Reality Television and Researching Children: Ethical Issues

On August 9, 2010October 9, 2025 By econnellIn Behind the Headlines, Karen Sternheimer, Popular Culture and Consumption, Relationships, Marriage and Family, Statistics and Methods7 Comments

By Karen Sternheimer

Are you a Kate Plus 8 fan? How about The Real Housewives of New Jersey? 19 Kids and Counting? These three reality shows, and many others, feature children either as central or occasional “characters.”

Sociologist Hilary Levey recently questioned some of the legal issues surrounding children on reality television in a USA Today op-ed. She points out that child actors have specific legal protections in states where child performers have traditionally worked, like California and New York, which mandate that a minimum of fifteen percent of a child’s income be placed in a trust account they can later access as adults. However, children on reality shows currently have no legal right to any money their show earns, nor have they typically been protected by child labor laws since they are technically not actors, as a Los Angeles Times story recently discussed.

In contrast to reality TV producers, researchers who study children and families in their homes adhere to specific ethical guidelines that may illuminate the debate about the ethics of children on reality television. (For a couple examples check out sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild’s classic study, The Second Shift, and sociologist Annette Lareau’s Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life).

Researching children might involve surveys, experiments, or extended observations, which bear some similarities with reality television shows that involve children. In contrast to reality show producers, researchers mask the identity of the children they study and virtually never release their images publicly, let alone hours of video.

As Janis Prince Inniss wrote last year, universities and research institutes have Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) that monitor all studies its researchers conduct.

Anyone who has filed an application with their IRB knows that the process can be lengthy and sometimes stressful, as board members can require repeated clarifications about your research plan and its purpose. And yet this is demanding in order to protect both the subjects involved and, of course, protect the institution from any legal liability.

In most cases researchers are supposed to fully disclose the nature of the study and its purpose to all potential participants. If researchers plan to use any deception or mask the true purpose of the research—which they sometimes do—the researchers must prove to the IRB that this is absolutely necessary, and document a full list of worst-case-scenario contingency plans to help their subjects. At a minimum, researchers should debrief participants after the study is over, which includes telling them what the study was really about and make sure that all participants are physically and psychologically okay.

When applying for IRB approval, researchers must report whether their study includes populations considered uniquely vulnerable, such as minors. (Pregnant women, prisoners, and the disabled are considered vulnerable populations, too; pregnant women because of their physical condition and prisoners and the disabled because they might be easily coerced into participating in research).

To protect all participants, researchers are required to obtain informed consent, meaning that before agreeing to participate, an individual should be informed of all of the potential risks and benefits that their involvement in the study might bring. It is also meant to prevent people from being pressured into participating.

Special populations—like children—may fear repercussions from adults if they refuse to participate. Federal guidelines require not only parental consent, but also children’s assent—which means the child must agree to participate in the study too. Here are some of the guidelines, from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS):

HHS will conduct or fund research in which the IRB finds that more than minimal risk to children is presented by an intervention or procedure that does not hold out the prospect of direct benefit for the individual subject, or by a monitoring procedure which is not likely to contribute to the well-being of the subject, only if the IRB finds that:

(a) The risk represents a minor increase over minimal risk;

(b) The intervention or procedure presents experiences to subjects that are reasonably commensurate with those inherent in their actual or expected medical, dental, psychological, social, or educational situations;

(c) The intervention or procedure is likely to yield generalizable knowledge about the subjects' disorder or condition which is of vital importance for the understanding or amelioration of the subjects' disorder or condition; and

(d) Adequate provisions are made for soliciting assent of the children and permission of their parents or guardians, as set forth in §46.408.

§46.407 Research not otherwise approvable which presents an opportunity to understand, prevent, or alleviate a serious problem affecting the health or welfare of children.

Basically, these guidelines require that any risks to children involved with research be as minimal as possible, and that children’s activities in the research process are generally similar to those in their normal lives.

Many reality shows focus on children’s everyday activities, as item (b) above discusses. But critics have asked what risks might come with their participation. Having cameras record a child’s temper tantrum or struggles with potty training might seem innocuous, but it raises questions about a child’s right to privacy. Adults would almost certainly never allow a camera to follow them into a bathroom, and might feel more empowered to ask the crew to turn off the cameras during an emotionally difficult time.

Item (c) raises series distinctions between research and reality television. While risks of research could be outweighed by
the benefits of the knowledge researchers gain about human behavior, reality television makes no claim to provide social benefits aside from entertainment. Yes, we might learn what it is like for a family to have an unusually large number of children, but most programs don’t necessarily add to our body of knowledge.

Are the potential risks children might face through participating in reality television worth the financial gain? The answer is not clear cut. Yes, their parents might be able to afford to provide more for them materially. The children could get to travel and partake in many kid-friendly adventures they wouldn’t get to do otherwise.

And yet concerns about physical injury during the 2007 filming of Kid Nation and the potential psychological effects of living in front of cameras remain important questions. What other ethical concerns arise from children appearing on reality television?

