Influence Of Structure Research Articles

School Experience and Student Perspectives: a study of some effects of secondary school organisation

Abstract The research was part of a larger long‐term project at a large Queensland secondary school. The main aim was to explore the relationship between student perspectives and the course chosen for study at Grade 9 and 10. A series of interviews were held with a sample of Grade 9 students six months after they began their courses. The main focus was on student perceptions of their Grade 9 school experience, peer attitudes, and future educational and job plans. Differences in school experience between the students in the three course groups are outlined, together with sex differences in school experience within each of the groups. The differing group perspectives which develop within the three groups are discussed. It is suggested that the research shows how the cultural level of school experience mediates between social structural influences and student perspectives.

The Impact of State and Law on Demographic Processes

From the first days of its founding, the Soviet state has displayed great interest in the all-round development of the population. The very first legal acts of the Soviet state were directed at improving the citizens' health, working conditions, and daily life and raising their standard of living and intellectual development. On the other hand, the population and its social structure and demographic characteristics exercise constant influence on law, requiring repeal or improvement of outdated provisions and the writing of new ones.

The American Perception of Class and Status

Most American sociological research has conceptualized the occupational structure as a continuous prestige hierarchy. The research reported here questions the generality of that conceptualization by examining the relative importance of manual-nonmanual differences and prestige differences for several attitudes and behaviors. First, the perception of working class and middle class more closely reflects a manual-nonmanual dichotomy than a continuous prestige scale. Voting behavior and party identification are also better predicted by the dichotomy. Second, the relevance of bounded and continuous status models varies according to the issues involved. Thus, some interpersonal behaviors and individual satisfactions are patterned according to continuous prestige rankings while opinions on societal issues reflect dichotomous differences. Third, individuals vary in their propensity to use or status models according to social structural influences. For instance, a prestige orientation is fostered by small, traditional industries while the dichotomy is more important in large, bureaucratic industries. The evidence also indicates that occupational prestige is more a middle-class concern, with little importance for manual workers.

"The Impact of Urban-Industrial Development on Agricultural Incomes and Productivity in Finland": Comment

The influence of community and regional social structure on agricultural productivity and on the welfare of farm families is increasingly acknowledged. Agricultural growth is more than a matter of good soil and technology. These factors, important as they are, can be productive only in the context of an organizational infrastructure that coordinates the many components of progressive agriculture and links the region to the outside world. One specification of the relationship between social organization and agriculture is the so-called urban-industrial impact hypothesis. Simply stated, it claims that farm incomes and productivity are highest near centers of urban-industrial development. This hypothesis has been tested a number of times and in different ways on the counties of the United States [Bachmura 1956; Sinclair 1957; Tang 1958; Sisler 1959; Nicholls 1961;1 Hathaway 1964; Bryant 1966; Bryant and O'Connor 1968] as well as on the municipalities of Sdo Paulo in Brazil [Nicholls 1969] .2 With some important exceptions, which will be discussed below, the empirical studies support the hypothesis, and it has been refined in a number of ways. It is still useful, however, to test it again, particularly in a European setting. Thus, while the principal purpose of this paper is to replicate the urban-industrial hypothesis on a sample of Finnish communes, it will contribute new material in two areas: the effect of regional centers and of national policy on agricultural incomes and productivity.

Influences of Social Structure and Action Space on Cognitive Maps: Images of Louisville, Kentucky

INFLUENCES OF SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND ACTION SPACE ON COGNITIVE MAPS: IMAGES OF LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY* Ronald D. Garst Ability to successfully navigate a complex urban environment is related to one's experience and personal characteristics. Those with most numerous social, organizational, and business contacts are expected to have the most complete knowledge of a city, and the most frequently traversed routes are likely to coincide with areas of most complete knowledge. Although each individual has a unique set of experiences with the city, this does not preclude a certain commonality of knowledge. Socio-economic and ethnic stratification and residential propinquity suggest that people residing in the same neighborhood should have similar patterns of urban knowledge, remembering the same buildings, landmarks, open spaces, and views. (1) Urban knowledge can be expressed through the cognitive map, which is the result of "a series of psychological transformations by which an individual acquires, codes, stores, recalls, and decodes information about the relative locations and attributes of phenomena in his every day spatial environment." (2) A cognitive map of a city is, therefore, an expression of an individual's knowledge about the city. This study compares the characteristics of composite cognitive maps drawn by respondents in three areas of Louisville, Kentucky, with several socio-economic, social interaction, and action space variables. The basic hypothesis is that individuals with highest socioeconomic status, most extensive social interaction, and most expansive action spaces, are able to draw the most accurate and complete cognitive maps. (3) RESEARCH METHODS. Three census tracts in Louisville, Kentucky, were selected for the study. Approximately one-quarter of each tract Dr. Garst is Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Maryland in College Park, MD 20742. * This study was conducted with the assistance of J. Kellogg, A. Misallati, B. Osuamkpe, G. Pauer, H. Price, D. Shephard, and J. Stratton. 114Southeastern Geographer was selected as a study site. Census block data indicated that each of the sites selected was representative of the entire tract. Area A is in the western part of the city in the heart of a predominantly black section. Blacks comprised 93 percent of the tract's population, and all of those interviewed were black. The median family income was $5,076 in 1969, or 51.7 percent of the city-wide median of $9,814. Area B, located in the southwestern part of the city, is a white lowermiddle income neighborhood which had a median family income of $8,556 in 1969, or 87.2 percent of the city-wide median. Area C is located in the southeastern part of the city in an upper-middle income neighborhood where the median family income was $16,937 in 1969, or 172.6 percent of the city-wide median. (4) The areas selected permitted a comparison of cognitive images of three different socioeconomic groups. A two-part interview was administered to 152 respondents (37 in Area A, 59 in Area B, and 56 in Area C). The first portion of the interview consisted of questions eliciting information about: 1) The social and economic backgrounds of the respondent, 2) the respondent 's action space, including distance to work, to formal and informal organization meetings, and to various types of shopping facilities, and 3) the number of years the respondent had been resident in Kentucky, in Louisville, in the neighborhood (an area within two city blocks of the respondent's residence), and in the presently occupied house. The second part of the interview required the respondent to draw a map of Louisville. Orleans, in his study of cognitive mapping in Los Angeles, found that people felt intimidated when asked to draw a map upon blank paper. This resulted in a high refusal rate and highly disoriented maps. (5) Following experimentation in Lexington, Kentucky, with several types of base maps containing varying amounts of information, a base map of Louisville was developed for the study which included the Ohio River and the major freeways as points of reference which could be used by respondents in estimating distance and direction. Even so, the map construction part of the interview was highly subjective. The interviewer's skill in explaining the purpose of the map, as well as the...

