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Background/Context: In the last several decades, a college education, in particular the bachelor's degree, has become the key to higher earnings, and overall, to a middle-class lifestyle in the United States. In an increasingly globalized economy, privileging information and communication technologies, it is more than likely that this emphasis on higher education in the American labor market will continue in the future. While we know much about the increasing link between a college education and social mobility, writ large, we know considerably less about who actually makes the transition to college, how this occurs, and why. Despite the strides made, large numbers of individuals are not making the transition to college. Among those who are, there are important differences in the kinds of postsecondary institutions they are attending, and in completion rates, with attendant implications for social mobility. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: This article has two purposes: (1) to synthesize the key facets of our knowledge base of how to expand the college pipeline and relatedly, to outline particular areas that have been under-examined across the disciplines; (2) to provide future directions that will allow us to better address this important inquiry along substantive and methodological lines. Research Design: This article draws on disciplinary papers commissioned by the Social Science Research Council's Transitions to College Committee. The discussion of preparation is framed around the contributions from the fields of anthropology, and political science; access vis-a-vis history, sociology, and demography; paying for college vis-a-vis economics; and completion vis-a-vis the field of higher education. Conclusions/Recommendations: The article calls for an overall integrative model, e.g., K-16 and interdisciplinary, improved coverage in large-scale datasets, and a more refined mixed methods approach to attend to notable gaps in our understandings of the transition to college. Across disciplines, a key substantive gap is variation along the lines of race, ethnicity, immigrant status, gender, and age across domains, which needs to be illuminated.

The challenge of research methods teaching is gaining attention among policy-makers keen to build social science research capacity and, critically, among educationalists keen to enhance the pedagogy. This paper addresses pedagogy, presenting a new conceptual-empirical typology of pedagogy for social science research methods teaching. Taking a sociocultural perspective, pedagogy is seen as encompassing both actions and underlying values. A mix of qualitative methods was used to engage more than 100 methods teachers (plus students) from diverse UK and international contexts. An expert panel method and focus groups helped elucidate pedagogical knowledge. Video-stimulated reflective dialogue added detail to that knowledge. Thematic analysis was used to make sense of teaching practice with individuals and across the dataset. A typology of research methods teaching developed iteratively across this process, proposing the core categories of "approach," "strategy," "tactics" and "tasks." In-depth case studies helped to gain nuance and test the emergent typology "in situ." The paper argues that the typology contributes a dynamic tool for developing practice. It transforms the way we think about teaching and can be applied in any social science research method teaching context, benefitting the pedagogic community by enabling greater focus in planning and reflection.

This paper presents an account of the development of the sociology of education in the UK, by means of an analysis of papers published in the field's flagship journal, the British Journal of Sociology of Education and its US equivalent, Sociology of Education. In particular, we examine the representation of two contrasting traditions in addressing social inequalities: 'political arithmetic'; and the more recent 'cultural turn'. We find that in the UK, the cultural turn dominates; whilst in the US, it is political arithmetic which does so. In accounting for these contrasting national profiles, we argue that they are underpinned by divergent social infrastructure and organisation. We also discuss some of the implications of the dominance of the cultural turn in the UK, specifically in terms of the relationship between the fields of academic research and policy and the development of a cumulative evidence base to address social inequalities in education.

This article focuses on the sense of what an "African" (American) identity could mean when viewed through the processes of migrations and fluid identities of contemporary African immigrant children as they interact with their African (Americans) peers in schools. The purpose of this article is to use data from a study of West African immigrant girls and their process of ethnic identity construction to support the authors' position for new discourses and methodologies that challenge the dominant discourses surrounding the Black educational experience in schools. This purpose can be articulated in two central questions that guide this article. First, how does one develop a new understanding of the variations of the term African and American by placing it in a global context (and the "American" in parentheses to designate those who were born of African people brought to the U.S. during the Trans-Atlantic slave trade)? Secondly, how does one acknowledge the role of temporality in current definitions of who is African (American)? The goal of this article is to examine the issue of appropriate naming of African ascendant people in the U.S. and to examine how asking new questions of who they are might lead to a more global framework for studying identity construction and negotiation for African ascendant people in the U.S. (Contains 3 notes.)

Explores the development of videotex in Great Britain, west Germany, France, and the United States from 1968-90. Using the Social Construction of Technology framework, the interaction of social groups, problems, solutions, and technological artifacts in videotex development is discussed. Transmission, display, standards, and marketing problems are examined from this perspective. (45 references) (LRW)

Presents an update on issues and events related to economic research in the U.S. as of June 1989. Information on the annual meeting of the American Economic Association; Interdisciplinary journal to be published by the center for the Study of Public Choice; Retirement of Will Lisner.

