Lisa D. Pearce

Intergenerational Religious Dynamics and Adolescent Delinquency

Integrating theories about religious influence, religious homogamy, and delinquency, this study examines religions potential for both reducing and facilitating adolescent delinquency. Analyses of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health show that the more religious mothers and their adolescent children are, the less often the children are delinquent; however, the effect of ones religiosity depends on the other. When either a mother or child is very religious and the other is not, the childs delinquency increases. Thus, religion can be cohesive when shared among family members, but when unshared, higher adolescent delinquency results. These findings shed light on how family religious dynamics shape well-beingand more generally emphasize that the influence of religiosity depends on the social context in which it is experienced.

Integrating Survey and Ethnographic Methods For Systematic Anomalous Case Analysis

This paper describes how the salience of research findings can be enhanced by combining survey and ethnographic methods to draw insights from anomalous cases. Using examples from a research project examining the influence of religion on childbearing preferences in Nepal, the author illustrates how survey data can facilitate the selection of ethnographic informants and how semistructured interviews with these deviant cases leads to improved theory, measures, and methods. A systematic sample of 28 informants, whose family size preferences were much larger than a multivariate regression model predicted, were selected from the survey respondent pool for observation and in-depth interviews. The intent was to explore relationships between religion and fertility preferences that may not have been captured in the initial multivariate survey data analyses. Following intensive fieldwork, the author revised theories about religions influence, coded new measures from the existing survey data, and added these to survey models to improve statistical fit. This paper discusses the authors research methods, data analyses, and resulting insights for subsequent research, including suggestions for other applications of systematic analyses of anomalous cases using survey and ethnographic methods in tandem.

Mixed Methods Inquiry in Sociology

Sociology is a discipline in which the idea of a multi-method research design has held credence for many years, far before the term mixed methods research was coined. This article charts the implementation and framing of this approach over time to better understand the place and state of mixed methods research in the discipline today. Several recent applications of mixed method research by sociologists are highlighted to demonstrate the range of projects being conducted. There are challenges to further development of mixed methods inquiry within Sociology; however, the current epistemological base of the approach—pragmatism—promotes the merits of a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches and the discipline is better for it.

The Dynamics and Correlates of Religious Service Attendance in Adolescence

This study examines changes in religious service attendance over time for a contemporary cohort of adolescents moving from middle to late adolescence. We use two waves of a nationally representative panel survey of youth from the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR) to examine the dynamics of religious involvement during adolescence. We then follow with an analysis of how demographic characteristics, family background, and life course transitions relate to changes in religious service attendance during adolescence. Our findings suggest that, on average, adolescent religious service attendance declines over time, related to major life course transitions such as becoming employed, leaving home, and initiating sexual activity. Parents’ affiliation and attendance, on the other hand, are protective factors against decreasing attendance.

The Four U's: Latent Classes of Hookup Motivations Among College Students.

College students’ “hookups” have been the subject of a great deal of research in recent years. Motivations for hooking up have been linked to differences in well-being after the hookup, but studies detailing college students’ motivations for engaging in hookups focus on single motivations. Using data from the 2010 Duke Hookup Survey, we consider how motivations for hooking up cluster to produce different classes, or profiles, of students who hook up, and how these classes are related to hookup regret. Four distinct classes of motivations emerged from our latent class analysis: Utilitarians (50 percent), Uninhibiteds (27 percent), Uninspireds (19 percent), and Unreflectives (4 percent). We find a number of differences in hookup motivation classes across social characteristics, including gender, year in school, race-ethnicity, self-esteem, and attitudes about sexual behavior outside committed relationships. In addition, Uninspireds regret hookups more frequently than members of the other classes, and Uninhibiteds report regret less frequently than Utilitarians and Uninspireds. These findings reveal the complexity of motivations for hooking up and the link between motivations and regret.

