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Fathers’ Military Service and Children’s College Attainment

By on April 20, 2026 in Articles

Paula Fomby, Patricia van Hissenhoven Flórez

Sociological Science April 20, 2026
10.15195/v13.a18

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Men’s early adult experiences shape the life chances of their future children. For Black men in the United States, systemic exclusion from educational and labor market opportunity has long constrained intergenerational mobility. We examine whether military service alters this trajectory, drawing on the US Panel Study of Income Dynamics (1968–2023, N=7,808 father–child pairs) to investigate college completion among adult children whose fathers were born between 1920 and 1976. Since the mid-twentieth century, the Armed Forces have offered Black men racial integration, occupational advancement, economic stability, and educational benefits that were less available in civilian society. Black fathers’ military service increased children’s probability of earning a bachelor’s degree by 53 percent compared with children of Black nonveterans, with larger differences when fathers served before the transition to an all-volunteer force. Gains were attributable to GI Bill benefit receipt and diversion out of limited civilian opportunity in early adulthood. White fathers’ veteran status conferred no educational advantage to their children, reflecting different counterfactuals: service provided greater relative benefits when the alternative was a racially closed civilian opportunity structure rather than an open one.
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Paula Fomby, University of Pennsylvania
E-mail: pfomby@sas.upenn.edu.

Patricia van Hissenhoven Flórez, University of Pennsylvania
E-mail: vpatr@sas.upenn.edu.

Acknowledgments: We are grateful to Angela Dixon, Megan Reed, Christine Schwartz, and participants in seminars at Emory University, University of Maryland, and University of Wisconsin for comments on earlier versions of this manuscript and to the University of Pennsylvania Population Studies Center and its NICHD Center Grant (P2C HD044964) for administrative and computing support. All errors and omissions are the responsibility of the authors.


Supplemental Materials

Reproducibility Package: Reproducibility package available at: https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/sites/psid/view/studies/303003


  • Citation: Fomby, Paula, Patricia van Hissenhoven Flórez. 2026. “Fathers’ Military Service and Children’s College Attainment” Sociological Science 13: 441-475.
  • Received: January 6, 2026
  • Accepted: March 9, 2026
  • Editors: Stephen Vaisey, Ellis Monk
  • DOI: 10.15195/v13.a18


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Making Progress in the Chicago Police Department, 1862–2024

By on April 16, 2026 in Articles

Tony Cheng, Johann Koehler

Sociological Science April 16, 2026
0.15195/v13.a17

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Claims to have made progress are a mainstay of organizational reputation management. However, confusing and contradictory performance expectations can make progress difficult to locate among a police department’s priorities. A case study of the Chicago Police Department’s front-facing pronouncements over more than a century and a half clarifies how a bureaucracy works, stretches, and repackages “progress” to resolve those confusions and contradictions. We find that progress claims featured more prominently and fervently during moments when the department had reason to believe its legitimacy was threatened. Within that general pattern, we also find specific patterns in the form that progress claims took. We observe the stable reliance on two techniques to gesture toward progress the police either promised to enact or that it claimed it had already delivered: the police shifted goalposts by cycling through inconsistent measures of favorable performance from one year to the next, and they drummed crises to dramatize the obstacles that favorable performance required them to overcome. By showing how both techniques reinforced one another, we clarify how a police department “makes” progress.
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Tony Cheng: Department of Sociology, Duke University.
E-mail: tony.cheng@duke.edu.

Johann Koehler: Department of Social Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science.
E-mail: j.koehler@lse.ac.uk.

Acknowledgments: We thank the London School of Economics and Political Science Phelan US Centre for support that made this research possible; to Vani Kant and Maryam Auwalu for excellent research assistance; to Eric Monson, Lauren Nichols, and the Duke Center for Data & Visualization Sciences for advice about representing the findings; and to Calvin Morrill, Tim Newburn, Coretta Phillips, Gil Rothschild Elyassi, Tobias Smith, and participants in the LSE’s Criminal Justice Forum for comments that sharpened the analysis. Direct correspondence to Tony Cheng, Department of Sociology, Duke University, 417 Chapel Drive, Box 90088, Reuben-Cooke Building Room 258, Durham, NC 27708.



Reproducibility Package: A memo describing the historical data, coding procedures, and analytic workflow used in this study is available here: https://osf.io/hdfp6/overview.

  • Citation: Cheng, Tony, and Johann Koehler. 2026. “Making Progress in the Chicago Police Department, 1862–2024” Sociological Science 13: 408-440.
  • Received: January 7, 2026
  • Accepted: February 17, 2026
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Kristen Schilt
  • DOI: 10.15195/v13.a17


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Are Occupations “Bundles of Skills”? Identifying Latent Skill Profiles in the Labor Market Using Topic Modeling

By on April 13, 2026 in Articles

Marie Labussière, Thijs Bol

Sociological Science April 13, 2026
0.15195/v13.a16

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Skills are considered a key determinant of workers’ labor market opportunities, especially in times of rapid technological change. However, existing research rarely conceptualizes and measures skills in their own right, instead relying on occupations as a proxy. How does this limit our understanding of the labor market structure and of wage inequality? In this article, we leverage a unique dataset of millions of online job postings in the United Kingdom to measure the skill profiles of jobs and analyze their similarity within and between occupational categories. Our data-driven approach reveals substantial discrepancies between occupational classifications and the actual skill content of jobs. We further demonstrate that job-level variation in skill content constitutes an independent source of wage inequality—one that is obscured by analyses at the occupational level. These findings challenge the conventional view of occupations as coherent bundles of skills, offering new avenues for analyzing labor market stratification.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.


