Other Sociology Commons^™

Inside A Multidisciplinary Grounded-Theory Project On Corruption In Ecuador: Navigating And Negotiating Challenges, Maria-Jose Rivera, Paúl Arias-Medina, Aracely Rojas-Lazo, Dolores Sucozhañay-Calle

The Qualitative Report

Studying day-to-day corruption raises hurdles for qualitative teams that cut across methodological, emotional, and ethical domains. Rather than presenting substantive findings on corruption, this article reports a reflexive analysis of those hurdles as experienced by an eight-member, multidisciplinary research team conducting the qualitative grounded-theory phase of the CIRCLE project in Ecuador - a context where discussing corruption often triggers mistrust, discomfort, and political sensitivities. Drawing on 33 meeting minutes and eight researcher stance memos, we applied Braun and Clarke’s reflexive thematic analysis to team-generated documents to examine how challenges unfolded and were negotiated. We identified three interconnected domains of difficulty. …

Inagural Issue Editor's Note, Laura Parson, Elizabeth Brule Dr., Fredricka R. Saunders

Journal of Institutional Ethnography

In this inaugural Editor’s Note, we introduce the Journal of Institutional Ethnography (JIE), share how the journal was developed, and explain its mission and goals. We provide an overview of the articles in our first issue and highlight how they use institutional ethnography to explore people’s everyday experiences and the institutional processes that shape them. We conclude by inviting scholars to submit their work, join our editorial boards, and help us grow the JIE community.

Beyond Abstracts: Reflections On Locating Institutional Ethnography Studies In Bibliographic Databases And Navigating The Social Organization Of Knowledge, Sonya Hill

Journal of Institutional Ethnography

This article draws on the challenges encountered, discoveries made, and search strategies employed during a scoping review of Institutional Ethnography (IE). While informed by that review process, the article is not a scoping review and does not present review findings. Rather, it reflects on the practical difficulties of locating IE studies in bibliographic databases and offers guidance for researchers seeking to identify, retrieve, and enhance the visibility of IE scholarship. Grounded in my efforts to locate IE studies, the article uses those experiences as an entry point for reflecting on the social organization of knowledge and how database indexing, metadata, …

Examining The Organization Of Student Work And Wellbeing In Higher Music Education, Kyle Zavitz, Liliana Araújo, Christine Guptill

Journal of Institutional Ethnography

This article investigates how music students’ work is institutionally coordinated within a higher school of music in Canada and how this shapes student health and wellbeing. This study reveals a problematic in students’ everyday experiences as the work required to succeed extends beyond what is formally recognized and made visible through institutional structures. Using Institutional Ethnography as the method of inquiry, we begin from the standpoint of music students, exploring the local and extra-local relations that coordinate what and how they do their work. Through interviews with students, faculty, and administrators, we trace students’ negotiation of contradictory discourses of ‘care’ …

Student (Mis)Placement In Swedish Special Education Provision Through Intellectual Disability Labeling: The Educator Standpoint, Liz Adams Lyngback, Enni Paul, Christina Headman

Journal of Institutional Ethnography

This institutional ethnography exploration begins with the standpoint of educators and focuses on the work related to ways students in Sweden exit the separate compulsory school for students with intellectual disability (CSID) and re-enter the regular compulsory school form through a student referral unit (SRU). By exploring what appears to puzzle the education system at the local level, this study contributes to a growing body of research on addressing multilingualism as a disability. Drawing on multi-sited ethnographic data, the study moves beyond educators’ experience to a broader inquiry into the ruling relations that coordinate the creation of misplaced students. The …

Assessor Experiences In Cmmc Level 2 Certification Assessments: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis Of Role Expectations, Samuel Heuchert, John Hastings

Research & Publications

The Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program requires that third-party assessments be conducted under a non-consultative model. The model is intended to ensure impartiality for organizations seeking certification. While this structure defines expectations for assessor behavior, assessor experiences and interpretations of these constraints remain underexamined. The study examines the lived experiences of CMMC-Certified Assessors and how they navigate role expectations within the non-consultative model. Using Role Conflict Theory as a guiding framework, the study applied Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to semi-structured interviews to explore how assessors make sense of their roles. The analysis identified experiential themes that describe how assessors construct …

Precarity And The Social Organization Of Affect In Public Libraries, Naomi E. Nichols Dr., Phil Canuel, Maggie Pearson, Kathrine Williams

Journal of Institutional Ethnography

Material and felt precarity are increasing in Ontario cities, impacted by housing and food unaffordability, an unpredictable drug supply, rising homelessness, and unmet social and health needs. The social relations of precarity play out in public spaces like libraries, changing how people’s work in, and experiences of, public space are organized. In this institutional ethnography (IE), we draw on 38 interviews with library staff and visitors to describe how shifts in the activities undertaken by library visitors (i.e., an increase in survival-related work) is co-ordered with, and re-shaping the work of library staff. Beginning with the standpoint of library staff, …

Contextualizing Trends In Television Viewing And Computer Use Among U.S. Children Aged 5–11 Years, 2001–2018, Ashley W. Kranjac, Dinko Kranjac

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

Introduction

Excessive screen time among children is linked to adverse physical, mental, and developmental outcomes. The putative drivers of increasing screen time among school-aged children in the United States remain unclear. Population-level changes may arise from intracohort change (IC)—change in average screen time across survey cycles—or cohort replacement (CR), as later-born cohorts with different levels of screen time replace earlier-born cohorts.

