A Longitudinal Study of Area-Level Deprivation in Ireland, 1991–2011

Research shows that social class differences in high school sports participation are large and growing. However, focusing on sports participation may obfuscate large social class differences in sports performance among participants. The authors develop theoretical predictions on the basis of exclusion (middle-class youth perform sports better) and inclusion (working-class youth perform sports better). To test these predictions, the authors analyze the relationship between high schools’ social class composition and success in high school athletics using data on more than 200,000 contests in school fixed-effects models. The findings indicate that predominantly middle-class schools beat economically integrated and predominantly working-class schools by large margins, supporting exclusivity perspectives. Also, predominantly working-class schools win as much as economically integrated schools, providing evidence of inclusion, but inclusion is much weaker than exclusion. The authors conclude that sports performance among youth is highly stratified by social class.

Methodological and conceptual issues regarding occupational psychosocial coronary heart disease epidemiology.

BackgroundAlthough mortality and health inequalities at birth have increased both geographically and in socioeconomic terms, little is known about inequalities at age 85, the fastest growing sector of the population...

Erratum to “The Dice Are Loaded: Schools’ Social Class Composition and Athletic Contests”

This report examines child deprivation in Ireland. It focuses on children who experience deprivation but are not classified as at-risk-of-poverty (AROP). As a result, they fall outside the official consistent poverty measure, which is a combined measure of AROP and deprivation. The report uses data from the Survey of Income and Living Conditions (SILC) to investigate the composition and characteristics of this group. The report underscores the need for comprehensive policies to improve living standards for vulnerable families.

SummaryThis paper tests the hypothesis that the inverse relationship between population density and migration distances in pre-industrial Europe results from variation in the social class composition of communities. Data from two pyrenean valleys in Navarre, spain, provide support for the hypothsis. Further effect on mugration distances may result from vatiation in the settlement pattern of communities. Seasonal movement associated with certain occupations seems to be unimportant.

Thirty years of warnings have not been realized that American students’ low performance on international tests threatens U.S. economic growth . Average national scores on a single test in a single year are inaccurate guides to educational policy. They hide differences in the social class composition of national samples and differences in how disadvantaged and advantaged students in each country perform over time. Further, in a large country such as the United States, where states are in charge of educational systems, performance by students of similar social class background on international tests varies greatly among states. Our examination of international test results finds that U.S. relative performance would seem to be better if U.S. social class composition were similar to that of comparison nations; that U.S. performance on international tests that are aligned with the U.S. curriculum is superior to performance on unaligned tests; and that disadvantaged students in the U.S. have been making more rapid gains than disadvantaged students in nations with higher score levels. All this should make policy makers cautious in jumping to conclusions about the shortcomings of U.S. schools and how to improve them. ᅟ

Students of American society, from the times of Tocqueville and Veblen, have been concerned with the social role of high culture in a democracy. The debate over the extent and consequences of elite dominance of the arts constituency has been intensified in recent years by the rise of government support for the arts. Little is known about the social composition of the arts constituency. Drawing on 268 largely unpublished studies of visitors to museums and audiences of live performing arts, we conclude that the gender and age composition of the arts audience is little different from the general public. However, the social class composition is strikingly elite: audiences are better educated, of higher occupational standing and more affluent than the general populace. Conversely, blue-collar workers, individuals with low incomes or little education, and racial and ethnic minorities are found to be greatly underrepresented. Analysis of differences between and within art forms reveals that museums, particularly science and history museums, draw a broader audience than do performing arts events; frequent attenders within most forms are found to be more elite than irregular consumers. Assessment of audience composition trends since the early 1960s indicates no movement toward a broader inclusion of the public, suggesting that a recent expansion in the scale of arts activities and government subsidies has not been accompanied by a democratization of cultural consumption

Electroencephalographic sleep studies have become an accepted clinical and research tool in the study of affective disorders, but questions persist regarding their diagnostic utility, sensitivity, and specificity. Several important methodological and conceptual issues are often overlooked in the sensitivity/specificity issue. Appraisals of sleep studies' utility may be affected by the competing needs of clinical and research studies and by focusing too narrowly on the diagnostic use of sleep studies, rather than on their wider clinical and research applications. Examples are presented that demonstrate the utility of sleep studies in examining other aspects of the neurobiology of depression.