It is a special characteristic of all modern societies that people consciously decide on and plan projects designed to improve their social systems. It is their universal predicament that their projects do not always have their intended effects. It seems inevitable that in most countries this common set of problems, combined with the obvious relevance of social science research procedures, will have generated a methodology and methodological specialists focused on the problem of assessing the impact of planned social change. It is an assumption of this paper that, in spite of differences in forms of government and approaches to social planning and problem-solving, much of this methodology can be usefully shared--that social project evaluation methodology is one of the fields of science that has enough universality to make scientific sharing mutually beneficial. As a part of this sharing, the author reports on program impact assessment methodology as it is developing in the United States today. He focuses on some problems encountered in the U.S. experience with assessing the impact of planned social change. He has grouped the problems under three general headings. First comes issues that are internal to scientific community and would be present even if scientist program evaluators were running society solely for the purpose of unambiguous program evaluation. These are: (1) Metascientific issues; and (2) Statistical issues. The remaining heading involves interaction with the societal context. Under (3) Political system problems, the author deals with issues that specifically involve political processes and governmental institutions, some of which are perhaps common to all large, bureaucratic nations, other unique to the U.S. setting. (Contains 9 figures.)

Survey research has played a major role in American social science. An outgrowth of efforts by the United States Department of Agriculture in the 1930s, the Division of Program Surveys (DPS) played an important role in the development of survey methodology. The DPS was headed by the ambitious and entrepreneurial Rensis Likert, populated by young and talented social scientists getting their first practical experience, and fed by the needs of the US government fighting World War II. The DPS innovations included open-ended interviewing and area probability sampling methodology as illustrated in the War Bond studies and the Master Sample of Agriculture. This paper examines the creation of the DPS, its work, and its legacy.

Actual empirical research that explores East Asian female international students' identity development is lacking. Therefore, a qualitative study was conducted to investigate how five East Asian female international students' identities are developed in a second-language environment, the United States. Challenging the conceptual approach that defines identity as something that develops naturally, this study found that the participants' identities were developed mainly by the play of social contexts and individuals. Although most of the participants experienced what they perceived to be constraints on their identities imposed by the American ideology of cultural homogeneity, unlike the claim made by some researchers that marginalized individuals often passively identify with the host society and accept the negatively formulated identities attributed to them, the participants did not uncritically conform to the hegemonic expectations and their given identities. Based on the findings of the study, this paper also presents some suggestions for educators of second-language higher education.

Research into immigration has for many years focused most of its attention on the issue of how immigrants adapt to host societies. This tendency is especially true in the work of sociologists. Yet if we acknowledge the growing ethnic diversity today in the United States and elsewhere, the most interesting questions arise as to how immigrants influence the host society--not how they adapt to it. This paper proposes a sociological theory to account for such influence. For evidence it draws on a variety of empirical examples from research on ethnic communities in the United States.

Sex and pleasure are fundamental aspects of students' lives and school cultures. They are also integral to students' sense of well-being and can determine their propensity to engage or disengage with the desire to love, learn and transform themselves. Taking the fundamental role of pleasure as its starting point, this paper discusses the idea of how a Foucaultian inspired "ethics of pleasure" might be used to proliferate ways of reading, producing and experiencing research related to sexualities and schooling in Australia and the United States. This "ethics of pleasure" is considered through a reading of two texts, "Young, Gay and Proud (YGP)" (1978), a text written for lesbian and gay young people by an autonomous collective of the Melbourne Gay Teachers' and students' Group (MGTSG) and, a letter written to Dan Savage, a nationally syndicated "agony aunt" in the United States. (Contains 9 notes.)

In this paper we provide a North American perspective as we explore the formation and comprehension of queer knowledge in adult education and in larger sociocultural contexts. We consider the need to position queer in adult education mindful of how queer is historically and currently positioned in culture and society. In doing so, we articulate queer--a term representing our spectral community that incorporates a diversity of sex, sexual, and gender differences--and queerness: our ways of being, believing, desiring, becoming, belonging, and acting in life-and-learning spaces. Then we turn to queer history and queer studies to investigate queer knowledge as fugitive knowledge integral and informative to our project to transgress the social and reconstitute the cultural in adult education as a field of study and practice. We locate queer knowledge as an antecedent to queer praxis, and focus on inclusive queer praxis as a transgressive practice-expression-reflection dynamic and a site of transformative learning.

