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The Small-World Network of College Classes: Implications for Epidemic Spread on a University Campus

By on May 27, 2020 in Articles

Kim A. Weeden, Benjamin Cornwell

Sociological Science May 27, 2020
10.15195/v7.a9

Abstract
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To slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, many universities shifted to online instruction and now face the question of whether and how to resume in-person instruction. This article uses transcript data from a medium-sized American university to describe three enrollment networks that connect students through classes and in the process create social conditions for the spread of infectious disease: a university-wide network, an undergraduate-only network, and a liberal arts college network. All three networks are “small worlds” characterized by high clustering, short average path lengths, and multiple independent paths connecting students. Students from different majors cluster together, but gateway courses and distributional requirements create cross-major integration. Connectivity declines when large courses of 100 students or more are removed from the network, as might be the case if some courses are taught online, but moderately sized courses must also be removed before less than half of student-pairs are connected in three steps and less than two-thirds in four steps. In all simulations, most students are connected through multiple independent paths. Hybrid models of instruction can reduce but not eliminate the potential for epidemic spread through the small worlds of course enrollments.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Kim A. Weeden: Department of Sociology, Cornell University
E-mail: kw74@cornell.edu

Benjamin Cornwell: Department of Sociology, Cornell University
E-mail: btc49@cornell.edu

Acknowledgments: Dr. Weeden and Dr. Cornwell contributed equally to this project. The authors thank the Cornell University administration, and in particular Dr. Lisa Nishii, for facilitating access to the data; Lauren Griffin and Alec McGail for research assistance; and Jake Burchard, Scott Feld, John Schneider, Demival Vasques Filho, Barry Wellman, Erin York Cornwell, and two anonymous reviewers for comments and advice. Cornell University had no role in the study design, data analysis, or preparation of the report.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Weeden, Kim A., and Benjamin Cornwell. 2020. “The Small-World Network of College Classes: Implications for Epidemic Spread on a University Campus.” Sociological Science 7: 222-241.
  • Received: April 17, 2020
  • Accepted: May 7, 2020
  • Editors: Mario Small
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a9


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The U.S. Occupational Structure: A Social Network Approach

By on May 18, 2020 in Articles

Andrés Villarreal

Sociological Science May 18, 2020
10.15195/v7.a8

Abstract
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We propose a new approach to study the structure of occupational labor markets that relies on social network analysis techniques. Highly detailed transition matrices are constructed based on changes in individual workers’ occupations over successive months of the Current Population Survey rotating panels. The resulting short-term transition matrices provide snapshots of all occupational movements in the U.S. labor market at different points in time and for different sociodemographic groups. We find a significant increase in occupational mobility and in the diversity of occupational destinations for working men over the past two decades. The occupational networks for black and Hispanic men exhibit a high overall density of ties resulting from a high probability of movement among a limited set of occupations. Upward status mobility also increased during the time period studied, although there are large differences by race and ethnicity and educational attainment. Finally, factional analysis is proposed as a novel way to explore labor market segmentation. Results reveal a highly segmented occupational network in which movement is concentrated within a limited number of occupations with markedly different levels of occupational status.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Andrés Villarreal: Department of Sociology, University of Maryland-College Park
E-mail: avilla4@umd.edu

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Villarreal, Andrés. 2020. “The U.S. Occupational Structure: A Social Network Approach.” Sociological Science 7:187-221.
  • Received: November 22, 2019
  • Accepted: March 31, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Kim Weeden
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a8


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Self-Citation, Cumulative Advantage, and Gender Inequality in Science

By on May 6, 2020 in Articles

Pierre Azoulay, Freda B. Lynn

Sociological Science May 6, 2020
10.15195/v7.a7

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In science, self-citation is often interpreted as an act of self-promotion that (artificially) boosts the visibility of one’s prior work in the short term, which could then inflate professional authority in the long term. Recently, in light of research on the gender gap in self-promotion, two large-scale studies of publications examine if women self-cite less than men. But they arrive at conflicting conclusions; one concludes yes whereas the other, no. We join the debate with an original study of 36 cohorts of life scientists (1970–2005) followed through 2015 (or death or retirement). We track not only the rate of self-citation per unit of past productivity but also the likelihood of self-citing intellectually distant material and the rate of return on self-citations with respect to a host of major career outcomes, including grants, future citations, and job changes. With comprehensive, longitudinal data, we find no evidence whatsoever of a gender gap in self-citation practices or returns. Men may very well be more aggressive self-promoters than women, but this dynamic does not manifest in our sample with respect to self-citation practices. Implications of our null findings are discussed, particularly with respect to gender inequality in scientific careers more broadly.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Pierre Azoulay: MIT Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and National Bureau of Economic Research
E-mail: pazoulay@mit.edu

