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To explore the impact of an introductory sociology course on concepts held by college students, a study was executed on the images of sociology and sociologists, the variation of this image with other variables, the degree and direction of change of these images on completing an introductory course, and variability among students' changes in direction and degree. Students enrolled in an introductory sociology college course were given questionnaires at the beginning and end of each term. A semantic differential technique was used with a seven-point scale for several polar opposites. In addition, questionnaires at the end of each course included a critique of the course and several background items. The hypotheses that college students would share a consistent image of sociology and that selected personal variables would not affect their images of sociology or sociologists were supported by the data. A third hypothesis, proposing little changes in student images of sociology after the introductory course, was not supported: student images did appear affected by the course. Research methodology, references, and tables of data are included in the report. (Author/KSM)

The objectives of this paper are threefold: (1) to present the structure and functioning of a system of "self-paced mastery learning" as evolved by the department over the period May 1972 to March 1974; (2) to discuss perceived "flaws" in traditional college level "learning systems" and receive input from readers regarding the educational relevance of the approach; and (3) to receive specific suggestions regarding further modifications of the system. (Author)

Several criteria for assessing bias in educational tests are presented and discussed. These criteria were developed in accordance with basic notions of fairness, equality, and expanded life options for women. In terms of prescriptions for test developers, the criteria are: (1) tests should be constructed of items which contain either no sex references or equal sex references; (2) status of males and females within the test should be equal; (3) item content should not reinforce traditional sex stereotypes. Tests currently in use may be considered biased if: (4) item content in terms of male or female statuses or stereotypes affects the performance of males or females differentially; (5) the test predicts differentially for males and females; (6) the test is normed separately for males and females unless separate norms are used to insure balance in selection; (7) the test is constructed so that female futures may be separated from male futures. (Author/RC)

The primary argument of this paper is that student political attitudes are a function of historical and politcal inputs acting on their attitudinal structure. Around 1970 the proportion of students supporting leftist causes reached a peak and began declining. Attitude surveys among students at the University of Oregon in 1970 and at Arizona State University in 1973 indicated this change in student attitudes while representing the inherent differences between the two schools. If the structure of student attitudes remains constant, the political effects of Watergate will increase student support for leftist causes. A new factor, and one that may change the attitudinal structure somewhat, is the declining level of disagreement between parents and students. Since disagreement with parents is closely related with support for demonstrations, declining disagreement with parents suggests that an increase in support among students for leftist causes may not be associated with the traditional forms of student activism. (Author/DE)

Sociologists have long been interested in the area of status attainment but have begun only recently to specifically focus upon the status attainment of women. New approaches are needed for further research. A review of major occupational choice theories shows that they are constructed for primarily male populations and thus are inadequate in their handling of factors which may influence the occupational choices of women. There are more developmental stages for women, with a relatively greater complexity of factors operating within any given stage. Some of the more critical contingencies which affect the occupational choice and status attainment of women are marital plans, fertility plans, residential plans, mother's and father's education and occupation, family finances, presence of discriminatory laws or hiring guidelines, internal motivation, husband's occupational expectation, desire for a working career as opposed to being a housewife, perception of the kinds of jobs that are appropriate for women, the influence of parents and peers, and presence of male siblings. (Author/DE)

The paper identifies the basic factors affecting rural development and the social consequences of rural policies and structural changes in agriculture; it also suggests research areas relating some of these factors to what is happening in America's rural communities. Data sources such as congressional hearings, rural sociologists' critiques, reports by public interest research groups, the National Academy of Science's review of land grant research, and journalists' comments were reviewed. Observations from workers, small and organic farmers, consumer groups, cooperatives, minority group rural enterprises, and scientists who have challenged the production orientation of land grant colleges and participated in a conference on redirecting the research priorities of thes colleges are discussed. Tenured and nontenured faculty in all departments of a college of agriculture were interviewed on the process of selecting research topics, reasons for the research, and implications for tackling the questions posed by representatives of publics currently not being served by land grant colleges. Some research topics suggested were: concentration of ownership and its relationship to poverty; corporate interlocks and their implications in rural development; farm policy and the general public welfare; unfair competition due to the Federal tax structure; vertical integration and its effect on the small farmer, market structure and pricing, and the consumer; and social implications and impact of land grant college research. (NQ)