Cold War historiography has undergone major changes since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. For two years (1992-1993) the principal Soviet archives fell open to scholars, and although some of the richest holdings are now once again closed, new information continues to find its way out. Moreover, critical documentary information has become available from the former Soviet bloc nations and from China. Gone are the days when students of the Cold War found the Eastern bloc side completely closed off to historical investigations. Such is the rush of new documentation from the former Eastern bloc that some researchers have commented that trying to make use of the materials is like trying to drink from a fire hose. In this paper, the author presents new findings on the Cold War and suggests that teachers should certainly be aware that the history of the Cold War is much more than the story of the decision making processes of the great leaders, for it is also the story of how ordinary people were affected by these decisions and how, in turn, these ordinary people helped to shape historical outcomes.

Suggests that British, Canadian, and U.S. pornography commissions' definitions of pornography and their positions on its potential effects show substantial variation in sociopolitical interpretations and regard for social science evidence. (ARH)

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to argue that rather than contest the artificial schism produced by social scientists between “qualitative” and “quantitative” research, we should to accept this binary, however, contingently, and use it productively. This would be an act of “strategic essentialism” that would allow us to be productive in the research and inquiry.Design/methodology/approach The paper uses postcolonial theory to make a case for contingent representation, i.e. using artificial categories to carve out a space for heterodox theoretical approaches.Findings Researchers devoted to qualitative research must resist thinking, speaking and evaluating that research using quantitative thinking. Also, while ethical considerations are paramount in qualitative research, we need to debunk the narrow understanding of ethics as “following rules.” Also, qualitative researchers need to be aware of the institutional pulls that the research will be subject to, and also be ready to resist them.Originality/value This paper discusses how good research resists the siren call of institutionalization. It challenges the “common sense” assumptions of the field and brings them into the realm of the questionable. It seeks to theorize the untheorizable, and anthropologize the dominant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce this special issue on the critical matter of whether the existing household panel surveys in the U.S. are adequate to address the important emerging social science and policy questions of the next few decades. We summarize the conference papers which address this issue in different domains. The papers detail many new and important emerging research questions but also identify key limitations in existing panels in addressing those questions. To address these limitations, we consider the advantages and disadvantages of initiating a new, general-purpose omnibus household panel in the U.S. We also discuss the particular benefits of starting new panels that have specific targeted domains such as child development, population health and health care. We also develop a list of valuable enhancements to existing panels which could address many of their limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order for American social scientists to effectively contribute to international social science, they must confront two challenges. They must come to terms with the problems generated by the fragmentation of the American social science disciplines and with the involvement of American social science with American foreign policy. (IS)

This critique points out problems in the methodology used by Robinson and Bell in their analysis of societal differences between the United States and England and makes suggestions about future investigations. (EB)

Examines the relationship between anthropology and the Black experience from the first importation of slaves to North America to the present. Discusses the role of Black anthropologists. (MK)

This article examines demographic and economic correlates of functional health among older people in the United States using an important new survey, the Asset and Health Dynamics (AHEAD). AHEAD places equal emphasis on high quality measurement of three life domains required for this research, health, economic status and demographic structure. A central question that researchers address in this paper involves the extent to which the demographic and economic differences that exist among older people account for functional health disparities by gender, by race and by ethnicity. In this paper, researchers examine an important aspect of health during old age, the extent of functional limitations. Because it measures the ability to perform a range of tasks necessary to take care of one's self and one's family, functional status is a particularly relevant health outcome at older ages. The interactive impact of older people's multiple chronic conditions on health is not proxied simply by disease prevalence and severity. Functional status also captures a critical dimension of the ability to live independently in the community, especially with increasing risks for disabling chronic diseases. Finally, functional status is an useful index of the need for assistance that must be provided by family, friends or government programs.