Freda B. Lynn: Department of Sociology and Criminology, University of Iowa
E-mail: freda-lynn@uiowa.edu

Acknowledgements: Address all correspondence to freda-lynn@uiowa.edu. Azoulay acknowledges the financial support of the National Science Foundation through its SciSIP Program (Award SBE-1460344). Soomi Kim provided exceptional research assistance. We thank Ezra Zuckerman for useful discussions. The authors contributed equally, and all errors are our own.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Azoulay, Pierre, and Freda B. Lynn. 2020. “Self-Citation, Cumulative Advantage, and Gender Inequality in Science.” Sociological Science 7:152-186.
  • Received: March 23, 2020
  • Accepted: March 29, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Olav Sorenson
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a7


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Effects of Public School Closures on Crime: The Case of the 2013 Chicago Mass School Closure

By on April 28, 2020 in Articles

Noli Brazil

Sociological Science April 28, 2020
10.15195/v7.a6

Abstract
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Public school closures are increasing in number and size in U.S. cities. In response, parents, teachers, and public school advocates argue that closures carry negative consequences for multiple institutions across a wide set of outcomes. One such institution is the local neighborhood, and a negative consequence that is frequently raised is increased crime. I test this claim by using the 2013 Chicago mass school closure as a case study. Rather than conceiving of a school closure as a binary event (closed or not closed) I break it out according to a school’s status after closure: vacant, repurposed, and merged with an existing school. I find that vacancy and repurposing into a nonschool are associated with decreased crime. In contrast, merging a closed school with an existing school is associated with increased crime. The vacancy and repurposing effects are spatiotemporally localized, concentrated in the 75-meter area surrounding the school and disappearing after a year, whereas the student merger effect persisted over time across larger spatial scales. My results suggest that the relationship between closure and neighborhood crime is not straightforward, varying by postclosure land use status and spatiotemporal factors.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Noli Brazil: Department of Human Ecology, University of California, Davis
E-mail: nbrazil@ucdavis.edu

Acknowledgements: I thank Luis Guarnizo, Andrew Papachristos, and Jenna Stearns for generously reading previous versions and providing invaluable feedback. I also thank Enrica Jiang for data collection and research assistance. Any remaining errors are mine alone.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Brazil, Noli. 2020. “Effects of Public School Closures on Crime: The Case of the 2013 Chicago Mass School Closure.” Sociological Science 7: 128-151.
  • Received: January 9, 2020
  • Accepted: February 22, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Olav Sorenson
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a6


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Selective Enrollment Public Schools and District-Level Achievement Outcomes from 3rd to 8th Grade

By on April 2, 2020 in Articles

Véronique Irwin

Sociological Science April 2, 2020
10.15195/v7.a5

Abstract
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Fierce local debates throughout the United States surround the equity of admitting students to public schools using academic criteria. Although research has evaluated the central assumption of these debates—that Selective Enrollment Public (SEP) schools enhance the welfare of students who attend them—none has addressed the district-level outcomes associated with these schools. This is important because the selectivity and scope of SEP schools produce tiered school systems (SEP districts). This district-level process, in turn, calls for an analysis of district-level achievement outcomes. To address this gap, I compile an original list of SEP schools using an innovative web scraping procedure. I combine these data with newly available district-level measures of third to eighth grade achievement from the Stanford Education Data Archive. Analyses follow a difference-in-differences design, using grade level as the longitudinal dimension. This approach facilitates a falsification test, using future treated districts, to reject spurious causation. I find evidence of overall slower growth in mean math achievement in SEP districts and for white, black, and Latinx racial/ethnic groups separately. SEP districts also see an increase in the white–Latinx math achievement gap. This work highlights the importance of considering SEP schools as part of a differentiated school system.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Véronique Irwin: Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley
E-mail: virwin@berkeley.edu

Acknowledgements: I thank Samuel Lucas, Daniel Schneider, Anthony Jack, and Zawadi Rucks-Ahidiana for their thoughtful comments. This work also benefited from excellent feedback at the Improving Education and Reducing Inequality Conference at the Russell Sage Foundation and was supported by funding from Russell Sage Foundation Grant #83-18-14.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Irwin, Véronique. 2020. “Selective Enrollment Public Schools and District-Level Achievement Outcomes from 3rd to 8th Grade.” Sociological Science 7: 100-127.
  • Received: September 24, 2019
  • Accepted: February 27, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Kim Weeden
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a5


