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The article discusses the creation of an intellectual biography of the U.S. sociologist Talcott Parsons. The researcher discusses Parsons' doctoral dissertation dealing with capitalism that was analyzed by sociologist Max Weber, and how Parsons' work delivered sociology from social Darwinism at the turn of the twentieth century. The author supports Parsons' work on the basis that he was a thinker and academician who did not use inconsistent analysis. The author utilized Parsons' archives at Harvard University, such as Parsons' paper "The Problem of Controlled Institutional Change."

One useful, but underutilized, strategy to increase quantitative literacy and promote critical sociological thinking is to have students investigate demographic trends in their local community. In this article, the authors describe a project in which students compare and contrast the demographic characteristics of two counties in their state using the 2000 Census Bureau data, formulate specific research questions using the data they have collected, and draw conclusions about the social influences on local demographic patterns using local media sources and sociological thinking. The authors present results from a quasi-experiment assessing the assignment’s effectiveness in improving quantitative literacy. They also present findings from a general evaluation survey administered to students. Despite the limitations of this study, results suggest that the described assignment increased quantitative literacy as well as encouraged critical sociological thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents data from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies with a focus on the interrelationships among health information seeking behavior (HISB), and health status or use of preventive health measures for U.S. adults both with and without a high school diploma. Key results of ordinal and binary logistic regression analyses indicated that, after controlling for demographic factors, (1) adults with a high school diploma use more text-based health information sources while adults without a high school diploma use more oral sources, (2) using the Internet as a source of health information is more strongly related to reporting excellent/very good health status than having a high school diploma, (3) those without a high school diploma who use the Internet report the largest increase in health status over any other health information source, and (4) for those with learning disability or vision problem, a high facility in reading English is an important predictor of whether the Internet is used as a health information source. The Internet appears to play a key role in both enhancing health status and enabling use of preventive measures for those with and without a high school diploma; although, individuals without a high school diploma who use the Internet for health information derive substantial benefit in health status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: To extend existing research on the US health disadvantage relative to Europe by studying the relationships of disability with age from midlife to old age in the US and four European regions (England/Northern and Western Europe/Southern Europe/Eastern Europe) including their wealth-related differences, using a flexible statistical approach to model the age-functions. Methods: We used data from three studies on aging, with nationally representative samples of adults aged 50 to 85 from 15 countries (N = 48225): the US-American Health and Retirement Study (HRS), the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) and the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Outcomes were mobility limitations and limitations in instrumental activities of daily living. We applied fractional polynomials of age to determine best fitting functional forms for age on disability in each region, while controlling for socio-demographic characteristics and important risk factors (hypertension, diabetes, obesity, smoking, physical inactivity). Results: Findings showed high levels of disability in the US with small age-related changes between 50 and 85. Levels of disability were generally lower in Eastern Europe, followed by England and Southern Europe and lowest in Northern and Western Europe. In these latter countries age-related increases of disability, though, were steeper than in the US, especially in Eastern and Southern Europe. For all countries and at all ages, disability levels were higher among adults with low wealth compared to those with high wealth, with largest wealth-related differences among those in early old age in the USA. Conclusions: This paper illustrates considerable variations of disability and its relationship with age. It supports the hypothesis that less developed social policies and more pronounced socioeconomic inequalities are related to higher levels of disability and an earlier onset of disability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We conduct a detailed investigation of correlations between real-time expressions of individuals made across the United States and a wide range of emotional, geographic, demographic, and health characteristics. We do so by combining (1) a massive, geo-tagged data set comprising over 80 million words generated in 2011 on the social network service Twitter and (2) annually-surveyed characteristics of all 50 states and close to 400 urban populations. Among many results, we generate taxonomies of states and cities based on their similarities