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This paper reports the findings of a study that related a series of background and treatment variables to the likelihood of success or failure on probation for 791 California adult offenders. Thirteen variables on which the 415 probation successes and the 376 failures differed significantly were divided into three categories: social background, antisocial behavior, and conditions of probation. The greatest differences between the two groups were in the antisocial behavior category. Probationers with a past history of disciplinary problems in the military, a juvenile record, or an adult record were much more likely to fail on probation. The type of crime the failures commit (property: auto theft, check offenses, forgery) suggests elements of career offenders. In terms of social background, the failures were more likely to come from disadvantaged circumstances: lower educational level and lower socio-economic status. They are also more unstable, as reflected in a high incidence of marital instability and a greater tendency to move from job to job. Finally, certain conditions of probation, especially the ordering of restitution, were more prevalent in the case histories of the failures than of the successes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a phenonienological framework of the, socialization process, based on Husserl, Mead, Schütz, Berger and Luckmann. It focuses on the assumptions underlying the Meadian analysis of socialization, and examines selected differences between child and adult socialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Sociological Research Unit of the Department of Sociology of Education has been engaged for the past five years upon a study of variations between and within social class in familial patterns of communication and control. This paper examines social class differences in maternal reports of various contextual usages of language. The findings, obtained from a sample of 100 mothers, indicate social class differences in adult-adult and mother-child communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Glock, Ringer, and Babbie have argued that people who become involved in church are seeking a comfortable refuge from the deprivations associated with being old, female, unmarried, or having a small income or little education. The present research tests this thesis using data from a province wide sample of adults in Alberta. No support for the thesis is found among any denominational grouping. When the thesis is broken down into its component hypotheses, however, the pattern of relationships that emerges is one that has long been familiar to sociologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a discussion on historical perspectives of sociological inquiry. In this view the evils of the world loom so large that only those energies which attack these evils head on are legitimately employed. The freedom to do scholarly work has been questioned when it is not directed to problems considered "relevant" by the critics. Detachment and analysis as hitherto practiced, and almost regardless of content, appear to them fatally impaired because they feel that even in the midst of great wealth they must live by an ethic of social despair. In modern society there is a prolonged period of dependence between childhood and adult responsibility. In effect, youths are permitted very early sexual experience, but when on that or other bases they claim or except the independence of adults, education prolongs their dependence and an automated technology makes them feel obsolete. The belief in science has remained remarkably consistent from the time of its first articulation in the 17th century to our own day. Francis Bacon wanted to inspire men with confidence that knowledge enhances human power.