A Closer Look at Interracial Marriage Statistics

On August 2, 2010October 9, 2025 By econnellIn Janis Prince Inniss, Race and Ethnicity, Relationships, Marriage and Family, Social Problems, Politics, and Social Change27 Comments

By Janis Prince Inniss

“Interracial Marriages at an all time high, study says” – CNN

“Study: 1 in 7 New U.S. Marriages is Interracial” – CBS News

“Interracial marriage: more than double the ‘rate in the 1980s’” – The Christian Science Monitor

“Interracial Marriage More Common Than Ever, but Black Women Still Lag, Pew Survey Shows One in Six New Marriages Now Between People of Different Colors” – ABC News

“After 40 years, interracial marriage flourishing, Since landmark 1967 ruling, unions have moved from radical to everyday” – MSNBC

“New Study Finds There Are More Interracial Marriages Than Ever” – Glamour magazine

Armed with these headlines alone, what can we surmise about interracial marriage in the U.S.? Given that such unions are “flourishing,” “common,” and at “an all time high,” I might assume that the people I know are unusual because they are not in interracial relationships.

But let’s go beyond the headlines. In fact, let’s go to the source of many of these headlines –a recent Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. The data show that 14.6 percent of all new marriages in the U.S. occurred between people of differing ethnicities/races. The distinction between new marriages and already married people is an important one to pay attention to because it tells us what population the statistic refers to; without keeping that in mind, the numbers tell us nothing.

So back to the statistic–14.6 percent – because it refers to new marriages, and new marriages are only a portion of all marriages..

It is hard to qualify 14.6 percent or 8.0 percent of almost anything as being abundant; the bottom line regarding interracial marriage in the U.S. is that it remains highly unusual. Yet the media has been very busy reporting results of the Pew Research Center on interracial marriage.

What some of these headlines highlight is a trend. They point out that although intermarriages are a small portion of all marriages, over the past 30 years, the portion of new and ongoing marriages has increased drastically. Notice that some headlines highlight this comparison: In 1980, 3.2 percent of all married people were in interracial relationships, but 8.0 percent were in 2010. And the 14.6 percent of new marriages that are interracial is up from 6.7of new marriages in percent in 2008.

In both cases, it is legitimate to refer to current rates of interracial marriage as being “at an all time high” and indeed they are now “more than double” what they were. But hopefully, with some training, either of these kinds of qualifiers will prompt you to ask, “High? How high?” and “More than double what number?” Unless we think about and get this kind of detail, we are left with the impression that interracial marriage has swept the land!

As we consider these statistics, it’s also important to remember that interracial marriages were illegal in some states in the U.S. until 1967, with the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Loving v. Virginia case. Given the social and legal context of the day, even without knowledge of the data of the last 30 years, would you have guessed that there was a rash of interracial marriages in 1968, 1969, or 1970? Or even in 1977, ten years after the Supreme Court decision? No. Therefore, baseline data on interracial marriage reflects the scarcity of this phenomenon.

And because of that, even relatively small increases can be described as indicative of big change. For example, 2 percent is double 1 percent, but 2 percent of something still isn’t a lot. Increases from 3.2 percent to 8.0 percent, and from 6.7 percent to 14.6 percent represent the same kind of change.

At the end of the last post on interracial marriage, I wrote, “Regarding young Mr. Smith, like 84.5 percent of people in his racial/ethnic group, he is marrying within his race.” The first chart in that piece contained the answer to Mr. Smith’s racial identity; unlike 15.5 percent of Blacks, he is not entering an interracial marriage. That same chart also highlights the point—displaying data for four racial/ethnic groups—that most newlyweds are not marrying people of a different racial/ethnic background.

Take a look at the chart below:

Initially, as I looked at the bars representing black men next to the bar representing black women, I was perplexed. Why? Because the proportions are so similar; it looked to me like black men and black women marry “out” at the same rate, and to the same other race/ethnicity. But how is that possible when we know from an even earlier post focusing on black/white interracial relationships (see chart below) that there are far more white women and black men married than there are white men and black women?

I expected to see that jump out at me in the bar chart above and was surprised to see such similarities. Do you see the fault in my initial thinking? It’s the issue of the population again. Data in the bar chart are of blacks who “out-married”, while the line graph compares raw numbers of black/white couples. Therefore, to make a direct comparison I had to remind myself that the shaded portion of the bar chart that represents black marriages to whites represents about 100,000 women but more than 300,000 black men.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Table 59 and MS-3.

Blue line represents black husband/white wife.

Red line represents white husband/black wife.

Both the headlines and the data about interracial marriage remind us that we need to think critically about what numbers we hear about really tell us about social change.

From Cockpit to Concert Hall: Distributed Cognition

On July 26, 2010October 9, 2025 By econnellIn Social Psychology, Theory6 Comments

Michael Discenza

Columbia University, Class of 2013

mad2200@columbia.edu

Edwin Hutchins, a professor and researcher in the field of cognitive science, has conducted extensive research about distributed cognition. Distributed cognition means that an individual’s understanding of and actions in the world are not merely a product of that one person’s individual decisions or desires, but are influenced by non-human agents.

One of the focuses of Hutchins’ research is the airplane cockpit. In a series of papers about the inner workings of the flight decks of commercial airliners, he explains how much of the cognitive work required for flying an airplane is done by the instrumentation and technology that makes up the flight control consoles. The communication technologies, instrumentation, and industry jargon serve as agents, non-human actors, which store and institutionalize knowledge and past cognitive efforts. The various components of the cockpit free the pilot from a glut of cogitative demands and make piloting a large commercial airliner, which would be an otherwise unwieldy cognitive task, a typical day’s for pilots. The functional system that results from this combination of human and non-human actors is what we call a socio-technical system.

