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More Common, Less Equal: Disparities in College Internship Participation Over Time

Carrie L. Shandra

Sociological Science April 23, 2026
10.15195/v13.a19


Internships play a key role in the production of inequality in the U.S. labor market, yet are often unobserved in analyses of youth employment. This study makes two empirical contributions to the study of internships. First, I use nationwide data from the 1994–2017 College Senior Survey to evaluate the association between internship participation and individual and institutional markers of privilege over time, net of grades, college major, and demographic controls. Second, I test if disparities in internship participation narrowed, persisted, or widened over three decades, independent of controls. Results indicate that internship participation has more than doubled since the mid-1990s, marking a period of rapid internship expansion, but these gains were not equal for all students. Those with the highest family income, with college-educated parents, from the most selective colleges, and from private colleges were consistently more likely to participate. Further, these internship participation gaps persisted or widened over time. Findings indicate that internships follow similar patterns of stratification as formal credentials, despite their more ambiguous nature. They also suggest that persistent barriers to internship participation remain for less-privileged students.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.


Carrie L. Shandra, State University of New York at Stony Brook
E-mail: Carrie.Shandra@stonybrook.edu.

Acknowledgments: This research was funded by a Presidential Grant and a Visiting Scholar award from the Russell Sage Foundation. Assistance with data acquisition and support was received from Ellen Stolzenberg and the Higher Education Research Institute. This study benefited from conversations with Sarah Damaske, Jessica Halliday Hardie, Dara Shifrer, Angela Frederick, Rachel Fish, Jennifer Pearson, and Linda Blum. All errors are my own.


Supplemental Materials

Reproducibility Package: This article uses proprietary data from the Higher Education Research Institute. Code used for data processing and analysis is available at https://osf.io/n39h2.


  • Citation: Shandra, Carrie L. 2026. “More Common, Less Equal: Disparities in College Internship Participation Over Time” Sociological Science 13:476-500.
  • Received: February 11, 2026
  • Accepted: March 2, 2026
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Cristobal Young
  • DOI: 10.15195/v13.a19


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Fathers’ Military Service and Children’s College Attainment

Paula Fomby, Patricia van Hissenhoven Flórez

Sociological Science April 20, 2026
10.15195/v13.a18


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.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.


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

Tony Cheng, Johann Koehler

Sociological Science April 16, 2026
0.15195/v13.a17


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.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.


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

Marie Labussière, Thijs Bol

Sociological Science April 13, 2026
0.15195/v13.a16


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

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

Sociological Science April 6, 2026
10.15195/v13.a15


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

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

Sociological Science April 2, 2026
10.15195/v13.a14


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

Peter McMahan, Eran Shor

Sociological Science March 25, 2026
10.15195/v13.a13


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.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.


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)

Thomas Biegert, Michael Kühhirt, Wim Van Lancker

Sociological Science March 25, 2026
10.15195/v13.a12


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.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.


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

William Scarborough, Ronald Kwon, David Brady

Sociological Science March 10, 2026
10.15195/v13.a11


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

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

Sociological Science March 3, 2026
10.15195/v13.a10


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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