Sociology Commons^™

Deaths Exceeded Births In Nearly Half Of U.S. Counties Last Year, Kenneth M. Johnson

Carsey Publications

In this data snapshot, author Kenneth Johnson reports that even before the onset of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, deaths were at a record high in the United States last year, but there were the fewest births since 1986. Between July 2018 and July 2019, the surplus of births over deaths was the least in more than 50 years. As a result, more people died than were born in 46 percent of U.S. counties last year. Because of this smaller surplus of births over deaths and diminished immigration, the U.S. population grew by just 0.48 percent last year—the lowest population growth rate …

Weight Loss And Healthiness: How Advertisements Target This Phenomenon, Madelyn Coleman

Scholars Week

With advertisements being all around us in the media and in magazines, messages flood into our everyday lives that can impact us both negatively and positively. Research prior to this involved how media has portrayed women and their weight loss as well as how they are looking at “skinniness” and body type. This as well as overall effects of the media in the food world were among many that have been studied. For my research, I wanted to look at the overall targeting of weight loss and health within magazines not as much as the idea of weight loss as …

Highlighting Recipes For Recognition And Social Reform In Soul Food Cookbooks., Jake Hicks

Scholars Week

This research explores the writings of African American chefs Edna Lewis and Todd Richards along with Nutritional activists Fabiola Demps Gaines and Roniece Weaver, who have used their published soul food cookbooks to challenge racial stereotypes while redefining America’s perceptions of the southern cuisine known as soul food. Existing scholarship has found that southern cuisine is branching out into more than just a regional food and has shifted into a social movement. This project offers a progressive view on how this social movement of southern cuisine is aiming to reshape the public’s understandings of what constitutes Soul food. Through in-depth …

Yummy Advertising? A Look At The Sexualization Of Food Advertisements, Mackenzie Cook

Scholars Week

This content analysis was to further research in looking how sexuality is used in advertising, but particularly food advertisements. More specifically, words and phrases used, advertising characters, how they are presented and posed, etc. Using a combination of 15 Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s ads, these were analyzed to find consistent themes for advertising tactics. Findings show that sexual innuendos in advertisement phrasing are often used, as well as female characters. It also showed that these characters were often scantily clad or close to nude, making them have more “sex appeal” for the male audience. Facial expressions and posing were also …

The Evolution Of Mcdonald’S: As Seen On Tv., Jay Gibson

Scholars Week

When thinking of fast food, McDonald’s is often one of the first that comes to mind. However, we rarely think about how this industry giant has changed over the years. From this point the question is asked, how has McDonald’s advertisements changed to suit their ever-growing audience? What, if anything, has caused these changes? Many might simply say the changes come with the times, but research reveals that there could potentially be much more serious reasons, such as the anti-obesity movement and battles in the legal field. By analyzing numerous television advertisements from the 90s and recent years, I find …

Sitcom Tv Food Messages: Who Makes And What Are We Eating?, Elizabeth Gagnon

Scholars Week

I dive into the family sitcom Fuller House and observe how it represents people who cook and what we eat. As a modern-day family sitcom, representation is current to our standards within today’s diets and kitchen routines. With both men and women cooking in the kitchen, healthy food choices are displayed everywhere, depicting nutritional awareness. I consider the food being served and discuss whether they may fit into gender tropes, such as a male protagonist taking pride in his special burgers. I focus on what food is represented, whether from shopping, ordering through an app, or in the kitchen, when …

Tasteful Cookie Lingo, Sheldon Baringer

Scholars Week

In stores today, several brands of cookies use selective word choices directed towards the consumer, for example, by using the words organic or natural. Prior research has analyzed in a similar fashion, but to my knowledge has not used this specific test group. In this research, I show how packaging for cookies affect buyer’s choice, as well as, price in comparison to health. Importantly, as claims on package towards a healthier product increase, so does price. I further examine how cost changes the focus of the product from healthy to delicious, or bulk size, in order to demonstrate how consumers …

Covid-19 Cases Are Clustered In Large Urban Hubs, But Rural Areas Surrounding Those Hubs Are Also Increasingly Affected, Yue Sun

Population Health Research Brief Series

As COVID-19 continues to evolve, we are seeing more cases in urban areas, however, this data slice shows where trends are heading next.