Distributed cognition is a quite straightforward concept, but it requires a certain degree of childlike imagination to internalize, namely a mindset similar to that which is required pass the “how do you put an elephant in the refrigerator” test. I was first exposed to the notion of a socio-technical system in a simple demonstration that Professor David Stark at Columbia University presented to a sociology class that I was taking. Professor Stark walked over to the door of the lecture hall, opened it, and walked away from the door as it closed. He then asked the class what had happened. After a few looks of confusion, the class hesitantly contributed suggestions until one student, in addition to mentioning that the professor had opened the door, included in his explanation that door had closed itself. The point of the demonstration was that the preceding actions were not just the effects of human manipulation of the environment, but that the spring on the door had caused the door to shut itself afterward.

The action of a door closing itself after someone opens it and walk through is one of the most basic examples of distributed cognition across the simplest of networks. The person who opened the door does not have to think about closing it because the architect already decided that the door should close automatically and incorporated the spring technology of the designer of the door and the door’s manufacturer. When we start to recognize non-human agents and give them credit for their influence in our lives, we see can find socio-technical systems everywhere.

The cockpit is an extremely complex socio-technical system, and so is a library—the protocol and tools, card catalogues, databases, and librarians are agents and actors in the system. Any store, home, factory, restaurant, sporting event, or traffic regulation system with stoplights and signage, any system that incorporates even the most simple of technology, is a locus of a socio-technical network across which cognition is distributed.

Photo courtesy of Sarah Sheu

At a recent Electronica concert in a large Mid-town Manhattan venue called Terminal 5, I found myself struck by the salience of the socio-technical system at work. The coordinated efforts of pilots, co-pilots, and air traffic controllers, achieved in the cockpit with the use of complex jargon corresponded to the use of primal cuing with the rhythmic patterns of the music and the lighting, which together induced periodic climaxes of excitement among a crowd of 3000 young adults. The turntable became the flight deck and the DJs and tech crews, pilots not of planes but masses of music fans.

The music groups and DJs at this concert all adhered to similar conventions in their music, crescendos and holds that created tension were followed by a release into up-tempo danceable beats. The corresponding lighting scheme was a mesmerizing lighting pattern that broke into rapidly flashing strobe lights and quickly circling spotlights and lasers. The DJ and support team on stage flashed hand signals from the stage to the tech team in the back of the hall, as the traditional walk-talkie cuing was rendered useless by the deafening roar of the music. Interestingly, as I watched over the shoulders of the tech crew I observed that the lighting patterns were pre-programmed and just required activation from their laptops, lifting a significant cognitive burden from the tech crew.

Although there is no concert-goers handbook that tells people when to put their hands in the air and go crazy, no instructions flashing across the stage signaling the crowd to dance in a certain way, and certainly little cognitive power among the crazed masses, the changing environment induced a crowd reaction that appeared to be carefully choreographed. Everyone’s hands flew into the air at the same time. These gestures were not prompted not by any single person’s will to throw their hands up or by any DJ’s instructions; they were an unconscious response to a complex system employing turntables, lights, tech crews, musical conventions, and previously established signals.

What other examples of examples of distributed cognition take
place in our everyday lives?

Racial and Ethnic Categories

On July 21, 2010October 9, 2025 By econnellIn Race and Ethnicity, Sally Raskoff, Statistics and Methods9 Comments

By Sally Raskoff

Have you ever thought about how your definition of your race and ethnicity differs from the definitions the government and science uses?

The government defines race as white, African American (or Black), American Indian or Alaska Native, and Asian while ethnicity is simply Hispanic or not. Many options are available for what type of Asian, Pacific Islander, or Other race. (See the relevant questions below from Census 2000.)

The Census Bureau defines race as follows:

The racial categories included in the census questionnaire generally reflect a social definition of race recognized in this country, and not an attempt to define race biologically, anthropologically or genetically. People may choose to report more than one race to indicate their racial mixture, such as “American Indian and White.” People who identify their origin as Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish may be of any race. In addition, it is recognized that the categories of the race item include both racial and national origin or socio-cultural groups. You may choose more than one race category.

Scientific definitions of race are best summed up by the American Anthropological Association's (AAA) statement on race. The AAA points out the difficulties in gaining any clear definition of race due to the lack of clarity as to what we are attempting to measure. In short, scientifically, there is no physical or geographic sense of what race is, although it does have cultural distinctions and the definitions vary in different times and places.

The surveys I’ve done with my students suggest that most of them think about themselves racially and ethnically in terms of their cultural group identities. If they are not in a group considered white, they have a clear sense of being part of an identifiable racial group (black, Asian, Latino, Native American Alaskan Native, or Pacific Islander). No matter their racial identity, most mention important distinctions related to their ethnic groups, e.g., Chicana, Armenian, Mexican American, Chinese, Guatemalan, and Jamaican.

Is it important to notice the disparities between the governmental and scientific definitions? If science says race as a concept is not useful for describing humans, why does the government do it?

