Sociology Commons^™

Pragmatism As A Basis For Grounded Theory, David L. Morgan

Sociology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Recently, there have been calls for renewed attention to the roots of Grounded Theory in pragmatism, and this article continues that effort at both the theoretical and the procedural level. From a theoretical perspective, it counters the claim that pragmatism is compatible with a relativist epistemology, as claimed by advocates of Constructivist Grounded Theory, and argues instead for a cyclical process of inquiry that moves from beliefs to actions to consequences. At the procedural level, the article demonstrates four concrete principles so that pragmatism: replaces induction with abduction; emphasizes the importance of prior beliefs as starting points; treats theoretical sampling …

Emociones, Semillas Nativas Y Cambio Climático: El Movimiento De Soberanía De Las Semillas En Chiapas, México, Carol Hernández Rodríguez, Hugo Perales Rivera, Daniel Jaffee

Sociology Faculty Publications and Presentations

¿Qué papel juegan las emociones en la definición de marcos interpretativos que permiten a las comunidades responder acertadamente a los retos impuestos por cambio climático? Este artículo explora empíricamente esta pregunta desde la perspectiva de pequeñas comunidades campesinas en la región central de Chiapas, México. Este estudio de caso muestra que los significados espirituales, culturales y materiales que las comunidades campesinas asignan a la milpa y sus semillas nativas, especialmente al maíz, convergen en un conjunto de emociones que permiten a sus miembros reconocer los riesgos de degradación ambiental y cambio climático y movilizarse políticamente en torno a la idea …

Qualitative Data Collection In An Era Of Social Distancing, Bojana Lobe, David L. Morgan, Kim A. Hoffman

Sociology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Qualitative researchers face unique opportunities and challenges as a result of the disruption of COVID-19. Although the pandemic represents a unique opportunity to study the crisis itself, social distancing mandates are restricting traditional face-to-face investigations of all kinds. In this article, we describe options and resources for researchers who find themselves needing to alter their study designs from face-to-face qualitative data collection to a “socially distant” method. Although technologies are constantly changing, we review the latest videoconferencing services available to researchers and provide guidance on what services might best suit a project’s needs. We describe options for various platforms and …

Counting Everyone Because Everyone Counts: The Value Of Census Data For Local Decision Making, Uma Krishnan

Metroscape

Once every ten years the US Census Bureau conducts the decennial United States census, and 2020 is the year. The census is a national effort to count everyone in the United States. Unfortunately, this year the COVID-19 pandemic has captured the nation’s attention even as the 2020 census struggles to claim relevance and broaden its reach. At the same time, census data has emerged as a critical tool for examining stark inequities in the demographics of who is contracting and dying of COVID-19. This year, counting everyone is more important than ever.

The Landscape: Making Oregon Count In 2020, Mac Cunningham

Metroscape

In our increasingly polarized national environment, the census remains one of the few tasks that all United States residents share in common. The results of the census will have implications for the decade to come.

Mandated by Article I of the United States Constitution, the census is the largest peacetime mobilization in the country. Conducted at the start of each new decade, the census is an effort by the government to count every resident in the United States at the location where each person usually lives. While this once-a-decade survey might seem labor intensive, the results of the census impact …

Indicators Of The Metroscape: Show Us The Money, Portland State University. Population Research Center

Metroscape

Chart showing census-based allocation for Medicare, Medicaid and other programs (2017), for each of the United States.

Iterative Thematic Inquiry: A New Method For Analyzing Qualitative Data, David L. Morgan, Andreea Alexandra Nica

Sociology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Because themes play such a central role in the presentation of qualitative research results, we propose a new method, Iterative Thematic Inquiry (ITI), that is guided by the development of themes. We begin by describing how ITI uses pragmatism as a theoretical basis for linking beliefs, in the form of preconceptions, to actions, in the form of data collection and analysis. Next, we present the four basic phases that ITI relies on: assessing beliefs; building new beliefs through encounters with data; listing tentative themes; and, evaluating themes through coding. We also review several notable differences between ITI and existing methods …

Assessing The Effectiveness Of Video-Based Interviewing: A Systematic Comparison Of Videoconferencing Based Dyadic Interviews And Focus Groups, Bojana Lobe, David L. Morgan

Sociology Faculty Publications and Presentations

The article introduces a systematic comparison of video-based dyadic interviews and focus groups using newly developed tools for evaluating the success of one way of doing focus groups over another. We conducted a series of online discussions using a video conferencing tool, half of which consisted of four-person focus groups and the other half were two person dyadic interviews. Moderators, who were well-trained master students of a course on digital technologies and data collection, answered systematic questions that compared their experiences with each type of group. All participants were contacted after their interviews to complete an online survey rating their …

Molecular Social Reality, The Cultural Helix & Sequencing Social Dna, Aidan Christopher Haughey

University Honors Theses

This thesis provides a theory for measuring Social Reality, along with a framework and model which apply that theory to measure presented social reality in media. The framework and model utilize the double helical structure of DNA to create a baseline unit of social reality that can be extracted from media to help measure and categorize social realities. An experiment is provided utilizing a custom built machine learning algorithm to demonstrate the practical application of the theory, framework, and model.