Marie Labussière: Sciences Po, Centre for Research on Social Inequalities (CRIS).
E-mail: marie.labussiere@sciencespo.fr.

Thijs Bol: University of Amsterdam, Department of Sociology.
E-mail: t.bol@uva.nl.

Acknowledgments: We are grateful to Luisa Burchartz, Viktor Decker, Thomas A. DiPrete, Fenella Fleischmann, Andreas Haupt, and Wouter Schakel for their helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this manuscript. This research was presented at the 2024 ISA RC28 Spring Meeting, the 2025 TASKS VII Conference, and workshops of the Institutions, Inequalities and Life Courses (IIL) research group at the University of Amsterdam, the Sciences Po Center for Research on Social Inequalities (CRIS), the Center for Research in Economics and Statistics (CREST), and the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB); we thank participants for their constructive discussions. Marie Labussière gratefully acknowledges Pierre Alquier and Matteo Amestoy for their technical advice.

Funding: This work was supported by the ERC starting grant from School to Career: Towards a Career Perspective on the Labor Market Returns to Education (CAREER) (ID: 950189).


Supplemental Materials

Reproducibility Package: All code necessary to reproduce the results reported in this article is publicly available in a replication package hosted on GitHub (https://github.com/mlabussiere/Occupations-bundles-of-skills.git). The online supplement also contains additional information on the data, methods, and robustness checks. The data are subject to access restrictions and cannot be shared publicly.


  • Citation: Labussière, Marie, Thijs Bol. 2026. “Are Occupations “Bundles of Skills”? Identifying Latent Skill Profiles in the Labor Market Using Topic Modeling” Sociological Science 13: 362-407.
  • Received: December 9, 2025
  • Accepted: March 2, 2026
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Vincent Buskens
  • DOI: 10.15195/v13.a16


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Socio-Economic Advancement and Long-Term Trends in the Gender Gap in Early Career Occupational Status in France 1860–1960

By on April 6, 2026 in Articles

Wiebke Schulz, Ineke Maas, Marco H.D. van Leeuwen

Sociological Science April 6, 2026
10.15195/v13.a15

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The stark reduction in gender inequality on the labor market is one of the most profound social changes over the past century. However, little is known about the development of the gender gap in occupational status. This study provides new evidence on the gap in occupational status early in men’s and women’s careers during a phase of rapid socio-economic change. We use an exceptionally rich dataset that combines French marriage certificates containing data on almost 50,000 brides and grooms from 1860 to 1960 with time-varying data on socio-economic advancement for the hundred French departments. From 1910 onwards, the gender gap in occupational status at marriage declined. Around 1940, the gap turned around in favor of women. As expected, labor market opportunities as well as technological development were associated with a reduction of the gender gap in status. Reaching gender equity, however, depends on a specific interplay of socio-economic forces. Technological developments only reduce the gender status gap when paired with expanded occupational opportunities for women.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.


Wiebke Schulz: Universität Bremen.
E-mail: wschulz@uni-bremen.de.

Ineke Maas: Utrecht University and VU University Amsterdam.
E-mail: i.maas@uu.nl.

Marco H. D. van Leeuwen: Utrecht University.
E-mail: M.H.D.vanLeeuwen@uu.nl.

Acknowledgments: Versions of this article were presented at WZB Berlin and the University of Bremen. Thanks to Lena Hipp, Lara Minkus, and Philipp M. Lersch for helpful feedback on past drafts of this article. We thank Ruta Daktariunaite and Henri Breuer for excellent research assistance. This study received funding as part of an Advanced Investigator Grant from the European Research Council (TowardsOpenSocieties) awarded to Marco H.D. van Leeuwen.


Supplemental Materials

Reproducibility Package: Code necessary to reproduce the results is available at: osf.io/6dsnt. The data used in this study are available in accordance with the access conditions specified on the respective websites: the TRA data were supplied to us by the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, MONA, that subsequently merged with the IRSTEA (Institut national de recherche en
sciences et technologies pour l’environnement et l’agriculture) to create the INRAE (Institut national de recherche pour l’agriculture, l’alimentation et l’environnement), https://www.inrae.fr/. The TRA data are now available from the INED (Institut national d’études démographiques): https://tra.site.ined.fr/en/databases/getting-the-data/


  • Citation: Schulz, Wiebke, Ineke Maas, and Marco H. D. van Leeuwen. 2026. “Socio-Economic Advancement and Long-Term Trends in the Gender Gap in Early Career Occupational Status in France 1860–1960” Sociological Science 13: 332-361.
  • Received: November 19, 2025
  • Accepted: February 17, 2026
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Jeremy Freese
  • DOI: 10.15195/v13.a15


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Jargonization, Language Development, and Team Performance

By on April 2, 2026 in Articles

Ray E. Reagans, Ronald S. Burt, Donald D. Liu

Sociological Science April 2, 2026
10.15195/v13.a14

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The emergence of team-specific vocabulary and language (“team jargon”) is a natural con- sequence of sustained, knowledge-intensive work. We examine how jargonization—the emergence of specialized shorthand—affects both the speed of language development and its implications for team performance. We argue that the explicit and mutually understood nature of team jargon reduces ambiguity, thereby facilitating language development and minimizing misunderstandings that could otherwise hinder coordination. Empirical analysis of language formation among newly formed teams assigned a symbol identification task supports this argument. We operationalize jargonization as the proportion of content words in team communications. Our findings indicate that as jargonization increases, the relationship between experience and language development strengthens, and the positive language effect on team accuracy increases in magnitude.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.


