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Questions on voluntary association memberships have been used extensively in social scientific research for decades. Researchers generally assume that these respondent self-reports are accurate, but their measurement has never been assessed. Respondent characteristics are known to influence the accuracy of other self-report variables such as self-reported health, voting, or test scores. In this article, we investigate whether measurement error occurs in self-reports of voluntary association memberships. We use the 2004 General Social Survey (GSS) questions on voluntary associations, which include a novel resource: the actual organization names listed by respondents. We find that this widely used voluntary association classification scheme contains significant amounts of measurement error overall, especially within certain categories. Using a multilevel logistic regression, we predict accuracy of response nested within respondents and interviewers. We find that certain respondent characteristics, including some used in research on voluntary associations, influence respondent accuracy. Inaccurate and/or incorrect measurement will affect the statistics and conclusions drawn from the data on voluntary associations.

Nonprofit organizations are influenced by multiple institutional logics. However, data and methodological limitations have restricted scholars to classifying organizations solely according to activity-based logics and hindered investigation of alternative logics. This article presents a method for measuring organizational identity—a critical component of the multiple logics framework. To illustrate our method, we focus on religious identity. Using dictionary-based text analysis, we analyze Form 990 data to identify nonprofit organizations that share the same activity-based logic (e.g., education, arts, and health care) but operate with different identity-based logics (religious vs. secular). To demonstrate the value of measuring organizational identity at scale, we compare religiously identified organizations with their secular counterparts. Results suggest there are approximately 670,000 religious and religiously identified organizations in the nonprofit sector and illustrate the importance of operationalizing multiple institutional logics for nonprofit research. Extensions include creating additional dictionaries and large-scale measures of other organizational identities, including race/ethnicity, gender, LGBTQIA+, and politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The expansion of women’s formal political representation ranks among the most significant trends in international politics of the last 100 years. Though women made steady political progress, substantial country-level variation exists in patterns of growth and change. In this paper, we develop longitudinal theories to examine how political factors affect women’s political representation over time. We use latent growth curve models to assess the growth of women in politics in 110 countries from 1975 to 2000. We investigate how electoral systems, national-level gender quotas, and growth of democracy impact country-level trajectories of women’s legislative representation. We find: (1) national quotas do affect women’s political presence, but at a lower level than legislated by law; (2) the impact of a proportional representation system on women’s political representation is steady over time; and (3) democracy, especially civil liberties, does not affect the level of women’s political representation in the earliest period, but does impact the growth of women’s political representation over time. These findings both reinforce and challenge prior cross-sectional models of women’s political representation.

This paper presents a large-scale, comprehensive test of generalized trust across 31 nations. I pay particular attention to the theory and measurement of voluntary associations in promoting trust, hypothesizing that voluntary associations connected to other voluntary associations are more beneficial for the creation of generalized trust than associations isolated from other associations. The theory is tested with a multi-level, cross-national model, including both individual level and country-level variables to predict the placement of trust. At the individual level, I find that membership in connected associations creates more trust than membership in isolated associations. At the national level, having more connected voluntary associations increases trust, while having more isolated associations decreases trust. (Contains 2 figures, 2 tables and 14 notes.)

In this paper we ask whether individuals decide that people are generally trustworthy or untrustworthy by extrapolating from their experiences in localized interactions or whether a more fixed predisposition drives assessments of trustworthiness. These two contrasting theoretical perspectives on generalized trust can be translated into empirically testable models and adjudicated using confirmatory tetrad analysis. This paper is among the first substantive applications of confirmatory tetrad analysis and illustrates an important advantage of this technique--the ability to distinguish between causal and reflective indicators of a latent variable. We find that individuals develop a generalized expectation of trustworthiness based on their experiences with different groups of people in localized settings. We demonstrate the robustness of our results across disparate samples and spatially dissimilar survey sites. (Contains 8 footnotes, 2 tables, and 1 figure.)

Quantitative methods are an integral part of much sociological research. For that reason, many sociology departments require a course in statistics as part of an undergraduate major in sociology, and most faculty view the undergraduate statistics course as a valuable part of an undergraduate student's training in sociology. Unfortunately, most undergraduate do not feel the same. In this paper, the author presents a teaching technique designed to motivate students to learn statistics, from the very first class period. In this technique, the author gives students a list of common first occupations for people with a BA in sociology, their starting salaries, and whether the occupation uses statistics or not. The goals of the technique are threefold: (1) to convince students that statistics is a worthwhile subject to learn; (2) to reduce student anxiety by having students demonstrate to themselves that they can "do" statistics, even before a single lecture is completed; and (3) to provide an example that can be used throughout the semester to illustrate multiple statistical techniques. (Contains 1 table.)

Each year, hundreds of millions of dollars are spent in international and bilateral aid programs to assist developing countries in expanding democratic governance. Evaluating these efforts' effectiveness is important given the vast needs of the client population. This article reviews a sample of evaluations of the United States Agency for International Developments (USAID) democracy and governance (DG) programming. The authors devise a standardized template to assess the quality of evaluations and find that the evaluations commissioned by USAID need major improvement. They find a lack of methodological accuracy and inadequate coverage of important information about the impact of assistance interventions. Given the importance of the substantive issue, high-quality evaluations are needed to provide reliable information for future programs and policies. The authors consider obstacles to obtaining high-quality international evaluations and provide recommendations for improvements. Although their focus is USAID's DG programming, much of the authors discussion could apply to other assessments of international and domestic evaluations.