soc150 studies

Doering et al 2023: was it me or was it gender discrimination?

RQ: How do women respond to ambiguous incidents at work?

C: Discrimination involves treating people differently based on group affiliation rather than individual merit. Ambiguous incidents are defined as ranging from micro aggressions to rare but serious events, are classified on a scale of more to less ambiguous, and the motives behind which are difficult to discern.

M: mixed methods. First, semi structured interviews with 31 women to analyze and make meaning of ambiguous incidents. Second, based on interview findings and existing theory, they designed a survey for 600 women to evaluate whether they experienced AIs. Third, they used interviews to design vignette experiments to compare behaviours after AIs.

F: AIs are salient and common for professional women. Interviews showed that ambiguous incidents range from micro aggressions to significant career events. They responded differently to negative treatment that they perceived as less ambiguous. The survey confirmed the results, that respondents experienced more ambiguous incidents than incidents classified as obvious discrimination. Vignette experiments showed that women anticipate responding differently to the same situation when it is more or less ambiguous, when it is obvious they will make others aware of the problem ie. HR rep, whereas ambiguous incidents led them to change their own work habits and self presentation without making others aware of the problem, ie. working harder, drawing attention to their accomplishments, and communicating more formally.

Silver, Dantzler, and Hope 2023: Residential Preferences, Place alienation, and neighbourhood satisfaction: A conjoint survey experiment in Toronto’s inner suburbs

RQ: 1. What attributes cause a neighbourhood to be more or less desirable? 2. What factors predict an individual’s degree of place alienation? 3. To what extent does place alienation explain an individual’s satisfaction with their neighbourhood?

C: neighbourhood preferences, satisfaction, place alienation which identifies the distance between the local profile of ideal neighbourhood preferences and an individual’s perception of their own neighbourhood, and social desirability bias in regular surveys, alleviated by conjoint experiments.

M: Assessing community, typical ways of travel, safety, housing type, culture/background of residents, school quality, housing costs, one way commutes to work or school, and nearby services and resources, they used a door to door random survey fielded in seven inner suburban neighbourhoods. the survey covered questions about neighbourhood priorities and perceptions, policy preferences, attitudes toward institutions, and demographic characteristics. The conjoint survey experiment was performed by each respondent 6 times yielding 4100 observations. Attributes were randomized between respondents, each individual saw attributes in the same order across all 6 tasks.

F: Residents in all SES neighbourhoods share many of the same priorities, a safe place without long commutes or low quality schools, where neighbours help each other out, with parks and green space, and is not dominated by apartments or high rises. Lower SES communities were less likely to prefer neighbourhoods with lots of cycling, higher SES had stronger preferences for a neighbourhood with shops, restaurants, and culture/recreation facilities. Upper SES also felt more strongly about neighbourhoods where people help each other out. Income was associated with lower levels of place alienation, but no other SES variables show a consistent connection. Place alienation does not reliably differ by neighbourhood SES, housing type, or length of residence. A strong and consistent relationship between place alienation and neighbourhood satisfaction exists.

Correll et al 2007: Is there a motherhood penalty?

RQ: Does parental status in women cause discrimination in the hiring process?

C: The only manipulated variable was parental status. Status characteristic theory: defines a status characteristic as a categorical distinction among people such as a personal attribute (gender) or a role (motherhood) that has widely held beliefs attached to it in the culture that associate greater status worthiness and competence with one category of the distinction. status is a position in a set of things that are rank ordered by a standard of value. Performance expectations are the expectations that group members form for their own and others performance on tasks.

M: Lab experiment: study participants (paid undergraduate volunteers) went into the lab individually, read a description of a company hiring for a marketing position, and examined application materials for two applications who differed in parental status but nothing else. 4 conditions: participants always rate one parent and one non parent. Black men, black women, white men, white women. Parental status was operationalized by indicating “parent teacher association coordinator” or other relevant activities under their qualifications. Afterward, they did a survey that measured the dependent variables for each applicant: competence, commitment, ability, and evaluation. Then they performed an audit study where they tested for hiring discrimination among actual employers by sending pairs of applications in for real mid level marketing jobs, with the parent or non parent alternating in applying first.

F: Mothers were rated as less competent and less committed than non mothers. Mothers were held to harsher performance standards, and they were recommended lower starting salaries. There was no fatherhood penalty, but there was a fatherhood premium in some cases. They were allowed to be late more than non fathers, and offered higher salaries. In the audit, mothers received callbacks about half as much as non mothers. Fathers were not benefitted nor disadvantaged in the audit.