It all comes down to the economics and politics of categorizing people. Keeping track of people in different categories, whatever they may be, helps us know more about our society. If we have clearly identified disparities and problems in treating certain groups fairly, studies that track these populations can help us know if our social programs and policies are actually helping or not.

What does it mean that our governmental, scientific, and personal definitions of race and ethnicity vary so much? Are the categories that the government and science use useful at all since they may not match up with those that people use?

If people fill out the census forms as accurately as possible, then the data the government collects can be used as our constitution demands: to allocate political representation and governmental programs appropriately to serve the people. If people aren’t aware what those categories mean or don’t how to accurately fill out the forms, what then is the use of that data?

Good data comes when people understand the concepts and share their definitions with the researchers.

It is fascinating that although science says race is a problematic concept to define, people hold dearly to their racial and ethnic categories of identity. Thomas Theorem comes to mind– if people define situations real, they become real in their consequences.

People grow up having to fill in those forms and thus claim a racial and/or ethnic identity. People participate in some cultural group that may have racial or ethnic distinctions or identities. Thus the concept of race becomes very real. This is especially true historically as society reifies these definitions and establishes policies that either disadvantage or elevate various groups depending on racial identity. Some of the many examples of such policies include Jim Crow laws passed in the South post-slavery, and the racial steering and covenants that were used in housing markets across the country until well into the 1960s.

As social scientists, we prefer clarity of definition rather than ambiguity. What, therefore, do these ambiguous racial definitions teach us about our society?

Doing Research while Watching Sports Center

On July 17, 2010October 9, 2025 By econnellIn Karen Sternheimer, Popular Culture and Consumption, Sex and Gender, Social Problems, Politics, and Social Change, Statistics and Methods39 Comments

By Karen Sternheimer

Think about how many people you know whose days are punctuated by checking sports scores, and whose bedtime stories come courtesy of ESPN’s Sports Center. Even something that seems as mundane as tracking sports coverage has sociological meaning.

Suppose you wanted to learn more about this practice. You might use sociological research methods such as in-depth interviews with fans, surveys of television audience members, or ethnography of how news agencies produce sports programming to collect your data.

Another interesting method tends to be overlooked in many research methods texts and courses. Content analysis involves systematically observing the content of a text, including written, visual, and audio texts. Often used in communications research, sociologists also use content analysis to take a deeper look into media we might otherwise take for granted.

Essentially, content analysis involves counting the occurrence of specific phenomena that researchers are interested in learning more about. One of the first tenets of good content analysis is to establish specific guidelines to make sure researchers are clear and consistent about what they are counting. More than just watching TV and writing an overall opinion, content analysis requires clear definitions of a sample and the procedure the researchers will use to analyze their findings.

Something as familiar as Sports Center can be systematically analyzed, with clear quantitative and qualitative results. Sociologists Michael Messner and Cheryl Cooky recently completed a content analysis of Sports Center and the sports coverage of the three Los Angeles network news affiliates. Their report, Gender in Televised Sports: News and Highlight Shows, 1989-2009, features the results of their content analysis over five separate periods: one in 1989, 1993, 1999, 2004, and 2009.

As their title suggests, the researchers wanted to learn about how much sports coverage is devoted to male and female athletes, as well as to better understand the context of the coverage about sports. They measured six weeks of local news coverage, selecting three two-week periods at various times of the year. In addition, they also recorded three weeks of Sports Center during similar time periods as the local news. The researchers timed the amount of coverage men’s sports and women’s sports received, including the ticker at the bottom of the screen.

If you are a regular viewer of sports coverage, you won’t be surprised to learn that men’s sports coverage dramatically overshadows women’s coverage. You might even conclude that this finding is so obvious that it isn’t necessary to conduct a systematic study.

But you might be shocked to learn that local coverage of women’s sports has dramatically declined over the past twenty years (and in the last ten especially), as the graph below illustrates. This is something we can only learn through repeated content analysis studies.

After a rise in local news coverage between 1989 and 1999, women’s sports coverage declined dramatically from 8.7% of all sports coverage to 1.6%. Likewise, Sports Center’s coverage (only included in the last three time periods of the study) declined as well, albeit not as dramatically because women’s sports coverage was low to begin with.

Why the decline? We might even predict that coverage would increase rather than decrease; as the researchers point out, girls' and women's participation in sports has increased dramatically over the past twenty years. In 1989, 1.8 million high school girls participated in sports, compared with 3.1 million in 2009. Women are more likely to play collegiate-level sports, and women’s opportunities to play professional sports—most notably in the WNBA—expanded too. So it seems counterintuitive that coverage would decline.

While Messner & Cooky note that fans now have numerous ways besides television to get sports updates (including fan websites and smart phone apps, for example), they conclude that to understand why women’s sports coverage declined it would be necessary to study “the assumptions and values [that] guide the decisions of producers, editors and TV sports commentators on what sports stories are important to cover, and how to cover them.”

The researchers hypothesize that the structure of televised sports coverage might help us understand the lack of women’s sports coverage. As Messner & Cooky point out, the network’s promise to deliver an audience of young men to advertisers provides a financial incentive to not only keep coverage of women’s sports to a minimum, but also to portray women in specific ways:

A foundational assumption of those who create programming for men on programs like SportsCenter seems to be that men want to think of women as sexual objects of desire, or perhaps as mothers, but not as powerful, competitive athletes.

