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Factorial Survey Experiments to Predict Real-World Behavior: A Cautionary Tale from Hiring Studies

By on September 24, 2024 in Articles

Andrea G. Forster, Martin Neugebauer

Sociological Science September 24, 2024
10.15195/v11.a32

Abstract

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Factorial surveys (FSs) are increasingly used to predict real-world decisions. However, there is a paucity of research assessing whether these predictions are valid and, if so, under what conditions. In this preregistered study, we sent out N = 3,002 applications to job vacancies in Germany and measured real-world responses. Eight weeks later, we presented nearly identical applicant profiles to the same employers as a part of an FS. To explore the conditions under which FSs provide valid behavioral predictions, we varied the topic sensitivity and tested whether behavioral predictions were more successful after filtering out respondents who gave socially desirable answers or did not exert sufficient effort when answering FS vignettes. Across conditions, the FS results did not correspond well with the real-world benchmark. We conclude that researchers must exercise caution when using FSs to study (hiring) behavior.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Andrea G. Forster: Utrecht University, Heidelberglaan 8, 3584 CS Utrecht, The Netherlands
E-mail: a.g.forster@uu.nl

Martin Neugebauer: Karlsruhe University of Education, Bismarckstr. 10, 76133 Karlsruhe, Germany
E-mail: martin.neugebauer@ph-karlsruhe.de

Acknowledgements: Both authors contributed equally to this study. We would like to thank Lukas Zielinski, Stefan Gunzelmann, Tim Skroblien, Pablo Neitzsch, and Franz Geiger for their help with the design of the experiments and the collection of the data. Furthermore, we would like to thank Katrin Auspurg, Annabell Daniel, Tamara Gutfleisch, Knut Petzold, and Katharina Stückradt as well as 16 professional experts (recruiters and job councelors) for their feedback on our experimental design and materials. Finally, we would like to thank the participants of ECSR 2022, ACES 2022, DGS 2022, the ISOL paper seminar, the Research Colloquium Sociology (University of Bern), and the Research Colloquium Analytical Sociology (LMU Munich) for their feedback on earlier versions of this article. This research was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education grant number 16PX21011.

Supplemental Materials

Reproducibility Package: The code and data needed to reproduce the analyses are available at the Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/x2tcp/.

  • Citation: Forster, G. Andrea and Martin Neugebauer. 2024. “Factorial Survey Experiments to Predict Real-World Behavior: A Cautionary Tale from Hiring Studies.” Sociological Science 11: 886-906.
  • Received: April 26, 2024
  • Accepted: August 23, 2024
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Stephen Vaisey
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a32


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Decomposing Heterogeneity in Inequality of Educational Opportunities: Family Income and Academic Performance in Brazilian Higher Education

By on September 10, 2024 in Articles

Adriano S. Senkevics, Rogério J. Barbosa, Flavio Carvalhaes, Carlos A. Costa Ribeiro

Sociological Science September 10, 2024
10.15195/v11.a31

Abstract

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Access to higher education depends on the interaction between social origins and academic performance: background resources boost academic skills; but even when controlling for performance, privileged students are more likely to make ambitious choices and further transitions. Recent literature has shown that inequality in educational choices is heterogeneous across countries. However, it is still not well understood how different institutional designs within countries may affect the workings of those effects and how they can strengthen or weaken the inequality of educational opportunities. Using high-quality register data from the Brazilian higher education system, our work contributes to this understanding by investigating how SES and performance interact and drive students’ choice between three different tracks: not entering higher education, entering the private system, or entering the public system. We developed a strategy to encompass multinomial choices and decompose the inequalities into primary and secondary effects. Using the Shapley Value decomposition strategy, we correct an intrinsic asymmetry that biased previous results. Our findings suggest affluent students enjoy dual advantages: high exam performance amplifies access to public universities (indirect effect) and family resources offset subpar performance, ensuring private university access (direct effect). We found no signs of multiplicative advantages.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Adriano S. Senkevics: National Institute for Educational Studies and Research, Ministry of Education of Brazil
E-mail: adriano.senkevics@alumni.usp.br

Rogério J. Barbosa: Institute of Social and Political Studies, State University of Rio de Janeiro
E-mail: rogerio.barbosa@iesp.uerj.br

Flavio Carvalhaes: Department of Sociology, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
E-mail: flaviocarvalhaes@gmail.com