Schieman et al 2023: A forced vacation? the stress of being temporarily laid off during a pandemic

RQ: How did the pandemic induced shock of being temporarily laid off affect workers’ mental health?

C: Stress processing model predicts that when a disruptive event occurs, individuals often struggle to re establish homeostasis. Forced vacation hypothesis: argues that those who became TLO might report lower distress relative to those who continued working. Lower levels of mastery, higher levels of stress due to financial strain and internal attribution.

M: Mixed methods, national longitudinal survey dataset and in depth interviews. The survey used data from the Canadian Quality of Work and Economic Life study (C-QWELS) and administered two surveys from September 2019 to May 2020. They measured psychological distress, being TLO, financial strain, the sense of mastery, and sociodemographic and work characteristics. Random samples were used from a large national panel, and proportionate stratified sampling was used to create a representative sample. In depth interviews were used to triangulate the quantitative results from the April and May survey responses.

F: Those who were TLO in April 2020 reported lower distress relative to their employed peers. Not lower financial strain, not strained associated with mastery, lower levels of distress.Wheaton’s context hypothesis helps explain why the layoffs felt more like a short term breather than a job disruption stressor. But May 2020 did result in significant financial strain and lower levels of mastery. However, levels of distress had now evened out to the SAME between those who were TLO and those who weren’t. The honeymoon phase wore off. The qualitative portrait from the in depth interviews conducted from 47 respondents of the C-QWELS survey revealed that people who were TLO felt that it was like taking a break, relaxing, and a vacation. There was a level of relief. This was due to the layoffs being temporary due to an expectation to return to work, exemptions from work related stress, self care and family time, reduced internal attribution, and alleviated financial strain by government and employer support.

Ye and Fletcher 2022: Immigrant Status and the social returns to academic achievement in adolescence

RQ: 1. Do immigrant students receive differential social returns to their academic achievement than do their white counterparts from native born families? 2. Does the same pattern hold for immigrant students across racial/ethnic backgrounds?

C: Segmented assimilation theory stresses that immigrant minority students’ experience is stratified by ethnicity and by contexts of the receiving community, in that Black and Hispanic immigrant students may experience negative social returns to achievement due to their perceived racial identity. Oppositional culture theory speculates that native born Black and American Indian students can be mocked for “acting white” if they do well in school. Social returns: the social benefits/disadvantages gained from their academic achievement. The model minority myth and the Asian success frame are two frameworks that hypothesize that high achieving Asian students may experience strong social discrimination (MMM), and that the frame of success under which Asians grow up can serve as a strength to boost children’s confidence in their academic abilities and make up for some immigrant families lack of socioeconomic resources and social capital.

M: Analysis of nationally representative data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Adult Health (Add Health), only containing information on friendship networks. the in school questionnaire and friendship nominations from wave 1 of the 1994-95 school year were used. 58,000 students are the final analytic sample. Followed with wave II in home questionnaire to buffer for reverse causality. Outcome variables are receiving any friendship nominations and the number of friendship nominations received. Academic achievement is operationalized through GPA. Immigrant status and race/ethnicity are constructed from self reports and the status of their parents.

F: Nativity and popularity: Immigrant students have similar levels of school achievement as their non immigrant counterparts, but are less popular. They are just as likely to receive at least one friendship nom as their white counterparts, but tend to receive fewer on average. Foreign born students are less likely than non immigrants to receive any friendship nominations. They do not have a social disadvantage relative to native born whites, but they do have lower popularity.

Nativity and academic achievement: the social return to academic achievement is positive among non Hispanic white students from native born families. each increase in GPA is associated with 16% increase in the odds of receiving any friendship nominations. Contrary to the oppositional culture theory, increases in GPA do lead to higher popularity among peers for Black and American Indian students. Consistent with OCT, increases in GPA do not lead to lower popularity among peers of immigrants.

Ethnic differences in the social return to achievement within immigrants: the immigrant penalty in the social return to GPA is somewhat consistent across Black and Hispanic groups, although some lack significance. The variation between Asian students was large, so the MMM is not applicable. The relationship between achievement and popularity is stratified by race/ethnicity within immigrants, with Black and Hispanic students being more disadvantaged overall. They find that an immigrant and racial penalty in the social return to achievement, for white students, educational achievement comes hand in hand with popularity. For immigrant students of colour, educational achievement does very little to boost popularity.