Ray E. Reagans: MIT.
E-mail: rreagans@mit.edu.

Ronald S. Burt: University of Chicago and Bocconi University.
E-mail: rburt@uchicago.edu.

Donald D. Liu
E-mail: donald.liu7@gmail.com.

Acknowledgments: This research was supported by the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and the MIT Sloan School of Management, which provided funding to transition our earlier experiment to the Empirica platform and to conduct the experimental trials reported here. Under the supervision of the two lead authors, the third author implemented the platform transition and managed the experiment. We are grateful to Linda Argote for her thoughtful comments on the manuscript. Please direct all correspondence to Ray Reagans.


Supplemental Materials

Reproducibility Package: A replication package has been deposited to OpenICPSR (https://www.openicpsr.org/openicpsr/project/239292/version/V1/view) that contains code and data required to reproduce the results presented in the article.


  • Citation: Reagans, Ray E., Ronald S. Burt, Donald D. Liu. 2026. “Jargonization, Language Development, and Team Performance” Sociological Science 13: 314-331.
  • Received: August 4, 2025
  • Accepted: October 30, 2025
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Peter Bearman
  • DOI: 10.15195/v13.a14


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The Cultural and Symbolic Foundations of Status Hierarchies: A Rejoinder to Biegert, Kühhirt, and Van Lanker

By on March 25, 2026 in Articles

Peter McMahan, Eran Shor

Sociological Science March 25, 2026
10.15195/v13.a13

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Interpretations of high-profile status attributions like NBA awards tend to come from one of two theoretical standpoints. Rational/economic models treat status assessments as socially tainted measurements of objective quality. In contrast, symbolic/cultural models interpret such assessments as culturally situated assertions used in the determination of quality and merit. In this rejoinder to Bigert, Kühhirt, and Van Lanker’s (2026) reply to our 2024 article in Sociological Science, we reiterate the implications of these contrasting theoretical stances for the interpretation of NBA player awards. We restate our argument that the contrast between All-Star and All-NBA awards provides the theoretical traction needed to distinguish objective bias from culturally endogenous status mechanisms in cumulative status advantage. The analysis supports our broader claim that cultural/symbolic interpretations of status are better suited for explaining the endogeneity and stratification that define status contests in varied contexts.
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Peter McMahan: Department of Sociology, McGill University.
E-mail: peter.mcmahan@mcgill.ca.

Eran Shor: Department of Sociology, McGill University.
E-mail: eran.shor@mcgill.ca.


  • Citation: McMahan, Peter, Eran Shor. 2026. “The Cultural and Symbolic Foundations of Status Hierarchies: A Rejoinder to Biegert, Kühhirt, and Van Lanker” Sociological Science 13: 303- 313.
  • Received: September 8, 2025
  • Accepted: September 8, 2025
  • Editors: Ari Adut
  • DOI: 10.15195/v13.a13


Original article:
Status Ambiguity and Multiplicity in the Selection of NBA Awards

Comment:
There Is Cumulative Status Bias and Status Entrenchment in NBA Awards: Comment on McMahan and Shor (2024)


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There Is Cumulative Status Bias and Status Entrenchment in NBA Awards: Comment on McMahan and Shor (2024)

By on March 25, 2026 in Articles

Thomas Biegert, Michael Kühhirt, Wim Van Lancker

Sociological Science March 25, 2026
10.15195/v13.a12

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Peter McMahan and Eran Shor (MS) published an article in Sociological Science critiquing our study on cumulative status bias in NBA All-Star elections (Biegert, Kühhirt, and Van Lancker 2023). In this article, we affirm the presence of cumulative status bias in NBA Awards. Crucially, MS focus only on the accumulated component of cumulative status bias, ignoring the impact of immediately preceding status signals, which decouple quality and status. Furthermore, we identify theoretical and empirical issues with their model extensions of All-Star elections and their reapplication to All-NBA selections. (1) We deem MS’ argument for legitimate deviations between status and quality deeply problematic. (2) We argue that their inclusion of additional variables is not theoretically plausible in several instances, nor does it improve the models, which still support our findings. (3) We argue that All-NBA selections are a different application, not a better one, with no direct implications for the role of cumulative status bias in NBA All-Star elections. (4) We highlight flaws in MS’ models, such as irrelevant covariates, an indiscriminate approach to confounding and mediation, mismeasurement, and problematic post-treatment and post-outcome controls. (5) Our re-analysis confirms that, even in the All-NBA setting, previous status distinctions cumulatively bias outcomes.
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Thomas Biegert: Department of Social Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science.
E-mail: t.biegert@lse.ac.uk.

Michael Kühhirt:
E-mail: kuehhirtm@gmail.com.

Wim Van Lancker: Center for Sociological Research, KU Leuven.
E-mail: wim.vanlancker@kuleuven.be.

Acknowledgments: We are grateful to David Brady and two anonymous reviewers for helpful feedback and suggestions.

Supplemental Material

Reproducibility Package: Reproduction package available at https://osf.io/t4n75/.

