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- The Sequential Rise of Female Religious Leadership
Authors:
Parker Webservices
Abstract: Jeremy Senn, Jörg StolzSociological Science March 20, 2025
10.15195/v12.a9In his seminal work “Ordaining Women,” Mark Chaves (1997b) highlighted the phenomenon of “loose coupling” regarding female religious leadership: congregations often display inconsistencies between their stated policies and actual practices. Some congregations declare openness to female leadership but do not practice it, whereas others officially forbid female leadership yet have women in leadership roles. Our article identifies a theoretical mechanism producing this inconsistency. We propose that congregations typically first loosen their formal rules governing female access to leadership and only later allow women to occupy leadership positions in practice. This two-stage process results in a temporal lag between rule change and practice change, creating the observed “loose coupling,” where rules are often more gender egalitarian than practice. Using two waves of the National Congregation Survey Switzerland covering all religious traditions, we test our theory both on the aggregate and the unit level and find strong support for it. Simulations further indicate that certain characteristics of the organizational population of congregations, such as their low attrition rate, may explain a large part of the lag between rule change and practice change.
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PubDate: Thu, 20 Mar 2025 16:00:40 +000
- Commuting and Gender Differences in Job Opportunities
Authors:
Parker Webservices
Abstract: Silvia AvramSociological Science March 14, 2025
10.15195/v12.a8Women tend to commute shorter distances and earn lower wages. The theory suggests that more mobile workers are likely to command higher wages, in part because they have access to more job opportunities. We show how information on employment concentration and commuting patterns can be linked to build an index of labor market opportunities, using linked administrative and household survey data from the UK. Although labor markets are porous, commonly used measures of employment concentration require well-defined geographical boundaries. We overcome this problem by combining employment concentration indices calculated using areas of different sizes and using the individual commuting costs as weights. We show that women have higher commuting costs and, as a result, their labor markets are smaller and their job opportunities are more limited.
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PubDate: Fri, 14 Mar 2025 16:00:43 +000
- Inequality and Total Effect Summary Measures for Nominal and Ordinal
Variables
Authors:
Parker Webservices
Abstract: Trenton D. Mize, Bing HanSociological Science February 5, 2025
10.15195/v12.a7Many of the topics most central to the social sciences involve nominal groupings or ordinal rankings. There are many cases in which a summary of a nominal or ordinal independent variable’s effect, or the effect on a nominal or ordinal outcome, is needed and useful for interpretation. For example, for nominal or ordinal independent variables, a single summary measure is useful to compare the effect sizes of different variables in a single model or across multiple models, as with mediation. For nominal or ordinal dependent variables, there are often an overwhelming number of effects to examine and understanding the holistic effect of an independent variable or how effect sizes compare within or across models is difficult. In this project, we propose two new summary measures using marginal effects (MEs). For nominal and ordinal independent variables, we propose ME inequality as a summary measure of a nominal or ordinal independent variable’s holistic effect. For nominal and ordinal outcome models, we propose a total ME measure that quantifies the comprehensive effect of an independent variable across all outcome categories. The added benefits of our methods are both intuitive and substantively meaningful effect size metrics and approaches that can be applied across a wide range of models, including linear, nonlinear, categorical, multilevel, longitudinal, and more.
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PubDate: Wed, 05 Feb 2025 17:00:17 +000
- Validating Factorial Survey Experiments: Response to Comment
Authors:
Parker Webservices
Abstract: Andrea G. Forster, Martin NeugebauerSociological Science January 27, 2025
10.15195/v12.a6In Forster and Neugebauer (2024), we examine to what extent a factorial survey (FS) on invitations of fictitious applicants can replicate the findings of a nearly identical field experiment conducted with the same employers. In addition to exploring the conditions under which FSs provide valid behavioral predictions, we varied the topic sensitivity and tested whether behavioral predictions were more accurate after filtering out respondents who provided socially desirable answers or did not exert sufficient effort in responding to FS vignettes. Across these conditions, the FS results did not align well with the real-world benchmark. We conclude that researchers must exercise caution when using FSs to study (hiring) behavior. In this rejoinder, we respond to the critique of our study by Pickett (2025).
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PubDate: Mon, 27 Jan 2025 17:01:17 +000
- Invalidating Factorial Survey Experiments Using Invalid Comparisons Is Bad
Practice: Learning from Forster and Neugebauer (2024)
Authors:
Parker Webservices
Abstract: Justin T. PickettSociological Science January 27, 2025
10.15195/v12.a5Forster and Neugebauer’s (2024) invalidation study is invalid. Their conclusion that factorial survey (FS) experiments “are not suited for studying hiring behavior” (P. 901) is unjustified, because their claim that they conducted a field experiment (FE) and FS with “nearly identical” designs is false (P. 891). The two experiments included: (1) different factor levels (for three factors), (2) different unvalidated applicant names (to manipulate ethnicity), (3) different applicant photos, (4) different fixed factors (e.g., applicant stories about moving), and (5) different experimental settings (e.g., testing, instrumentation, and conditions of anonymity). In the current article, I discuss each of these major design differences and explain why it invalidates Forster and Neugebauer’s (2024) comparison of their FE and FS findings. I conclude by emphasizing that social scientists are better served by asking why FE and FS findings sometimes differ than by assuming that any difference in findings across the experimental designs invalidates FS.