Carlos A. Costa Ribeiro: Institute of Social and Political Studies, State University of Rio de Janeiro
E-mail: carloscr@iesp.uerj.br

Acknowledgements: We extend our gratitude to the editors and reviewers for their insightful suggestions. We are thankful to Marcelo Medeiros, Thomas DiPrete, and Scott Davies, as well as the School of International and Public Affairs and the Institute of Latin American Studies at Columbia University and the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto for their hospitality during the authors’ visit. Special thanks go to the National Institute for Educational Studies and Research (INEP) for granting access to the restricted microdata. We are also appreciative of the financial support provided by Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro – FAPERJ (grants E-26/201.343/2021 and 010.002639/2019); Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Tecnológico – CNPq (grant 400786/2016-8); Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior – CAPES (grant 88887.368106/2019-00); and Pro-Ciência from the State University of Rio de Janeiro – UERJ.

Supplemental Materials

Reproducibility Package: The replication package is available at https://osf.io/pru32/; however, due to the use of restricted microdata from INEP’s Protected Data Access Service, it does not enable the replication of the full results as the data set is subject to specific limitations.

  • Citation: Senkevics, Adriano S., Rogério J. Barbosa, Flavio Carvalhaes, and Carlos A. Costa Ribeiro. 2024. “Decomposing Heterogeneity in Inequality of Educational Opportunities: Family Income and Academic Performance in Brazilian Higher Education.” Sociological Science 11: 854-885.
  • Received: November 26, 2023
  • Accepted: April 19, 2024
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Jeremy Freese
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a31


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Prosociality Beyond In-Group Boundaries: A Lab-in-the-Field Experiment on Selection and Intergroup Interactions in a Multiethnic European Metropolis

By on September 6, 2024 in Articles

Delia Baldassarri, Johanna Gereke, Max Schaub

Sociological Science September 6, 2024
10.15195/v11.a30

Abstract

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How does prosocial behavior extend beyond in-group boundaries in multiethnic societies? The differentiation of Western societies presents an opportunity to understand the tension between societal pressures that push people outside the comfort zones of their familiar networks to constructively interact with unknown diverse others and the tendency toward homophily and in-group favoritism. We introduce a three-step model of out-group exposure that includes macrostructural conditions for intergroup encounters and microlevel dynamics of intergroup selection and interaction. Using lab-in-the-field experiments with a large representative sample of Italian natives and immigrants from the multiethnic city of Milan, we find that, when pushed to interact with non-coethnics, Italians generally treat them similarly to how they treat coethnics and value signs of social and market integration. However, when given the opportunity to select their interaction partners, Italians favor coethnics over immigrants. Taken together, these results help reconcile classical findings concerning the positive effects of intergroup contact with evidence documenting the persistence of out-group discrimination in selection processes.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Delia Baldassarri: Julius Silver, Roslyn S. Silver, and Enid Silver Winslow Professor, Department of Sociology, New York University and Senior Researcher, Dondena Center, Bocconi University
E-mail: delia.b@nyu.edu

Johanna Gereke: Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Mannheim Centre for European Social Research, University of Mannheim
E-mail: johanna.gereke@uni-mannheim.de

Max Schaub: Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Hamburg
E-mail: max.schaub@uni-hamburg.de

Acknowledgements: We are grateful to Maria Abascal, Shannon Rieger, Merlin Schaeffer, Nan Zhang, and Diego Gambetta as well as several seminar participants for their valuable comments. Funding from ERC Starting Grant 639284. Direct correspondence to Delia Baldassarri, 383 Lafayette Street, Department of Sociology, New York University, New York, NY, 10012 (delia.b@nyu.edu).

Supplemental Materials

Reproducibility Package: Data and code for replication are available at OSF https://osf.io/3rzgj.

  • Citation: Baldassarri, Delia, Johanna Gereke, and Max Schaub. 2024. “Prosociality Beyond In-Group Boundaries: A Lab-in-the-Field Experiment on Selection and Intergroup Interactions in a Multiethnic European Metropolis.” Sociological Science 11: 815-853.
  • Received: June 14, 2024
  • Accepted: August 5, 2024
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Ray Reagans
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a30


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Housework as a Woman's Job? What Looks Like Gender Ideologies Could Also Be Stereotypes

