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Vocabulary test score trends from the General Social Survey contradict the widespread conclusion that scores on standardized intelligence tests have systematically increased over the past century. We use a vocabulary test included in 20 nationally representative surveys administered since 1974 to test three hypotheses proposed to account for these trends, including changes in the formal measurement properties of the test, over-time changes in the meaning of education, and intercohort differences in exposure to words on the test. We find no support for the idea that test scores have declined because of changes in the structure of the test. Instead, our results show that education selectivity accounts for some cohort differences among prewar cohorts and that cohort-specific differences in exposure to words on the test account for nearly all variation in vocabulary scores of respondents born after 1945, suggesting different causal processes have influenced cohort verbal ability during distinct historical eras.

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

Shawn F. Dorius: Department of Sociology, Iowa State University
Email: sdorius@iastate.edu

Duane F. Alwin: Department of Sociology and Criminology, Pennsylvania State University
Email: dfa2@psu.edu

Julianna Pacheco: Department of Political Science, University of Iowa
Email: julianna-pacheco@uiowa.edu

Acknowledgements: This research was supported by National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Training Grant from the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan (T32 HD007339). Duane Alwin was supported in part by a grant from the National Institute of Aging (R01AG021203), a grant from the National Science Foundation (SES-1331454), and the McCourtney endowment, College of the Liberal Arts, Pennsylvania State University, during the writing of this article. Please direct correspondence to Shawn F. Dorius (sdorius@iastate.edu).

Citation: Dorius, Shawn F., Duane F. Alwin and Julianna Pacheco. 2016. “Twentieth Century Intercohort Trends in Verbal Ability in the United States.” Sociological Science 3: 383-412.
Received: January 13, 2016
Accepted: January 28, 2016
Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Stephen Morgan
DOI: 10.15195/v3.a18

Trust and Public Support for Environmental Protection in Diverse National Contexts

By Parker Webservices on June 8, 2016 in Articles

Malcolm Fairbrother

Sociological Science, June 8, 2016
DOI 10.15195/v3.a17

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Worldwide, most people share scientists’ concerns about environmental problems, but reject the solution that policy experts most strongly recommend: putting a price on pollution. Why? I show that this puzzling gap between the public’s positive concerns and normative preferences is due substantially to a lack of trust, particularly political trust. In multilevel models fitted to two international survey datasets, trust strongly predicts support for environmental protection within countries and, by some measures, among countries also. An influential competing theory holds that environmental attitudes correlate mostly with left versus right political ideology; the results here, however, show that this correlation is weaker and varies substantially from country to country—unlike that with trust. Theoretically, these results reflect that environmental degradation is a collective action problem and environmental protection a public good. Methodologically, they derive from the more flexible application of multilevel modeling techniques than in previous studies using such models.

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

Malcolm Fairbrother: School of Geographical Sciences, Cabot Institute, Centre for Multilevel Modelling, University of Bristol
Email: ggmhf@bristol.ac.uk

Acknowledgements: The author thanks Diego Miralles, Laura De Vito, Jan Mewes, and Jonas Edlund for helpful comments on earlier versions of this article, and audiences at the Institute for Futures Studies (Stockholm), Umeå University, Örebro University, Gothenburg University, Stockholm University, and the Institute for Social and Economic Research (Essex) for many constructive suggestions and criticisms. The research on which the article is based was funded in part by the Riksbankens Jubileumsfonds (Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences, project number NHS14-2035:1), and a Fellowship from the Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Bristol.

Citation: Fairbrother, Malcolm. 2016. “Trust and Public Support for Environmental Protection in Diverse National Contexts.” Sociological Science 3: 359-382.
Received: March 3, 2016
Accepted: March 13, 2016
Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Sarah Soule
DOI: 10.15195/v3.a17

Integration Policies and Immigrants’ Labor Market Outcomes in Europe

By Parker Webservices on June 3, 2016 in Articles

Irena Kogan

Sociological Science, June 3, 2016
DOI 10.15195/v3.a16

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This article assesses whether two integration policy measures (labor market training and counseling) reach the immigrants who need them and whether these policies improve immigrants’ labor market situations. We first examine the comprehensiveness of integration policies by linking Migration Integration Policy Index scores of immigrants’ labor market mobility with levels of immigrant participation in labor market training and counseling in 15 European countries. We find that provision with labor market training does not entirely correspond to policy intentions, whereas labor market counseling more closely achieves policies’ proclaimed aims. Second, we carry out propensity score matching analysis to estimate the effectiveness of immigrants’ integration policies. We find that labor market training and counseling do not improve immigrants’ employability or job status in three of the four analyzed countries, which lends weak support to the productivity skills argument, emphasizing instead the validity of the signaling and selection perspectives.

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

Irena Kogan: University of Mannheim
Email: kogan@mail.uni-mannheim.de

Acknowledgements: Earlier versions of the article were presented at ECSR Spring School, Collegio Carlo Alberto, Turin, March 23–27, 2015; Nuffield College Sociology Seminar, University of Oxford, June 3, 2015; and Annual BAGGS Conference on Inequality, University of Bamberg, September 29–30, 2015. We thank the participants for their valuable comments and suggestions.

Citation: Kogan, Irena. 2016. “Integration Policies and Immigrants’ Labor Market Outcomes in Europe.” Sociological Science 3: 335-358.
Received: January 16, 2016
Accepted: February 19, 2016
Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Olav Sorenson
DOI: 10.15195/v3.a16

Pulling the Trigger: How Threats to the Nation Increase Support for Military Action via the Generation of Hubris

By Parker Webservices on May 25, 2016 in Articles

Yuval Feinstein

Sociological Science, May 25, 2016
DOI 10.15195/v3.a15

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Previous studies of public opinion in the United States have reported positive associations between national hubris and support for military actions. This article argues that in addition to its stable aspect, national hubris has a contextual aspect: under perceived symbolic threats to the nation, national hubris increases and boosts support for military action. To test this argument, which is grounded in a sociological and social psychological understanding of individuals as members of collectivities who pursue a symbolic politics of status achievement and maintenance, a survey-experiment was conducted with a nationally representative sample. In the experiment, participants who were exposed to rhetoric that highlighted symbolic threats to the nation to justify an impending military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities reported higher levels of national hubris and were more likely to support the military action than either participants who were exposed to internationalist rhetoric or those in the control group.

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

Yuval Feinstein: Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Haifa
Email: fyuval@soc.haifa.ac.il

Acknowledgements: The author is grateful to the National Science Foundation for providing the funding for this research. The author also thanks Terece Bell, Jeremy Broekman, Philippe Duhart, Jennifer Eggerling-Boeck, Vered Kraus, Robert D. Mare, Zeynep Ozgen, David O. Sears, Andreas Wimmer, and Meir Yaish for their help and advice regarding theory, research design, and manuscript preparation. Previous versions of the article were presented at the annual meetings of the American Sociological Association (2012), the Association for the Study of Nationalities (2012), and the Israeli Political Science Association (2013). I thank conveners and audiences for stimulating comments and challenging criticisms