New York State’S Older Adults In Assisted Living Facilities Need All Of Us To Help Them Avoid The Coronavirus, Mary Helander, Claire Pendergrast

Population Health Research Brief Series

Older adults in assisted living facilities are particularly vulnerable to the coronavirus because of how quickly it can spread in close-knit settings. This data slice aims to advocate for the health and safety of older adults and features an interactive map showing the saturation of assisted living facilities in New York State.

Social Scientists’ Testimony Before Congress In The United States Between 1946-2016, Trends From A New Dataset, Thomas V. Maher, Charles Seguin, Yongjun Zhang, Andrew P. Davis

Purdue University Libraries Open Access Publishing Fund

Congressional hearings are a venue in which social scientists present their views and analyses before lawmakers in the United States, however quantitative data on their representation has been lacking. We present new, publicly available, data on the rates at which anthropologists, economists, political scientists, psychologists, and sociologists appeared before United States congressional hearings from 1946 through 2016. We show that social scientists were present at some 10,347 hearings and testified 15,506 times. Economists testify before the US Congress far more often than other social scientists, and constitute a larger proportion of the social scientists testifying in industry and government positions. …

Let’S Talk About Death: Conversation And Bereavement In Late-Life Widows And Widowers [Poster], Bekah Bass

Research in the Capitol

Death is a taboo subject in American society, yet it affects everyone at some point in life. By looking at conversations surrounding death from a sociological perspective, I study the association between conversations about death and the grief of those left behind. Using the Changing Lives of Older Couples dataset, I am conducting a secondary data analysis to study the relationship between talking about death with a spouse before death, and the denial and mental health impacts on the widow after death. By understanding how conversations about death may be related to positive or negative outcomes, we can better support …

Older Adults And Information And Communication Technologies In The Global North, Molly-Gloria R. Harper, Barry Wellman, Anabel Quan-Haase

FIMS Publications

At all ages, people are incorporating information and communication technologies (ICTs) into their lives. It is not that they have stopped talking with each other in-person, it is that ICTs complement their interactions when they cannot be together face-to-face. Since the 1990s, email has provided a routine way to stay in touch and sustain meaningful contact over distance. But not all age groups have adopted ICTs with the same enthusiasm. Research in the Global North has consistently reported that age plays an important role in ICT adoption and use (Anderson and Perrin 2017). For example, older adults have been the …

Why Coronavirus Could Hit Rural Areas Harder, Shannon M. Monnat

Population Health Research Brief Series

As rates of coronavirus (COVID-19) infection and death continue to rise, it is important to consider how rural areas may be differentially affected. Rural economies may also be affected in different ways than their urban counterparts, which has implications for long-term rural population health outcomes.

Barely Bonded: Affective Politics And The Gendered Struggle For Water In Villa El Salvador, Lima, Peru, Kyle Woolley, Kelly Moore

Sociology: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Affect is increasingly understood as a critical element of political life and collective action in Latin America and elsewhere. It is critical to generating participation in collective action projects, sustaining or collapsing action, and how participants interpret the meanings and values of a project and the social relationships within it. More broadly, affective political experiences are markers of the sense of belonging or disaffection from others and broader political systems that are central to civic life. The meanings of participation after projects fade are often attributed mainly to the collective events themselves, and draw on one-off interviews after the events …

Unhealthier States Have Lower Covid-19 Testing Rates, Kent Jason G. Cheng

Population Health Research Brief Series

This data slice dissects the various rates of state testing for COVID-19 across the country, and explains implications of the low test rates in the unhealthier states.

Staying Safe And Healthy During Coronavirus Response: A Guide For Older Adults, Claire Pendergrast, Mary Helander

Population Health Research Brief Series

This issue brief thoroughly addresses how older adults can best protect their physical and mental health against the evolving circumstances surrounding COVID-19.