By on September 3, 2024 in Articles

Katrin Auspurg, Sabine Düval

Sociological Science September 3, 2024
10.15195/v11.a29

Abstract

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We question the validity of standard measures of gender ideology. When asked about “men” and “women” in general, respondents may imagine women (men) with lower (higher) labor market resources. Therefore, standard measures may conflate gender ideologies (injunctive norms) with stereotypical beliefs (descriptive norms). We test this hypothesis with an experiment in the German family panel pairfam: ∼1,200 respondents rated the appropriate division of housework in ∼3,700 hypothetical couples. By gradually adding information about labor market resources, we were able to override respondents’ stereotypical beliefs. We find that with more information, even “traditional” respondents support egalitarian housework arrangements. The main difference between “traditional” and “egalitarian” respondents is not in their ideologies (as previously thought), but in their interpretation of vague items. This leads us to conclude that standard measures overestimate traditional gender ideologies. Our study also illustrates how varying the amount of information can help identify respondents’ implicit beliefs.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Katrin Auspurg: Department of Sociology, LMU Munich
E-mail: katrin.auspurg@lmu.de

Sabine Düval: German Youth Institute (DJI)
E-mail: dueval@dji.de

Acknowledgements: We thank the participants of the Conference of the European Survey Research Association (ESRA) in 2019, the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA) in 2019, the pairfam User Conference in 2019, and the seminar on “Analytical Sociology: Theory and Empirical Applications” at at the Venice International University in 2018 for helpful suggestions. We are also grateful for comments on an earlier version we received from Josef Brüderl. We used data from the German Family Panel pairfam, coordinated by Josef Brüderl, Sonja Drobniè, Karsten Hank, Johannes Huinink, Bernhard Nauck, Franz J. Neyer, and Sabine Walper. From 2004 to 2022, pairfam was funded as priority program and long-term project by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Sabine Düval worked on the manuscript and data analysis mainly during her PhD studies at the LMU Munich. Part of this work was done while Katrin Auspurg was a Visiting Fellow at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence.

Supplemental Materials

Reproducibility Package: The data we used (pairfam data release 10.0) can be accessed here: https://www.pairfam.de/en/data/data-access. Our replication files (Stata dofiles and data on response times not included in the pairfam release) are available on the following OSF platform: https://osf.io/3fqw9 (Auspurg and Düval 2024).

  • Citation: Auspurg, Katrin, and Sabine Düval. 2024. “Housework as a Woman’s Job?: What Looks Like Gender Ideologies Could Also Be Stereotypes.” Sociological Science 11: 789-814.
  • Received: September 21, 2023
  • Accepted: February 22, 2024
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Maria Abascal
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a29


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Examining Attitudes toward Asians throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic with Repeated Cross-Sectional Survey Experiments

By on August 30, 2024 in Articles

Yao Lu, Neeraj Kaushal, Xiaoning Huang, S. Michael Gaddis, Ariela Schachter

Sociological Science August 30, 2024
10.15195/v11.a28

Abstract

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This study examines how COVID-induced and general attitudes toward Asians have changed over the course of the pandemic using nationally representative survey experiments in 2020 and 2022. First, we measured COVID-induced anti-Asian attitudes as the effect of a treatment reminding respondents of the pandemic on whether respondents would be willing to live or work with someone who is East or South Asian. The results suggest that the COVID-19 treatment worsened attitudes toward East and South Asians in the social domain and toward East Asians in the economic domain in 2020, but not in 2022. Second, we measured change in general attitudes toward Asians by comparing the control group responses in 2020 and 2022. The results demonstrate that, over the same period, general attitudes toward Asians have not improved despite growing attention toward anti-Asian biases. This finding underscores the persistence of general negative attitudes toward Asians beyond the immediate context of the pandemic and the ongoing imperative to actively address deeply ingrained biases against Asians.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Yao Lu: Department of Sociology, Columbia University
E-mail: yl2479@columbia.edu

Neeraj Kaushal: School of Social Work, Columbia University
E-mail: nk464@columbia.edu

Xiaoning Huang: Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University
E-mail: jack.huang@northwestern.edu

S. Michael Gaddis: Research and Policy Partnerships, NWEA
E-mail: michael.gaddis@nwea.org

Ariela Schachter: Washington University in St. Louis
E-mail: ariela@wustl.edu

Acknowledgements: We thank Tiffany Huang, Jennifer Lee, and participants of the Experimental Design Workshop at Columbia University, and the Asia and Asian America Working Group at University of Pennsylvania for their helpful comments. This research was funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (1R21HD105183), the Columbia Population Research Center, the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, the Center for Pandemic Research, and the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University.