Methods

We analyzed nine 2-year National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) cycles from 2001 to 2002 through 2017–2018, including 9,841 children aged 5–11 years old. Screen time was measured as the sum of proxy-reported estimates of daily hours …

The End Of Unmeasured Exploitation: How A.S.M., C.A.S., And S.I.A. Challenge Digital Attention Capitalism, Delante Clark

Graduate Scholarship and Creative Works

Digital attention capitalism generates value through the capture and monetization of human attention, yet it has historically lacked standardized mechanisms for measuring attention-related harm. This paper argues that the Attention Safeguard Models (A.S.M.), Cognitive Attentional Standards (C.A.S.), and Sociological Impact Assessment (S.I.A.) collectively challenge this system by introducing an integrated framework for classifying, measuring, and evaluating digital attention harm and its societal consequences. C.A.S. provides standardized measurement of digital attention harm, A.S.M. identifies and classifies patterns of attentional disruption and manipulation, and S.I.A. evaluates broader impacts on institutions, communities, civic engagement, education, social cohesion, and inequality. Together, these systems transform …

The Heterogeneous Impacts Of The Residential Component Of A Training Program: A Semi-Parametric Analysis, Jun Cai, Alfonso Flores-Lagunes, Xintong Wang

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Several training programs worldwide are residential, bringing enrollees to live in facilities and thus increasing program costs. In the U.S., the Job Corps (JC) program for disadvantaged youth includes a residential component. Despite extensive literature evaluating JC, the impact of the residential component has received limited attention. We develop and employ a semi-parametric model to estimate the average causal effects of this residential component, accounting for selection into both the program and the residential feature. Our findings indicate that, for JC enrollees, the residential component boosts earnings, employment, and educational degree attainment among adolescents. For other subgroups, the residential component …

Authoritarianism, Hostility And Threat: An Analysis Of American Political Podcasts Surrounding The 2024 Presidential Election, Noah D. Cohen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Political rhetoric surrounding key events has seen sharp increases in emotionally affective speech, intergroup sentiment, and rhetoric unbecoming of democratic societies in recent years. Similarly, semi-democratic and ideologically driven speech has become increasingly normalized within an era of political polarization and hardline beliefs in modern media. Within this economy of outrage, sensational and largely unmoderated media formats, particularly podcasts, have become a mainstay of political information and discourse. This raises an important question: how does rhetoric surrounding political events construct intergroup sentiment and authoritarian rhetoric within political media, particularly American political podcasts? Further, given political podcasts’ growing social influence in …

Nihilistic Violence Aesthetics In Public Online Communication, Heath Nicholas Landress

Journal of Social, Behavioral, and Health Sciences

Public online communication has increasingly included violence-related content that is meme-based, ironic, visually stylized, multimodal, and only partially ideological. This comprehensive literature review synthesized research on online extremism, extremist memes, toxic multimodal content, dehumanizing digital communication, nihilistic violent extremism, warning behaviors, platform affordances, and youth-facing online environments. The purpose was to clarify what the literature had established; identify where the scholarship remained fragmented; and map research domains relevant to social, behavioral, public safety, and human services scholarship. The review used a structured, comprehensive literature review strategy supported by integrative synthesis procedures. The final corpus contained 34 scholarly sources, including 32 …

Content Mapping: An Experimental Analysis Of Missing Message Content, Jeannette Sutton

Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security, and Cybersecurity Faculty Scholarship

The Warning-Response Model recommends the inclusion of five key content areas in warning messages to reduce information seeking that can lead to warning response delay: the message source, hazard (including its impact), affected location, recommended guidance, and time. Research has found that complete messages, that is, those that include all of five recommended content areas, help people make decisions about the protective actions they may take.  Unfortunately, a large majority of WEA messages omit information from one or more of the recommended content areas. This study examined the impact of omitting each of the five recommended content areas on message …

Religious Practice And Attitudes Toward Immigration And Racial Justice In America, Amya Douglas

Graduate Theses and Dissertations (2019 - present)