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School Choice, Neighborhood Change, and Racial Imbalance Between Public Elementary Schools and Surrounding Neighborhoods

By on March 25, 2020 in Articles

Kendra Bischoff, Laura Tach

Sociological Science March 25, 2020
10.15195/v7.a4

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The expansion of school choice in recent years has potentially generated demographic imbalances between traditional public schools and their residential attendance zones. Demographic imbalances emerge from selective opting out, when families of certain racial and/or ethnic backgrounds disproportionately choose not to enroll in their neighborhood-based public schools. In this article, we use a unique data set of school attendance zones in 21 large U.S. school districts to show how changes in neighborhood conditions and school choice options influence race-specific enrollments in locally zoned public elementary schools from 2000 to 2010. We find that the presence of more school-choice options generates racial imbalances between public elementary schools and their surrounding neighborhoods, but this association differs by type of choice-based alternative. Private schools, on average, reduce the presence of non-Hispanic white students in locally zoned schools, whereas charter schools may reduce the presence of nonwhite students in locally zoned schools. Increases in neighborhood-school racial imbalances from 2000 to 2010 were concentrated in neighborhoods undergoing increases in socioeconomic status, suggesting that parents’ residential and school decisions are dynamic and sensitive to changing neighborhood conditions. Selective opting out has implications for racial integration in schools and the distribution of familial resources across educational contexts.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Kendra Bischoff: Department of Sociology, Cornell University
E-mail: kbischoff@cornell.edu

Laura Tach: Department of Policy Analysis and Management, Cornell University
E-mail: lmt88@cornell.edu

Acknowledgements: This project was funded by the Cornell Center for Social Sciences. Bischoff was also supported by a National Academy of Education–Spencer Foundation fellowship. We would like to thank Salvatore Saporito for generously sharing the school attendance boundary data he collected for the 1999–2000 school year. This project would not have been possible without it. We also thank Chenoa Flippen, Peter Rich, Steven Alvarado, Matt Hall, Anna Haskins, and Erin York Cornwell for their comments on previous versions of this article.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Bischoff, Kendra, and Laura Tach. 2020. “School Choice, Neighborhood Change, and Racial Imbalance Between Public Elementary Schools and Surrounding Neighborhoods.” Sociological Science 7: 75-99.
  • Received: July 1, 2019
  • Accepted: January 16, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Sarah Soule
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a4


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"A Situation Where There Aren't Rules": Unwanted Sex for Gay, Bisexual, and Questioning Men

By on March 9, 2020 in Articles

Jessie V. Ford, Andréa Becker

Sociological Science March 9, 2020
10.15195/v7.a3

Abstract
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Although college gay and bisexual men report elevated rates of sexual victimization, their accounts have received less scholarly attention. This article examines 18 gay, bisexual, and questioning (GBQ) men’s narratives about their experiences of unwanted sex in college. Our findings suggest that men are motivated to have unwanted sex while trying to navigate ambiguous sexual scripts amid male power dynamics, sexual inexperience, and ubiquitous heteronormativity and homophobia. Due to less defined sexual scripts and/or inexperience, men sometimes overlaid a heterosexual script onto encounters, resulting in an expectation that the “top” should have an orgasm. The stigma of being gay (or its potential) also entered into sexual interactions, pushing people to have sex in secrecy, in remote locations, or with closeted people who use force or threats to obtain sex. Together, these gendered and homophobic social pressures combine to leave GBQ men grappling with a double bind. As part of this double bind, GBQ men feel pressure to have sex in order to perform properly as a man—and specifically as a gay or bisexual man. They also fear losing control in a sexual situation, which could result in emasculation.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Jessie V. Ford: Department of Sociomedical Sciences, Columbia University
E-mail: Jf3179@cumc.columbia.edu

Andréa Becker: Graduate Center, City University of New York
E-mail: abecker@gradcenter.cuny.edu

Acknowledgements: We would like to thank Drs. Paula England and Lynn Chancer for their feedback and support in putting together this article. We’d also like to thank our research assistant Joe Sullivan for his brilliant insight into the ideas presented here.

