Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Age Group Labels And Categories Of Preschool Children, Carolyn P. Edwards

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

Questions of how young children use “age” groups to understand the social world led to 2 studies exploring the content of preschool children’s age group labels and categories. Study 1 included 32 children aged 2-4 years and determined spontaneous labels for both photographs and dolls representing the life span. Results indicated that children readily labeled all ages using a relatively limited set of terms, but showed less patterned labeling of stimuli representing adults than children. Girls’ labels were more structured than boys’. Older preschoolers showed more differentiated structures than did younger ones and used more kinship terms as labels. Study …

Exploring Visual Sociology And The Sociology Of The Visual Arts: Introduction And Selected Bibliography, Michael R. Hill

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Visual studies in the social sciences have recently begun to enjoy increased popularity. Like the interdisciplinary excitement which earlier linked. the behavioral and social sciences to problems in environmental design, this event points to yet greater potential for collaboration between the social sciences, on the one hand, and the design disciplines, on the other. Whereas the interdisciplinary environmental design movement tended to focus specifically on the relationship between humans and the built urban environment (although some landscape architects properly extended their investigations to rural and natural environments), the intersection of visual sociology and the sociology of the visual arts encompasses …

Selected References On Walking, Crossing Streets, And Choosing Pedestrian Routes, Michael R. Hill

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Studies on the behavior and experiences of pedestrians have continued unabated since the first major bibliography on the subject, was compiled by Dietrich Garbrecht (1971a). Numerous additions were noted in a supplement by this author (Hill, 1976a). The present bibliography summarizes and updates these earlier works. Further, it includes several related references from the environmental design research literature which significantly illuminate the general problem of understanding the pedestrian environment. References on route choice by automobile drivers have specifically been included to encourage comparisons between vehicular and pedestrian transportation modes.

This bibliography is presented without annotations. However, those seeking a summary …

Stalking The Urban Pedestrian: A Comparison Of Questionnaire And Tracking Methodologies For Behavioral Mapping In Large-Scale Environments, Michael R. Hill

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Behavioral mapping in unrestricted, outdoor environments raises methodological challenges which have led several environmental behavior researchers to employ questionnaires rather than behavioral observation as the usual method of data collection. This study provides an empirically-grounded comparison of both techniques for recovering data on routes selected by pedestrians as they engage in unrestricted travel from place to place in an urban environment. Mid-trip interception tracking provides expensive but accurate data on partial trips whereas questionnaires provide more easily obtainable data on complete trips but with a lesser degree of accuracy. The reduced level of accuracy for questionnaire data is mild, however, …

Walking, Crossing Streets And Choosing Pedestrian Routes: A Survey Of Recent Insights From The Social/Behavioral Sciences, Michael R. Hill

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Walking at first appears to be a relatively simple, mundane behavior that should pose no great puzzle for the diligent researcher in the social and behavioral sciences. The review presented here of recent studies, however, demonstrates that the behavior and experiences of ordinary pedestrians are filled with opportunities for empirical investigation and intricate theory building. But, why bring these studies together for synthesis in this volume? I suggest here that there are, in fact, several reasons that argue in favor of a timely focus on the apparently simple behavior of the pedestrian.

First, the deceptive simplicity of the pedestrian experience …

Epistemology, Axiology, And Ideology In Sociology, Michael R. Hill

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

This paper (a) presents a systems framework for conceptualizing epistemological issues in sociology, (b) links this framework to axiological responsibilities, and then (c) locates both the epistemological and axiological discussions within the patriarchal ideology and hierarchical power structure of American sociology. I t is argued that adopting an activist, emancipatory ideological position obligates social scientists to critically review their axiological commitments and epistemological premises. Major arguments are set in italics to permit a quick scan of the paper. These arguments form an epistemological position paper for the closing of the Twentieth Century.