This study aims to understand how Christians’ knowledge of Scripture and involvement in the church have an impact on their social-political views, specifically, racial justice and immigration. By using the survey responses from the 6th wave of the Baylor Religion Survey, more frequent church attendance and reading Scripture were correlated with a greater recognition of racism in terms of being against white supremacy and white nationalism, supporting racial justice when asked about racial gaps, and possessing greater support for immigrants. This study highlights the distinction between religious affiliation and religious practice, and it suggests that certain policy sentiments can be …

The Internet Did This To Me: Forms, Consequences, And Coping Strategies Of Cyberbullying, Isaac Oppong

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examined self-reported cyberbullying experiences recounted in a subreddit (r/cyberbullying) to identify forms of cyberbullying, its effects, and ways to cope with it. The findings indicate that there are several types of cyberbullying, such as verbal aggression, deceptive manipulation, privacy invasion, and coercive control. These experiences led to emotional, social, and behavioral consequences, including fear, anxiety, withdrawal, and decreased online activity. Based on concepts from Social Information Processing theory and Symbolic Interactionism, this study reveals how cyberbullying can produce the same or similar consequences as traditional bullying. People experienced disturbances in their self-presentation, contended with spoiled identities, and dealt …

Expanding The Cognitive Attentional Standards Platform Through Artificial Influence Assessment (Aia): Rationale, Development, And Measurement Design, Delante Clark

Graduate Scholarship and Creative Works

Artificial intelligence is increasingly shaping how individuals access information, make decisions, and interact with digital environments. The Cognitive Attentional Standards Platform (C.A.S.) was developed to assess attention related harms, cognitive safety, digital autonomy, and platform influence across digital systems (Clark, 2026). However, the growth of generative AI, conversational agents, and algorithmic decision support technologies has introduced new forms of influence that may not be fully captured by existing assessment domains. This paper proposes the Artificial Influence Assessment (AIA) as an expansion of the C.A.S. framework designed to measure AI mediated influence on cognition, behavior, autonomy, and information processing. Drawing on …

Governing Algorithmic Attention: Attention Safeguard Models And The Cognitive Attentional Standard As System Level Interventions In Human Computer Interaction, Behavioral Economics, And Artificial Intelligence, Delante Clark

Graduate Scholarship and Creative Works

Algorithmic recommendation systems and interface designs shape attention by combining visually salient cues with uncertain reward timing and low friction interaction. These conditions can sustain anticipatory checking, extend time on task, and reduce natural disengagement points through patterns such as infinite scrolling and autoplay. This paper synthesizes research across neuroscience, human computer interaction, behavioral economics, and artificial intelligence to argue that attention capture is a predictable outcome of incentive driven design rather than an individual failure of self regulation. It advances the Attention Safeguard Models and the Cognitive Attentional Standard as system level interventions that regulate exposure conditions, pacing, and …

The Experiences Of College Students Facing Housing And Financial Insecurity, Nora Shaheen

University Honors Theses

Housing and financial insecurity among college students continues to be a growing crisis, yet their lived experiences are often overlooked. This thesis utilizes qualitative research to investigate the emotional, social, and academic experiences of students navigating housing and financial instability. The data was collected through semi-structured interviews with six current/former college students who have experience with housing and financial insecurities. During the analysis, recurring patterns were grouped into themes, including the triggers of instability (familial abandonment, rent increases, relationship dissolution, etc), social stigma and internalized shame, emotional and mental health costs, social isolation, survival strategies, food insecurity, work-school balance, disrupted …

Pretty Much From Scratch: A Braided Essay On Autistic Diagnosis, Creativity, Identity, And Community, Jenée Stanfield

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

This braided essay uses memoir and research to explore autistic diagnosis, creativity, identity, and community. It examines how the misinformation around these topics harm and “other” autistics: the fallacy of diagnostic objectivity/neutrality, the dual myths of autistic hyper- and hypo-creativity, and autism as an identity defined solely by medical professionals. The memoir sections play with point of view and genre.

Jenée is a late-realized autistic with ADHD and OCD, who identifies as neurodivergent and neuroqueer. She lives in Washington state with her spouse and dog. She has a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and is currently a Master …

Regimes Of Pain: Violence, Silence, And The Reproduction Of Power In Indonesia, Andi Achdian, Erna Ermawati Chotim

Jurnal Politik

This article examines political violence in Indonesia as a continuing mode of governance that extends beyond periods of open repression. Focusing on three historical episodes—the mass violence of 1965–1966, militarised rule in Aceh during the Military Operations Zone, and the racialised violence of May 1998—it argues that violence does not disappear after formal repression ends, but is reorganised within everyday life through bodily injury, social silence, fear, and learned endurance. To explain this process, the article develops the concept of regimes of pain, defined as forms of power that produce and normalise bodily suffering in order to sustain political order. …