This long-term study found another interesting change: despite the reduced coverage of women’s sports, when women are part of sports coverage the tone was more respectful in 2009 than it had been in the past. Most of the time women appear in sports coverage as male athletes’ girlfriends, wives, or mothers, and yet some coverage now focuses more on women’s athletic prowess.

By contrast, the authors observed that in the past, sports coverage frequently ridiculed women. For instance, a 1999 story on women who bungee jumped nude and a 2004 story about a “weightlifting granny” made women appear more like comic relief than serious athletes. These stories haven’t completely gone away, but they were less common in 2009. The authors conclude that involving more women in the sports news production process might produce more favorable coverage of women’s sports, but concede that there’s no guarantee. For example, female reporters might be hired more for their looks than for their sports background.

As you can see, content analysis can take an everyday activity like watching sports coverage and analyze its deeper meanings. What other kinds of sociological information might content analysis give us?

Interracial Marriage among Newlyweds in the U.S.

On July 13, 2010October 9, 2025 By econnellIn Janis Prince Inniss, Race and Ethnicity, Relationships, Marriage and Family8 Comments

By Janis Prince Inniss

Last week, I received an envelope in the mail that was clearly an invitation. I recognized the return address as that of a couple that my husband and I have been friends with for almost ten years—let’s call them the Smiths. The Smiths host several parties annually for which we receive written invitations. Still, this looked more formal than an invite for a summer gathering. The envelope was as thick as a wedding invitation, but the Smiths have been married for many years. What could it be? A ”major” birthday?

Inside was a wedding invitation for their son’s nuptials. You don’t know the Smiths, but if I told you the race of their son, would you be able to guess the race of his soon-to-be bride? How about if you had information about whom most newlyweds marry?

Who do people marry? Much has been written about romance and the challenges of finding suitable dating partners, but once people find a mate and decide to marry, who do they choose? Let’s focus on the race/ethnicity of the newly married who wed someone outside of their race/ethnicity.

By looking at the chart below, you will see the percentage of newlyweds who married someone of a different race/ethnicity than their own in 2008. Notice that that the percentage of people “marrying out” (marrying someone of a different race) varies across racial/ethnic groups.

The group with the most out- marriages—Asians—did so at a rate of almost one third (30.8 percent). Whites had the lowest out- marriage rate of the groups, with fewer than one in ten whites (8.9 percent) married to someone of a different race than their own.

Does any of this surprise you? Did you expect any of these numbers to be higher? Lower? More similar across groups? Why would one racial/ethnic group “marry out” at a rate that is particularly different from another? For example, why do Asians and Hispanics “marry out” so much more than blacks and whites–especially whites? Or to flip the question around, why are out-marriage rates for blacks and whites so low? Do you think that some groups have cultural attitudes that shape their attitudes towards intermarriage? What role, if any, do you think the numbers of available people within one’s racial/ethnic group play in any of this?

Source: Marrying Out: One-in-Seven New U.S. Marriages is Interracial or Interethnic (Pew Research Center)

Who are newlyweds marrying when they do marry out their racial/ethnic group? As indicated in the series of pie charts below, the answer depends on the group. For minority groups though, the majority of intermarriages do not occur with other minorities but with whites. Of newlywed Asians, 75.1 percent married whites, of Hispanics 80.5 percent, and of blacks 57.5 percent. So who do whites marry when they marry outside of their race/ethnicity? Almost half (48.8 percent) of all newlywed whites married Hispanics.

Note: Other includes American Indian, two or more races and “some other” race categories.

Data reflect marriages to someone of a different race/ethnicity in the previous 12 months.

Source: Marrying Out: One-in-Seven New U.S. Marriages is Interracial or Interethnic (Pew Research Center)

What patterns, if any, can we detect in looking at the spouses of men and women in new interracial marriages? The charts below provide such data. One of the more striking differences between males and females who recently “out-married” is among whites: Of those who intermarried in 2008, far more white men married Asian women than white women married Asian men (26.9 percent compared to 9.4 percent), while white women were far more likely to marry black men than white men were to marry black women (20.1 percent compared to 6.9 percent). Another noteworthy difference is that of Hispanics who married someone of a different race/ethnicity, the proportion of Hispanic women who married black men was much higher than Hispanic men who married Black women (13.2 percent compared to 4.5 percent).

What about the “desirability” of certain groups as spouses? (I presume that marriage is some indication of someone’s desirability—at least desirability as a marriage partner.) The lack of desirability of black women and Asian men as spouses for those who intermarried in 2008 is worth noting. White, Hispanic, and Asian men in mixed marriages married women of every other racial category more than they did black women. Similarly, white, black, and Hispanic women who entered interracial marriages in 2008 did so with men from other racial/ethnic groups ahead of Asian men. Both white women and white men however, were desired as partners by blacks, Hispanics and Asians in interracial marriages in 2008. As the data in the pie charts illustrates, the majority of minorities in intermarriages—both male and female—married whites (ranging from 57.2 percent to 83.3 percent).

