College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
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Item Understanding the Mechanism of Panel Attrition(2009) Lemay, Michael; Kreuter, Frauke; Survey Methodology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Nonresponse is of particular concern in longitudinal surveys (panels) for several reasons. Cumulative nonresponse over several waves can substantially reduce the proportion of the original sample that remains in the panel. Reduced sample size increases the variance of the estimates and reduces the possibility for subgroup analysis. Also, the higher the attrition, the greater the concern that error (bias) will arise in the survey estimates. The fundamental purpose of most panel surveys is to allow analysts to estimate dynamic behavior. However, current research on attrition in panel surveys focuses on the characteristics of respondents at wave 1 to explain attrition in later waves, essentially ignoring the role of life events as determinants of panel attrition. If the dynamic behaviors that panel surveys are designed to examine are also prompting attrition, estimates of those behaviors and correlates of those behaviors may be biased. Also, current research on panel attrition generally does not differentiate between attrition through non-contacts and attrition through refusals. As these two source of nonresponse have been shown to have different determinants, they can also be expected to have different impacts on data quality. The goal of this research is to examine these issues. Data for this research comes from the Panel Survey of Income Dynamics (PSID) conducted by the University of Michigan. The PSID is an ongoing longitudinal survey that began in 1968 and with a focus on the core topics of income, employment, and health.Item The Politics of Metabolism: The Metabolic Syndrome and the Reproduction of Race and Racism(2009) Hatch, Anthony Ryan; Collins, Patricia H; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Biomedical researchers, government agencies, and the pharmaceutical industry increasingly use the term metabolic syndrome to define the observed co-occurrence of the major biological risk markers for heart disease, type II diabetes, and stroke. The metabolic syndrome is a new feature in what I call the politics of metabolism, or the discourses, social processes, and institutional relationships that governs the metabolism of individuals and groups. The emergence of the metabolic syndrome reflects a growing network of scientific, state, and corporate actors and institutions that are invested in studying, regulating, and profiting from control over metabolism. Drawing on insights from critical race theory, science and technology studies, and Foucauldian studies of biopower, I analyze the metabolic syndrome as a new discourse about metabolism that continually draws upon racial meanings to construct individual and group differences in different kinds of metabolic risk. The metabolic syndrome not only constitutes a new way of constructing, studying, and treating metabolic health problems, it also constitutes an emerging site for the production of racial meanings. Researchers use race in metabolic syndrome research and to study, prescribe, and label prescription drugs that may be related to the metabolic syndrome. I investigate the use of race and the metabolic syndrome in biomedical research on prescription drugs and African Americans. I develop the metaphor of killer applications to examine how prescription drugs operate in the politics of metabolism. A killer application is a superior technology that combines human and non-human elements that structure bodily practices in a wide range of social, commercial, and scientific contexts--prescription drugs have become the new killer applications in biomedicine. I argue that the search for killer applications has transformed the ways that pharmaceutical corporations study prescription drugs, metabolism, and race. I compare how drug researchers use race and the metabolic syndrome to study antipsychotics and statins in African Americans, how physicians' race-based diagnoses of schizophrenia and high cholesterol structure the prescribing patterns of antipsychotics and statins, and how scientists' assumptions about the genetic basis of racial differences in drug metabolism structure the debate about racebased drug therapies.Item Awakening Sleeping Beauty: Promises of Eternal Youth Packaged Through Scientific Innovation(2008-10-30) smirnova, michelle hannah; Mamo, Laura; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The definition of what constitutes "healthy" aging has recently experienced a shift in emphasis from internal to external components--especially for the white, affluent, heterosexual woman. The emergence of the skincare cosmeceutical industry and its attention to aging women's bodies raises questions about the discursive logics regarding health that both produce and are produced by modern aesthetic ideals and how they have produced this emergent aesthetic component of the "life-extension project." Similar to Nikolas Rose's (2001) "will to health", I propose that ideals of health, youth and beauty have become collapsed into a civic duty of this women--the "will to youth". A discourse analysis (124 cosmeceutical advertisements from More--a niche magazine directed at 40+ women), revealed how this industry constructs the aging woman's body as pathological by invoking the idea that the fairytale dreams of Sleeping Beauty and the fountain of youth may be realized through scientific innovations, most notably the cosmeceutical.Item The Relationship Between Response Propensity and Data Quality in the Current Population Survey and the American Time Use Survey(2007-04-26) Fricker, Scott; Tourangeau, Roger; Survey Methodology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)An important theoretical question in survey research over the past fifty years has been: How does bringing in late or reluctant respondents affect total survey error? Does the effort and expense of obtaining interviews from difficult to contact or reluctant respondents significantly decrease the nonresponse error of survey estimates? Or do these late respondents introduce enough measurement error to offset any reductions in nonresponse bias? This dissertation attempted to address these questions by examining nonresponse and data quality in two national household surveys--the Current Population Survey (CPS) and the American Time Use Survey (ATUS). Response propensity models were first developed for each survey, and busyness and social capital explanations of nonresponse were evaluated in light of the results. Using respondents' predicted probability of response, simulations were carried out to examine whether nonresponse bias was linked to response rates. Next, data quality in each survey was assessed by a variety of indirect indicators of response error--e.g., item missing data rates, round value reports, interview-reinterview response inconsistencies, etc.