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From the 1890s to the present, writers have commented upon the instability of Negro family life. Most have observed that discrimination in the job and housing markets have made it difficult Jar black men to support their wives and children. As a result, desertion occurs commonly. Family stability has been of interest because of the belief that children who grow up apart from their parents will be adversely affected. Indeed, some investigations imply that being raised in a home which did not have both parents is linked to lower rates of achievement in school, higher rates of delinquency, and lower occupational status. While commentators have discussed family stability, there has been little consensus as to how this concept should be measured. Moreover, there are only a few demographic indicators available for operationalizing this concept, particularly if one desires to study long-term trends or to compare blacks and whites. The major portion of this paper examines Negro and white trends on a number of indicators related to a specific definition of family stability. This study concludes that (1) the majority of both blacks and whites are in the statuses indicative of family stability. Contrary to the images which are sometimes portrayed, most black families are husband-wife families, and the majority of black children live with both parents. (2) in every comparison, the Proportion of people in the status indicative of family stability is greater among whites than among blacks. (3) in recent years there have been changes in family status, although most of them have been small. Some changes suggest a trend toward greater stability while others indicate a trend in the opposite direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the consequences for immigrants in changing from their native land to a rather markedly new environment. The main focus will rest with the adult immigrants. One of the implications of this paper is that adults are continually undergoing the process of socialisation. Most of the identification studies assume that modelling after parents leads a child to resemble one or both parents. These studies usually look at a list of traits or characteristics of the parent and child to determine whether they are similar. If similar, the assumption is that the child used the parent as a model. The possibility exists that where there are similarities the parent and child have both been influenced by some outside source. Thus, the studies do not take into account the changes which occur in the adult. The immigrant does break away from the immigrant subculture in many respects and tends to become a part of the new culture. It seems evident that the theories of delinquency, which base the delinquency on the two-culture hypothesis, need re-examination. The data presented in this article indicate that possible impact of difference between the old and the new culture is diminished by the influences upon the adult in the new cultural system.

This paper, though it deals with adult brain damaged patients, discusses a topic which is relative to the field of learning disabilities. Visual figure-ground discrimination, and aphasia-like problems are present in so many children who suffer with a learning handicap that this study and its findings, will be of interest to many researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's reply to sociologists Joseph Lopreato and Janet Saltzman Chafetz. The author says that their distinction between "explanation" and "prediction" becomes a little esoteric. The acculturation theory, which is new to Lopreato and Chafetz, was proposed by sociologist Peter Blau and has been used by others. In response to their claim that the author's paper addresses itself to "an almost incidental part" of their two articles, the author reminds them of the titles of those articles: "Upward Social Mobility and Political Orientation," and "The Political Orientation of Skidders: a Middle-Range Theory." Lopreato and Chafetz do regret their inconsistent classification of one Republican from one article to another, but they do not mention the inconsistent classification of the Christian Democrats. Regarding the occupational status scale, it is unfortunate that the detailed information on each individual's occupation was not recorded in the data set. Lopreato and Chafetz are correct in their supposition that cognitive dissonance theory involves the resolution of two inconsistent cognition: the cognitive dissonance theory of mobility effects reasons that an individual, having perceived his personal success or failure in society relative to his father, will develop a generalized attitude toward the political system consistent with his personal experience.

The article presents abstracts of various papers related to various countries of the world that were published in several periodicals. One of the papers discussed is "International Migration and Social Mobility: An Australian Case Study," R.T. Appleyard. This case study emphasizes the differential expectations and short-run achievements of two ethnic groups in Australia's immigration program by reporting the findings of two major research projects on emigration from Europe to Australia: British assisted families in 1959 and Greek single workers in 1965. Both projects were longitudinal in type, interviews with sampled emigrants before the departure for Australia probed their approach to the emigration threshold, how long they stayed there, what finally decided them to step across it, their socio-economic background and their expectations and knowledge of Australia. Another paper discussed is "Factors Related to Immigrant Assimilation: Pre-Migration Traits," by Jerold Heiss. Using Italian immigrants in Australia, an attempt is made to test the hypotheses: Pre-migration traits are associated with later assimilation because they affect the subjects' early post-migration opportunities, motivation and reward for learning the new culture. The data indicate that a number of the pre-migration traits are related to assimilation, but the factors mentioned do not seem to be the intervening variables.