Stay tuned to this space as we answer some of the questions raised in this piece and continue to learn more about intermarriage in the U.S. And regarding young Mr. Smith, like 84.5 percent of people in his racial/ethnic group, he is marrying within his race.

“Good” Meetings

On July 8, 2010October 9, 2025 By econnellIn Sally Raskoff, Social Institutions: Work, Education, and Medicine, Theory2 Comments

By Sally Raskoff

I recently blogged about frustrating meetings. I usually prefer to focus on the positive, so I am following up with a blog about “good” meetings. To me, a non-frustrating meeting would be one in which the meeting leaders address the reasons for calling the meeting in an effective and efficient manner.

What makes an efficient meeting possible? How can sociology help us better understand what makes meetings effective?

To hold a meeting is to gather people together outside of their typical realm of activity. The meeting should have some relevant focus and purpose whether it is discussing issues or making decisions.
Effectiveness has to do with implementing decisions. Actions need to come from the decisions made, and the discussion should have some impact on what goes on outside the meeting.
Efficiency is different from effectiveness. It means having clear objectives and getting things done with as little “noise” as possible. We are efficient if we deal with what is before us rather than distracting the task at hand with other issues.
The social context is important. If people know their social roles, they are more likely to act accordingly to do as others would expect. If everyone shares the meaning of the meeting itself and knows the symbols that are used within, communication is easier. If all key players are present, that can support efficiency since all those with something to say or do are involved in the process.
Social norms exist in this microcosm. Clarity about the rules of the meeting– in terms of behavior and process– are crucial to having a good meeting. If everyone knows how to behave, those social norms ensure that people will bring appropriate and expected actions into the room.

Many meetings even come with pre-existing formal rules. Groups often use Robert’s Rules of Order in meetings to provide the basic guidelines for what happens and when. The rules include how to make a motion (suggest a decision or policy be made), how to discuss it (after the motion is made and seconded), and when to vote on it (after discussion). These rules also specify not to discuss other issues while discussing a motion – this effectively limits discussions to one issue at a time, which enhances efficiency and potential effectiveness.

Many sociologists have discussed how organizations create rules and order, most notably Max Weber and Emile Durkheim. Organizations form bureaucracies to create a set of protocols for how the organization will operate. Durkheim discussed how the division of labor provides the role definitions so that people can know what they are to do and who has the authority to make decisions or change the rules. Weber wrote extensively on how bureaucratic organizations have hierarchical structures of offices and positions in which individuals have clear career paths. These provide a conduit for the distribution and use of power and authority within the tasks of the organization. Thus, if the boss calls a meeting, the workers show up and pay attention. If a co-worker calls a meeting, perhaps fewer people will show up or will take the process seriously.

Formal and informal networks operate within a bureaucratic structure and are also linked to power. The formal network, tied to the hierarchy, has clear connections with power and authority. The informal networks that develop over time due to proximity or personal ties can supplement or detract from the official uses of power within the organization. Thus if a co-worker who calls a meeting is connected to many other workers through the informal networks and if those other workers have a lot of respect for the person calling the meeting, that meeting may draw more people and participation than the one called by the boss!

While Weber’s ideal type of bureaucracy did point out the (potential) for efficiency and rationality of organizations, it is not appropriate to assume that bureaucratic structures are always effective. A lack of focus can get in the way of implementing the decisions made.

A recent meeting I participated in illustrates this well. We gathered together to deal with issues that are partly defined and controlled by a union-management contract, state law, and many other bureaucratic structures. We focused on specific tasks, using the process to discuss the information we had gathered. Those with the formal authority expressed their opinions, as did those with less formal authority. Decisions were made based on those discussions. At the end of the meeting, many felt the process was somewhat efficient and we had made progress on the tasks at hand.

However, we will truly know how effective this meeting was only in the future. Will any of those decisions be implemented or affect the day-to-day operations of the organization? In the days after the meeting, many informal conversations occurred where people speculated on those decisions and whether or not they will be implemented. Thus a meeting that feels “good” while it is taking place may or may not continue with that qualifier if the outcome of the meeting is for naught.

What other aspects of “good” meetings can you identify? What sociological concepts can help illuminate those aspects?

Sex, Research, and Public Spaces

On June 29, 2010October 9, 2025 By econnellIn Crime and Deviance, Statistics and Methods, Todd Schoepflin19 Comments

By Todd Schoepflin

Did you hear the one about the sociologist who watched men having sex in park bathrooms? Sounds like a setup for a joke with a bizarre punch line, doesn’t it?

Unless you’re a student of sociology, in which case it probably sounds familiar, because you know that’s what sociologist Laud Humphreys did in the course of his research. Humphreys, well known for his 1970 book Tearoom Trade, not only observed men having sex, but followed them to their cars to record their license plate information and then used a contact in a police department to obtain their home addresses.

A year later, he went to their homes (having altered his appearance so as not to be recognized) to supposedly conduct a medical survey. Basically, Humphreys used deception throughout his research to obtain information about the men’s lives and lifestyles. Although he gathered interesting information about the men he studied, he used unethical means to do so.

It’s interesting to think about whether Humphreys violated the privacy of these men when he observed them in restrooms. Humphreys watched the most private behavior that occurs between people, but the sex took place in public restrooms. So is it a violation of privacy to watch people who are having sexual relations in public space?

