Racial Discrimination Video from ABC News Show

Today, the blog of journal Sociology Compass had a post about an episode of the ABC News show What Would You Do?. The premise of What Would You Do? is kind of social-psychology 101 meets "Candid Camera" by secretly recording people's reactions to either social breaches or unexpected situations. In this episode, a real estate agent made obviously racist remarks to first a black couple then an Arab couple during an open house. The agent and the two couples were actors and the goal was to see what the other homeseekers at the open house would do when hearing these comments. Although they show many stepping in, many also did not. And, those who did, did so in different ways: some confronted the agent directly, some talked to the agent and apologized to the couple (they felt that the agent had maligned their community with her behavior) but it seemed like most just went to the couple and told them that they should ignore the real estate agent.

Unfortunately, the agent's actions are all too common in the United States. Despite talk of a "post-racial" America with the election of Obama, it is a fact that this kind of discrimination continues. The problem with only exposing racism in this light is that it often hides the more hidden aspects of "institutional" racism that can't be called out in person, but must be confronted institutionally. The producers of What Would You Do? actually ended up accidentally capturing this kind of racism on a previous episode. A group of white teenagers (actors) were trashing a car in a public park to see what people passing by the scene would do. During this segment, the host, John Quiñones, explains that three calls were placed to 911: the first was about the vandalism, the second two were to report two suspicious black men in another car who "looked like they were getting ready to rob something." It turns out, the black men were the family members of another set of black teenage actors (used in a later segment to see if the race of the vandals mattered for the way that passers-by reacted; it did) who were sleeping in the car waiting for their kids to be done. In the last part of that segment, talking to the black teenagers, he highlights the fact that is the most prominent experience from the day that sticks out in their minds.

The show is a little pedantic for me, I can't imagine watching more than the few clips relating to things I'm interested in (there is another episode looking at the experience of Latino day laborers). But, I think that it would be really great as a teaching tool to show students and could lead to an interesting discussion. Also, Sociology Compass has a teaching guide on housing discrimination and racial residential segregation by Robert Adelman and James Clark Gocker. Also, another great resource — also produced by ABC News — is Diane Sawyers' 1991 Prime Time Live episode, "True Colors", described here (I couldn't find the video online) used an "audit study" method to show on camera some discrimination both blacks and women face getting loans, purchasing cars, and renting apartments.

One Down, How Many More to Go?

I've been absent the last couple of weeks because I was finishing the albatross that has been around my neck for over six months. I finally sent out my first sole-authored paper for review. Now, I just need to get me a reviewer voodoo doll!

I am getting ready to head to ASA. I'm sad that I missed the Scatterplot party and will get in too late for the Anomie's grad student brunch, but hopefully I will find others through the new ASA tweet network.

An Item to Take Up at ASA Business Meeting

A little while back, I purchased the ASA Style Guide. Although it is lacking the comprehensiveness of the APA Guide, it is a handy little reference that is written specifically for the journals that I will most likely be sending most of my papers (provided, of course, that I finish them). I thought that some readers might find the following tidbits interesting (ASA 2007)*:

[In Section 5.1:]
Blog
(n.) Short for Web log, a blog is a Web page that serves as a publicly accessible personal journal for an individual. Typically updated daily, blogs often reflect the personality of the author.
(v.) To author a Web log. Other forms: Blogger (a person who blogs). Retrieved January 15, 2007 (http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/b/blog.html) (P. 67)

I am quite impressed that, despite the awkwardness of some of their usages, the entire section on "Guidelines for Using Electronic Resources (E-Resources)" is actually quite good an includes a glossary of common terms and citations for all kinds of electronic resources, including blogs.

Of course, as the example, they cite an econ professor! I think that, in addition to ribbons, we should take up the issue of citing a sociologist blogger in the ASA style guide for goodness sake!

American Sociological Association (ASA). 2007. American Sociological Association Style Guide. 3rd ed. Washington, DC: American Sociological Association.

* I figured that I should try and use the appropriate citation method since I am, after all, citing the style guide.