A Model Of Research Article Writing Sociolinguistic Competence (Rawsc): Evidence From Qualitative Meta-Synthesis And Follow-Up Interviews, Reza Khany, Saeedeh Mohammadi

The Qualitative Report

The knowledge of sociolinguistic factors can be a remarkable component of competence in research article writing for learners’ successful handling of scholarly writing tasks in English for academic purposes (EAP) programs. This study aimed to present a model of Sociolinguistics Competence (SC) in writing EAP research articles. Give this, two stages were followed. Firstly, a meta-synthesis approach was adopted to investigate the available literature on various aspects of SC and extract the latent themes and concepts in the target model. As a result, two categories emerged from the combination of five concepts and 258 codes. Secondly, an introspective stage was …

A Sociological Critique Of Cognitive Deviance: Unconventional Beliefs Reconsidered, Katherine E. Waters

Conspectus Borealis

No abstract provided.

Toward A Meta-Framework For Conducting Mixed Methods Representation Analyses To Optimize Meta-Inferences, Julie A. Corrigan, Anthony J. Onwuegbuzie

The Qualitative Report

The purpose of this article is to propose a meta-framework for conducting what we term mixed methods representation analyses (MMRA). We define MMRA as the appropriate selection of sampling design (i.e., the sampling frame [random] or sampling boundary [purposive]; sampling combination, comprising the mixing dimension [partial/fully], time dimension [concurrent/sequential], emphasis dimension [dominant/equal status], and relationship among/between samples [identical/parallel/nested/multilevel]; sample size; and number of sampling units [e.g., of people, cases, words, texts, observations, events, incidents, activities, experiences, or any other object of study]) in order to obtain representation and concomitantly meta-inferences consistent with the study’s generalization goal(s). Thus, the goal of …

Across Racial Lines: Three Accounts Of Transforming Urban Institutions After A Natural Disaster, James Carter, Nolan Rollins, Gregory Rusovich

New England Journal of Public Policy

At 1:30 p.m. on August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina grazed the mostly evacuated city of New Orleans, reserving its most devastating force for coastal Mississippi, just to the east. During the next two days, the federal levees protecting the city failed in multiple places. Sixteen hundred people died in the metropolitan area. Residences and businesses in 80 percent of the city went underwater. Public officials warned residents and business owners that they might not be able to return for two to three months. The scope of devastation in certain parts of the city made ever returning questionable for many residents. …

Beacons Of Hope: How Neighborhood Organizing Led Disaster Recovery, Denise Thornton

New England Journal of Public Policy

The goal of this article is to broaden the scope of your knowledge about New Orleans neighborhoods by describing our revitalization strategies and our common goals, which may be of value to civil society, business, and government leaders in other cities facing social and economic decay. Many have studied us, many have tried to blend into the colorful fabric of our society, but most fall short in truly understanding our rich and diverse culture and our remarkable social structure. This lack of understanding was detrimental to our recovery and is explained in the coming paragraphs.

Slaying Two Sacred Cows: One Group’S Part In Helping New Orleans Reform, Rebuild, And Renew, Ruthie Frierson

New England Journal of Public Policy

Citizens for One Greater New Orleans was a volunteer group of women that exemplified the surge of citizen activism that flourished in New Orleans after Katrina. Alarmed by their realization that local government was too dysfunctional to direct a successful comeback, citizens mobilized and charged at two seemingly untouchable local institutions they deemed ripe for reform, the ineffectual levee board and the notoriously biased board of tax assessors. Using skills honed through years of volunteer work, they mobilized public opinion, lobbied reluctant state lawmakers, and finally achieved success through the passage of constitutional amendments in two separate statewide referendum elections. …

A Research Tapestry: Stories Woven Into Stories, Laura Colket

The Qualitative Report

This autoethnography highlights the subjective nature of narrative research and illustrates the ways in which both micro and macro forces impact the research process. Through this article, I present a research tapestry in which the experiences, perspectives and stories of the participants weave together with my own experiences, perspectives and stories. I draw from my dissertation research, a narrative inquiry focused on the experiences of Haitian educational leaders working to create systemic change after the 2010 earthquake.

