Bruce Keith

Parental divorce and the well-being of children: a meta-analysis.

This meta-analysis involved 92 studies that compared children living in divorced single-parent families with children living in continuously intact families on measures of well-being. Children of divorce scored lower than children in intact families across a variety of outcomes, with the median effect size being .14 of a standard deviation. For some outcomes, methodologically sophisticated studies yielded weaker effect sizes than did other studies. In addition, for some outcomes, more recent studies yielded weaker effect sizes than did studies carried out during earlier decades. Some support was found for theoretical perspectives emphasizing parental absence and economic disadvantage, but the most consistent support was found for a family conflict perspective.

Credits, Time, and Attainment: Articulation Policies and Success After Transfer:

While state legislatures are increasingly enacting articulation policies, research to date provides little evidence that these policies enhance students’ likelihood of transfer. Based on a careful historical review of state statutes, the authors propose that articulation policies do not improve transfer rates because that is not their intended purpose; the main goal of articulation policies is to prevent the loss of credits when students transfer within state higher education systems. Subsequently, the authors use the National Education Longitudinal Study to evaluate articulation policies based on an alternative set of outcomes: attainment of a bachelor’s degree, time to degree, and credits required to complete a bachelor’s degree. They discuss the limitations of existing data and propose that future studies be designed to specifically evaluate the transfer or loss of credits applicable toward general education requirements.

The academic research-teaching nexus in eight advanced-industrialized countries

The purpose of this study is to examine the internationalcomplexities of the research-teaching nexus in higher educationalinstitutions. The Carnegie International Survey of the Academic Professionis employed to compare teaching and research activities in eight countries.These countries include the former West Germany, United Kingdom, Sweden, TheUnited States, Australia, Israel, Japan, and South Korea. Findings revealthat teaching and research are not mutually exclusive activities in thework/life of faculty. Research oriented faculty are more likely to viewtheir research commitments as being competitive with teaching. Research isfound to positively affect teaching, but attributes of teaching (e.g.,course load, student demand, etc.) negatively impact research. In addition,the paper finds academic orientation and the number of articles publishedduring the past three years to be the most important factors in determiningthe number of weekly hours spent on research and teaching activities.

The Context of Scientific Achievement: Sex Status, Organizational Environments, and the Timing of Publication on Scholarship Outcomes

Within the sociology of science, there exists a substantial literature showing that males, on average, publish more than females. This literature directs our attention toward organizational contexts and the timing of publication as promising factors bearing on cumulative scholarship outcomes. In this inquiry, based on 2,910 persons who received doctorates in sociology between 1972 and 1976, we isolate the importance of organizational context to explain the emergent and cumulative sex differences in publication outcomes. Our findings reveal that existing scholarship differences between males and females in this cohort occur within the first six years of the doctorate and continue throughout the career as a result of different employment patterns and publication trajectories. Notably, we find support for Robert Mertons contention that context structures the display of individual merit.

A longitudinal assessment of productivity in prominent sociology journals and departmental prestige

This paper tests the theory of cumulative advantage and disadvantage as it applies to the productivity and prestige of academic departments within sociology. The theory suggests that past perceptions of departmental prestige and cumulative records of faculty productivity are of greater significance than more recent levels of productivity in determining their perceived level of eminence within the discipline; a phenomenon due to the accumulation of past performance and recognition over time. The paper employs two widely disseminated measures of departmental eminence: the 1966 Cartter Report rankings and the 1982 Conference Boards assessments. Measures of departmental productivity are derived from cumulative publication histories of departments between 1936 and 1989 in three preeminent sociological journals; namely, theAmerican Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, andSocial Forces. The paper finds that while past accomplishments do not bear importantly on current perceptions of departmental prestige after controlling for the level of productivity maintained during the preceding decade, prior perceptions of prestige are strongly associated with current rankings. In addition, past perceptions of academic prestige are found to be highly stable, thereby creating the potential for a stratification hierarchy that allows for little mobility over time.

Organizational Contexts and University Performance Outcomes: The Limited Role of Purposive Action in the Management of Institutional Status

Institutional researchers and decision makers have long been interested in the management of university status. To this end, the present inquiry examines the stability of various university performance indicators representing size, student aptitude, faculty scholarship, graduate programs, and ratings. Although these various institutional attributes are associated with status, changes in their characteristics are not found to be associated with changes in status. Instead, institutional status is found to be quite stable over time, largely predicated on past status levels. These findings offer a forum within which to discuss university status for the purpose of managing institutional change.