  • Citation: Ford, Jessie V., and Andréa Becker. 2020. “”A Situation Where There Aren’t Rules”: Unwanted Sex for Gay, Bisexual, and Questioning Men” Sociological Science 7: 57-74.
  • Received: January 6, 2020
  • Accepted: February 4, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Mario Small
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a3


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Gender Flexibility, but not Equality: Young Adults’ Division of Labor Preferences

By on January 21, 2020 in Articles

Brittany N. Dernberger, Joanna R. Pepin

Sociological Science January 21, 2020
10.15195/v7.a2

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Rising acceptance of mothers’ labor force participation is often considered evidence of increased support for gender equality. This approach overlooks perceptions of appropriate behavior for men and gender dynamics within families. We use nationally representative data of 12th-grade students from Monitoring the Future surveys (1976 to 2014) to evaluate changes in youths’ preferred division of labor arrangements. Over this period, contemporary young people exhibited greater openness to a variety of division of labor scenarios for their future selves as parents, although the husband-as-earner/wife-as-homemaker arrangement remained most desired. Using latent class analysis, we identify six configurations of gender attitudes: conventionalists, neotraditionalists, conventional realists, dual earners, intensive parents, and strong intensive parents. There are no gender egalitarian configurations—exhibiting equal support for both parents’ time at work and time at home. Our findings indicate researchers must distinguish between adoption of gender egalitarian principles and gender flexibility in dividing time at work and at home.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Brittany N. Dernberger: Department of Sociology, University of Maryland
E-mail: bdernber@terpmail.umd.edu

Joanna R. Pepin: Population Research Center, University of Texas at Austin
E-mail: JPepin@prc.utexas.edu

Acknowledgements: We thank Kelly Raley, Melissa Milkie, Philip Cohen, and Sarah Flood for generously reading previous versions and providing invaluable feedback. This article was presented at the University of Maryland’s Gender,Work, and Family/Stratification working group, the Family Demography working group at the University of Texas, and at the 2018 American Sociological Association’s annual conference. We thank all the audience participants for their thoughtful comments. Replication code for data access and all paper analyses are available at https://osf.io/m3xwy/.

This research was supported by grant P2CHD042849, Population Research Center, and grant T32HD007081, Training Program in Population Studies, awarded to the Population Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin; and grant P2CHD041041, Maryland Population Research Center, awarded to the University of Maryland, by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Dernberger, Brittany N., and Joanna R. Pepin. 2020. “Gender Flexibility, but not Equality: Young Adults’ Division of Labor Preferences.” Sociological Science 7: 36-56.
  • Received: November 20, 2019
  • Accepted: December 14, 2019
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Sarah Soule
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a2


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Stereotypical Gender Associations in Language Have Decreased Over Time

By on January 7, 2020 in Articles

Jason J. Jones, Mohammad Ruhul Amin, Jessica Kim, Steven Skiena

Sociological Science January 7, 2020
10.15195/v7.a1

Abstract
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Using a corpus of millions of digitized books, we document the presence and trajectory over time of stereotypical gender associations in the written English language from 1800 to 2000. We employ the novel methodology of word embeddings to quantify male gender bias: the tendency to associate a domain with the male gender. We measure male gender bias in four stereotypically gendered domains: career, family, science, and arts. We found that stereotypical gender associations in language have decreased over time but still remain, with career and science terms demonstrating positive male gender bias and family and arts terms demonstrating negative male gender bias. We also seek evidence of changing associations corresponding to the second shift and find partial support. Traditional gender ideology is latent within the text of published English-language books, yet the magnitude of traditionally gendered associations appears to be decreasing over time.
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Jason J. Jones: Department of Sociology and Institute for Advanced Computational Science, Stony Brook University
E-mail: Jason.J.Jones@stonybrook.edu

Mohammad Ruhul Amin: Department of Computer Science, Stony Brook University
E-mail: moamin@cs.stonybrook.edu

Jessica Kim: Department of Sociology, Stony Brook University
E-mail: jessica.a.kim@stonybrook.edu

Steven Skiena: Department of Computer Science, Stony Brook University
E-mail: skiena@cs.stonybrook.edu

Acknowledgements: This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grants IIS-1546113 and IIS-1927227. The authors would like to thank Stony Brook Research Computing and Cyberinfrastructure as well as the Institute for Advanced Computational Science at Stony Brook University for access to the highperformance SeaWulf computing system, which was made possible by a $1.4 million National Science Foundation grant (#1531492).