The article presents abstracts of various papers related to the migration that were published in several periodicals. One of the papers discussed is "Talent That Won't Stay Put," by Walter Adams. The author of "The Brain Drain" attempts to present the facts about the brain drain and to raise serious questions about the conventional interpretation of these facts, emphasizing once more that the brain drain is a fascinatingly intricate movement which warrants far more clear- headed attention than it has heretofore received. Another paper discussed is "Contact Hypothesis in Ethnic Relations," by Yehuda Amir. Research regarding the effects of inter-group contact on ethnic relations is reviewed. The investigations discussed include both intra-and cross-cultural studies involving contact between various ethnic groups. The principles and generalizations emerging from these studies are categorized under the following topics: opportunities for contact, the principle of equal status, contact with high-status representatives of a minority group, cooperative and competitive factors, casual versus intimate contact, institutional support, personality factors, and direction and intensity of initial attitude.

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The article discusses the results of a pilot study conducted in a settlement in South East England, as part of a research project on the sociological aspects of expanded settlements. The purpose of the article is to look at the process of assimilation of newcomers into expanded settlements and to discuss the meaning of assimilation in small-scale societies. The author discusses the role of conflict in producing a cohesive structure or in enabling the newcomers to identify with a part, at least, of the expanded settlement. The rapid expansion of settlements surrounding London since the Second World War has provided an opportunity for those interested in rapid social change to examine novel aspects of small-scale societies. Various writers have pointed out the need for an adequate conceptual framework with which to understand the distinctive social situation in order to relate the data available for villages in more remote areas. The author points out that giving the new residents of settlement opportunities to fight external authorities may originally engender the feelings of community.

The article presents information on various research papers related to migration of ethnic groups, published in an earlier issue of the journal "International Migration Review". "Religious Problems of Migrants," by H.G. Aerts is concerned with the problems brought about by the fact that, as a consequence of the large-scale migration, a great many religious traditions are now represented in Australia. "Professional on the Move," by R. W. Fisher is a report on emigration of skilled, trained workers from developing countries. "China's Minority Nationalities in the Cultural Revolution" reconsiders the question of nationalities within the cultural revolution. It examines divergent opinions within the government regarding immediate and total assimilation. "Immigration and Factionalism: An Analysis of Factions in Rural Israeli Communities of Immigrants," by Moshe Shokeid presents some findings of a research project in Israel which tried to reconstruct and analyze the history and conditions under which factions first emerged and then disappeared in two newly created communities of immigrants in the course of ten years.

The article presents information on various research papers published in the earlier issue of the journal " International Migration Review." Some of the research papers are, "The Jews in Russia," by Edy Kauman. The article shows that the discrimination Jews suffer in the Soviet Union today is more subtle but not less real than the Tzars' persecutions or Stalin's manifest anti-Semitism, and is an integral part of Russia's opposition to the state of Israel. "Economic Aspects in the Urbanization Process," by E. Ruzaxina; "Equality of Nationalities in the USSR: The Case of Central Asia," by A.Sheehy; "Alien Criminal Defendent: An Examination of Immigration Law Principles for Criminal Practice," by D.B. Wexier.

In this study some of the determinants of black assimilation into large United States cities are examined. Assimilation is treated as a multidimensional phenomenon, the various dimensions of which are attributes of organized populations. 4 structural model is developed and analyzed, using the technique of path analysis, in which other attributes of urban social structures are related to the various dimensions of assimilation. Analysis suggests that the dimensions of assimilation are causally interrelated, with educational assimilation a major determinant of income assimilation, both directly and indirectly through its effects upon occupational assimilation. However, other attributes of organized urban populations also make important direct and indirect contributions to assimilation. Of special importance is percent of the city's population that is black and the rate of black population growth. Surprisingly, ghettoization is not very important causally when compared with other variables in the system, a significant negative finding in view of current emphasis upon this factor. This analysis suggests that greater attention be paid to organizational dimensions of urban populations as a means of specifying the processes underlying the assimilation of blacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An examination of the cultural conditions under which high illegitimacy rates occur suggests possible modifications in theories of assimilation, the destruction of social and cultural systems, and the relations between social and cultural integration. The relatively high rates in Northwestern Europe are explained as a genuine rural sub-culture, but the high rates in industrializing sub-Saharan Africa and the New World south of the Mason-Dixon line are seen as arising from the destruction of both the social and the cultural systems of a group undergoing acculturation. Contrasts and similarities among the U.S. South, the Caribbean, Africa, and the Latin-American mainland are outlined. New World Indians and slaves are viewed as having been neither culturally nor socially integrated in their communities, or into the national life. Three deductions from the analysis suggest (1) a theory of phases, according to which rural rates in the New World should generally be higher than the urban; (2) a correlation between low national rates and the degree of national cultural and social integration; and (3) the existence of genuine communities in which there is internal cultural and social integration, and thus low illegitimacy rates. Data are presented to verify these deductions from the broader theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the relationship between sociological theory and race relations. The sociological theories of the founders of American sociology as an academic discipline were only implicitly related to the concrete problems of race relations. Their theories concerning race relations were derived from European scholars who were concerned with the universal phenomenon of race contact. Sociological theories relating to the concrete problems of race relations in the U.S. were implicit in the sociological analysis of the Negro problem as a social problem. The analysis of the Negro problem was based upon several fairly clear assumptions, that the Negro is an inferior race because of either biological or social heredity or both, that the Negro because of his physical character cannot be assimilated and that physical amalgamation is bad and undesirable. The sociological theories implicit in the studies of the Negro problem were developed during the period when the nation held that the attempt to make the Negro a citizen was a mistake and a new accommodation of the races was being achieved in the South under a system of segregation.

