Suchergebnisse

The author1is the "dean" of BMS Scientific Committee members and here traces seven different trends in sociological methodology – Big Data Social Science, Longitudinal Data, Comparative Sociology, Social Networks, Inferential Statistics, Survey Methods, Measurement – in contributions of the BMS.

The beliefs and behavior of Americans—from political convictions to sexual mores—have changed dramatically in the past several decades. It is often surmised that the attitudes and ideas of a younger generation are displacing those of their parents and grandparents. The reality is more complex.

Reexamines the link between aging & conservatism, drawing on secondary empirical data & the literature. It has become conventional wisdom that, as people age, they become more conservative, in the sense that they are less susceptible to changing attitudes. A particularly important assumption of this common sense is that aging implies a relatively high degree of stability in the lives of individuals. However, a distinction is made between a trait, defined as a relatively stable behavioral predisposition, & a state, or transitory component of behavior. Using panel data on political orientations drawn from the National Election Studies & General Social Surveys, it is shown that different kinds of attitudes are more or less trait- & state-like, depending on their direction & intensity. Thus, party identification may be more stable, or trait-like, over time, while other kinds of attitudes may be more state-like. To properly explain why some attitudes appear to be more trait-like than others, it is necessary to gauge both the susceptibility to & opportunities for change of individuals in & across age cohorts. 3 Tables. D. Ryfe

Interview data (N = 141 Fs) on traits desired in children from the Lynds' studies of Muncie (Middletown), Ind, in the 1920s are compared with similar data (N = 333 F Rs) collected in a 1978 replication of the Lynds' work by Theodore Caplow et al (Middletown Families: Fifty Years of Change and Continuity [see IRPS No. 12/82c00119]). The results indicate that major changes have occurred in the most preferred qualities of children over this century, providing relatively strong evidence of changes in parent-child relations over this period. These patterns suggest greater emphasis on qualities linked to the autonomy of children in contemporary society, whereas earlier desiderata stressed greater obedience to institutional & adult authority. These trends are interpreted in terms of changing relations in the family & in the context of the response of the family to social, economic, & demographic changes during the twentieth century. 1 Table, 56 References. Modified HA

This article investigates the implications of Thomas Frank's "conservative backlash" thesis that cultural cleavages have become much more important in contemporary American political life relative to traditional socioeconomic bases for political differentiation. We frame our research within the recent literature on the "polarization" of the electorate with respect to social and cultural issues. Using Hunter's "culture war" imagery, we examine the extent to which opposing cultural forces on issues of abortion, gay rights, women's extra-familial labor force participation, and child-rearing have become more important in shaping political identities and party preferences. We use data from twenty-six nationally representative surveys of the General Social Survey (GSS) from 1974 through 2010, and we find evidence of polarization in the liberal-conservative identities of respondents. We find that occupational class had a clear and consistent relationship to political views, which is relatively stable over time. We also find that cultural views are related to political identities, and that most features of the cultural component in our analysis are increasingly associated with liberal political views. Our results favor an interpretation of a changing role of cultural orientations in shaping political identities and provide tentative support for Frank's "Kansas hypothesis" as revealed in the GSS data.