It’s important to remember that Humphreys was studying sex as a form of social interaction. One thing that really interested him was the role of silence in these sexual encounters. Participants rarely uttered a word in most of the encounters he observed. When words were spoken, they were few, in some cases only a greeting or an utterance of “thanks” when the sex was completed. Silence served a vital function because it guaranteed anonymity for the participants and reinforced the impersonality of the situation.

Think about it: in an intimate situation, you want to get to know someone. You talk to them and want to learn personal details about them. But these men wanted sex without obligation or commitment. For this reason, a park bathroom was the perfect place because it provided the type of environment that suited the lack of personal involvement these men desired. Furthermore, Humphreys suggested that in this type of setting, with fast and impersonal sex being the most important ingredients, great expectations weren’t in play. In other words, the men he studied didn’t have the highest standards for partners in terms of appearance, personality, age, or other characteristics that people tend to focus on when they are searching for intimacy.

Humphreys discovered that men of all types came to the tearooms for sex: married, unmarried, some with heterosexual identities, others with homosexual identities, blue-collar workers, white-collar workers, all interested in what Humphreys referred to as “kicks without commitment.” Some men were regulars, stopping at a tearoom on the way to or from work. “One physician in his late fifties was so punctual in his appearance at a particular restroom,” Humphreys wrote, “that I began to look forward to our daily chats.” Keep in mind that Humphreys earned the trust of the men by serving as a lookout, promising to alert them of unwelcome intruders. He never identified his real purposes for being there.

The restrooms where Humphreys did his research were in Forest Park in St. Louis. The busiest bathrooms, he noted, were isolated from recreational areas. Ideally, then, children weren’t likely to go to them after being at a playground. Activity in the tearooms peaked at the end of the workday, so it was especially convenient if men could park their cars close to a restroom as they drove home from work.

For comparison, I took a picture of the bathroom building and the men’s entrance at Delaware Park in Buffalo when I last took a walk in the park. The building is a stone’s throw from an expressway, but there is no parking available close to the building. And the building is just a few steps away from where people rollerblade, bike, walk, jog, and play soccer. I honestly don’t know if any homosexual activity takes place in the men’s bathroom (or heterosexual activity, for that matter) but it doesn’t seem isolated enough for sexual activity.

In all, Humphreys provided insight into many sociological issues, including the rules that govern the process of impersonal sex, the kinds of men that frequent tearooms, and how men related their behavior to the rest of their lives. What is your opinion of Humphreys? Do you think he was an innovative researcher with a sharp sociological eye? Was he a creep in desperate need of an ethics seminar? How would you describe him and his research? Finally, when it comes to studying people in public places, do you think sexual behavior is off limits?

College Degrees and Social Mobility

On June 24, 2010October 9, 2025 By econnellIn Behind the Headlines, Class and Stratification, Karen Sternheimer, Social Institutions: Work, Education, and Medicine9 Comments

By Karen Sternheimer

Are you currently or about to be a college student? A recent college grad? If so, you probably hope that your college degree will help you in the job market. According to the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP)’s annual study of college freshmen, in 2009 78 percent of college freshmen said it was very important or essential to be well-off financially. This isn’t a big surprise during economically hard times. But does a college degree help you move up economically?

A recent Los Angeles Times article posed this question, noting that “a diploma is no longer seen as a guarantee of a better job and higher pay.” In light of the rising costs of a college degree, which Sally Raskoff recently blogged about, it is worth exploring whether going to college is still linked with upward mobility.

As you can see from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) unemployment data below, more education means a greater likelihood of having a job. The recent recession impacted construction work and retail positions especially hard, so it’s not surprising that those with less education who might be more likely to work in those fields would have higher unemployment rates. Having a bachelor’s degree instead of only a high school diploma essentially reduces the odds of unemployment by more than half.

BLS data also show that more education means higher median income, as the graph below details. People holding advanced degrees have the highest median weekly income, but notice the big jump between earnings of those with some college and those with a college degree.

Seems pretty straightforward so far: going to college means earning more money. But when we look at earnings by education and gender, the picture becomes a bit more complicated. Education has a more modest impact on women’s weekly earnings. The BLS data show that men out earn women at every education level and that women with college degrees earn only slightly more than men without four-year degrees ($45 a week).

Women with advanced degrees actually have a lower median income than men with only bachelor’s degrees; likewise, women who have attended some college earn less than men with only high school degrees. For women, a college degree might yield less income than it does for men, but it still provides a boost compared with those without degrees.

The Times story notes that the percentage of bachelor’s degree holders in professional and managerial positions has declined over the past several decades, and future job growth is expected in the service sector. Jobs like customer service, food servers, and healthcare aides don’t tend to pay very well in contrast to professional and managerial jobs: in April 2010, the median weekly income of someone in a management-level position was $1,068 compared with $476 in a service job, according to the BLS. When you consider that service sector work is more unstable and subject to seasonal ups and downs, there is an even greater disadvantage.

So what does this mean for an aspiring college student or recent college grad?

