SOCIOLOGY

• Intimate Partner Violence: Exploring the Experiences of Mexican Men and Women in North Carolina
  Awarded $ 14,996 for the period 4/1/03 to 3/31/04
  Source: Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center

  The project aims to develop a better understanding of intimate partner violence (IPV) among Mexican-born men and women living in the United States. The investigators' model suggests that IPV arises from structural, individual, crosscultural, and cultural factors. The project will:
  1. document the factors that contribute to the onset, elevation, and perpetuation of IPV in Mexican-born couples;
  2. characterize their experiences with community resources related to IPV; and
  3. establish the central concepts of a theoretical model of IPV that can be used to develop a more comprehensive, externally funded project examining IPV among a more diverse sample of Latinos.
  
  This crosscampus collaboration between the Sociology department and Community and Family Medicine should evolve into an effective working relationship.

• Families in Crisis: The Meaning of Masculinity
  Awarded $2,475 for the period 1/03 to 1/04
  Source: WFU Social and Behavioral Sciences Research Fund
  As a part of an on-going project, Dr. Hattery and colleagues were able to complete interviews with 14 battered women and 5 men who batter. They plan to complete another 10 interviews with men who batter. The additional data will allow the completion of a book manuscript and make the project competitive for extramural funds to extend it beyond Forsyth County.

Changing residence after retirement is partly driven by health: good health early in retirement promotes mobility, while poor health later in retirement prevents it. Guided by a behavioral model of migration decision-making, this pilot study aims to determine how well expectations of a move predict an actual move just before and after retirement.

Specific aims are to assess the relationship between resource variables, including money, travel experience, and community ties, and both expected and actual mobility; between expectations of moving and actually moving; and whether the net effect of variables predicting mobility depend on gender, labor force status, or racial/ethnic background.

The study will use data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). Its 1992 wave contains measures of resources, travel experience, community ties, and expected mobility. A measure of actual mobility between 1992 and 1994 is available from the second wave. The core of the proposed analysis will employ multinomial and binomial logistic regression to model expected mobility and actual mobility, respectively. The proposed analytical design uses SUDAAN software to account for statistical questions arising from the HRS’s complex sampling design and explores couple-level dynamics that may shape mobility behavior and attitudes. The results will enable more accurate behavioral and demographic predictions when the baby-boom cohort begins to retire in about 5 years and continues for the next 18.

Earl Smith
Intimate Partner Violence among African-American Couples
Source: WFU Social, Behavioral, and Economic Science Research Fund

This exploratory study seeks to determine the depth and severity of the causes of domestic violence among African Americans, which large-scale, quantitative studies have not been able to capture. Specifically, it aims:

1. To explore the experiences and meaning of IPV among a sample of African-American men and women who are in committed (either marital or cohabiting) relationships;
2. To identify the points of similarity and difference between the IPV experiences of African-American men and women and European-American men and women, as noted in the literature and previous work by Hattery (2001); and
3. To develop a theoretical framework, based on a race, class, and gender model, that more accurately explains the IPV experiences of African-American men and women.

The study addresses a significant gap in the IPV literature; namely, qualitative differences in the ways racial and ethnic groups experience IPV. It is unique in focusing on the perceptions and experiences of both men and women, batterers and the battered. In encompassing men, it moves both empirical and theoretical work on IPV beyond the limits of the “women’s issue.” Until men learn not to batter, a quarter of women in our society will be victims of violence at the hands of their partners.

Joseph Soares
Cultural Capital and the Educational Attainments of Elite Families
Awarded $8,840 for the period 12/1/04 to 7/31/05
Source: WFU Social, Behavioral, and Economic Science Research Fund

This study looks at the role of family culture and extracurricular activities in the educational accomplishments of children with at least one parent educated at a college at the top tier of selectivity and prestige. While controlling for other family and individual characteristics, this study examines whether parental cultural patterns, children’s cultural patterns, or a combination of the two statistically explain which families do best at achieving educational reproduction at top-tier colleges. The data will make it possible to test a major scholarly hypothesis on cultural capital and elite family educational reproduction.

Ian Taplin
Conflict and Control in Organizations: Rethinking Governance in the Light of Efficiency Imperatives and Management Security
Source: WFU Social, Behavioral, and Economic Science Research Fund

This pilot study is designed to evaluate how and to what extent senior managers in two major corporations deal with new sets of regulatory pressures following recent corporate governance controversies. With pressure for greater transparency in administrative routines following passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, July 2002, it is hypothesized that managers will be forced to create more elaborate procedures to maintain the status quo. Building on an earlier demonstration that management decision-making is constrained by self-interested actors (senior managers) who seek to minimize the destabilizing effects of externally mandated change, the project further postulates that neither inertia nor a specific firm-based culture leads to errant behavior, but, instead, the system predisposes managers toward rational self-interest. Change, if it occurs, will therefore remain minimal.

If we are to understand why some managers behave badly and illegally, we must analyze how they construct an administrative apparatus that shields them from scrutiny and sustains a broad commitment to such principles throughout the firm.