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Jones, Jason J., Mohammad Ruhul Amin, Jessica Kim, and Steven Skiena. 2019. “Stereotypical Gender Associations in Language Have Decreased Over Time.” Sociological Science 7: 1-35.
  • Received: August 13, 2019
  • Accepted: October 31, 2019
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Sarah Soule
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a1


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Which Mothers Pay a Higher Price? Education Differences in Motherhood Wage Penalties by Parity and Fertility Timing

By on December 19, 2019 in Articles

Catherine Doren

Sociological Science December 19, 2019
10.15195/v6.a26

Abstract
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Upon becoming mothers, women often experience a wage decline—a “motherhood wage penalty.” Recent scholarship suggests the penalty’s magnitude differs by educational attainment. Yet education is also predictive of when women have children and how many they have, which can affect the wage penalty’s size too. Using fixed-effects models and data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, I estimate heterogeneous effects of motherhood by parity and by age at births, considering how these relationships differ by education. For college graduates, first births were associated with a small wage penalty overall, but the penalty was larger for earlier first births and declined with higher ages at first birth. Women who delayed fertility until their mid-30s reaped a premium. Second and third births were associated with wage penalties. Less educated women instead faced a wage penalty at all births and delaying fertility did not minimize the penalty.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Catherine Doren: Office of Population Research and Center for Research on Child Wellbeing, Princeton University
E-mail: cdoren@princeton.edu

Acknowledgements: This research was supported by a core grant to the Center for Demography and Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (P2C HD047873) and a training grant (T32 HD07014) awarded to the Center for Demography and Ecology by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development. Thanks to Christine Schwartz, Myra Marx Ferree, Eric Grodsky, Sasha Killewald, Kathy Lin, Sara McLanahan, Christine Percheski, and Tim Smeeding for helpful feedback on past drafts of this article.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Doren, Catherine. 2019. “Which Mothers Pay a Higher Price? Education Differences in Motherhood Wage Penalties by Parity and Fertility Timing.” Sociological Science 6: 684-709.
  • Received: October 23, 2019
  • Accepted: November 18, 2019
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Sarah Soule
  • DOI: 10.15195/v6.a26


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Gender Typicality and Academic Achievement among American High School Students

By on December 12, 2019 in Articles

Jill E. Yavorsky, Claudia Buchmann

Sociological Science December 12, 2019
10.15195/v6.a25

Abstract
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This study is the first to use nationally representative data to examine whether differences in gender-typical behaviors among adolescents are associated with high school academic performance and whether such associations vary by race or socioeconomic status. Using wave I data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and linked academic transcript data from the Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement study, we find that boys who report moderate levels of gender atypicality earn the highest grade point averages (GPAs), but few boys score in this range. As gender typicality increases, boys’ GPAs decline steeply. In contrast, girls who practice moderate levels of gender typicality earn slightly higher GPAs than other girls. These patterns generally hold across race and socioeconomic status groups.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Jill E. Yavorsky: Department of Sociology, University of North Carolina Charlotte
E-mail: jyavorsk@uncc.edu

Claudia Buchmann: Department of Sociology, The Ohio State University
E-mail: buchmann.4@osu.edu

Acknowledgements: This research uses data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), a program project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and funded by grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations. Information on how to obtain the Add Health data files is available on the Add Health website (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth). No direct support was received from grant P01-HD31921 for this analysis. This research also uses data from the Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement study, which was funded by a grant (R01 HD040428-02, Chandra Muller, PI) from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and a grant (REC-0126167, Chandra Muller, PI, and Pedro Reyes, Co-PI) from the National Science Foundation. This research was also supported by grant 5 R24 HD042849, Population Research Center, awarded to the Population Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Health and Child Development. Opinions reflect those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the granting agencies. We thank the reviewers and editor for their helpful comments. We also are grateful to Yue Qian, Paula England, Tom DiPrete, and participants in the Seminar Series at the Center for the Study of Wealth and Inequality at Columbia University and participants in the University of Michigan Department of Sociology Seminar Series.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Yavorsky, Jill E., and Claudia Buchmann. 2019. “Gender Typicality and Academic Achievement among American High School Students.” Sociological Science 6: 661-683.
  • Received: October 8, 2019
  • Accepted: November 13, 2019
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Kim Weeden
  • DOI: 10.15195/v6.a25


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Robust Discourse and the Politics of Legitimacy: Framing International Intervention in the Syrian Civil War, 2011–2016

By on November 25, 2019 in Articles

Eric W. Schoon, Scott W. Duxbury

Sociological Science, November 25, 2019
10.15195/v6.a24

Abstract
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Legitimacy is widely invoked as a master frame in international political discourse. During episodes of contention, this frame is used by opposing sides to advance competing interpretations of the same social problems. Through an analysis of elite political discourses surrounding international intervention in the Syrian Civil War, we examine what distinguishes the effectiveness of actors’ framing efforts when they use a shared frame to advance conflicting agendas. We show how features of the objects (i.e., what or who) being framed shape the resonance and stability of the framing. Moreover, we show how framing objects that can be coherently interpreted in multiple ways facilitate the cultivation of discourses that are consistent despite changing social conditions and the evolution of framers’ goals. We refer to this as robust discourse and elaborate on the implications of this concept.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Eric W. Schoon: Department of Sociology, The Ohio State University
E-mail: schoon.1@osu.edu

