The components of density and the dimensions of residential segregation

The purposes of this research are to examine the relationships between density and residential segregation and to propose a technique for the more precise measurement of social density. Using data from the 1990 US Census for the fifty eight largest metropolitan areas in the United States, we explore the applicability of measuring social density by examining how the dimensions of segregation are related to the components of race-specific and non-race-specific density. Findings suggest that density is an important part of our understanding of the processes involved in the segregation of race/ethnic groups and further that the measurement of social density can make a significant contribution to research on the concentration of poverty, joblessness, and violence.     

Language Matching Among Mother‐child Dyads: Associations with Child Attachment and Emotion Reactivity

Links between mother‐infant affective matching and attachment security are well‐documented, but research on other types of behavioral matching and attachment security are lacking, as are studies that examine these constructs later in children's development. We examine language style matching (LSM) between mothers and their school‐aged children (N = 68), using interviews with each dyad member. As predicted, regressions revealed that higher mother‐child relational LSM was associated with greater child attachment security (operationalized as high security, low dismissal), and that higher LSM predicted smaller increases in children's electrodermal response to a relational probe 1.5 years later. Further, mother‐child relational LSM was a mediator in the indirect path between children's attachment security and children's reactivity. We discuss the potential utility of LSM as a measure of relationship quality and future studies that could refine our understanding of parent‐child language matching.     

CONDITIONAL INVESTMENT–CASH FLOW SENSITIVITIES AND FINANCING CONSTRAINTS

We study the sensitivity of investment to cash flow conditional on measures of q in an adjustment costs framework with costly external finance. We present a benchmark model in which this conditional investment–cash flow sensitivity increases monotonically with the cost premium for external finance, for firms in a financially constrained regime. Using simulated data, we show that this pattern is found in linear regressions that relate investment rates to measures of both cash flow and average q. We also derive a structural equation for investment from the first‐order conditions of our model, and show that this can be estimated directly.     

A multilevel cross-classified modelling approach to peer review of grant proposals: the effects of assessor and researcher attributes on assessor ratings

Summary. The peer review of grant proposals is very important to academics from all disciplines. Although there is limited research on the reliability of assessments for grant proposals, previously reported single-rater reliabilities have been disappointingly low (between 0.17 and 0.37). We found that the single-rater reliability of the overall assessor rating for Australian Research Council grants was 0.21 for social science and humanities (2870 ratings, 1928 assessors and 687 proposals) and 0.19 for science (7153 ratings, 4295 assessors and 1644 proposals). We used a multilevel, cross-classification approach (level 1, assessor and proposal cross-classification; level 2, field of study), taking into account that 34% of the assessors evaluated more than one proposal. Researcher-nominated assessors (those chosen by the authors of the research proposal) gave higher ratings than panel-nominated assessors chosen by the Australian Research Council, and proposals from more prestigious universities received higher ratings. In the social sciences and humanities, the status of Australian universities had significantly more effect on Australian assessors than on overseas assessors. In science, ratings were higher when assessors rated fewer proposals and apparently had a more limited frame of reference for making such ratings and when researchers were professors rather than non-professors. Particularly, the methodology of this large scale study is applicable to other forms of peer review (publications, job interviews, awarding of prizes and election to prestigious societies) where peer review is employed as a selection process.     

The political mobilization of corporate directors: socio‐economic correlates of affiliation to European pressure groups

Business has played a central role in the debate over Britain's place in the European Union. This paper examines the socio‐economic characteristics of directors of Britain's largest corporations who affiliated either to Business for Sterling or Britain in Europe. It reports associations between directors' social backgrounds and their probabilities of affiliation. Elite university education, club membership, wealth and multiple directorships were all associated with higher propensities to affiliate. The associations are consistent with the idea that directors' social resources allow them to overcome collective action problems as well as supplying them with the motivations to affiliate. They also indicated that directors form a privileged group in that they have a number of very powerful actors who can take unilateral political actions.     

Routes of success: influences on the occupational attainment of young British males

Using data from the National Child Development Study, the paper develops a complex path model predicting the occupational grade achieved by 4,298 employed British males at age 33. Most British social mobility research has been based in the 'class structurationist' tradition, and the paper begins by comparing this with the 'status attainment' tradition, which is more common in the USA. The class structurationist approach has rarely analysed the factors influencing individual occupational attainment, and those working in this tradition in Britain have often assumed that people from working-class origins fare worse on average than those from the middle class because of factors associated with their class disadvantage rather than any difference in individual characteristics such as ability or ambition. Status attainment research, however, has generally found that individual ability and motivation are the key factors influencing occupational attainment, and that class origins count for comparatively little. Using various measures of class origins, parental support, qualifications, and individual ability and ambition, the paper goes on to develop a linear structural equations model which achieves a good fit to the data. The model demonstrates that individual ability is by far the strongest influence on occupational achievement, that motivation is also important, and that factors like class background and parental support, while significant, are relatively much weaker. The paper concludes that occupational selection in Britain appears to take place largely on meritocratic principles.     

Value change: Analyzing national change in citizen secularism across four time periods in the World Values Survey

Convergence or divergence are two plausible but different views on how local cultures respond to the forces of globalization. In the present study, a newly formulated value dimension of secularism was used to investigate the direction of value change induced in members of national groups over the last two decades by the forward march of recent history. A culturally equivalent but single dimension of secularism was extracted from the items tapping the two dimensions of value originally proposed by Inglehart (1997) in the World Values Survey. No evidence of convergence or divergence in secularism was found, as there were no significant differences in standard deviations of citizen scores on secularism across any of the six time periods across which the World Values Survey was administered on the four occasions to date. In addition, there was evidence, though it was not consistent, showing that people across the planet are becoming more secular. Furthermore, a consistently significant relationship between change in HDI (Human Development Index) and change in secularism could not be consistently found for countries, suggesting that cultural value change is not determined by social-economic development. However, the secularism of a country's citizens was found to moderate the impact of social development on secular change during certain recent time period, such that only citizens in initially more secular countries increased their secularism. Future research agendas were proposed in light of these findings.     

The evolution of deception

Deception has evolved under natural selection, as has the capacity to detect deceit. In this article, we describe the adaptive significance of deception in plants, fireflies, octopi, chimpanzees, andHomo sapiens. We review behavior genetic research to find that heredity affects human deceptiveness and theorize that genetically-transmitted anatomical features prefigure human success at deceit.