Jennifer L. Glanville

How do We Learn to Trust? A Confirmatory Tetrad Analysis of the Sources of Generalized Trust:

In this paper we ask whether individuals decide that people are generally trustworthy or untrustworthy by extrapolating from their experiences in localized interactions or whether a more fixed predisposition drives assessments of trustworthiness. These two contrasting theoretical perspectives on generalized trust can be translated into empirically testable models and adjudicated using confirmatory tetrad analysis. This paper is among the first substantive applications of confirmatory tetrad analysis and illustrates an important advantage of this technique—the ability to distinguish between causal and reflective indicators of a latent variable. We find that individuals develop a generalized expectation of trustworthiness based on their experiences with different groups of people in localized settings. We demonstrate the robustness of our results across disparate samples and spatially dissimilar survey sites.

The Measurement of School Engagement Assessing Dimensionality and Measurement Invariance Across Race and Ethnicity

The purposes of this study were to (a) assess the measurement of school engagement in prior research that used the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88), (b) systematically develop an improved measurement model for school engagement, and (c) examine the measurement invariance of this model across racial and ethnic groups. Results from confirmatory factor analyses indicated that school engagement should be measured as a multidimensional concept. A higher order measurement model in which behavioral and psychological engagement are second-order latent variables that influence several subdimensions is consistent with the data. Results from a series of multiple group analyses indicated that the proposed measurement model exhibits measurement invariance for White, African American, Latino, and Asian students. Therefore, it is appropriate to compare the effects of the dimensions of engagement across these groups. The results demonstrate the advantages of confirmatory factor analysis for enhancing the understanding and measurement of school engagement.

Economic status proxies in studies of fertility in developing countries: Does the measure matter?

This paper investigates the consequences of using different economic status proxies on the estimated impact of economic status and other determinants of fertility. Using micro survey data from Ghana and Peru, we find that the proxies for income that best predict fertility are a principal components score of the ownership of consumer durable goods and a simple sum of ownership of these durable goods. Furthermore, the choice of the proxy generally has a minor influence on the predicted effects of the control variables. We compare the results from using a restricted set of proxies, such as those available in the Demographic and Health Surveys, with the results obtained using a lengthier set of proxies. Our results suggest implications beyond fertility analyses by providing researchers with an awareness of the sensitivity of microanalyses to the treatment of economic status. Our results also suggest practical recommendations for the collection of survey data.

Religious Involvement and Educational Outcomes: The Role of Social Capital and Extracurricular Participation

Previous research has observed that religious participation is positively related to a wide variety of adolescent outcomes, including academic achievement, but relatively little is known about why this is the case. We focus on a group of related potential explanations for why religious involvement improves educational outcomes. We examine whether religious participation enhances academic outcomes among teens by the way in which it shapes their social ties, or social capital, focusing on both intergenerational relationships and on relationships with peers. We also examine the potential intervening role of extracurricular participation. Using structural equation models to analyze data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), we examine the potential role of social capital and extracurricular participation in mediating the relationship between religious participation and academic achievement, dropping out of high school, and attachment to school. We find that religious attendance promotes higher intergenerational closure, friendship networks with higher educational resources and norms, and extracurricular participation. These intervening variables account for a small part of the influence of adolescent religious participation on the educational outcomes in this study.

Women's participation in the labor force: the role of social networks

Network research about employment outcomes has rarely focused on women. In this paper, we use the Los . Angeles Survey of Urban Inequality LASUI to examine the role of social networks on the constraints and opportunities which women face in labor force participation. We examine the effects of a womans general network structure on her employment status, rather than focusing on the characteristics of the specific network tie that connected her to a job. Using an innovative, yet simple, measure to capture network diversity, we test network explanations of why women are in the paid labor force, controlling for background, structural, and family composition variables. In general, we find that the greater the quality and diversity of the social resources that are available through a womans social network, the more likely she is to be working for pay. We also find evidence that suggests disadvantaged women with children must also rely on their social support networks for childcare to enter the labor market. In addition, we explore the connection between the methods successful job searchers used to find work and the overall structure of their networks through descriptive statistics. q 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Socio-economic status, permanent income, and fertility: A latent-variable approach

This paper examines how permanent income and other components of socio-economic status (SES) are related to fertility in less developed countries. Because permanent income cannot be measured directly, we employ a latent-variable method. We compare our results with those of the more common proxy-variable method and investigate the consequences of not accounting for measurement error. Using data from Ghana and Peru, we find that permanent income has a large, negative influence on fertility and that research must take the latent nature of permanent income into account to uncover its influence. Controlling for measurement error in the proxies for permanent income can also lead to substantial changes in the estimated effects of control variables. Finally, we examine which of the common proxies for permanent income most closely capture the concept. The results have implications beyond this specific dependent variable, providing evidence on the sensitivity of microanalyses to the treatment of long-term economic status.

A Typology for Understanding the Connections Among Different Forms of Social Capital

Critics have argued that the term social capital is too vague or general to be a useful concept. Recognizing the need for clarification, the authors distill the conceptual discussions about social capital to argue that there are three components_network structure, trust and reciprocity, and resources_that are associated with but vary in degree and salience for all forms of social capital. These three components should be considered continua along which the forms of social capital can vary. A fourth continuum is between micro and macro levels of social capital. Locating particular examples of social capital along these continua opens the possibility to compare different types of social capital and to develop and test theories about how they are related to each other. The authors also describe a simulation study to illustrate how simulation can facilitate understanding of the linkages among different forms of social capital.

Voluntary Associations and Social Network Structure: Why Organizational Location and Type Are Important

Are voluntary associations integrative forces in our society because they promote diverse social ties, or do they primarily promote ties between socially similar people? The answer depends on the location and type of the organization. Neighborhood organizations reinforce network density and homogeneity, whereas more distant organizations enhance network diversity. In contrast to instrumental organizations, expressive organizations increase network density and homogeneity. When organizational location and type are taken into account, the influence of membership on network diversity does not vary by gender. Neighborhood racial composition does not moderate the relationship between membership in neighborhood organizations and network racial diversity.

Is Trust Rigid or Malleable? A Laboratory Experiment

An important debate within the trust literature is whether trust is modified by social experiences or resistant to change despite changing social circumstances. We address this debate by designing and implementing an experiment that exposes participants to a high or low trust environment and compares their change in generalized trust. We find that the experimental condition influences change in generalized trust, particularly for participants whose prior level of trust was mismatched with their experimental condition. The implications of these results for theories on the sources of trust are discussed.

Social Capital and Generosity: A Multilevel Analysis

Although much is known about the individual-level predictors of volunteering, charitable giving, and informal helping, less is known about how the characteristics of communities shape generosity. In this article, we assess the predicted effects of both individual- and contextual-level social capital (social networks and generalized trust) on three forms of generous behavior using the European Social Survey, which provides complete data on over 30,000 respondents in 160 regions in 19 countries. The results suggest that regional-level trust is associated with more volunteering and donating to charities. In addition, regional-level social capital (the combination of trust and social ties) predicts greater volunteering. The relationship between contextual-level social capital and informal helping is weaker.