The article focuses on the impact of war on minority groups. Immigrant groups constitute but one of many specific forms of minority groups. Minorities include religious groups, racial groups, economic or political groups. Immigrants and their descendants are not necessarily minority peoples. Susceptibility to enemy propaganda is closely related to the degree of social distance between the majority and specific minority groups. Given a specific degree of assimilation, the effect of the war on various minority groups will depend upon the present relation with the immigrant's home country, as well as the present conditions prevailing there. The speed of assimilation, as pointed out above, which determines the effect of the war or foreign events generally on a minority group, depends upon a variety of factors. Foremost among these are the cultural similarity to American culture, the occupational distribution and the educational level of the group at the time of immigration, as well as the economic situation in the country of emigration prior to departure.

This article summarizes the results of several studies bearing upon the quality of migrants with reference to intelligence. It deals therefore with the problem of selective migration, the problem of whether those who migrate from any given area at any given time are superior intellectually to those who stay behind. Report form a study concluded that the superior individuals, who are dolichocephalism, migrated to the cities, whereas the relatively inferior brachycephals stayed on the land. The anthropometrics linkage, which has been postulated, has pretty well been discarded, but not so the theory of selective migration, to which appeal is frequently made in order to explain observed differences in population quality. In general it appeared as if the urban districts rate is higher in intelligence than rural districts and that this is due to the migration of superior intelligence to the cities. Hirsch regards selective migration as responsible, at least in part, for the low general intelligence of the eastern Kentucky mountaineers. Peterson and Lanier found that whereas twelve year-old Negro boys are definitely inferior to White boys in Nashville, in New York City there is little or no difference between the two races. They explain this fact by the selective migration of the most intelligent Negroes from the South to the North.

The article discusses the application of the concept of ethnocentrism to the people of Romónum Island in Truk. The people's frequent low evaluation of themselves and high regard for U.S. citizens indicate that the concept of ethnocentrism needs to be revised. Possible explanations for this attitude are examined, including assertions that the Trukese are given both to flattery and self-effacement and that their culture is in the process of collapsing and they are moving toward assimilation. The members of the society are said to recognize basic and pervasive cultural differences between themselves and the members of different societies.

The article attempts to study the assimilation of strangers into an established group, under controlled field conditions and also illustrates the uses and limitations of social survey techniques in studying changes in a fairly small group. It describes briefly the research design of the Berinsfield Social Survey in England, and then discusses the results. The researchers planned to compare social changes in an experimental and a control group, when rehousing took place. Assimilation has been defined and studied in three ways. The first section defines assimilation as the extent to which the strangers' presence is resented by the locals, and vice versa. In the second and third sections, assimilation is considered to be the extent to which differences between locals' and strangers' responses were disappearing. In the fourth section, brief use is made of sociometry and assimilation is defined as the extent to which locals and strangers are distinguishable groups in the sociograms of friendship choices.