  • Citation: Thomas Biegert, Michael Kühhirt, Wim Van Lancker. 2025. “There Is Cumulative Status Bias and Status Entrenchment in NBA Awards: Comment on McMahan and Shor (2024)” Sociological Science 13: 287-302.
  • Received: February 24, 2025
  • Accepted: April 18, 2025
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Ray Reagans
  • DOI: 10.15195/v13.a12


Status Ambiguity and Multiplicity in the Selection of NBA Awards

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The Effect of the Texas Migrant Busing Program on the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election

By on March 10, 2026 in Articles

William Scarborough, Ronald Kwon, David Brady

Sociological Science March 10, 2026
10.15195/v13.a11

Abstract

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From 2022 to 2024, Texas transported more than 100,000 migrants from the U.S.–Mexico border to six cities led by Democratic mayors, creating a unique migration shock far from the border. We use county-level data to estimate the program’s effects on presidential elections. Comparing two elections prior to the program (2016–2020) with one after (2024), we find that the busing program increased Trump’s vote share by more than three percentage points in treated counties. These effects are robust to alternative analyses. To explore mechanisms further, we analyze individual-level data from AP VoteCast. The increase in Trump’s vote share in places receiving buses was driven by swing voters and elevated Republican turnout. Swing voters in busing destinations were moved to Trump by amplified concerns with crime, whereas Republican turnout was linked to heightened concerns over immigration. Our findings highlight the enduring power of minority threat and the growing role of subnational immigration policies.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

William Scarborough: Department of Sociology, University of North Texas.
E-mail: William.Scarborough@unt.edu

Ronald Kwon: Department of Sociology, University of North Texas.
E-mail: Ronald.Kwon@unt.edu

David Brady: Department of Public Policy and Management, University of Southern California.
E-mail: Bradyd@usc.edu

Acknowledgments: This project benefited from support from the Department of Sociology at the University of North Texas. The authors thank editor Ari Adut and the anonymous reviewers at Sociological Science for their helpful feedback in advancing the article.

Supplemental Materials

Reproducibility Package: Replication code for this article can be accessed here: https://osf.io/xfsk6/overview?view_only=bfada169cd534edebc22fea0edb56064

  • Citation: Scarborough, William, Ronald Kwon, David Brady 2026. “The Effect of the Texas Migrant Busing Program on the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election” Sociological Science 13: 273-287.
  • Received: September 23, 2025
  • Accepted: January 7, 2026
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Bart Bonikowski
  • DOI: 10.15195/v13.a11

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Is College Really “the” Equalizer? New Evidence Addressing Unobserved Selection

By on March 3, 2026 in Articles

Haowen Zheng, Robert Andersen, Anders Holm, Kristian Bernt Karlson

Sociological Science March 3, 2026
10.15195/v13.a10

Abstract

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Influential research shows that college graduates achieve similar labor market outcomes regardless of socioeconomic origin, leading to the view that a college degree is a “great equalizer.” Still, other evidence suggests that family background continues to shape labor market outcomes long after graduation, implying that college’s equalizing effect may largely reflect the characteristics of those who pursue higher education. However, the role of unobserved selection into college has rarely been examined. After formally illustrating how this unobserved selection can bias estimates of the college effect, we present new analyses that correct for this bias using an instrumental-variable approach on white male respondents in the 1979 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. The selection-corrected results suggest that intergenerational mobility is similar among college graduates and nongraduates. Although college yields substantial returns for all, these returns do not differ by family background. We conclude that for higher education to serve as a true equalizer, it must become both less selective and more accessible to students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Haowen Zheng: Stone Center for Inequality Dynamics, University of Michigan.
E-mail: zhenghw@umich.edu

Robert Andersen: Ivey Business School, Western University.
E-mail: bob.andersen@ivey.ca

Anders Holm: Department of Sociology, Western University.
E-mail: aholm@uwo.ca

Kristian Bernt Karlson: Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen.
E-mail: kbk@soc.ku.dk

Acknowledgments: The authors thank Richard Breen, Wenhao Jiang, Robert Manduca, Kim Weeden, Ang Yu, and participants at PAA 2025, the Sociological Science 2025 Conference, and ASA 2025 for their helpful comments and support. This research was conducted with restricted access to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data. We thank the staff at BLS and NORC at the University of Chicago for their assistance with accessing restricted data. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the BLS.

Supplemental Materials

Reproducibility Package: A replication package is available at https://osf.io/ne23f/. It includes all code used for data cleaning and analysis as well as a cleaned data set derived from the public-use NLSY79 data. Part of the analysis relies on restricted geographic data obtained through a data contract with the BLS (see https://www.bls.gov/nls/request-restricted-data/nlsy-geocode-data.htm). This is not included in the replication package but can be accessed through a BLS application. The instrumental variables were drawn from the replication package of Carneiro, Heckman, and Vytlacil (2011) (see https://www.openicpsr.org/openicpsr/project/112467/ version/V1/view).

