Jack K. Martin

The Construction of Fear: Americans' Preferences for Social Distance from Children and Adolescents with Mental Health Problems.

Debates about childrens mental health problems have raised questions about the reliability and validity of diagnosis and treatment. However, little research has focused on social reactions to children with mental health problems. This gap in research raises questions about competing theories of stigma, as well as specific factors shaping prejudice and discrimination toward those children. Here, we organize a general model of stigma that synthesizes previous research. We apply a reduced version of this model to data from a nationally representative sample responding to vignettes depicting several stigmatizing scenarios, including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), depression, asthma, or “normal troubles.” Results from the National Stigma Study—Children suggest a gradient of rejection from highest to lowest, as follows: ADHD, depression, “normal troubles,” and physical illness. Stigmatizing reactions are highest toward adolescents. Importantly, respondents who label the vignette childs situation as a mental illness compared to those who label the problem as a physical illness or a “normal” situation report greater preferences for social distance, a pattern that appears to result from perceptions that the child is dangerous.

Downsizing Survival: The Experience of Work and Organizational Commitment

Although downsizing has become a common feature of American workplaces, the existing literature has focused on the effects of how downsizing is conducted, rather than considering how downsizing affects the experience of work for downsizing survivors. Using data from the 1997 National Employee Survey and structural modeling techniques, this study compares downsizing survivors and workers unaffected by downsizing on a variety of sociodemographic indicators, job characteristics, and organizational environment measures in order to explain the lower levels of organizational commitment among survivors. The model in which downsizing survival was directly and indirectly associated with commitment was generally supported. Survivors reported less commitment than unaffected workers. In addition, downsizing survival was positively associated with job-related stress and negatively associated with perceived organizational support, which translated into survivors’ lower levels of commitment. This research suggests that organizations that downsize should consider ways to redesign work processes so as to reduce job-related stress and should engage in organizational practices that demonstrate organizational support for surviving employees.

Under the influence of genetics: how transdisciplinarity leads us to rethink social pathways to illness

This article describes both sociological and genetic theories of illness causation and derives propositions expected under each and under a transdisciplinary theoretical frame. The authors draw propositions from three theories—fundamental causes, social stress processes, and social safety net theories—and tailor hypotheses to the case of alcohol dependence. Analyses of a later wave of the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism reveal a complex interplay of the GABRA2 gene with social structural factors to produce cases meeting DSM/ICD diagnoses. Only modest evidence suggests that genetic influence works through social conditions and experiences. Further, women are largely unaffected in their risk for alcohol dependence by allele status at this candidate gene; family support attenuates genetic influence; and childhood deprivation exacerbates genetic predispositions. These findings highlight the essential intradisciplinary tension in the role of proximal and distal influences in social processes and point to the promise of focusing directly on dynamic, networked sequences that produce different pathways to health and illness.

Cultural Authority and the Sovereignty of American Medicine: The Role of Networks, Class, and Community

According to Paul Starr, in The Social Transformation of American Medicine (1982), the cultural triumph of progressivism, coupled with institutional changes, established a system of authority based in the scientific profession of medicine rather than on any person who claimed to be a doctor or any type of healing based on other theories (e.g., homeopathy). This cultural authority “entails the construction of reality through definitions of fact and value” (13). While Starr rejected earlier notions that popular attitudes translated directly into status and power, he did see public beliefs and opinion as crucial to the growth of cultural authority and its conversion into the control of markets, organizations, and governmental policy (7). From this perspective, cultural authority engenders trust, compels obedience, and fosters legitimacy, thereby increasing public dependence on the profession of scientific medicine. Thus, the American public became willing to embrace and institutionalize the use of regular physicians despite the belief of many Americans that common sense was the best approach to health and healing. Social histories of scientific medicine’s rise to professional dominance often rely on this coupling of public sentiment and institutionalized sources of power. Not typically addressed, however, is whether such a

Methodological Considerations from a Kinsey Institute Mixed Methods Pilot Project

Abstract Despite the growth of mixed methods, little attention has focused on the specific challenges of conducting mixed methods research on sexual experience and perceptions of sexuality. This paper’s purpose is to discuss the exploratory sequential design of, and methodological considerations originally arising from, a mixed methods pilot project that explored the possibility of updating components of Alfred Kinsey’s mid-20th century research on US men and women. This pilot project consisted of three phases: (1) cognitive interviews, (2) two modalities of computer-based surveys conducted in two settings with two samples, and (3) debriefing interviews with selected survey participants from phase two coupled with ethnographic observations. We describe the phases, focusing on how multiple methods facilitated the design and assessment of our pilot project. We end by highlighting methodological considerations relevant to our mixed methods approach – phase timing, research environment, longitudinal design, data security and privacy, and cost – and their implications for sexuality researchers.