The contribution of sociologists to social action programs has been notable for being unnotable, with a few important exceptions. Yet the future and survival of sociology lies in moving sociology more obviously from the classroom to the world outside. Sociologists suffer from a restricted vision of what their discipline can do, which causes them to be preoccupied with theorizing and allows them to think of problems as potential journal articles. One reason for the failure of sociologists to have an impact on social action is that applied research, the generation of new information helpful in problem solving, as opposed to theoretical research, the testing of new theories, is lacking. Theory is useless without concrete knowledge of a community with which to work. Another reason is that sociologists are not really professionally competent; they are unable to identify concrete manifestations in patterned social interaction. The fault is in the training which relies, for instance, on abstract definitions and descriptive accounts rather than use of the community as a laboratory. The emerging sub-discipline, the sociology of development, is one step, however, toward bringing about more effective sociologists for the good of the entire discipline. (Author/JH)

The formation, development, and demise of a women's center in suburban New York are described. The women's center resulted from a conference designed to assess problems confronting women and to mobilize resources to meet those problems. However, after the formation of the center, a struggle for leadership and conflicts over the values and beliefs of the participants emerged. Many of the middle-class women with children at home tended to be more moderate and emphasized education, counseling, and referral to existing facilities rather than social action and radical change. As the emphasis shifted from social action to service, the center's reason for existence became eroded. The leaders became immobilized and quarreled among themselves, and the ambivalences among the leaders reflected the role strain prevalent among most women today. Women feared appearing too militant to attract other women or too ineffectual to accomplish the improvements they desired in the status of women. In addition to internal factors accounting for the Center's demise, external problems were prevalent, such as inability to tap funds. Recommendations for future women's centers are included. (Author/DE)

This research report presents the results of a study to determine the influence of significant others upon adolescent levels of aspiration. High school sophomores in a central Wisconsin community responded to an instrument testing ego, ego's perception of significant others' expectations, and occupational aspiration. The two hypotheses under study included the relative influence of significant others on levels of aspiration and an individual ego's perceptions of significant others' influence as a better predictor of levels of aspiration than actual expectations by significant others. The findings indicate that the more influence one is subjected to, the higher the correspondence between aspirationally-relevant content of that influence and one's own aspirations. A summary of the findings for the second hypothesis indicates that perceptions of informational inputs are comparatively better predictors of levels of aspiration. The implication of this study is that the "total picture" of interpersonal influence on status aspirations is incomplete and more research is needed. (Author/DE)

Proceedings of the 1974 Second Annual Conference of the Sociology of Education Association are presented. The conference, which focused upon the sociology of the school and schooling at the elementary and secondary levels, was structured around three objectives: (1) provide sociologists of education an opportunity to review past work in their field, (2) explore current educational problems and policy, and (3) move toward an agenda for future research. The six papers presented are followed by comments from discussants. The first paper, by Charles E. Bidwell, "The Sociology of Schooling," laid the groundwork upon which subsequent speakers were able to build. Burton R. Clark, in "Adolescents and School Reform," briefed the conference participants on federal recommendations regarding the future of secondary education. William G. Spady, in "Authority and Empathy in the Classroom," presented a deductive model of teacher behavior. An alternative inductive approach was presented by Hugh Mehan in "Ethnomethodology and Education," in which he showed how a teacher is likely to interact with students in ways that help construct and sustain the teacher's definition of social reality. Elizabeth G. Cohen, in "An Experimental Approach to School Effects," focused on the problem of research methodology. The overriding conference issue revolved around the balance between "large-scale organizational" and "micro," or "person," oriented research perspectives. (Author/DB)

This paper has a dual purpose. First, it relates the research and writings of DuBois, a social scientist and humanist in the best intellectual tradition of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to the sociology of the black family in the United States; and second, it presents selected data having to do with the structure and functioning of contemporary black families. Probably even more than being descriptive, the presentation has to do with issues of knowledge, theory, methodology, and social policy raised by the study of family life among blacks. Since DuBois' time, and before, a popular profile of the black family stresses family composition and makes extensive and important inferences about behavior and achievement. The data, based on census figures, is not satisfactory for explaninig how and why a family functions. The discussion of the several intellectual hats and dimensions DuBois brings to the study of the family and experiences of blacks suggests that research and writing on the black family, aside from considerable datedness, much unevenness, and many gaps reflects as many approaches as there are traditions or modes of intellectual activity. It also serves to underscore several issues, among them the fact that more studies in the field and in some depth are needed of various types or expressions of family activity and among blacks in many settings. Any sociological profile of the black family demands a balance between objectivity and caring about human values. (Author/AM)