Scott W. Duxbury: Department of Sociology, The Ohio State University
E-mail: duxbury.5@osu.edu

Acknowledgements: The authors would like to thank Colin Beck, Robert Braun, Nicole Fox, Steve Lopez, Aliza Luft, Andrew Martin, Dana Moss, Corey Pech, Vinnie Roscigno, and Mike Vuolo for their comments, feedback, and advice at various stages during the research process. This work also benefited greatly from feedback at the War and Society Workshop at Northwestern University and the Koç University College of Administrative Sciences and Economics colloquium. Any errors remain the sole responsibility of the authors. Please direct correspondence to Eric Schoon, Department of Sociology, 238 Townshend Hall, The Ohio State University, 1885 Neil Avenue Mall, Columbus, OH 43210-1222. E-mail: Schoon.1@osu.edu.

  • Citation: Schoon, Eric W., and Scott W. Duxbury. 2019. “Robust Discourse and the Politics of Legitimacy: Framing International Intervention in the Syrian Civil War, 2011–2016.” Sociological Science 6: 635-660.
  • Received: September 16, 2019
  • Accepted: October 16, 2019
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Sarah Soule
  • DOI: 10.15195/v6.a24


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Linking Self-Employment Before and After Migration: Migrant Selection and Human Capital

By on November 20, 2019 in Articles

Andrey Tibajev

Sociological Science, November 20, 2019
10.15195/v6.a23

Abstract
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In linking self-employment before and after migration, the often-cited home-country self-employment hypothesis states that immigrants who come from countries with large self-employment sectors are themselves more likely to have been self-employed and hence have a higher propensity for self-employment in their destination country. Using Swedish data, this study shows that the first part of the hypothesis, that origin-country average rates of self-employment can be used to approximate individual experience, is false; but the second part, the connection between self-employment before and after migration, is true if the measurement is done on the individual level. Migrants who have been self-employed before migration accumulate entrepreneurial human capital, making future self-employment a more desirable labor market alternative vis-à-vis wage employment. But because of migrant selection, this association cannot be captured by aggregate measures, and this is the reason why the home-country self-employment hypothesis, although intuitive, has underperformed in previous empirical tests.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Andrey Tibajev: Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society, Linköping University
E-mail: andti116@student.liu.se

Acknowledgements: I am grateful for insightful comments from Moa Bursell, Martin Hällsten, Karin Krifors, Olav Nygård, Ognjen Obucina and Zoran Slavnic as well as the conference participants of the European Consortium for Sociological Research Annual Conference in Paris and International Migration, Integration, and Social Cohesion Annual Conference in Barcelona.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Tibajev, Andrey. 2019. “Linking Self-Employment Before and After Migration: Migrant Selection and Human Capital.” Sociological Science 6: 609-634.
  • Received: October 7, 2019
  • Accepted: October 16, 2019
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Olav Sorenson
  • DOI: 10.15195/v6.a23


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Individual and Social Genomic Contributions to Educational and Neighborhood Attainments: Geography, Selection, and Stratification in the United States

By on November 13, 2019 in Articles

Thomas Laidley, Justin Vinneau, Jason D. Boardman

Sociological Science, November 13, 2019
10.15195/v6.a22

Abstract
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Research on neighborhood effects draws suggestive links between local spatial environments and a range of social, economic, and public health outcomes. Here, we consider the potential role of genetics in the geography of social stratification in the United States using genomic data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. We find that those with genotypes related to higher educational attainment sort into neighborhoods that are better educated and have higher population densities, both descriptively and using formal school and sibling fixed-effects models. We identify four mechanisms through which this geographic sorting on genetic endowment can magnify social stratification: assortative mating, social-genetic effects, gene-by-environment interactions, and gene–by–social-genetic interactions. We examine the presence of the latter three in our data, finding provisional yet suggestive evidence for social-genetic effects that putatively amount to about one-third of the influence of one’s own genomic profile. We find no evidence, however, for the presence of interactions between environments and individual genetic background. Collectively, these findings highlight the potential for geographic sorting on genotype to emerge both as a key methodological concern in population genetics and social science research and also a potentially overlooked dimension of social stratification worthy of future study.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Thomas Laidley: Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado Boulder
E-mail: thla0691@colorado.edu