Prior to empirical investigation of trait level measures, it had been suggested that, on balance, well-adjusted individuals tended to have a higher level of intelligence than poorly adjusted individuals. The underlying inference was that there should be positive correlations found between personality traits associated with “adjustment” and intelligence, at least at the level of general mental abilities. Over the last several decades, empirical research has suggested that, while there are sources of common variance among personality and intellectual ability measures, the relations are more scattered and provide few general findings (other than broad assessments of neuroticism and so-called engagement traits and intellectual abilities). The status of the empirical research foundation is briefly reviewed. Conceptual and methodological issues, such as non-linear relations, typical and maximal behaviors, contextualized assessment, and missing linkages are discussed in an effort to explore personality and intelligence traits in a manner that might better reveal underlying relations between these domains.

In 2004, factor analysis became 100 years old. Charles Spearman’s (1904) seminal article, “General Intelligence: Objectively Determined and Measured,” was fundamental in establishing the theory and methodology of factor analysis (www.fa100.info). No doubt, the long history of this statistical tool in social science research is, in part, testament to its utility. In this chapter we examine the use of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis as tools for research focused on elucidating the dimensions of the psychopathy construct. It is not intended to be a technical discussion of how to conduct such analyses or the mathematical underpinnings of these statistical tools. The goals of the current chapter are to (a) provide a brief overview of previous exploratory factor analytic research on the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL) and Psychopathy Checklist–Revised (PCL–R); (b) present conceptual and methodological issues that pertain to the application of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis for research on psychopathy; and (c) discuss the recent three-factor (Cooke & Michie, 2001) and four-factor (Hare, 2003) models of psychopathy. To assist in illustrating some of the issues raised in this chapter, a large sample (N = 4,865) of North American PCL–R data, provided by Dr. Robert Hare, is used to test contemporary factor models of psychopathy.

An overview of the use of EEG to assess hemispheric differences in cognitive and affective processes is presented. Some of the advantages of using EEG to assess asymmetric hemispheric differences in the study of complex mental activity are described. Following this brief introduction, two conceptual issues which are central to studies of EEG asymmetries are introduced: (1) the distinction between hemispheric specialization and activation, and (2) the importance of rostral-caudal differences for the understanding of both specialization and activation. Three methodological issues in the use of EEG to assess hemispheric differences are then presented: (1) the use of asymmetry metrics, (2) muscle artifact, and (3) appropriate reference electrode location. Finally, some empirical examples of using EEG to assess affective and cognitive processes which illustrate these conceptual and methodological issues are described.

The current enthusiasm for matching patients with optimal treatments rests on limited conceptual analyses. In addition, much of the existing research on patient-treatment matching has been based on methodological assumptions that are not commensurate with the complexity of the matching problem. Six key conceptual and methodological issues that underlie attempts to match patients with optimal forms of treatment and to conduct research on patient-treatment matching are outlined. The conceptual issues are: selecting effective matching variables, specifying the end result that matching is to enhance and determining the stage(s) in the treatment process at which matching decisions are to be made. The three methodological issues deal with the type of patient-treatment match or interaction effect and include: nonlinear interaction effects, higher-order interaction effects and multilevel interaction effects. Examples clarifying these issues are drawn from the literature on treating alcohol-dependent persons, but the issues are discussed at a broad level that permits generalization to treatment for many disorders. Implications for research on and the practice of "prescriptive treatment" are considered.

Conceptual and Methodological Issues in the Study of Role‐taking Accuracy

In this paper some of the conceptual and empirical issues in the specification and aggregation of deprivation measures used as a basis for resource allocation in the primary health sector are explored. The problems of deriving deprivation payments to general practitioners (GPs) from data pertaining to individuals are examined, and two empirical studies which draw out methodological issues are described. In the first study, a Bristol database is used to explore the spatial aggregation issue in ranking GP practices on a selected measure of deprivation. In the second, a database relating to English wards is used to investigate the sensitivity of deprivation payments to the statistical transformation and standardisation in the specification of the deprivation index. It is argued that the aggregation and specification issues should be confronted directly in the conceptual and practical developments of current approaches.