A Qualitative Study: Military Veterans And Franchise Ownership, Martin J. Mcdermott 4384520, Jason Jackson

The Qualitative Report

This study focuses on the military experience and motivation to become a franchise business owner. Previous research indicated franchisees who were military veterans had a significantly higher level of job satisfaction in owning and operating a franchise compared to franchisees with no military background.This study attempts to provide answers to important research questions like how and why military experience influences satisfaction in owning a franchise.Seven franchise business owners who served in the military participated in this qualitative study using a process of surveying, coding, and thematizing to answer this research inquiry. The findings of this follow-on study indicated veterans had …

Cleveland, Alex - Covid-19 Journal, Alex Cleveland

Personal Journals

In this journal, EIU student Alex Cleveland in the Spring 2020 History of Illinois (HIS 3810) documents the beginning period of the pandemic, including initial reactions to the shelter in place order.

Mobilization Of The Substance Use Disorder Recovery Community In The Time Of Coronavirus, Austin Mcneill Brown

Population Health Research Brief Series

This issue brief explains the recovery community's resilient response to the social distancing mandates from COVID-19 and notes recommendations for policymakers. This brief also includes a broad list of recovery resources.

What Factors Influence Chinese Students To Choose Master Program In Jmc: A Phenomenological Study, Zhiwei Wang Dr., Zhenbiao He Prof., Zhengke Fu Dr.

The Qualitative Report

The number of Chinese postgraduates in JMC has steadily increased with the growing number of JCC master’s programs in in China. Little is known about key factors that influence Chinese students’ decisions in choosing which program attend. In order to fill a gap in the academic field, a qualitative phenomenological approach was applied to examine the experiences of seven Chinese master’s students in JMC from three different universities in Zhejiang province, China. Three important themes have been created including (1) geographical advantages; (2) recommendation of peers and professors; and (3) course design and curriculum. These findings have important implications for …

The Lived Experiences Of First-Generation College Students Of Color Integrating Into The Institutional Culture Of A Predominantly White Institution, Talisha Lawson Adams, Juliann Sergi Mcbrayer

The Qualitative Report

As many colleges and universities continue to increase their enrollment and diversification of their student body, the number of first-generation college students of color will continue to rise. Colleges have been charged with the challenge of not only enrolling this student population but also ensuring that they are connected to the university and persist to graduation. The purpose of this phenomenological qualitative study was to examine the lived experiences of first-generation college students of color at a Predominantly White Institution (PWI). This study utilized individual in-depth interviews and a focus group to examine how first-generation students of color experienced college …

The Dynamic Of Performing Social Relations Amongst Managers And Supervisors: A Thematic Analysis, Tri Astuti, Avin Fadilla Helmi, Aniq Hudiyah Bil Haq, Mohamad Dziqie Aulia Al Farauqi

The Qualitative Report

This study investigated the factors, dimensions, and dynamic flow of the manager-supervisor social relationship in a company with family values. This research was a qualitative study with a thematic analysis approach based on the six-step thematic analysis from Braun and Clarke (2006). The authors used open-ended questionnaires and interviews as data gathering tools. This study found that the three factors that influence four interrelated dimensions can result in group cohesiveness, target achievement, and performance improvement. The results of this study can be used in policy-making by considering the social relationship between employees as a supporting factor in achieving organizational goals. …

Consumers' Preferred Body Scanning Technology: A Comparison, Saiful Islam

LSU Master's Theses

Poor fit of apparel products has been troublesome for both the consumers and manufacturers for many years. The acquisition of a correct set of body measurements is crucially important for achieving proper fitting apparel. Three-dimensional body scanning technology has been recognized as a promising alternative to the traditional measuring tape method of obtaining body measurements. Three-dimensional body scanners are quick, efficient, highly reproducible, and largely free of error related to human intervention.

The purpose of this study was to investigate consumers’ preferred type of body scanning technology. Three types of body scanners (traditional body scanner, suit-based body scanner, and mobile-based …