Justin Vinneau: Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado Boulder
E-mail: justin.vinneau@colorado.edu

Jason D. Boardman: Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado Boulder
E-mail: boardman@colorado.edu

Acknowledgements: This research uses data from The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), a program project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and funded by grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations. Information on how to obtain the Add Health data files is available on the Add Health website (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth). Laidley and Vinneau acknowledge generous support from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant 5T32DA017637. This work has also benefited from research, administrative, and computing support provided by the University of Colorado Population Center (CUPC Project 2P2CHD066613-06) funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. We thank the editors for their feedback and guidance in preparing the manuscript as well as our colleagues at the Institute of Behavioral Science (IBS) and Institute for Behavioral Genetics (IBG) at the University of Colorado Boulder, who provided early feedback. Any remaining errors are ours alone. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the official views of the CUPC, NIH, IBS, IBG, or University of Colorado Boulder.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Laidley, Thomas, Justin Vinneau, and Jason D. Boardman. 2019. “Individual and Social Genomic Contributions to Educational and Neighborhood Attainments: Geography, Selection, and Stratification in the United States.” Sociological Science 6:580-608.
  • Received: September 16, 2019
  • Accepted: October 16, 2019
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Gabriel Rossman
  • DOI: 10.15195/v6.a22


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The Mere Mention of Asians in Affirmative Action

By on September 26, 2019 in Articles

Jennifer Lee, Van C. Tran

Sociological Science, September 26, 2019
10.15195/v6.a21

Abstract
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Presumed competent, U.S. Asians evince exceptional educational outcomes but lack the cultural pedigree of elite whites that safeguard them from bias in the labor market. In spite of their nonwhite minority status, Asians also lack the legacy of disadvantage of blacks that make them eligible beneficiaries of affirmative action. Their labor market disadvantage coupled with their exclusion from affirmative action programs place Asians in a unique bind: do they support policies that give preferences to blacks but exclude them? Given their self- and group interests, this bind should make Asians unlikely to do so. We assess whether this is the case by comparing their attitudes to those of whites, blacks, and Hispanics. Drawing on a novel three-way framing experiment embedded in the 2016 National Asian American Survey, we document how the “mere mention of Asians” in affirmative action frames affects support for the preferential hiring and promotion of blacks. Support shifts in different ways among all groups depending on the mere mention of Asians as either victims of affirmative action alongside whites or as victims of discrimination alongside blacks. Moreover, among Asians, support for affirmative action differs significantly by immigrant generation: first-generation Asians express the weakest support.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Jennifer Lee: Department of Sociology, Columbia University
E-mail: lee.jennifer@columbia.edu

Van C. Tran: Department of Sociology, The Graduate Center, CUNY
E-mail: vtran@gc.cuny.edu

Acknowledgements: Direct all correspondence to Jennifer Lee, Department of Sociology, Columbia University. E-mail: lee.jennifer@columbia.edu. This research was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (1558986) and the Russell Sage Foundation (93-17-07). For comments and suggestions, we thank Maria Abascal, Aixa Cintrón-Vélez, Thomas DiPrete, Florencia Torche, Andreas Wimmer, and the editors of Sociological Science.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Lee, Jennifer, and Van C. Tran. 2019. “The Mere Mention of Asians in Affirmative Action.” Sociological Science 6: 551-579.
  • Received: July 15, 2019
  • Accepted: September 2, 2019
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Kim Weeden
  • DOI: 10.15195/v6.a21


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A Large-Scale Test of Gender Bias in the Media

By on September 3, 2019 in Articles

Eran Shor, Arnout van de Rijt, Babak Fotouhi

Sociological Science, September 3, 2019
10.15195/v6.a20

Abstract
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A large body of studies demonstrates that women continue to receive less media coverage than men do. Some attribute this difference to gender bias in media reporting—a systematic inclination toward male subjects. We propose that in order to establish the presence of media bias, one has to demonstrate that the news coverage of men is disproportional even after accounting for occupational inequalities and differences in public interest. We examine the coverage of more than 20,000 successful women and men from various social and occupational domains in more than 2,000 news sources as well as web searches for these individuals as a behavioral measure of interest. We find that when compared with similar-aged men from the same occupational strata, women enjoy greater public interest yet receive less media coverage.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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

Arnout van de Rijt: Social and Behavioural Sciences, Utrecht University
E-mail: arnoutvanderijt@gmail.com

