Kyle C. Longest

Gender, the Stress Process, and Health A Configurational Approach

Numerous studies have shown that men and women react to experiences of stressors and a lack of protective resources in different ways, with women exhibiting high levels of internalizing health outcomes (e.g., psychological distress and ill health) and men showing higher levels of externalizing outcomes (e.g., substance abuse and aggression). Although this research is valuable, the emphasis on differing outcomes by gender has prematurely shifted the focus away from the processes leading to similar health outcomes across genders. The current study uses a novel analytic approach, Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), to examine and compare the key pathways that lead to poor physical and mental health among men and women. Analysis of data from a panel study of Indianapolis residents (N = 532) indicates that a combination of numerous stressors with low resources consistently leads to poor mental and physical health. The specific configurations of factors that are sufficient to produce these outcomes, however, differ across men and women, with men requiring a full onslaught of stressors and a dearth of resources to experience high psychological distress or ill health and women experiencing such poor outcomes as the result of several, relatively limited combinations of these factors.

Can You Lend Me a Hand? Task-Role Alignment of Social Support for Aspiring Business Owners

Previous research has emphasized the positive impact of supportive informal relations on workers in various occupational settings. Such support seems particularly important for workers who aspire to be self-employed, running their own businesses. Existing theory, however, offers little guidance regarding the mechanisms through which these supportive relationships operate. We argue that social support and role expectation theories address this conundrum. Our framework highlights the differences between instrumental and informational support types, the requirements involved in delivering such support, and the benefits of aligning role expectations with the type of support requested. Analyzing a representative sample of people attempting to create their own businesses in the United States, we find evidence consistent with our predictions: social support’s effect on people’s persistence depends on alignment between the tasks performed and the roles of support providers. To the extent that the support is task-role aligned, aspiring business owners receive the greatest benefits from high-commitment service and labor assistance provided by family and low-commitment informational assistance from friends but also suffer the most when such support is misaligned. These findings cast doubt on the prevailing assumption in the broader social support literature: that having more support always leads to better outcomes.

Assessing the Writing Process Do Writing-Intensive First-Year Seminars Change How Students Write?

Sociologists and scholars of composition have long argued that in order to get students to improve the quality of what they write, they need to change how they write. Here, the authors assess whether students’ participation in writing-intensive first-year seminars leads to changes in their writing process. Data collected via pretest and posttest interviews of 34 students show that writing-intensive seminars help first-year students become better planners and revisers yet have little effect on the ways that they prewrite and draft. Additionally, students in their first semester of college demonstrate higher order writing processes at the beginning of their seminar than their second-semester counterparts and show more improvement over the course of the semester as well. We analyze the conditions that foster these patterns and suggest that increasing quantitative course requirements (i.e., page counts) may hamper students’ ability to adopt qualitatively better writing strategies.

Moral Communities and Sex: The Religious Influence on Young Adult Sexual Behavior and Regret

Research indicates that religiosity inhibits adolescent and young adult sexual behavior, but few studies examine how religious contexts may shape sexual behavior. When religious contexts are considered, studies rarely test multiple spheres of religious influence simultaneously. Moreover, little research examines how either individual religiosity or religious contexts shape emotional responses to sex. We analyze nationally representative, longitudinal data that allow for concurrent examination of multiple religious contexts and several measures of young adult sexual behaviors and sexual regret. The influence of religiosity on sexual behavior and regret varies within and across both the spheres and outcomes tested. Individual religious salience and close ties with parents are the most consistent deterrents to initiation of sexual intercourse and having numerous intercourse partners. Closeness to parents and participation in religious activities are associated with lower odds of sexual regret, but ties to adults in one’s religious congregation are associated with increased sexual regret.

Identity: The Necessity of a Modern IdeaIdentity: The Necessity of a Modern Idea, by IzenbergGerald. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. 552 pp.

and legal standing due to their ‘‘foreigner’’ status. Similarly, the children who were sent to their mothers’ countries—Thailand and Vietnam—after their parents’ split faced exclusionary treatment as ethnic minorities. Despite discrimination and daily mistreatment, their mothers or other guardians are reluctant to give up the children’s Japanese or Korean citizenship—membership in countries perceived to be more advanced— hoping for a chance that the children would go back and have full access to social and economic opportunities as citizens, which seem a distant dream. Essentially, migrants’ legal, social, and cultural rights become vulnerable in the territory where they are not citizens, especially for migrants with severely curtailed economic power. To maximize their chances in life, therefore, immigrants and their descendants attempt to assimilate into the mainstream society, like Eurasian Sarawakians who identify themselves as Malays. While Marriage Migration in Asia offers a variety of case studies, some analysis was uneven and limited. Acknowledging previous works’ incorporation of women’s agency and critical engagement with citizenship questions, Ishii states that ‘‘these households [with marriage migrants] and their children become transgressive forces that challenge the boundaries and sovereignty of nationstates and their notions of what constitutes citizenship’’ (p. 14). However, this claim of ‘‘transgressive forces’’ is only loosely sutured with the emphasis on ‘‘multi-marginalization,’’ when migrants are portrayed in less nuanced ways as hopeless victims. This could have been avoided if Marriage Migration in Asia had engaged critical theoretical and analytic discourses that have enriched the field of marriage migration studies in the last decade and more. Identity: The Necessity of a Modern Idea, by Gerald Izenberg. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. 552 pp.

59.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780812248081.

59.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780812248081.

Living Through the Hoop: High School Basketball, Race, and the American Dream By Reuben A. Buford May NYU Press, 2007. 243 pages.

electrical and internet grids, which are, Perrow argues, sitting ducks. I can only agree. But having agreed, I have to ask myself were the ports, the electric grid, or the internet conceived with the perils that now arguably warrant being thought of as the “next catastrophe” in mind? Obviously not. For a very long time, centralization was regarded as the epitome of rational organization and efficiency. Vulnerability to breakdown of systems, much less terrorism, was not an issue. For all the merits of The Next Catastrophe, it is disappointing that Perrow does not engage with Ulrich Beck’s theorizing about the “risk society” and the critical commentary to which Beck’s work has given rise. Having created an infrastructure premised on the false assumption of having engineered away natural disasters and unmindful of the political and economic vulnerabilities we have exposed ourselves to, Perrow is right to offer his chastening appraisal. He concludes with THE question: “What is to be Done?” His answer is not comforting. In a word, we are likely to continue making the same poor choices. We will rebuild New Orleans, sort of, as if we must dare nature to hit us yet again. This is a sobering book. If enough people hear Perrow’s message, the future might be ever so slightly less catastrophic.