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PubDate: Mon, 27 Jan 2025 17:00:15 +000
- The Genetics of Partnership Dissolution
Authors:
Parker Webservices
Abstract: Ruth Eva Jørgensen, Rosa Cheesman, Ole A. Andreassen, Torkild Hovde LyngstadSociological Science January 20, 2025
10.15195/v12.a4There is a genetic component to divorce risk, but little is known about which and how genetically influenced traits are involved. This study makes three major contributions to address these gaps. First, we link genetic data from the Norwegian Mother, Father, and Child Cohort Study (MoBa) to population register data and estimate the total influence of common genetic variants on partnership dissolution (N = 121, 408). Then, we identify heritable traits associated with partnership dissolution using event-history analysis and a broad set of polygenic indices. Finally, we assess whether associations are robust to controls for confounding in within-sibling models. Significant heritability estimates were found for both females (h2SNP = 0.09; SE = 0.01; p < 0.0001) and males (h2SNP = 0.03; SE = 0.01; p < 0.0001). Genetic dispositions for educational attainment and other sociodemographic factors decrease the probability of partnership dissolution, whereas dispositions for internalizing symptoms and risk behavior increase the likelihood of partnership dissolution. Integrating genetics and sociodemographic approaches can shed new light on the causes of partnership dynamics by helping us understand what drives the selection processes throughout the life course.
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PubDate: Mon, 20 Jan 2025 17:00:01 +000
- Straight Jacket: The Implications of Multidimensional Sexuality for
Relationship Quality and Stability
Authors:
Parker Webservices
Abstract: Yue Qian, Yang HuSociological Science January 15, 2025
10.15195/v12.a3The quality and stability of couple relationships have far-reaching consequences for the well-being of individual partners and patterns of family change. Although much research has compared the quality and stability of same-sex and different-sex relationships, the multidimensional nature of sexuality has received insufficient attention in this scholarship. Individuals in same-sex (different-sex) partnerships do not necessarily identify as gay/lesbian (straight) or report exclusive same-sex (different-sex) attraction—a phenomenon we term “identity/attraction–partnership inconsistency.” By analyzing nationally representative longitudinal data collected between 2017 and 2022, we show that identity/attraction–partnership inconsistency is common among U.S. adults, ranging from 2 percent of men in different-sex partnerships to 41 percent of women in same-sex partnerships. Regression results show that such inconsistency is associated with lower relationship quality and higher relationship instability, and these negative ramifications are particularly pronounced among individuals, notably men, in different-sex partnerships. Our findings uncover the implications of multidimensional sexuality for relationship dynamics and outcomes given the rigid institutionalization of different-sex couplehood and the close normative regulation of men’s heterosexuality. Our study highlights the importance of incorporating multiple dimensions of sexuality and their interplays into research on couple relationships and family change.
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PubDate: Wed, 15 Jan 2025 17:00:12 +000
- Getting a Foot in the Door: A Meta-Analysis of U.S. Audit Studies of
Gender Bias in Hiring
Authors:
Parker Webservices
Abstract: So Yun Park, Eunsil OhSociological Science January 9, 2025
10.15195/v12.a2For the past three decades, scholars have conducted field experiments to examine gender-based hiring discrimination in the United States. However, these studies have produced mixed results. To further interpret these findings, we performed a meta-analysis of 37 audit studies conducted between 1990 and 2022. Using an aggregated sample of 243,202 fictitious job applications, the study finds no evidence of statistically significant gender discrimination at the study level. However, a series of more focused meta-analyses reveal important variations in the extent of discrimination by occupation type and applicant race. First, the gender composition of an occupation predicts gender bias in hiring. Second, the intersection of gender and race is critical—in female-dominated jobs, White female applicants receive more callbacks than their male counterparts, but Black female applicants experience no such benefit. The study contributes to the literature on labor market and gender (in)equality by synthesizing the findings of field experiments.
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PubDate: Thu, 09 Jan 2025 17:00:10 +000
- The Risk Creates the Reward: Reputational Returns to Legal and Quality
Risks in Online Illegal Drug Trade
Authors:
Parker Webservices
Abstract: William Holtkamp, Scott Duxbury, Dana L. HaynieSociological Science January 6, 2025
10.15195/v12.a1Although buyers in unregulated markets depend heavily on reputational information in the absence of state oversight, few studies examine how the riskiness of a good may condition reputational effects on prices. We capitalize on novel data on 10,465 illegal drug exchanges on one online “darknet” illegal drug market and computational text analysis to evaluate how distinct types of legal and quality risks moderate reputational effects on illegal drug prices. Our results suggest that quality risk considerations are especially acute, where the effect of numeric sales ratings and the sentiment expressed in sales review text are both increased for non-prescription drugs and attenuated for prescription drugs. In contrast, we find limited evidence that legal risks moderate reputational effects on illegal drug prices. These results underscore the importance of quality risks in illegal purchasing decisions, identify quality risk as a determinant of reputational premiums for illegal drug prices, and shed light on how the riskiness of a specific good can guide economic action in unregulated trade settings.
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PubDate: Mon, 06 Jan 2025 17:00:11 +000
- New OMB’s Race and Ethnicity Standards Will Affect How Americans
Self-Identify
Authors:
Parker Webservices
Abstract: René D. Flores, Edward Telles, Ilana M. VenturaSociological Science December 16, 2024
10.15195/v11.a42In March 2024, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) approved major changes to the ethnic and racial self-identification questions used by all federal agencies, including the U.S. Census Bureau. These modifications include merging the separate race and Hispanic ethnicity questions into a single combined question and adding a Middle Eastern and North African category. Government officials and researchers have requested evidence on how Americans might react to these changes. We conducted a survey experiment with a nationally representative sample of 7,350 adult Americans. Participants were randomly assigned to answer either the existing separate race and ethnicity questions or a combined question proposed by the OMB. We find that the combined question decreases the percentage of Americans identifying as white and as some other race. We identify the key mechanism driving these effects: Hispanics decrease their identification in other categories when a Hispanic category is available in the combined question format. This results in statistically significant decreases in key minority populations, including Afro-Latinos and indigenous Latinos.
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PubDate: Mon, 16 Dec 2024 17:00:01 +000
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