The influence of social structure and culture on human behavior in modern Japan.

This paper endeavors to sorb out the behavioral and psychological implications of tradition and modernity as they occur in any country, and to examine their particular nature in Japan. The first section defines and contrasts the concepts of social structure and culture. The second section is a review of the literature of the last 100 years on Japanese national character in an attempt to summarize the characteristics of the Japanese people that seem to have persisted in the past and to have remained viable in modern Japan. The third section attempts to give these characteristics some historical depth, to view them both in terms of the author's own research and in terms of the swirl of changes that are generally recognized to have occurred recently in Japan.

The Influence of Social Structure and Culture on Human Behavior in Modern Japan

This paper endeavors to sorb out the behavioral and psychological implications of tradition and modernity as they occur in any country, and to examine their particular nature in Japan. The first section defines and contrasts the concepts of social structure and culture. The second section is a review of the literature of the last 100 years on Japanese national character in an attempt to summarize the characteristics of the Japanese people that seem to have persisted in the past and to have remained viable in modern Japan. The third section attempts to give these characteristics some historical depth, to view them both in terms of the author's own research and in terms of the swirl of changes that are generally recognized to have occurred recently in Japan.

Milieu urbain et recherche d'une identité culturelle : les lycéens de Fort-Archambault et d'Abéché (Tchad).

P. Teisserenc — Urban Milieu and Search for Cultural Identity: High-School Students in Fort-Archambault and Abeche (Chad). Reactions of school-children, in the upper grades of secondary education, to the culture conflict created by modem, western-type, urban-oriented education. Reconciliation and/or conflicts in world-view and explanation of natural phenomena. Choice/refusal of value Systems. Influence of African social structure and religion (moslems v. christians/pagans).

Social Structure, Family Patterns and Interpersonal Influence

Social Structure, Family Patterns and Interpersonal Influence

Social and cultural factors influencing the mental health of the aged.

This paper explores some of the influences of social structure upon the aged. The implications of individual changes in roles and patterns of group living are examined in relationship to the institutional organization and value system of American society.

An Item Factorization of the Faculty Attitude Survey

THE EVALUATION of faculty morale in the edu cational setting, while evoking much interest, has not generally been approached with the same degree of rigor commonly found in industrial studies. An article previously published by the authors (4) de scribed the development of a differential morale at titude inventory for the college environment. This instrument consisted of twelve categories which, when factored, yielded four group factors that were tentatively identified as supervision, self integra tion, institutional environment, and employment re wards. These four factors were found to c 1 o s e ly parallel factors identified by Baehr and Renck (1) in a study carried out in an industrial setting. A weakness of this earlier study (4), resulted from the fact that the categories factored had been formed of items assigned by judges. The size of the sample made item factorization impractical, there fore, the categories described had to be accepted on the basis of subjective judgments. A subsequent study using a revised form of this differential morale attitude inventory termed the Faculty Attitude Survey, Form X, w a s undertaken by Hansen (2). Essentially, the revised form con sisted of a reordering of the same items as in the original study with the substitution of areaction item to the survey itself, for an ambiguous item that was eliminated. The purpose of Hansen's study was to refine the Faculty Attitude Survey by item factorization and to relate the factor scores of fac ulty members on the reconstituted categories to cer tain data collected on the same individuals by a so ciometric device developed by McCabe (3), McCabe's instrument was designed to identify the dimensions of the influence structure in the college setting which he hypothesized as communications,reliance and attributed influence. Hansen found that nine of the original 12 catego ries of the attitude survey remained fundamentally unchanged but that a major realignment of items had occurred. While a total of 12 identifiable c atego ries were derived from this analysis, three of these bore no relationship to those originally postulated. At least one significant relationship was found be tween each of the three indices of the influence struc ture as developed by McCabe and factor scores o n the Faculty Attitude Survey. In general, however, these relationships were small and the direction in consistent. A more adequate description of Hansen's and Mc cabe's studies can be found in the microfilmed dis sertations. In addition, the Faculty Attitude Survey, Form X, as described in this paper, appears in Han sen's study in its entirety.