Disciplinary Culture and Organizational Dissonance: The Regional Association in American Sociology

Abstract In this essay, I examine the contextual and historical relationship between the national and regional associations in American sociology. Four findings emerge from the analysis of this relationship. First, the regional associations underutilize the populations they represent. Second, the constituencies of the national and regional associations are diverging. Third, the regional associations appear no longer to serve as a viable pathway for involvement in the leadership of the national association. Fourth, the disciplinary visibility of the regional associations journals has declined, on average, since 1990. These four outcomes reflect a disciplinary drift toward internal differentiation, which can only be understood as a manifestation of the culture of American sociology. Specifically, the discipline is becoming increasingly incoherent as a result of the inaccurate perception it holds of itself as a science. This misperception, historically embedded within the disciplinary culture of American sociology, appears to guide the discipline toward an overemphasis on the production of research and the establishment of a governance structure that draws heavily on faculty from doctoral-granting departments. Accordingly, following from my analysis of the disciplines culture. I concude that sociology is better positioned as a profession than a science.

The Institutional Structure of Eminence: Alignment of Prestige among Intra-University Academic Departments

Abstract This study examines the reputational ratings of twenty disciplines using data from the 1982 Conference Board of Associated Research Councils to identify the extent to which such ratings can produce meaningful rankings of universities. Given that perceptions of departments and universities reflect social psychological images about the relative value of the program or school, such images can have powerful implications for hiring, recognition and the rewards process if they remain stable over time. The result is a mental construct that can have powerful implications for structure of stratification among higher educational institutions and the careers of those who pass through these universities. Seen from this perspective, eminence based on reputation is a property of the university. As such, departments within given universities should be quite consistent with regard to their respective ratings. Findings from this paper reveal the reputations of programs within universities are quite similar to eac...

Human Capital, Social Integration, and Tournaments: A Test of Graduate Student Success Models

A tournament model emphasizes variation in graduate department resources and environments and is compared to human capital models of graduate student success. Success is defined as participation of sociology students in professional activities and commitment to various professional aspirations. Data from a random survey of 25 sociology graduate programs provided student achievement indicators and department resource factors that are regressed on student success rates. Both the department resource factors and student background variables show substantial effects on success, and human capital factors are moderated by the opportunity structure of the graduate program itself. Women students have lower academic aspirations and racial/ethnic minority students participate in professional activities at lower rates, when student achievement factors are controlled. Academic and private-sector career goals and department resource effects on graduate student involvement are discussed.

Search Not for the Core in the Knowledge Frontier: A Reply to Schweingruber

Teaching Sociology, Vol. 33, 2005 (January:90-94) 90 IN HIS COMMENT on our paper, David Schweingruber argues that introductory textbooks do not adequately reflect the disciplinary core because the authors of such texts employ terms that extend beyond disciplinary boundaries. Moreover, he offers evidence purporting to show that the terms included in introductory texts do not appear frequently in the recently published articles of the discipline’s most prominent journals. But near the end of his commentary, he appears to cast aside both of these positions in favor of a belief that the core is to be found not in the concepts used in the discipline but in a particular way of thinking, one essentially defined by the indefinable. We are of one mind in reference to this last point but probably not in the way Schweingruber intended. Our contention has been consistent: the discipline fails to possess a core body of knowledge commonly recognized by all who study it that serves as the foundation upon which cumulative work will be based. In support of this conjecture we offer evidence drawn from our article (Keith and Ender 2004), which rests on an analysis of 35 introductory texts (16 published in the 1940s, 19 in the 1990s). Four findings of this work appear particularly noteworthy in light of the present discussion. The total number of concepts included only once (solitary concepts) did not decline between the 1940s and 1990s. The ratio of solitary-to-total concepts did not decline between the 1940s and 1990s. The ratio of solitary-to-core (commonly referenced) concepts did not decline between the 1940s and 1990s. The variability in the total number of concepts cited did not decline; both time intervals are characterized by a very low degree of consensus among concepts included in the texts.