--and the causal roles of various household, respondent, and survey design attributes on the level of reporting error were explored. The principal analyses investigated the relationship between response propensity and the data quality indicators in each survey, and examined the effects of potential common causal factors when there was evidence of covariation. The implications of the findings from this study for survey practitioners and for nonresponse and measurement error studies are discussed.Item The Outsourcing of Intimate Affairs(2007-04-26) Lair, Craig Dennis; Ritzer, George; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In this dissertation I place the trend of outsourcing what I refer to as "intimate affairs" - those activities necessary to reproduce both physically and emotionally what Habermas (1991 [1962]: 46-47) calls the "intimate sphere" (e.g. the preparation of food, housekeeping tasks, parenting, gift giving, etc.) - within a theoretical context by arguing that this type of outsourcing is best understood from the perspective of reflexive modernization theory. In particular, I argue that the outsourcing of intimate affairs is best seen as resulting from two processes that stand at the heart of reflexive modernization: the disembedding of the social world and the concomitant wave of individualization that has accompanied this development. But more than just reflecting these processes, I also argue that intimate outsourcing can be seen as promoting disembedding and individualization as well. However, this dissertation also addresses a number of issues that, while being central to the debate over this topic, have largely been left unanswered. These include questions of what exactly is outsourcing and how it can be applied to activities such as intimate affairs? It is also includes the question of what is new and/or historically unique about outsourcing in comparison to past practices where intimate affairs were outsourcing. As I show, answering these questions is important for placing this trend in a theoretical context. In this dissertation I also critically evaluate a number of alternative theoretical accounts that have addressed to topic of outsourcing at the micro-level. As I show, while many of these theories have important insights in to this topic, they also have a number of significant limitations in accounting for the outsourcing of intimate affairs. In particular, I argue that most of these theories fail to place this type of outsourcing within a broad enough theoretical context. I show that such a context is offered by the theory of reflexive modernization theory and that many of the particular insights of these alternative theories can be integrated into the reflexive modernization perspective.Item Adolescents and Antidepressants: Analyzing a Social Scientific Controversy(2007-02-19) Nelson, Amber Dawn; Mamo, Laura; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis analyzes the scientific controversy over giving antidepressant medications to adolescents as it unfolded in a U.S. Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) hearing. Using the FDA hearing held on February 2, 2004, convened in response to a "crisis" evolving around the safety of antidepressant use among adolescents, this paper analyzes the unfolding response. This study utilizes social world's analysis, a qualitative methods approach designed to uncover the multiple stakes and claims of the problem as understood by each person at the hearing. I identified four distinct social worlds: 1) Adolescents, family and friends, 2) Independent professionals, 3) FDA, and 4) FDA-summoned professionals. Findings revealed that 103 actors came together around the crisis and each defined the problem of the controversy through one or more of the following four distinct frames; (1) side effects, (2) data, (3) practices and policies and/or (4) a lack of access to informed choice.Item The Implications for Desistance of the Developmental Course of Childhood Aggressive Behavior(2006-08-18) Bacon, Sarah Nicholson; Petras, Hanno; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)One of the most important goals for criminological research is to further our understanding of the concept of desistance. Challenges in defining and measuring desistance have been exacerbated by the lack of theoretical foundations to guide inquiry and empirical research. To date, only a few predictors have been empirically identified, and all of them are exclusively relevant to adulthood. An important objective for desistance research, then, is to identify factors associated with earlier desistance. This research endeavors to meet this objective by specifying a conceptual model relating the developmental course of early childhood aggression to offending behavior during adolescence and early adulthood. The relationships proposed by the conceptual model are assessed using a longitudinal measure of aggression and analytic techniques designed to assess change in development over time. An additional extension of existing research is the comparison of these relationships for boys and girls. Data come from Johns Hopkins University's Prevention Intervention Research Center's school-based interventions trials in Baltimore City Schools. Participants comprise an epidemiologically defined sample of urban, primarily African-American, first grade boys and girls. Results suggest that some pathways to desistance may be identified before adulthood, thus supporting the notion that examinations of early development have utility for informing our understanding of later processes.Item Exploring the Geography of Routine Activity Theory: A Spatio-Temporal Test Using Street Robbery(2006-07-10) Groff, Elizabeth; Dubayah, Ralph; Weisburd, David; Geography; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Many social phenomena have a spatio-temporal dimension and involve dynamic decisions made by individuals. Investigations focusing on the spatio-temporal dimensions of human behavior have received a great deal of theoretical attention; however, empirical testing of these theories has been handicapped by a lack of micro-level data and modeling tools that can capture the dynamic interactions of individuals and the context in which they occur. This research presents a methodology for evaluating theory