in word use; estimate the happiness levels of states and cities; correlate highly-resolved demographic characteristics with happiness levels; and connect word choice and message length with urban characteristics such as education levels and obesity rates. Our results show how social media may potentially be used to estimate real-time levels and changes in population-scale measures such as obesity rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose the use of Google online search data for nowcasting and forecasting the number of food stamps recipients. We perform a large out-of-sample forecasting exercise with almost 3000 competing models with forecast horizons up to 2 years ahead, and we show that models including Google search data statistically outperform the competing models at all considered horizons. These results hold also with several robustness checks, considering alternative keywords, a falsification test, different out-of-samples, directional accuracy and forecasts at the state-level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

US Census same-sex couple data represent one of the richest and most frequently used data resources for studying the LGBT population. Recently, the Census Bureau conducted an analysis of a serious measurement problem in these data, finding that as many as 40 % of same-sex couples tabulated in Census 2000 and 28 % of those tabulated in Census 2010 were likely misclassified different-sex couples (O'Connell and Feliz, Bureau of the Census, ). As a result, the Census Bureau released new state-level 'preferred' estimates for the number of same-sex couples in these years, as well as previously unavailable information regarding the error rate of sex misclassification among different-sex married and unmarried couples by state and year. Researchers can use this information to adjust same-sex couple tabulations for geographic areas below the state level. Using these resources, this study: (1) considers in greater detail how the properties of the same-sex couple error might affect statistical inference, (2) offers a method for developing sub-state estimates of same-sex couples, and (3) demonstrates how using adjusted estimates can improve inference in analyses that rely on understanding the distribution of same-sex couples. In order to accomplish the third task, we replicate an analysis by McVeigh and Diaz (American Sociological Review 74: 891-915, ) that used county level Census 2000 unadjusted same-sex couple data, substitute our adjusted same-sex couple estimate, and examine the way in which this substitution affects findings. Our results demonstrate the improved accuracy of the adjusted measure and provide the formula that researchers can use to adjust the same-sex couple distribution in future analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Ovarian cancer is the most lethal gynecologic disease in the United States, with more women dying from this cancer than all gynecological cancers combined. Ovarian cancer has been termed the “silent killer” because some patients do not show clear symptoms at an early stage. Currently, there is a lack of approved and effective early diagnostic tools for ovarian cancer. There is also an apparent severe knowledge gap of ovarian cancer in general and of its indicative symptoms among both public and many health professionals. These factors have significantly contributed to the late stage diagnosis of most ovarian cancer patients (63% are diagnosed at Stage III or above), where the 5-year survival rate is less than 30%. The paucity of knowledge concerning ovarian cancer in the United States is unknown. Methods: The present investigation examined current public awareness and knowledge about ovarian cancer. The study implemented design strategies to develop an unbiased survey with quality control measures, including the modern application of multiple statistical analyses. The survey assessed a reasonable proxy of the US population by crowdsourcing participants through the online task marketplace Amazon Mechanical Turk, at a highly condensed rate of cost and time compared to traditional recruitment methods. Conclusion: Knowledge of ovarian cancer was compared to that of breast cancer using repeated measures, bias control and other quality control measures in the survey design. Analyses included multinomial logistic regression and categorical data analysis procedures such as correspondence analysis, among other statistics. We confirmed the relatively poor public knowledge of ovarian cancer among the US population. The simple, yet novel design should set an example for designing surveys to obtain quality data via Amazon Mechanical Turk with the associated analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the mid-nineteenth century, the American Medical Association's code of ethics has mandated that physicians provide charity care. However managerialism has threatened the likelihood of physicians' providing charity care. Specifically, physicians who recently became employees, or whose revenue became predominantly pre-paid, also became less likely to provide free care. Moreover, physicians with an increased proportion of revenue from Medicaid, or in counties with high Medicaid managed care penetration, were less likely to provide charity, perhaps due in part to a reduced ability to cost-shift. Despite upcoming health reform, managerial strategies that employ or pre-pay physicians are likely to leave many millions of uninsured without access to charity care from physicians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]