Supplemental Materials

Replication Package: Study materials can be found at the Open Science Framework https://osf.io/a6ewy/.

  • Citation: Lu, Yao, Neeraj Kaushal, Xiaoning Huang, S. Michael Gaddis, and Ariela Schachter. 2024. “Examining Attitudes toward Asians throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic with Repeated Cross-Sectional Survey Experiments.” Sociological Science 11:777-788.
  • Received: October 27, 2023
  • Accepted: March 16, 2024
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Maria Abascal
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a28


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Teacher Bias in Assessments by Student Ascribed Status: A Factorial Experiment on Discrimination in Education

By on August 27, 2024 in Articles

Carlos J. Gil-Hernández, Irene Pañeda-Fernández, Leire Salazar, Jonatan Castaño Muñoz

Sociological Science August 27, 2024
10.15195/v11.a27

Abstract

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Teachers are the evaluators of academic merit. Identifying if their assessments are fair or biased by student-ascribed status is critical for equal opportunity but empirically challenging, with mixed previous findings. We test status characteristics beliefs, statistical discrimination, and cultural capital theories with a pre-registered factorial experiment on a large sample of Spanish pre-service teachers (n = 1, 717). This design causally identifies, net of ability, the impact of student-ascribed characteristics on teacher short- and long-term assessments, improving prior studies’ theory testing, confounding, and power. Findings unveil teacher bias in an essay grading task favoring girls and highbrow cultural capital, aligning with status characteristics and cultural capital theories. Results on teachers’ long-term expectations indicate statistical discrimination against boys, migrant origin, and working-class students under uncertain information. Unexpectedly, ethnic discrimination changes from teachers favoring native origin in long-term expectations to migrant origin in short-term evaluations, suggesting compensatory grading. We discuss the complex roots of discrimination in teacher assessments as an educational (in)equality mechanism.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Carlos J. Gil-Hernández∗: Department of Statistics, Computer Science, Applications, University of Florence
∗Corresponding author, E-mail: carlos.gil@unifi.it

Irene Pañeda-Fernández: WZB Berlin Social Science Center
E-mail: irene.paneda@wzb.eu

Leire Salazar: Institute for Public Goods and Policies, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas
E-mail: leire.salazar@cchs.csic.es

Jonatan Castaño Muñoz: Departamento de Didática y Organización Educativa, Universidad de Sevilla
E-mail: jcastanno@us.es

Acknowledgements: This project has been funded through the JRC Centre for Advanced Studies and the project Social Classes in the Digital Age (DIGCLASS). Jonatan Castaño Muñoz acknowledges the support of a) the ‘Ramón y Cajal’ grant RYC2020-030157 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by “ESF Investing in your future”; and b) University of Seville “VI University research plan” (VI plan propio de investigación). We thank Lilian Weikert, William Foley, Zbigniew Karpiñski, David Martínez de Lafuente, Alberto López, and Mario Spiezio for their valuable feedback and support. We also thank the participants at the following venues where we presented earlier versions of the article: the ‘Experiments on Social Inequality’ Workshop at Sciences Po-LIEPP, the ‘Colloquium of the Migration and Diversity Department’ at the WZB Berlin Social Science Centre, the ECSR Thematic Conference ‘Effort and Social Inequality’ and ‘2024 IC3JM Conference’ at Carlos III-Juan March Institute of Social Sciences, the FES ‘Inequality and Social Stratification Committee Workshop’ in Oviedo, the ‘Education and Social Inequalities Seminar’ at University of Sevilla, the ‘CLIC Seminar Series’ at the European University Institute, the SISEC conference in Cagliari, and the FES National Congress in Sevilla.

Supplemental Materials

Replication Package: Data and replication code are publicly accessible at the GitHub repository: https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.12666534. The hypotheses and research design were publicly pre-registered with a pre-analysis plan (PAP) before data collection and analysis at the Open Science Foundation repository: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/DZB3S.