“I Feel Like More of a Man”: A Mixed Methods Study of Masculinity, Sexual Performance, and Circumcision for HIV Prevention

Ethnographic studies from numerous societies have documented the central role of male circumcision in conferring masculinity and preparing boys for adult male sexuality. Despite this link between masculinity, sexuality, and circumcision, there has been little research on these dynamics among men who have been circumcised for HIV prevention. We employed a mixed methods approach with data collected from recently circumcised men in the Dominican Republic (DR) to explore this link. We analyzed survey data collected six to 12 months post-circumcision (N = 293) as well as in-depth interviews conducted with a subsample of those men (n = 30). We found that 42% of men felt more masculine post-circumcision. In multivariate analysis, feeling more masculine was associated with greater concern about being perceived as masculine (OR = 1.70, 95% CI: 1.25–2.32), feeling more potent erections post-circumcision (OR = 2.25, 95% CI: 1.26–4.03), and reporting increased ability to satisfy their partners post-circumcision (OR = 2.30, 95% CI: 1.11–4.77). In qualitative interviews, these factors were all related to masculine norms of sexually satisfying one’s partner, and men’s experiences of circumcision were shaped by social norms of masculinity. This study highlights that circumcision is not simply a biomedical intervention and that circumcision programs need to incorporate considerations of masculine norms and male sexuality into their programming.

Mixed Method Data Collection Strategies: Motivations for Mixed Method Social Research

High-quality data collection is fundamental to the advancement of knowledge in the social sciences. Yet, advances in techniques for data analysis in the past half-century have far outpaced advances in data collection methods. This is likely to change in the coming decades, as new technologies and strategies bring the social sciences to the brink of a revolution in data collection methods. Some of the seeds of that revolution lay in mixed method data collection approaches. This book is devoted to recent innovations in mixed method strategies for collecting social science data The three main goals of this book are: (1) to demonstrate that by combining multiple methods it is possible to elicit important new insights into the causes and consequences of beliefs and behavior; (2) to provide concrete, operational examples of mixed method data collection techniques so that those interested in using these methods have a clear starting point; and (3) to highlight state-of-the-art developments in these data collection strategies, identifying a set of common principles that underlie them with the aim of stimulating continued methodological innovation in this area. Mixed method data collection strategies are those that are explicitly designed to combine elements of one method, such as structured survey interviews, with elements of other methods, such as unstructured interviews, observations, or focus groups in either a sequential or a simultaneous manner (Axinn, Fricke, and Thornton 1991; Edin 1999; Fricke 1997; Kertzer 1997; Kertzer and Fricke 1997; Pearce 2002; Sieber 1973).

Measuring Five Dimensions of Religiosity Across Adolescence

This paper theorizes and tests a latent variable model of adolescent religiosity in which five dimensions of religiosity are interrelated: religious beliefs, religious exclusivity, external practice, private practice, and religious salience. Research often theorizes overlapping and independent influences of single items or dimensions of religiosity on outcomes such as adolescent sexual behavior, but rarely operationalizes the dimensions in a measurement model accounting for their associations with each other and across time. We use longitudinal structural equation modeling with latent variables to analyze data from two waves of the National Study of Youth and Religion. We test our hypothesized measurement model as compared to four alternate measurement models and find that our proposed model maintains superior fit. We then discuss the associations between the five dimensions of religiosity we measure and how these change over time. Our findings suggest how future research might better operationalize multiple dimensions of religiosity in studies of the influence of religion in adolescence.

How Early Life Religious Exposure Relates to the Timing of First Birth

This paper examines intermediary processes explaining how religious socialization and involvement early in life are related to the timing of first births for women in the United States. The theory of conjunctural action forms the basis for hypotheses for how religious schema and materials operate to influence birth timing. Using the NLSY79 data and event history methods, the study finds evidence for expected family size, work-family gender ideology, educational attainment and enrollment, cohabitation, and age at marriage as mediators of associations between early life religious exposure (affiliation and attendance) and the timing of nonmaritally and maritally conceived first births. These findings corroborate other research identifying the long reach of religious socialization and involvement in youth, elucidate some of the pathways for these connections, and motivate further work to understand linkages between religion and family behaviors in the United States.

Postmarital Living Arrangements in Historically Patrilocal Settings: Integrating Household Fission and Migration Perspectives

This study integrates theory and research on household fission (or partition) and migration to better understand living arrangements following marriage, especially in historically patrilocal and primarily agricultural settings. Using panel data from the Chitwan Valley Family Study to analyze the sequential decision-making process that influences men’s living arrangements subsequent to first marriage, we demonstrate the importance of distinguishing among extended family living, temporary migration, and the establishment of an independent household. We find that community economic characteristics, such as access to markets or employment, as well as household wealth affect the initial decision to leave the natal home. Household resources and use of farmland, along with the young men’s own education, media exposure, travel, and marital behavior, influence the decision to make the departure from the natal home permanent. Our findings explain why previous results regarding household fission and those focused on migration have provided such mixed results, and we establish a new framework for thinking about how families and individuals manage living situations.