  • Citation: Zheng, Haowen, Robert Andersen, Anders Holm, and Kristian Bernt Karlson. 2026. “Is College Really “the” Equalizer? New Evidence Addressing Unobserved Selection” Sociological Science 13: 242-272.
  • Received: October 6, 2025
  • Accepted: December 12, 2025
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Jeremy Freese
  • DOI: 10.15195/v13.a10

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Early Childhood Investments and Women’s Work Outcomes across the Life Course

By on February 24, 2026 in Articles

Vida Maralani, Camille Portier, Berkay Özcan

Sociological Science February 24, 2026
10.15195/v13.a9

Abstract

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This study investigates variability in women’s experiences balancing work and family, focusing on the association between early childhood investments and work trajectories. Using longitudinal data and event study models, we examine work participation from two years before to 10 years after first birth across different early childhood investment levels. Although sustained intensive investment is associated with the largest reduction in paid work, the relationship between child investment and work outcomes does not follow a simple “more investment, less work” pattern. Instead, investment intensity and duration both shape work trajectories. Women with more intensive short-term practices or moderate longer-term ones work at similar levels as women making lower investments. Patterns also differ by work outcome: not working is most differentiated by sustained intensive child investment, whereas hours worked are similar across a range of investment levels. Finally, women with constrained family resources consistently work more than those married to college-educated spouses.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Vida Maralani: Cornell University.
E-mail: vida.maralani@cornell.edu.

Camille Portier: European University Institute.
E-mail: camille.portier@eui.eu.

Berkay Özcan: New York University Abu Dhabi.
E-mail: berkay.ozcan@nyu.edu.

Acknowledgments: We thank Isadora Milanez, Douglas McKee, Douglas Miller, Samuel Stabler, Kim Weeden, Kelly Musick, Patrick Ishizuka, Stephen Jenkins, Peter Rich, Lucinda Platt, Seth Sanders, Duncan Thomas, Zhipeng Zhou, and Alvaro Padilla Pozo for their valuable feedback and support on this project. We are grateful for research support from the Cornell Center on the Study of Inequality. After completing the study and drafting this manuscript, we used ChatGPT (OpenAI) to check grammar and clarity in several sections of dense prose.

Supplemental Materials

Reproducibility Package: Replication code for this article can be accessed here: https://osf.io/j8ymw/overview.

  • Citation: Maralani, Vida, Camille Portier, and Berkay Özcan. 2026. “Early Childhood Investments and Women’s Work Outcomes across the Life Course” Sociolog- ical Science 13: 214-241.
  • Received: August 31, 2025
  • Accepted: January 13, 2026
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Maria Abascal
  • DOI: 10.15195/v13.a9

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Force of Attraction and Partner Availability in the U.S. Marriage Market: A Two-Sided Matching Model

By on February 17, 2026 in Articles

Yuan Cheng, John K. Dagsvik, Xuehui Han, Zhiyang Jia

Sociological Science February 17, 2026
10.15195/v13.a8

Abstract

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0 Citation


This article develops and applies a stochastic two-sided matching model to analyze marriage patterns in the United States using 1 percent samples from the 2010 and 2019 American Community Survey, accessed via the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series. This approach disentangles two sources of change in marriage patterns over time: individuals’ preferences for partner characteristics (“forces of attraction”) and the numbers and composition of potential partners (“partner availability”). As illustrated by our empirical application, the model provides a flexible and unified analytical framework to address a broad range of relevant questions in marriage research, offering valuable new perspectives on marriage dynamics and facilitating future research, despite the limitation that the model does not separately identify individual-specific preferences.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Yuan Cheng: Population Research Institute, Fudan University.
E-mail: chengyuan@fudan.edu.cn.

John K. Dagsvik: Research Department, Statistics Norway.
E-mail: john.dagsvik@ssb.no.

Xuehui Han: Asia and Pacific Department, International Monetary Fund.
E-mail: XHan@imf.org.

Zhiyang Jia: Research Department, Statistics Norway.
E-mail: Zhiyang.Jia@ssb.no.

Acknowledgments: We are grateful to the editor, Professor Arnout van de Rijt, and the deputy editor for their constructive comments that significantly improved our analysis. We also thank Zhenchao Qian, participants of the sociology research seminar at The Ohio State University, and graduate students in the Labor Economics course at Fudan University for their valuable feedback. We extend special thanks to Xizhe Peng for his continued support and facilitation of this project. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views or policies of the International Monetary Fund or Statistics Norway. Any remaining errors are our own.

Supplemental Materials

Reproducibility Package: https://github.com/GuoguomaFD/Matching.

  • Citation: Cheng, Yuan, John K. Dagsvik, Xuehui Han, and Zhiyang Jia. 2026. “Force of Attraction and Partner Availability in the U.S. Marriage Market: A Two-Sided Matching Model” Sociological Science 13: 178-213.
  • Received: November 22, 2025
  • Accepted: January 12, 2026
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Michael Rosenfeld
  • DOI: 10.15195/v13.a8

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The Faith Factor. How Scholars’ Religiosity Biases Research Findings on Secularization

By on February 10, 2026 in Articles

Valeria Rainero, Jörg Stolz, Ruud Luijkx

Sociological Science February 10, 2026
10.15195/v13.a7

Abstract

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1 Citation


Secularization is one of the most debated areas of research in current sociology of religion. Despite hundreds of empirical studies, researchers do not even agree on the very existence of secularization in different parts of the world. This article investigates whether some of the variability in findings may be attributed not to the social reality investigated but to bias in the form of researchers’ own religiosity. Specifically, we test whether researchers’ religiosity is correlated with two outcomes: their personal belief in the secularization thesis and the likelihood of supporting secularization in their published articles. To address this question, we constructed an international database of scholars working on secularization and conducted a survey measuring their religiosity and beliefs about religious decline. We then coded their publications according to whether they supported the secularization thesis and linked the two data sets. We find significant evidence of a “(non-)religious bias.” Either in their private attitudes or public writings, religious researchers find less evidence for the secularization thesis, whereas secular scholars find more. This result cannot be explained by differences in research methods, study quality, or the religious and geographic contexts under investigation.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Valeria Rainero: Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento.
E-mail: valeria.rainero@unitn.it.