You could choose your major based on the job prospects it carries. A 2009 Forbes magazine article lists the top ten majors with the lowest unemployment rates:

Accounting

Mechanical Engineering

Electrical Engineering

Computer Science
Business Administration

Economics/Finance

Information Systems

Computer Engineering

Management Information Systems

Marketing

Bear in mind there are likely people with degrees in these disciplines who are still looking for a job. But what if nothing on this list appeals to you?

Choosing a major only based on potential income virtually guarantees you boredom at school and on the job. I haven’t been shy about touting the marketable skills that a sociology degree brings, and a college degree is worth very little if it doesn’t enhance your personal skill set and interests.

The bottom line: college degrees matter. On average, your income will be higher and your chances of being unemployed will be lower if you have one. But keep in mind that a degree does not guarantee a permanent position in the middle class. With more people holding bachelor’s degrees than in the past, (11 percent of Americans 25 and older had a bachelor's degree in 1970, compared with nearly 30 percent today), there is more educated competition in the labor force than there was a generation ago. As the Brookings Institution recently reported, many middle-class families experience an “income rollercoaster” due to shifts in the economy.

A degree is like having a life vest while sailing: it’s really important to have, but it will not always save you. The rising costs of a four year degree may make earning one a bigger challenge, particularly as colleges raise tuition and fees. It’s likely that a degree has never been more economically important, but it is vital to be realistic about your earning potential, especially if you are going into debt in the process. Graduating with massive student loan debt could offset the income gains a degree brings.

No Backstage Pass: Student Presentations of Self to Professors

On June 21, 2010October 9, 2025 By econnellIn Janis Prince Inniss, Social Institutions: Work, Education, and Medicine, Social Psychology7 Comments

By Janis Prince Inniss

Dear Class,

When I was creating my syllabus, I forgot to mention that there is one more exam covering everything we did for the semester—yes, it’s cumulative—and a 20 page research paper. I know that this is the last week of class but could you please excuse me? Pick whichever reason you like best from the following to excuse my lapse:

A. My child had a fever and I had to take her to the doctor and then to the hospital and I didn’t get any sleep at all that night. And my dog was hit by a bus. Plus, my computer was acting funny. I think it has a virus. (If you’re taking an on-line course, add this: I was having trouble getting into Blackboard and Blackboard kept kicking me out.)

B. I was focused on my career and really needed to get some other work done to make sure I get promoted.

C. I really didn’t understand that I was so supposed to put all of that in the syllabus. It’s so hard trying to figure out months beforehand what I’m going to do with a class. The university wants us to hand in the syllabus long before the class even starts. I didn’t expect all of this to be so hard. I’m really good at all the other things I do and get really good evaluations on all of my other work.

D. This is the last class I’m going to teach. I’ve always got good evaluations for all the other courses I taught and I really don’t want this class to bring down my overall evaluation grade.

E. I just need an extension. That way I can add this information to the syllabus and nobody will have to know that it wasn’t there when you first got it.

Do you think I have ever told the student version of any of these to my professors? In earning four degrees, I have taken about seventy university courses so I’ve had ample opportunity. I’ve pulled a few all-nighters, pecking away at a typewriter trying to finish papers on-time. I trudged to the library in snow to do research. I was up until 2 and 3 o’clock studying for exams. Eventually, I realized that the students hovering around my professors were not asking questions about the materials but instead were explaining why they need an extension on this or that assignment. An extension? I thought a deadline was …well, the point after which you might as well drop dead as far as your professor is concerned. I didn’t realize it was only a suggestion. I wasn’t familiar with the ritual of negotiating a new deadline or alternative assignment.

I complied because that’s what I knew. I was lucky in that though, because, let me let you in on a secret that your professors may not have told you: Most of us have worked very hard to complete our own degrees, and have done so despite a variety of personal problems, challenges, and frustrations. In fact, many of us struggle to meet deadlines (teaching, writing articles, books, conducting research) that cause us stress. So when you tell us your personal problems in the hopes that we will extend deadlines, it can be infuriating to us. When you go on about how good your grades are, but show little or no evidence of how you could have possibly attained those grades, we don’t feel sympathy for you. We feel frustration. And we tell each other jokes about the most outrageous excuses that our students give us. (We don’t use your names though.) It suggests that you don’t understand the concept of impression management. For sociology students, this is particularly egregious because the concept was developed by sociologist Erving Goffman.

Impression management is an awareness of how others view us and how we can manipulate that perception and ultimately shape the way others treat us. Goffman differentiated between front stage and back stage behavior. Front stage refers to our public persona, our “onstage” roles. Front stage is what we want others—our audience—to think, know, or feel about us. Back stage is our private self; the dressing room at the back of a theatre where we put on make-up, get dressed, and prepare before entering the front stage.

Back stage: You tell your friends/spouses/significant others about your burdens and why you really need to pass this class without really doing the work.

Back stage: We—faculty—talk about bizarre student excuses.

Front stage: You ask questions of your professors and make comments to them that illustrate how hard you are working to earn a good grade. You find ways to let them know that you’ve done all of the readings, exercises, and other assignments, even if they’re only “recommended”.

Front stage: We teach. And we act like we believe unbelievable student excuses.

As at a theatrical performance, the ”audience” should not be permitted to go back stage. Create an impression that you are a serious student, even if it is only an impression. Otherwise, make your excuse as good as this one in the video below….

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640

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