A Study Of The Impact Of Covid-19 On Home Delivery Purchases And Expenditures, Avinash Unnikrishnan, Miguel A. Figliozzi

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Lockdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have significantly affected shopping behavior. This study surveys people living in Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro Metropolitan area on household and demographic characteristics, e-commerce and home delivery service and product preferences, number of deliveries made before and during the COVID-19 lockdown, and household expenditures on home deliveries. Ordered choice models are developed to understand factors that affect the number of online deliveries made before COVID-19, and the number and household expenditures on online deliveries during the COVID-19 lockdown. Results indicate that higher-income households are more likely to make more online deliveries and spend more money on home deliveries …

Periodic Atlas Of The Metroscape: Counting Oregon, Mac Cunningham, Xi Wei, Randy Morris

Metroscape

Every United States census has challenges ensuring that every person responds and is counted. Individuals who are missed in the census count or “undercounted” for various reasons are often referred to as “hard-to-count” populations. Hard-to-count populations include rural residents, people of color, immigrants, people experiencing homelessness, children under age five, renters, and more.

For the 2010 census, the final mail return rate in Oregon was 76 percent. Census tracts with a mail return response rate of 76 percent or less are highlighted on the map on this page. Response rates closest to the state’s final response rate are light yellow, …

Comparing Diaries And Waste Compositional Analysis For Measuring Food Waste In The Home, Tom E. Quested, Griff Palmer, Laura Moreno, Christa Mcdermott, Kelsea A. Schumacher

Institute for Sustainable Solutions Publications and Presentations

Diaries have been used to obtain national and subnational estimates of household food waste (HHFW) in several countries. Furthermore, diaries have been proposed as a method for tracking progress towards goals that include HHFW reduction. However, multiple studies have suggested diaries substantially underestimate HHFW. This paper collates and analyses data from five studies in which diary estimates of HHFW can be directly compared to other, more accurate estimates from waste compositional analysis (WCA). This analysis finds that all diary estimates for HHFW were lower than the corresponding WCA estimates, with the degree of underestimation ranging from 7% to 40%. Four …

The Afghan Peace Talks, China, And The Afghan Elections, Grant M. Farr

Sociology Faculty Publications and Presentations

After more than a year of negotiations it appeared in the fall of 2019 that an agreement had been reached between the United States and the Afghan Taliban. Yet before the agreement could be formally signed, the United States backed away from the agreement citing the death of an American serviceman as a result of a Taliban bomb. The negotiations are now officially on hold, although Zalmay Khalilzad, the United States Special Representative, continues to talk to the Taliban through other channels. The failure, at least so far, of an agreement between the United States and Taliban has numerous consequences, …

Systems Isomorphisms In Stochastic Dynamic Systems, Rajesh Venkatachalapathy

Dissertations and Theses

The identification of isomorphisms between disparate systems is an important focus of systems science. Such isomorphisms have not only conceptual and pedagogical value to systems science, but they also provide pragmatic value to specific disciplines by suggesting new ways to model familiar phenomena and by serving as reference models that show how even simple models can generate complex behavior. Specifically, this dissertation looks at certain classes of stochastic dynamic systems (SDS) and shows that similar equations can model phenomena in sociology and psychology. In both disciplines, what is modeled by these SDS isomorphisms is a certain type of reliability, defined …

Middle East, North Africa, South Asia Initiative Report, Portland State University. Cultural Resource Centers, Wafaa Almaktari, Bo Koering, Kevin Thomas, Shanice Clark, Stacie Taniguchi, Cynthia Carmina Gómez

Cultural Resource Centers Reports and Resources

The Middle East, North Africa, South Asia (MENASA) Initiative was created to address a lack of resources and services to support the MENASA student population at Portland State University (PSU). Formed by a group of undergraduate and graduate MENASA students, and supported administratively by the Cultural Resource Centers, the MENASA Initiative is a student-centered effort with the goal of creating a MENASA Student Center to match the other five Cultural Resource Centers (La Casa Latina Student Center, the Multicultural Student Center, the Native American Student and Community Center, the Pacific Islander, Asian, and Asian American Student Center, and the Pan-African …

Support From Inside Out: Exploring Whether Various Social Supports Assist In Reducing Prison Rule Violations, Sarah Renee Lazzari

