals and others, and some understanding of the experiences of transgender people has begun to emerge. Future work should explore relationships among members of the families they create.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, INZLJ, KILJ, NLZOH, NMLJ, NUK, ODKLJ, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK, ZRSKP
Increasing awareness of the “replication crisis” has prompted discussion about replicability and reproducibility in social and behavioral science research, including in communication. As with other ...fields, communication has seen discussion about concerns with the interpretation of existing research. One response has been the piecemeal adoption of “open science” practices in communication to reduce selectivity in analysis, reporting, and publication of research. Calls for further adoption of such practices have, in turn, been met with criticisms and concerns about the negative consequences of their adoption. Amidst disparate perspectives regarding solutions to replicability and reproducibility issues in communication science, difficulties building consensus and caution about negative outcomes are understandable, but they also present the risk of a status quo bias that could stall the improvement of the replicability and reproducibility of communication research. The urgency of the replication crisis for communication and the cost of inaction are presented here along three exemplifying dimensions perhaps of particular importance in communication research: (a) responsibility to the public, (b) stewardship of resources, and (c) membership in a community of scholars. While debate over solutions will continue, we would do well to keep in mind that problems with replicability and reproducibility in communication research are indeed a crisis needing immediate attention.
Large-scale surveys are common in social and behavioral science research. Missing data often occur at item levels due to nonresponses or planned missing data designs. In practice, the item scores are ...typically aggregated into scale scores (i.e., sum or mean scores) for further analyses. Although several strategies to handle item-level missing data have been proposed, most of them are not easy to implement, especially for applied researchers. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we examined a practical hybrid approach to deal with item-level missing data in Likert scale items with a varying number of categories (i.e., four, five, and seven) and missing data mechanisms. Specifically, the examined approach first uses proration to calculate the scale scores for a participant if a certain proportion of item scores is available (a cutoff criterion of proration) and then use full information maximum likelihood to deal with missing data at the scale level when scale scores cannot be computed due to the selected proration cutoff criterion. Our simulation results showed that the hybrid approach was generally acceptable when the missing data were randomly spread over the items, even when they had different thresholds/means and loadings, with caution to be taken when the missingness is determined by one of the scale items. Based on the results, we recommend using the cutoff of 30% or 40% for proration when the sample size is small and the cutoff of 40% or 50% when the sample size is moderate or large.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
Bioethicists influence practices and policies in medicine, science, and public health. However, little is known about bioethicists' views. We recently surveyed 824 U.S. bioethicists on a wide range ...of ethical issues, including topics related to abortion, medical aid in dying, and resource allocation, among others. We also asked bioethicists about their demographic, religious, academic, and professional backgrounds. We find that bioethicists' normative commitments predict their views on bioethical issues. We also find that, in important ways, bioethicists' views do not align with those of the U.S. public: for instance, bioethicists are more likely than members of the public to think abortion is ethically permissible but are less likely to believe compensating organ donors is. Our demographic results indicate the field of bioethics is far less diverse than the U.S. population-less diverse even than other academic disciplines-suggesting far more work needs to be done to build an inclusive field.
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