The article attempts to analyze some features of the growth, recruitment and assimilation of the population during the thirty year period when Corby in Northamptonshire, England has changed from a village of 1,500 people to a New Town of well over 34,000 inhabitants. The features discussed include at top, the population growth. According to the 1931 Census, the population of Corby was 1,596. The war years brought a slight decline, but since 1945 growth has continued at an increasing rate, particularly since its designation as a New Town in 1950. During both the prewar and postwar periods immigration has made a more significant contribution than natural increase to the total population growth. Corby today consists of several large housing estates which have been added to the village nucleus since 1934 by successive developers -the steel firm, the Urban District Council and Development Corporation. The age of development, the pattern of mi- migration, together with differences in layout and structure, have resulted in four highly distinctive units or physical sub-regions. Thus the various quarters possess populations of different origin, age structure and proportion employed in the steelworks.

The article focuses on the processes of adjustment and assimilation as they were exhibited by a group of Estonian Displaced Persons (DP) in the English city of Leicester. In June, 1953, there were 3,504 Estonians registered with the police of Great Britain as aliens. In addition to this number there were a further 360 who had acquired British Citizenship by naturalization since 1945, and a probably smaller number of women who had become British subjects by marriage. In Leicester itself the Estonians formed about 2.5 % of the foreign-born population, the largest national group being the Poles. About 3 % of Leicester's population was foreign-born, roughly the same percentage as in Great Britain as a whole, although the Estonians were considerably over-represented. The concept of assimilation is one of the most ambiguous in social science. In its widest connotation it means taking part in the life of the community. More frequently it is used to refer to the process through which all distinction between an immigrant group, or individual immigrant, and the receiving community is lost. This article has attempted to show that certain traits of DP life in contemporary England, such as the preoccupation with the past and the formation of closed national groups, are not, as at first appears, wholly dysfunctional from the point of view of adjustment.

This study was prompted by concern as to the validity of current procedures for identifying the perceptually deficient child, for providing him training in perceptual skills and for understanding the concept of perceptual deficiency. Seventy children (41 boys, 29 girls) of kindergarten age from the lower socioeconomic classes were studied. Thirty-five children were administered the Bender Visual Motor Gestalt Test and were then required to perform a discrimination task using these same forms. For the other 35 subjects, these tasks were performed in reverse order. Results showed that performance on one task was not related to performance on the other. It was possible for a child to discriminate forms well and still obtain a score on the Bender which indicated "perceptual" difficulties and vice versa. It would be highly questionable to subject a child, labeled as having perceptual problems, to remedial tasks requiring visual discrimination in the service of perceptual training if, in fact, he can perform this kind of task quite well. The authors discuss both the validity and the educational usefulness of perceptual deficit as a global concept and suggest that labeling of this kind may impede our understanding of the child's problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sufficient information has accumulated to indicate that there is frequently a positive relationship between functional mental retardation and linguistic conflicts where speakers use standard English and auditors use nonstandard English. in order to negate the effects of this relationship, phonological, grammatical, and lexical interferences must be reduced between subculturally different teachers or clinicians and children. Ear training methodologies are suggested that provide for auditory contrastive analysis or bidialectal teaching. The inappropriateness of conventional auditory discrimination testing and training programs is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether four commonly employed item-discrimination indices are independent of the average achievement level of the examinee group on which they are based. Those indices studied were the Flanagan approximation of the product-moment correlation, the Davis transformation of the product-moment correlation, the Gulliksen item reliability index, and the upper-group vs. lower-group difference in proportion correct. From four subject areas 185 multiple-choice items were constructed, and each item was administered to a random sample of about 350 Iowa high-school students. From these data, it was possible to estimate the item statistics which would have been obtained had the items been used in six different populations: grades 9, 10, 11, 12, grades 9-12 combined, and potential college students, as determined by either ITED or NMSQT. For each reference population, the four item discrimination indices were estimated for each item, using the data from the upper and lower 27 per cent of each population. The over-all results of this study suggest that none of the discrimination indices is independent of the achievement level of the examinee population. Without exception, the mean values of each index differed Significantly among the reference populations. Moreover, the pattern of change in the index, as computed for progressively more able populations, was frequently different for different levels of item difficulty. However, the correlation between item discrimination indices based upon two different reference populations was, on the average, greater than .85. The significant differences among mean Gulliksen and Difference Indices was expected in view of their theoretical bases. The significant differences for the Flanagan and Davis Indices were somewhat more Surprising. It is suggested that, although the theoretical model far the Flanagan Index assumes a linear relationship between item trait and criterion, the relationship may be markedly curvilinear over extended ranges of criterion ability when item data are not corrected for chance success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]