  • Citation: J. Gil-Hernández, Carlos, Irene Pañeda-Fernández, Leire Salazar, Jonatan Castaño Muñoz, 2024. “Teacher Bias in Assessments by Student Ascribed Status: A Factorial Experiment on Discrimination in Education” Sociological Science 11: 743-776.
  • Received: January 6, 2024
  • Accepted: July 9, 2024
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Stephen Vaisey
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a27


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Algorithmic Risk Scoring and Welfare State Contact Among US Children

By on August 23, 2024 in Articles

Martin Eiermann

Sociological Science August 23, 2024
10.15195/v11.a26

Abstract

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Predictive Risk Modeling (PRM) tools are widely used by governing institutions, yet research on their effects has yielded divergent findings with low external validity. This study examines how such tools influence child welfare governance, using a quasi-experimental design and data from more than one million maltreatment investigations in 121 US counties. It demonstrates that the adoption of PRM tools reduced maltreatment confirmations among Hispanic and Black children but increased such confirmations among high-risk and low-SES children. PRM tools did not reduce the likelihood of subsequent maltreatment confirmations; and effects were heterogeneous across counties. These findings demonstrate that the use of PRM tools can reduce the incidence of state interventions among historically over-represented minorities while increasing it among poor children more generally. However, they also illustrate that the impact of such tools depends on local contexts and that technological innovations do not meaningfully address chronic state interventions in family life that often characterize the lives of vulnerable children.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Martin Eiermann: Department of Sociology, Duke University
E-mail: martin.eiermann@duke.edu.

Acknowledgements: The author thanks Olivia Kim and Henry Zapata for invaluable research assistance, and thanks Garrett Baker, Alexandra Gibbons, Sarah Sernaker, and Christopher Wildeman for constructive feedback.

Replication Package: Access to restricted-use NCANDS data can be requested through the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect (NDACAN). Other data and replication code are available at: https://osf.io/dq3xp/.

  • Citation: Eiermann, Martin. 2024. “Algorithmic Risk Scoring and Welfare State Contact Among US Children” Sociological Science 11: 707-742.
  • Received: May 20, 2024
  • Accepted: July 2, 2024
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Maria Abascal
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a26


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Status Ambiguity and Multiplicity in the Selection of NBA Awards

By on August 20, 2024 in Articles

Peter McMahan, Eran Shor

Sociological Science August 20, 2024
10.15195/v11.a25

Abstract

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Sociologists of culture have long noted that contrasting cultural frames can lead to status ambiguity and status multiplicity. We explore these phenomena in the domain of professional sports by first replicating and then extending and challenging recently published findings on selections for the National Basketball Association (NBA) All-Star game. Relying on a large data set that includes more than 10,000 player–years, we show that accounting for better-justified performance measures reduces but does not nullify the effects of status cumulative advantage on All-Star selections. However, when replacing All-Star selections with a less ambiguous measure (selections to All-NBA teams), we no longer find evidence of decoupling between player performance and award nomination. From this we conclude that cumulative status advantage only affects selection when voters view factors other than statistical performance as legitimate, perhaps even desired, selection criteria. These findings have relevance for our understanding of status evaluations beyond professional sports, including in domains as diverse as the film industry, the performing arts, literature, politics, and the sciences.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Peter McMahan: Department of Sociology, McGill University
Email: peter.mcmahan@mcgill.ca

Eran Shor: Department of Sociology, McGill University
Email: eran.shor@mcgill.ca

Supplemental Material

Replication Package: Reproduction package is available at https://github.com/mcmahanp/nba_status.

  • Citation: McMahan, Peter, and Eran Shor. 2024. “Status ambiguity and multiplicity in the selection of NBA awards.” Sociological Science 11: 680-706.
  • Received: January 5, 2024
  • Accepted: June 2, 2024
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Ray Reagans
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a25


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Unemployment Insurance and the Family: Heterogeneous Effects of Benefit Generosity on Reemployment and Economic Precarity

By on August 16, 2024 in Articles

Ursina Kuhn, Debra Hevenstone, Leen Vandecasteele, Samin Sepahniya, Dorian Kessler

Sociological Science August 16, 2024
10.15195/v11.a24

Abstract

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We investigate how unemployment insurance generosity impacts reemployment and economic precarity by family type. With Swiss longitudinal administrative data and a regression discontinuity design using potential benefit duration, we examine differences between single households and primary and secondary or equal earners, as well as differences by gender and presence of children. Less generous unemployment insurance (shorter potential benefit duration) speeds up reemployment for all family types during the period with benefit cuts whereas longer-term effects are stronger for single households, secondary and equal earners, and those without children. Economic precarity increases for singles, single-parents, and primary earners during the period with lower benefits though there are no long-term effects. We argue that those with higher financial responsibility (i.e., primary earners or those with children) face pressure to find jobs irrespective of benefit generosity whereas those with lower financial responsibility (i.e., secondary or equal earners and those without children) have more capacity to react.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Ursina Kuhn: Social Work, Bern University of Applied Sciences. Swiss Centre of Expertise in the Social Sciences (FORS)
E-mail: ursina.kuhn@fors.unil.ch