Jörg Stolz: Institute for Social Sciences of Religion, University of Lausanne.
E-mail: joerg.stolz@unil.ch.

Ruud Luijkx: Department of Sociology, Tilburg University & Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento.
E-mail: r.luijkx@uvt.nl.

Acknowledgments: We sincerely thank everyone who provided valuable comments and suggestions during presentations of this article at the University of Milan (2023), the SSSR Conference in Pittsburgh (2024), and the Institute for Social Sciences of Religions at the University of Lausanne (2024). We also wish to thank Eduard Ponarin and Dominik Balazka for their contributions to the earlier version of the research design and Jeremy Senn for conducting the inter-coder reliability test.

Supplemental Materials

Reproducibility Package: A replication package with instructions, data, and STATA code is publicly available on the Open Science Framework (OSF): https://osf.io/vcxnk/.

  • Citation: Rainero, Valeria, Jörg Stolz, and Ruud Luijkx. 2026. “The Faith Factor. How Scholars’ Religiosity Biases Research Find- ings on Secularization” Sociological Science 13: 154-177.
  • Received: October 30, 2025
  • Accepted: December 16, 2025
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Andreas Wimmer
  • DOI: 10.15195/v13.a7

1

Poor Neighborhoods, Bad Schools? A High-Dimensional Model of Place-Based Disparities in Academic Achievement

By on February 6, 2026 in Articles

Geoffrey T. Wodtke, Kailey White, Xiang Zhou

Sociological Science February 6, 2026
10.15195/v13.a6

Abstract

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Persistent disparities in academic achievement between students from high- and low- poverty neighborhoods are widely attributed to differences in school quality. Using nationally representative data from more than 18,000 students and nearly 1,000 elementary schools, we examine how the schools serving students from different neighborhoods vary across more than 160 characteristics, including detailed measures of their composition, resources, instruction, climate, and effectiveness. Our findings document significant differences in demographic composition between schools serving high- and low-poverty neighborhoods but comparatively little variation in other dimensions of the school environment. With novel machine learning methods tailored for high-dimensional data, we estimate that equalizing all these different factors would reduce the achievement gap by less than 10 percent, primarily through changes in school composition. These results suggest that the main drivers of place-based disparities in achievement lie outside of elementary schools, underscoring the need to address broader structural inequalities as part of any effort to reduce achievement gaps.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Geoffrey T. Wodtke: Department of Sociology, University of Chicago.
E-mail: wodtke@uchicago.edu.

Kailey White: Crime Lab and Education Lab, University of Chicago.
E-mail: kwhite10@uchicago.edu.

Xiang Zhou: Department of Sociology, Harvard University.
E-mail: xiang_zhou@fas.harvard.edu.

Acknowledgments: The authors thank Steve Raudenbush, Guanglei Hong, Ariel Kalil, Steven Durlauf, Eric Grodsky, and Lucienne Disch for helpful comments and discussions. This project was supported by a grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation (No. 2015613) and by the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Foundation. We used Chat- GPT, version 4o, for help with copyediting the manuscript and debugging R scripts. Responsibility for all content rests solely with the authors.

Supplemental Materials

Reproducibility Package: Code and instructions for accessing the data necessary to reproduce the results presented in this article are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17634676.

  • Citation: Wodtke, T. Geoffrey, Kailey White, and Xiang Zhou. 2026. “Poor Neighborhoods, Bad Schools? A High-Dimensional Model of Place-Based Disparities in Academic Achievement” Sociological Science 13: 109-153.
  • Received: September 8, 2025
  • Accepted: December 12, 2025
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Jeremy Freese
  • DOI: 10.15195/v13.a6

0

How Measurement Changes Can Exaggerate the Growth of Religious “Nones”

By on February 3, 2026 in Articles

Matthew Conrad, Conrad Hackett

Sociological Science February 3, 2026
10.15195/v13.a5

Abstract

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Academic and popular interest in nonreligion has risen in parallel with the growth of religiously unaffiliated populations. In many countries, census and survey questions used to measure religion have been modified to better capture nonreligious identities. Little attention has been given to how these changes in measures affect specific claims about the rise of the “nones.” Although there is no doubt that religiously unaffiliated populations have grown in many countries during the twenty- first century, the degree of such growth has sometimes been exaggerated due to measurement effects. We review methodological issues that affect the estimates of the size of religiously unaffiliated populations and their change over time. We call for further study to quantify the effect of these changes.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Matthew Conrad: Department of Anthropology, University of Connecticut.
E-mail: matthew.conrad@uconn.edu.

Conrad Hackett: Pew Research Center, University of Maryland.
E-mail: chackett@pewresearch.org.

Acknowledgments: We are grateful for helpful feedback from Philip Brenner, Ryan Cragun, Ariela Keysar, Courtney Kennedy, Andrew Mercer, and David Voas. Many people contributed to our broader project of measuring religious change, including Marcin Stonawski, Yunping Tong, Stephanie Kramer, Anne Shi, Alan Cooperman, Joanna Sikorska, and Caileigh Stirling. Support for this work came from The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John Templeton Foundation (grant 62287).