Babak Fotouhi: Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, Harvard University
E-mail: babak_fotouhi@fas.harvard.edu

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Shor, Eran, Arnout van de Rijt, and Babak Fotouhi. 2019. “A Large-Scale Test of Gender Bias in the Media.” Sociological Science 6: 526-550.
  • Received: June 6, 2019
  • Accepted: June 13, 2019
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Olav Sorenson
  • DOI: 10.15195/v6.a20


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Building Inequality: Housing Segregation and Income Segregation

By on August 7, 2019 in Articles

Ann Owens

Sociological Science, August 7, 2019
10.15195/v6.a19

Abstract
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This article foregrounds housing in the study of residential segregation. The spatial configuration of housing determines the housing opportunities in each neighborhood, the backdrop against which households’ resources, preferences, and constraints play out. I use census and American Community Survey data to provide the first evidence of the extent of housing segregation by type and by cost at multiple geographic scales in large metropolitan areas in the United States from 1990 to 2014. Segregation between single- and multifamily homes and renter- and owner-occupied homes increased in most metropolitan areas, whereas segregation by cost declined. Housing segregation varies among metropolitan areas, across geographic scales, and over time, with consequences for income segregation. Income segregation is markedly higher when and where housing segregation is greater. As long as housing opportunities remain segregated, residential segregation will change little, with urgent implications for urban and housing policy makers.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Ann Owens: Department of Sociology, University of Southern California
E-mail: annowens@usc.edu

Acknowledgements: This research was supported by a USC Lusk Center for Real Estate faculty research grant. Comments and suggestions from the 2019 Population Association of America Annual Meeting and from reviewers improved this article. All conclusions and errors are attributable to the author.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Owens, Ann. 2019. “Building Inequality: Housing Segregation and Income Segregation.” Sociological Science 6: 497-525.
  • Received: May 29, 2019
  • Accepted: June 23, 2019
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Kim Weeden
  • DOI: 10.15195/v6.a19


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Do Some Countries Discriminate More than Others? Evidence from 97 Field Experiments of Racial Discrimination in Hiring

By on June 17, 2019 in Articles

Lincoln Quillian, Anthony Heath, Devah Pager, Arnfinn H. Midtbøen, Fenella Fleischmann, Ole Hexel

Sociological Science, June 17, 2019
10.15195/v6.a18

Abstract
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16 Citation


Comparing levels of discrimination across countries can provide a window into large-scale social and political factors often described as the root of discrimination. Because of difficulties in measurement, however, little is established about variation in hiring discrimination across countries. We address this gap through a formal meta-analysis of 97 field experiments of discrimination incorporating more than 200,000 job applications in nine countries in Europe and North America. We find significant discrimination against nonwhite natives in all countries in our analysis; discrimination against white immigrants is present but low. However, discrimination rates vary strongly by country: In high-discrimination countries, white natives receive nearly twice the callbacks of nonwhites; in low-discrimination countries, white natives receive about 25 percent more. France has the highest discrimination rates, followed by Sweden. We find smaller differences among Great Britain, Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, the United States, and Germany. These findings challenge several conventional macro-level theories of discrimination.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Lincoln Quillian: Department of Sociology, Northwestern University
E-mail: l-quillian@northwestern.edu

Anthony Heath: Centre for Social Investigation, Nuffield College
E-mail: anthony.heath@nuffield.ox.ac.uk

Devah Pager: Deceased, formerly Department of Sociology, Harvard University

Arnfinn H. Midtbøen: Institute for Social Research, Oslo, Norway
E-mail: a.h.midtboen@samfunnsforskning.no

Fenella Fleischmann: Interdisciplinary Social Science, Utrecht University
E-mail: F.Fleischmann@uu.nl

Ole Hexel: Department of Sociology, Northwestern University, and Observatoire Sociologique du Changement, Sciences Po, Paris, France
E-mail: ole.hexel@u.northwestern.edu

Acknowledgements: We have received financial support for this project from the Russell Sage Foundation and the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University. We thank Larry Hedges for methodological advice. We dedicate this article to Devah Pager, who learned a little from us and taught us much more.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Quillian, Lincoln, Anthony Heath, Devah Pager, Arnfinn H. Midtbøen, Fenella Fleischmann, and Ole Hexel. 2019. “Do Some Countries Discriminate More than Others? Evidence from 97 Field Experiments of Racial Discrimination in Hiring.” Sociological Science 6: 467-496.
  • Received: March 7, 2019
  • Accepted: April 23, 2019
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Olav Sorenson
  • DOI: 10.15195/v6.a18


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