Debra Hevenstone: SocialWork, Bern University of Applied Sciences
E-mail: debra.hevenstone@bfh.ch

Leen Vandecasteele: Swiss Centre of Expertise in Life Course Research (LIVES), Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, University of Lausanne
E-mail: leen.vandecasteele@unil.ch

Samin Sepahniya: Social Work and Health, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland
E-mail: samin.sepahniya@fhnw.ch

Dorian Kessler: Social Work, Bern University of Applied Sciences
E-mail: dorian.kessler@bfh.ch

Acknowledgements: This article was written as part of the project Family Models and Unemployment (grant number 176371) funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). We would like to acknowledge the SNSF project “Coupled Inequalities. Trends and Welfare State Differences in the Role of Partner’s Socio-Economic Resources for Employment Careers” (grant number 100017_182406) and the Swiss Centre of Expertise in Life Course Research (LIVES) for fruitful collaboration and exchange. We thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments which helped to clarify the paper. We also thank the SNSF for open access funding of this article.

Supplemental Material

Replication Package: The code for data analysis, data description, and instructions on how data can be requested for replication is provided on SwissUbase. https://doi.org/10.25597/tm2k-jf98

  • Citation: Kuhn, Ursina, Debra Hevenstone, Leen Vandecasteele, Samin Sepahniya and Dorian Kessler. 2024. “Unemployment Insurance and the Family: Heterogeneous Effects of Benefit Generosity on Reemployment and Economic Precarity.” Sociological Science 11: 649-679.
  • Received: July 4, 2024
  • Accepted: March 18, 2024
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Vida Maralani
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a24


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Disparate Impact? Career Disruptions and COVID-19 Impact Statements in Tenure Evaluations

By on August 13, 2024 in Articles

Lauren A. Rivera, Katherine Weisshaar, András Tilcsik

Sociological Science August 13, 2024
10.15195/v11.a23

Abstract

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Extensive research reveals employer biases against workers with career disruptions, particularly those related to caregiving. However, the effectiveness of organizational practices intended to mitigate such biases is less well understood. This study examines the use of COVID-19 impact statements in tenure decisions at research universities, an organizational intervention that was designed to reduce biases but raised concerns that it might inadvertently amplify them. Contrary to concerns about unintended consequences, a pre-registered survey experiment with 602 full professors in STEM fields reveals that the inclusion of impact statements leads to more favorable tenure evaluations, regardless of faculty gender and disruption type. Qualitative evidence suggests that perceptions of pandemic-related disruptions as legitimate, externally imposed, time-limited events in the past help circumvent previously documented biases. This study enhances our understanding of organizational practices that effectively mitigate biases and points to the potential role of narrative framing in workplace evaluations and organizational inequalities.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Lauren A. Rivera: Department of Management and Organizations, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
E-mail: L-rivera@kellogg.northwestern.edu

Katherine Weisshaar: Department of Sociology, Northwestern University
E-mail: kate.weisshaar@northwestern.edu

András Tilcsik: Department of Strategic Management, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto
E-mail: andras.tilcsik@rotman.utoronto.ca

Acknowledgements: We are deeply grateful to Jeannette Colyvas for formative discussions about COVID-19 impact statements. We also thank Anne Bowers, Clayton Childress, Stefan Dimitriadis, Laura Doering, Alicia Eads, Angelina Grigoryeva, Ryann Manning, Santiago Campero Molina, Sida Liu, Katherine Spoon, the Toronto Group of Seven, participants at the International Conference on Science of Science and Innovation, and seminar participants at the Amsterdam Centre for Inequality Studies, Stanford University, and Columbia University for useful feedback on early drafts.

Supplemental Material

Replication Package: Deidentified survey data and the code needed to replicate the findings are available at https://doi.org/10.5683/SP3/UAM9PJ.

  • Citation: Rivera, Lauren A., Katherine Weisshaar, and András Tilcsik. 2024. “Disparate Impact? Career Disruptions and COVID-19 Impact Statements in Tenure Evaluations. Sociological Science 11: 626-648.
  • Received: May 13, 2024
  • Accepted: June 17, 2024
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Kristen Schilt
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a23


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