Reproducibility Package: A package is available on the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/93exg/) that contains data and R code to reproduce the results in this article, as well as links to the full data sets.

  • Citation: Conrad, Matthew, and Conrad Hackett. 2025. “How Measurement Changes Can Exaggerate the Growth of Religious “Nones”” Sociological Sci- ence 13: 89-108.
  • Received: September 15, 2025
  • Accepted: November 14, 2025
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Cristobal Young
  • DOI: 10.15195/v13.a5

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Ambiguous Actorhood: Twenty-First Century Firms and the Evasion of Responsibility

By on January 27, 2026 in Articles

Carly R. Knight, Adam Goldstein

Sociological Science January 27, 2026
10.15195/v13.a4

Abstract

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Sociologists have long argued that the cultural construction of organizations as social actors underpins public expectations of corporate accountability. In recent decades, however, the unified bureaucratic structures that once sustained this construction have given way to increasingly fragmented and opaque organizational forms. This study considers to what extent the diffuse, often illegible nature of twenty-first century corporations undermines the ability of public audiences to demand corporate accountability. We argue that complex, fragmented organizational configurations allow firms to partially evade the negative reputational consequences of misconduct by confounding audiences and obfuscating the “actor” behind the bad organizational action. Drawing on a vignette- based survey experiment, we test whether fragmentation reduces attributions of blame following corporate wrongdoing. Consistent with our hypotheses, we find that while respondents generally attribute high levels of blame for wrongdoing, greater fragmentation decreases the blame directed at core firms and heightens audiences’ uncertainty about responsibility. Moreover, in fragmented structures, blame is not simply redistributed to auxiliary entities but is diminished overall. These findings suggest that as corporate structures grow more complex and less legible, the underlying actors behind organizational action become harder to identify and construct, and thereby harder to hold to account.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Carly R. Knight: New York University.
E-mail: carly.knight@nyu.edu.

Adam Goldstein: Princeton University.
E-mail: amg5@princeton.edu.

Acknowledgments: The authors are listed in reverse alphabetical order. For helpful com- ments, the authors wish to thank Laura Adler, Barbara Kiviat, Kim Pernell, and Claire Sieffert. This article has benefitted from presentations at the 2024 American Sociological Association Meetings and the 2025 RC17 Conference on Organizing Plurality.

Supplemental Materials

Reproducibility Package: Data and code to reproduce the results reported in this article are avail- able at OSF (https://osf.io/enpmt/). The online supplemental appendix also contains additional information about the survey data.

  • Citation: Knight, Carly R., Adam Goldstein. 2025. “Ambiguous Actorhood: Twenty-First Century Firms and the Evasion of Respon- sibility” Sociological Science 13: 63-88.
  • Received: August 26, 2025
  • Accepted: October 31, 2025
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Kieran Healy
  • DOI: 10.15195/v13.a4

0

Generative AI in Sociological Research: State of the Discipline

By on January 20, 2026 in Articles

AJ Alvero, Dustin S. Stoltz, Oscar Stuhler, Marshall A. Taylor

Sociological Science January 20, 2026
10.15195/v13.a3

Abstract

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Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has garnered considerable attention for its poten- tial utility in research and scholarship, even among those who typically do not rely on computational tools. However, early commentators have also articulated concerns about how GenAI usage comes with enormous environmental costs, serious social risks, and a tendency to produce low-quality content. In the midst of both excitement and skepticism, it is crucial to take stock of how GenAI is actually being used. Our study focuses on sociological research as our site, and here we present findings from a survey of 433 authors of articles published in 50 sociology journals in the past five years. The survey provides an overview of the state of the discipline with regard to the use of GenAI by providing answers to fundamental questions: how (much) do scholars use the technology for their research; what are their reasons for using it; and how concerned, trustful, and optimistic are they about the technology? Of the approximately one third of respondents who self-report using GenAI at least weekly, the primary uses are for writing assistance and comparatively less so in planning, data collection, or data analysis. In both use and attitudes, there are surprisingly few differences between self-identified computational and non-computational researchers. In general, respondents are very concerned about the social and environmental consequences of GenAI. Trust in GenAI outputs is low, regardless of expertise or frequency of use. Although optimism that GenAI will improve is high, scholars are divided on whether GenAI will have a positive impact on the field.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

AJ Alvero: Center for Data Science for Enterprise and Society, Cornell University.
E-mail: ajalvero@cornell.edu.

Dustin S. Stoltz: Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Lehigh University.
E-mail: dss219@lehigh.edu.

Oscar Stuhler: Department of Sociology, Northwestern University.
E-mail: oms@northwestern.edu.

Marshall A. Taylor: Department of Sociology, New Mexico State University.
E-mail: mtaylor2@nmsu.edu.

Acknowledgments: All authors contributed equally. We thank all the respondents of our survey for being generous with their time. We are indebted to Kim Weeden and Cat Dang Ton for giving us crucial comments on an early version of this article. We are also grateful for the important feedback we received at the ASA Session on Culture and Computational Social Science, the Sociological Science Conference at Cornell University, the International Network of Analytical Sociology Conference at Columbia University, the Institute for Analytical Sociology Symposium at Linköping University, and the Culture and Action Network at the University of Chicago.