through the implementation of a simulation model; the assumptions of the theory are operationalized in a model, a series of experiments are run, and the outcomes are analyzed to discover if they match what the theory would predict. Specifically, the concepts of routine activity theory (RAT) (Cohen and Felson, 1979) are formalized in a computational laboratory representing Seattle, Washington. The computational environment for implementation, Agent Analyst, merges agent-based modeling (ABM) software with geographic information systems (GIS). A strategy for developing activity spaces is implemented and demonstrates how agents can move along existing street networks, and land use patterns can be used to create representational activity spaces. Three versions of a model of street robbery are developed; each version implements a different level of constraints on agent's routine activities. In one version (Simple), individuals are either at home or not at home. In another, individuals follow a temporal schedule (Temporal). Last, individual's schedules are both temporally and spatially constrained (Activity Space). A series of experiments are conducted which compare the incidence and spatial pattern of street robbery events from each version. The results of the experiments provide strong evidence of the important role routine activities play in street robbery events. The addition of temporal and spatio-temporal schedule constraints reduces the incidence and changes the pattern of street robberies. Support for routine activity theory's premise, as time spent away from home increases street robbery will increase, is found in the Simple and Temporal, but not the Activity Space version of the model.Item Narrative and Selfhood in the Antidepressant Era(2006-05-30) Stepnisky, Jeffrey Nicholas; Ritzer, George; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation is a study of the relationship between antidepressant medications, self-understanding, and the narrative construction of self. The analysis relied upon two kinds of empirical data. First, advertisements for antidepressants in popular magazines, television, and online promotional websites were collected. Second, interviews were conducted with 23 people who were taking or had taken antidepressant medications. It is argued that antidepressants are components of the larger social processes of risk, biomedicalization, and individualization. In contrast to a narrative view, which conceives selfhood as a dialogical and embodied achievement, the antidepressants participate in a set of discourses that sustain atomistic conceptions of the self. The analysis emphasizes the personal agency that antidepressant users bring to bear upon their use of antidepressants. Chapter one is an introduction to theories of risk, individualization, and narrative as well as the ways in which narrative and selfhood are potentially transformed through the use of antidepressants. Chapter two offers an analysis of three theoretical conceptualizations of the relationship between biomedicine and selfhood: naturalism, poststructuralism and the narrative-hermeneutic perspective adopted in the dissertation. Chapter three analyzes the advertising materials emphasizing the manner in which relationships are constructed between selfhood, biology, and antidepressant medications. Chapters four, five, and six introduce interview materials in order to examine: a) how people learn to use antidepressants and in doing so come to split-off and manage unwanted elements of their selves, b) the ways in which the popular discourse of authenticity (being a "real" self) is transformed in the encounter with antidepressants, and c) the manner in which the antidepressants are taken up in social institutions such as the family. The dissertation concludes with a reflection upon the implications of a shift from a form of selfhood composed in narrative and relationship, to a form of post-social selfhood composed through the use of technologies such as antidepressants.Item SPACE, IDENTITY AND INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY: NEGOTIATING DECOLONIZATION IN THE UNITED NATIONS(2006-05-11) Patil, Vrushali; Korzeniewicz, Roberto P; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Beginning with the colonial and imperial encounters that constitute the early, conflict-ridden moments of trans-territorial contact, this research is interested in the relationship between gender, race, and shifting transnational power relationships. Bringing together work from Sociology, Women's Studies, and Postcolonial Studies, it is interested in the following questions. How are modern constructions of gender and race forged in transnational--colonial as well as 'postcolonial'--processes? How did they emerge in and contribute to such processes during the colonial era? Specifically, how did they shape colonialist constructions of space, identity and international community? How has this relationship shifted with legal decolonization? First, it offers a theory regarding these questions in the European colonial era, the theory of kinship. This theory posits that the colonialist construction of space, identity and international community historically relied on a trope of kinship, which operated by constructing the colonies as 'children' and the metropoles as 'parents.' Even more, kinship actually helped to constitute colonial notions of race (i.e., 'childlike natives') and gender (i.e., 'the lack of the nuclear household in African society as evidence of cultural immaturity'). In this manner, kinship helped to define colonized others as children, thereby to deny the subjectivity of these others (particularly their spatial and identity claims), and thus to ultimately build hierarchical structures of international community. Combining discourse and comparative historical methods of analysis, this work explores how colonialists and anti-colonialists renegotiate transnational power relationships within the debates on decolonization in the United Nations from 1946-1960. It argues that while colonialists continued to use the trope of kinship to legitimate the status quo, anti-colonialists insisted that the colonies had 'grown up' and that continuing colonialism was a humiliation that emasculated fully adult men. Thus, anti-colonialists attempted to reorder global power relationships by renegotiating the kinship trope. In other words, to the politics of paternalism, they responded with the politics of masculinity. Ultimately, then, the complex, shifting, politics of race relied on a politics of gender/sexuality, both of which were central to the changing contours of international community in the mid-20th century.