This paper examines the context within which research and policy have developed by tracing the historical development of gun research across decades and topics. While the journey is not necessarily linear, nor is it always clear, the work done by researchers on gun issues offers some hope for improving both the debate and outcomes associated with this area. Identifying seminal moments in gun research and policy history aid in the exploration of this issue and offer directions for the future. Research has addressed many of the challenges of firearms in society. The purpose of this paper is to note the failure of the research to recognize the role of guns in America even as it attempts to bring change within the volatile arena of guns in America. This disconnect between the research and the social problems and harm associated with guns is clear in the literature and the policy that attempts to respond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite extensive social science research into public perceptions and social responses to fracking, scholars have only begun to examine the relationship between distance to development and support or opposition for it. Importantly, the emerging studies are exclusively from the United States, and focus on communities and regions in which fracking already exists – in contrast to areas where it is proposed and still going through planning approvals. This paper reports public responses to proposed fracking in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom. A total of 120 people participated in an in-person survey with a qualitative follow-up in four locations: the village right next to the development site, two other villages just inside and just outside the wider fracking concession area, and in the capital city of Belfast, 150 km away. A clear spatial pattern of opinion was found, from almost universal opposition to fracking next to the site, to an even three-way split between proponents, opponents and 'neutrals' to fracking in general, in Belfast. Results show that some risks are perceived to be more local than others, whilst perceived (economic) benefits are recognised mainly at the national level. Content analysis of local and national newspapers revealed a very clear and similar pattern. Connections to Fermanagh, through visits or long-term residence, were also clear predictors of opposition to fracking. The spatial pattern of support for fracking in Northern Ireland differs substantially from each of the contrasting patterns observed in the United States. We discuss likely reasons for this and implications for both research and policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is written in response to Alberto J. Rodriguez and Deb Morrison's article entitled, "Expanding and Enacting Transformative Meanings of Equity, Diversity and Social Justice in Science Education." The authors provide a historical account of science education social justice research efforts within the USA and support the need to more critically incorporate social justice research agendas in science education. They summarize four main rationales used in science education research for engaging in equity, diversity and social justice: the economic, moral, demographic shift, and sociotransformative arguments. The authors remind researchers to consider systems of power and privilege when advocating for marginalized people, arguing that social justice should be embodied by the researcher and constantly be enacted within their work. The authors question why few have taken up social justice science education research. This paper expands on these authors' arguments by offering a critical race analysis of the social justice construct in science education research. I conclude with suggesting the need to deconstruct whiteness within social justice science education research agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tracks Mead's induction into the sociological canon, focusing in particular on American sociologists who made a concerted effort to reconstruct Mead as a systematic social theorist and apply his ideas to empirical research. It distinguishes two interpretive strategies of framing the classic and constructing the canon -- the politics of orthodoxy and politics of the open canon. The politics of orthodoxy aims to ascertain the original meaning and close the textual canon, creating a template relative to which alternative interpretations are judged incomplete, unorthodox, or wrongheaded. The politics of the open canon proceeds on the assumption that the classic text lends itself to conflicting interpretations, that room for the honest difference of opinion must be safeguarded, and that the capacity to further productive inquiry rather than the adherence to an orthodox view recommends a particular construal as viable and canon-worhty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Nationally Representative Household Panel Survey (NRHPS) would represent a natural extension into the mid-21st century of the development of repeated cross-sectional and then longitudinal/panel household surveys that have constituted major resources for developments in social science and social policy sinceWorldWar II. Although an inherently expensive endeavor, it would keep the U.S. comparable to and competitive with similarly wealthy nations that have already developed NRHPSs. An NRHPS may be the most cost-effective way to generate the data needed for advancement in social science and social policy because such progress requires data on a much wider range of attributes of the same individuals, households, and their environments than are currently available in existing surveys. These surveys tend to be specialized by scientific disciplines, substantive/policy areas, and/or segments of the population, and thus preclude the kind of thinking and data necessary across disciplines, substantive policy areas, and segments of the population that are most needed in both social science and social policy. To be a costeffective vehicle for such purposes an NHRPS must: (1) create integration and synergy across disciplines, substantive areas, and population subgroups; (2) cost-effectively meet scientific and logistical challenges; and (3) foster and utilize scientific and methodological innovations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers whether the U.S. needs a new national survey to measure time use. The paper begins by discussing the ways that time use is measured within the U.S; as a part of that discussion, the pros and cons of the different methods are highlighted. Next, the paper highlights why time use data is essential to addressing many questions in social sciences. The paper then turns to outlining the current gaps in our measurement of household time use. Finally, the paper discusses whether a new national dataset is needed to address these gaps. The paper concludes that a new national survey is not needed to fill the gaps - however, some guidance is provided as to how existing surveys can be modified to improve time use measurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article comments on Yoshio Fukuyama's paper on the relationship between social research and the churches. In his paper, "Social Research and the Churches," Yoshio Fukuyama sets out to report on the current status of organized religious research by way of an overview of the history of church-based social research from the late nineteenth century to the present. The selection by the Lilly Endowment of Fukuyama to conduct this inquiry was fitting since he has been a long-time participant in, as well as an observer of, the religious research scene in the United States and has first-hand knowledge of a number of the studies mentioned in his paper. The task of reporting on the current status of organized religious research involves value judgments. The value judgments that the author has arrived at in the course of his task, which are never thoroughly articulated, color the historical analysis which comprises the largest part of the paper, resulting in a selective understanding of this history.