Supplemental Materials

Reproducibility Package: A replication repository for this article can be found at: https://github.com/Marshall-Soc/genai_sociology. The data for this article are hosted on the Harvard Dataverse (Alvero et al. 2025) and can be accessed through: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/ICXIRP

  • Citation: Alvero, AJ, Dustin S. Stoltz, Oscar Stuhler, and Marshall A. Taylor. 2025. “Generative AI in Sociological Research: State of the Discipline” Sociological Science 13: 45-62.
  • Received: August 23, 2025
  • Accepted: November 8, 2025
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Cristobal Young
  • DOI: 10.15195/v13.a3

0

The Forward March of Categorical Tolerance in the United States

By on January 13, 2026 in Articles

Omar Lizardo

Sociological Science January 13, 2026
10.15195/v13.a2

Abstract

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This article updates the empirical picture of categorical tolerance (CT), namely, the pattern of refusing to report dislikes across cultural genres, for the third decade of the twenty-first century in the United States. Analyzing recent survey data from two platforms, I find that CT has continued its march among Americans, reaching approximately one in five respondents. The analysis confirms earlier-observed demographic trends, showing that CT is strongly associated with younger cohorts and non-white individuals. However, I also find that individuals reporting the highest educational attainment are now overrepresented among categorical tolerants, suggesting that CT may increasingly function as an elite cultural strategy consistent with contemporary forms of status display, signaling openness and refusal to refuse. Furthermore, I find that while the odds of being a CT are not strongly polarized by political ideology, the inclination toward symbolic exclusion among non-CTs is, with conservatives significantly more likely to express a greater volume of cultural dislikes than liberals.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Omar Lizardo: Department of Sociology, UCLA.
E-mail: olizardo@soc.ucla.edu.

Acknowledgments: I would like to thank the anonymous Sociological Science reviewers for insightful suggestions for revision that helped improve the article. An early version of this article was presented at the first Sociological Science Conference at Duke University in 2024, where I received useful comments and suggestions.

No supplemental materials.

Reproducibility Package: Data files and R code (in Quarto Markdown format) necessary to reproduce all of the analyses, tables, and figures reported in the article can be found at the following GitHub repo: https://github.com/olizardo/sociological-science-categorical-tolerance-followup.

  • Citation: Lizardo, Omar. 2025. “The Forward March of Categorical Tolerance in the United States” Sociological Science 13: 22-44.
  • Received: October 18, 2025
  • Accepted: November 23, 2025
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Stephen Vaisey
  • DOI: 10.15195/v13.a2

0

How Do (Human) Child Welfare Workers Respond to Machine-Generated Risk Scores?

By on January 6, 2026 in Articles

Martin Eiermann, Maria Fitzpatrick, Katharine Sadowski, Christopher Wildeman

Sociological Science January 6, 2026
10.15195/v13.a1

Abstract

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Algorithmic risk scoring tools have been widely incorporated into governmental decision making, yet little is known about how human decision makers interact with machine-generated risk scores at the street level. We examined such human–machine interactions in the child welfare system, a high-stakes setting where caseworkers ascertain whether government interventions in family life are warranted. Using novel data—verbatim transcripts of caseworker discussions—we found that decision makers: (1) disregarded scores in the middle of the distribution while paying attention to extremely high or low risk scores and (2) rationalized divergences between human decisions and machine-generated scores by highlighting the algorithm’s overemphasis on historical data and specific risk factors and its lack of contextual knowledge. This meant that caseworkers were unlikely to modify their decisions so that they aligned with risk scores. However, we did not find evidence of principled resistance to algorithmic tools. Our findings advance research on such tools by specifying how human perceptions of the utility and limitations of novel technologies shape discretionary decision making by state officials; and they help to explain their uneven and potentially modest impact on the bureaucratic management of social vulnerability.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Martin Eiermann: Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
E-mail: meiermann@wisc.edu.
Maria Fitzpatrick: Books School of Public Policy, Cornell University; National Bureau of Economic Research.
E-mail: maria.d.fitzpatrick@cornell.edu.
Katharine Sadowski: Graduate School of Education, Stanford University.
E-mail: ksadow@stanford.edu.
Christopher Wildeman: Department of Sociology, Duke University; Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University; ROCKWOOL Foundation Research Unit.
E-mail: christopher.wildeman@duke.edu.

Acknowledgments: The authors are grateful to Ruby Richards and Nicole Adams for feedback on earlier drafts of this manuscript and the Douglas County Department of Human Services for providing data throughout this project.

No supplemental materials.

Reproducibility Package: The terms of our Data Use Agreement with the Douglas County Department of Human Services (DCDHS) legally prohibit us from sharing the original data, which are temporarily stored on a secure Cornell University research server, cannot be shared externally, and must be destroyed at the end of the agreement period. These restrictions reflect the presence of highly sensitive child welfare data in verbatim transcripts of caseworker discussions. All analysis code and documentation of qualitative coding workflows are publicly available at OSF. Researchers with questions about Douglas County Decision Aide (DCDA) data that were generated during the randomized controlled trial may contact: Ruby Richards, Director of Human Services, Douglas County (303-688-4825).

  • Citation: Eiermann, Martin, Maria Fitzpatrick, Katharine Sadowski, and Christopher Wildeman. 2025. “How Do (Human) Child Welfare Workers Re- spond to Machine-Generated Risk Scores?” Sociological Science 13: 1-21.
  • Received: September 3, 2025
  • Accepted: November 14, 2025
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Jeremy Freese
  • DOI: 10.15195/v13.a1

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