Dissertations and Theses

Scholars argue that prison rule violations are a way to assess whether individuals are engaging in prosocial behaviors. Individuals who engage in prosocial behaviors, during periods of incarceration, are less likely to engage in behaviors that result in official rule violations. Decreasing rule violations is one way to work towards a safer prison environment, while also preparing individuals for release. The current study uses cross-sectional data form the 2004 Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Facilities, in order to examine whether multiple types of prisons programs, which will be framed as various types of social supports, influence the frequency …

Psu Black Studies At Risk, Professor Says: Administration Called Out For Toxic Environment, Beverly Corbell, Ethan Johnson

Black Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This school year is the 50th anniversary of the formation of the Black Studies Department at Portland State University, a momentous occasion for celebrating the formation of a degree curriculum devoted to the history, culture and politics of black people, but the African-American director of the department doesn’t feel much like celebrating.

Ethan Johnson, who has headed the department for the past 15 years, says the university is failing to support the black studies curriculum and even more is failing to listen to the concerns of minority students and faculty at the school, a result that is disastrous to their …

Family, School, And Forms Of Capital, Sonja Taylor

Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation contains three separate but related papers, each with a different focus. In the three papers, I sought to gain a deeper understanding of how different forms of cultural and social capital appeared in the relationship between families and schools. The first paper covers an interview study exploring how teachers in elementary school understood and used email to facilitate partnership with parents, a form of social capital that has the potential to benefit families from all class backgrounds. The second paper investigates the relationship between socioeconomic status, bonding social capital and cultural capital; I tested whether social capital affected …

Cultivating Moral Imagination Through Deliberative Pedagogy: Reframing Immigration Deliberation For Student Engagement Across Differences. A Response To "Deliberating Public Policy Issues With Adolescents: Classroom Dynamics And Sociocultural Considerations", Lisa Weasel

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

In “Deliberating Public Policy Issues with Adolescents,” the authors described what they determine to be an unsuccessful attempt at deliberative pedagogy on the topic of immigration in three high school classrooms that differed demographically. Specifically, the authors observed that students failed to engage with evidence, stuck with their initial viewpoints, and only listened politely to those with different views, rather than interacting across differences to reach consensus. While student positionality, as the authors suggest, is important to take into account, there may be ways to reorient deliberations on “wicked problems” such as immigration, which are by their nature prone to …

The Influence Of Age At Migration On Criminal Offending Among Foreign-Born Immigrants, Omar Melchor-Ayala

Dissertations and Theses

Domestic and international events -- such as the recent migrant caravans from Central and South America, and the records number of migrant children detained at the border -- have brought renewed attention to the adaptation of immigrants in the United States. More specifically, questions regarding whether the population of immigrants is driving the "crime problem," have taken center stage. Immigrants vary significantly in terms of when they migrate into the country. According to the Current Population Survey (CPS), the population of approximately 12 million foreign-born immigrant children living in the United States is split in terms of their age and …

Disability At The Intersections, Dara Shifrer, Angela Frederick

Sociology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Complete and accurate understandings of stratification depend on more regular consideration of disability. To build sociologists’ recognition of disability as a socially constructed axis of stratification, we first demonstrate the construction of the disability category through classic legitimating processes: moral attributions, biological attributions, separation, and dichotomization. Expanding understandings of basic processes of stratification, we then document the centrality of disability in the social construction of class, race, gender, sexual orientation, and age. Finally, we show various ways disability functions as an axis of stratification in intersection with other key axes of stratification.

Understanding The Politicization Of Oromo Identity In The Diaspora: Re/ Locating The Bones Of The Oromo, Madeline Jaye Bass

Dissertations and Theses

The Oromo people of Ethiopia share a common language, worldview, set of sacred meanings, and a historic system of governance. The rise of the Abyssinian Empire in the late 1800s led to the colonization of the Oromo; their language and religion were made illegal, their homeland was expropriated and renamed, and they were forced to live as slaves on their own land. After the end of the Abyssinian colonial era, historic discrimination was institutionalized into the new Ethiopian state form through the politicization of identities. Ethnic identities become political identities when cultural traits are used by the state as criteria …

Does X Mark The Applicant? Assessing Reactions To Gender Non-Binary Job Seekers, Kelly Mason Hamilton

Dissertations and Theses

The number of individuals who identify as a non-binary gender has almost tripled over the last 10 years. This growing population, and the legal protection against sex discrimination afforded to them under Title VII, puts a responsibility on employers to better understand their experiences in the workplace. The purpose of the current study was to examine how disclosing a non-binary gender identity when applying for jobs influenced hiring outcomes. Specifically, my study assessed (a) hiring managers' beliefs about non-binary gender identities, (b) how those beliefs impacted hiring managers' perceived ability to provide social support to prospective applicants, and (c) how …