The relationship between pre-existing differences in student attitudes, values, personality, and length of school career is examined in this research report. A sample of 2,790 students who in 1967 were enrolled as freshmen in seven urban and suburban, public and parochial school systems in southern New York completed a questionnaire during their freshman year, sophomore year, senior year, and one year after graduation. Sub-samples were defined in terms of educational status after completion of high school including four-year college students, two-year college students, terminal high school students, and dropouts. Comparisons between the four sub-samples were made according to status background and intelligence, educational career variables, scholastic attitude variables, and self-reference variables. The data confirmed that individuals now in four-year colleges scored higher on the selected variables than those in two-year colleges, who in turn scored higher than terminal high school students, who in turn scored higher than dropouts. Such differences in scores existed not only as recently as the senior year of high school but as early as the freshman year. The findings suggest that pre-existing differences influence the length of formal schooling. (Author/DE)

Presented are eight author contributed papers on research needs in the neuropsychological, socio-environmental, and educational aspects of learning disabilities. Issues focused on in the papers and conference include the definition of learning disabilities, the role of screening in prevention or remediation, and whether curriculum should focus on the strengths or weaknesses of individuals. Among research recommendations given for the three areas are the study of effects of social communication networks and interaction patterns on learning, developing behavioral criteria and neurological indices of hyperactivity, and developing profile type assessments to help individualize instructional programs. The following are titles and authors of included papers: "The Handicapped Learner--Recommendations for Research" (Marion Blank); "The Biological Bases of Development" (Susan Carey-Block); "Systematic Instructional Procedures--An Instructional Hierarchy" (Noris Haring); "Applied Behavior Analysis and Learning Disabilities--Curriculum Research Recommendations" (Thomas Lovitt); "Socio-cultural Correlates of Learning and Behavior Problems" (Jane Mercer); "The Mundane Extreme Environment and Its Effect on Learning" (Chester Pierce); "The Neurological Assessment of Learning Disabilities" (Rita Rudel); and "Multi-level Approach to Research in Learning" (Cynthia Deutsch et al). (DB)

This paper addresses some considerations about self theory and the Twenty Statements Test (TST) as they might be used to study women. Two theories have developed within the general rubric of "symbolic interaction" as coined by Blumer. The first is the Iowa School, or Kuhn school, which states that the self is a directly researchable phenomenon; the same procedures used in other sociological research are applicable and the self is researchable as any other social object. The TST was developed by Kuhn and his students, as a method of uncovering general self-attitudes. Conversely, the second school, or Chicago school, argues that the self is only knowable by inference and an understanding of the many roles which a person plays; thus, the self is not conceived as subject to analysis by sociological techniques. Supporting the Iowa school, this paper justifies its approach to self theory. Secondly, a brief description of self theory and the Twenty Statements Test is provided, so that both the theoretical orientation and its technique are understood. Thirdly, certain selected examples of self theory and TST research which have considered women are presented. The paper concludes with a short discussion of suggested future directions in which self theory might proceed, and presents an argument for investigating the self within a broader investigative framework than the TST provides. (Author/JR)

In discussing the school system and school reforms, the author examines in detail some well known dilemmas of the present-day school system -- those connected with egalitarian ideology and selective outcome, with mass education and inherent social inequalities, with the striving for more general education, and with the needs of the labor market. The author speaks mainly of highly industrialized European and North-American countries, excluding the Third World and socialist countries. For social and historical reasons, school and educational reforms are less successful than expected. School reform projects must take into account some of the more or less neglected factors. First, a thorough preliminary analysis of future reform projects must be undertaken to determine how realistic they are. Second, it is necessary to think about unwanted, indirect social effects of any reform. Third, a better knowledge about the interconnections between school and social structure is needed. On the whole, it is important to know not only the aims, but also what is possible to accomplish in any given situation, and what the tools are that would lead to the direction sought. (Author/JR)

The relative homogeneity of individual value orientations in 11 contemporary nations is the subject of this paper. In macro-sociological discussions, particularly of the polity, there are frequent assertions about the relative homogeneity of a people and of their culture, but these assertions are rarely specified or derived from quantitative empirical investigations. A review of the literature on cultural homogeneity and individual value orientations indicates that there have been major obstacles to computing societal scores of the relative degree of homogeneity in individual value orientations. A new approach is proposed which avoids the obstacles encountered in previous efforts by assuming that attitudes are a reflection of values and, thus, inferring the heterogeneity of value orientations through a study of diversity in attitudes. Scores are computed for 11 nations and several propositions are considered in an effort to account for these national scores. In addition, suggestions are made for the application of this new approach to other levels of analysis. (Author/ND)