Reproduciendo Otros Mundos: Indigenous Women's Struggles Against Neo-Extractivism And The Bolivian State, Gisela Victoria Rodriguez Fernandez

Dissertations and Theses

Latin America is in a political crisis, yet Bolivia is still widely recognized as a beacon of hope for progressive change. The radical movements at the beginning of the 21st century against neoliberalism that paved the road for the election of Bolivia's first indigenous president, Evo Morales, beckoned a change from colonial rule towards a more just society. Paradoxically, in pursuing progress through economic growth, the Bolivian state led by President Morales has replicated the colonial division of labor through a development model known as neo-extractivism. Deeply rooted tensions have also emerged between indigenous communities and the Bolivian state due …

Misrecognition In A Sustainability Capital: Race, Representation, And Transportation Survey Response Rates In The Portland Metropolitan Area, Raoul S. Liévanos, Amy Lubitow, Julius A. Mcgee

Sociology Faculty Publications and Presentations

US household transportation surveys typically have limited coverage of and responses from people of color (POC), which may lead to inaccurate estimation of POC transportation access and behavior. We recast this technocratic understanding of representativeness as a problem of “racial misrecognition” in which racial group difference is obscured yet foundational for distributive transportation inequities and unsustainability. We linked 2008–2012 population and housing data to an apparent stratified random sample of 6107 household responses to the 2011 Oregon Household Activity Survey (OHAS) in a “sustainability capital”: the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area. We detailed how the 2011 OHAS consistently overrepresented White households …

"What About The Men? Investigating Alcohol Consumption, Masculinities, And Risky Sex In Peri-Urban Eswatini, Aaron Jackson Levine

Dissertations and Theses

This study focuses on the narratives Swazi men create around drinking, masculinity, and sexual behavior. Alcohol myopia theory, motivational-expectation theory of drinking, and Connell's theory of masculinities were used to create research that details how alcohol and the cultural environment of gendered social drinking intertwine and interact with each other to form the gender structure of eSwatini. Twenty Swazi men were sampled by convenience, given semi-structured interviews, and questioned about their perceived and internal reasoning for the drinking of themselves and others, the observed drinking behaviors of others, their own drinking behaviors, how they viewed women in and accepted women …

Interrogating The Construction And Representations Of Criminalized Women In The Academic Social Work Literature: A Critical Discourse Analysis, Sandra Marie Leotti

Dissertations and Theses

In the United States today, there are 2.3 million people behind bars in jails and prisons. Mass incarceration has swept up the United States to such a degree that we are known globally for holding more people in correctional facilities than any other country in the world. Although women have always, and still do, reflect a smaller proportion of the correctional population, over the last 40 years, their rates of criminalization and imprisonment have far outpaced that of men's. Drastic increases in the criminalization of women are intimately connected to the entrenchment of social disadvantage enabled under neoliberal globalization. Neoliberal …

Webinar: Aging In Place: Improving Mobility For Older Adults, Alan Kenneth Delatorre, Ivis Garcia Zambrana, Ja Young Kim

TREC Webinar Series

Aging in place can simply be defined as staying in your home as you age; aging in place concerns include mobility, social activities, safety, accessibility, and long term supports and services in one’s neighborhood and society. In order to facilitate aging in place, organizations in Salt Lake County, Utah and the City of Portland, Oregon, provided home modifications to income-qualified older adults that intended to enable aging in place. Such modifications alter individuals’ life-space mobility – a concept recently used by gerontologists and that we introduced to planners – from within one’s home to the broader community. A unique methodological …

Closure Or Censure? Examining The Determinants Of Disclosure Of Sexual Assault Among College Students, Whitney Head-Burgess

Dissertations and Theses

Sexual assault is an ongoing problem on college campuses, with some projections indicating that one in four college women has experienced some sexual coercion or assault during her time at university. Recent national policy has strove to address the problem through legislation like the 2013 Campus Sexual Violence Elimination Act. Nonetheless, the crime remains the most underreported in the nation despite policy and law which explicitly defines what constitutes sexual assault. However, most victims of sexual assault will disclose what happened to someone else, even if they choose not to report.

This research examines sexual assault disclosure practices on a …

Effects Of Regulation Intensity On Marijuana Black Market After Legalization, Sikang Song

Dissertations and Theses

Since 2012, many states and Canada have legalized the use and sale of recreational marijuana. One of the expected benefits of the legalization is that the establishment of a legal cannabis market would eliminate the black market which has been the main form of marijuana trade for decades. Even though legal options are available for marijuana producers and consumers, the black market is still thriving in states where recreational marijuana has been legalized. The reasons behind the persistence of the marijuana black market are complex. One of the main arguments is that the legalized states have failed to establish a …