Qualifying and Quantifying the Physical Sciences

It's nice to know that it is not only in social sciences such as sociology and linguistics where there seems to be a qualitative/quantitative divide -- today, Female Science Professor, an anonymous female professor in the physical sciences, also discusses the debate between quantitative and non-quantitative methods in her field and the gendering that is associated with the assumptions of who is a qualitative and who is quantitative methodologist.

Her basic message, and one I hear often repeated by people who glorify statistics^[1], is twofold. First, there is an assumption that quantitative methods arrive at some "true" answer. Now, this is, of course, true. Most statistics will give you a true answer in the sense that the computer program will give you a number best fit to the data of a given sample that is the most accurate answer to that problem. But, what is particularly important in what she says is where this runs into problems:

You can always get a number, but even if it means something.. what does it mean? (i.e., the number itself is not an end in itself, you have to think about it).

Just because one can get a number means that one has to be able to articulate A) what that number is, what it means, how it should be interpreted, etc. and B) what assumptions were used to produce that number. Now, those who glorify statistics, will indicate that this is the true number for which we should base all of our knowledge. The problem is that there are statistical assumptions made about the derivation of that number (i.e. sampling error and modeling error), not to mention the methodological concern over how the question was worded asked, primed by previous questions, etc. (i.e. measurement error; see my earlier post on that topic). Qualitative researchers often challenge quantitative researchers on what that number means and, in my experience, quantitative researchers often overly exaggerate the meaning of the number, particularly if it revolves around something like culture, attitudes or beliefs—things that are often complicated and nuanced.

On the other hand, I have seen qualitative researchers argue that, because of the assumptions required for quantitative methods, all of the findings are invalid. The problem here is that all analysis, by definition, requires that assumptions be made. Just because one has a more nuanced version of reality in qualitative methodology does not mean that it is not prone to errors as well. The sample might not be representative, informants might have the desire to be friends and not discuss difficult topics with the analyst, processes might be true for this subset, but it might be because of that subset's particular social position.

Although this is at this point dogma in sociology, the only way to appropriately address many questions is by some combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. But, here is where I see FSP's second issue arising: quantitative methods are seen as particularly rigorous because they require an understanding of math, equations, and statistics. These are also areas that are traditionally dominated by men. Qualitative methods are seen as feminine and not very difficult. The theory goes that anyone can talk to someone, where's the difficulty in that?^[2] These comments, I find, often come from people—particularly when they find people in the media—who have a severe lack of understanding of statistics and don't realize the assumptions inherent in statistically analyses and blindly trust the all-holy "Number."

While there is beginning to be an appreciation of such topics, the understanding of statistics and math to be "difficult" (and, thus, by extension professors who are able to use that methodology indispensable) and qualitative methods "easy", that this is going to do a great disservice to both sociology as a whole. A large part of the problem, as I see it is the lack of cooperation between qualitative and quantitative sociologists. Grants are so scarce as it is, we are afraid to try and write anything beyond the proscribed standards to work with teams that might look at problems in both directions. Or, alternatively, individual researchers try and take on both components themselves many with great success. The problem I have found with this goal in my own development is that it is very difficult to be on top of methods in two very different methodological traditions and to produce anything that can pass muster in both qualitative and quantitative fields. I don't have enough time in my graduate career to do both well - maybe it might come when I have my first job or a postdoc, but it seems a severe disservice to the pursuit of knowledge to maintain these divisions. This division seems particularly severe for people associated with qualitative methods - particularly when that assumption (as is the case with FSP) is wrong and based solely upon one's gender!

^[1] I am not positive that she is discussing statistics, this is the world in which I live, so I will go on that for my purposes.
^[2] This is where I am sure that there is some difference in what FSP does and what qualitative sociologists do; unless there is some branch of the physical sciences wildly different than what I thought of the physical sciences -- talking to particles and all.

To Blog or Not to Blog?

Part of my ongoing fascination with the implication of the internet is how a revolutionary new technology can have an impact on the non-virtual social world. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the impact of Wikipedia on the way in which existing social institutions, particularly the news media or academia, adapt to the proliferation of web-based reference material. squires pointed out that Wiktionary "is basically a recapitulation of whatever is already published about the topic"^[1] and is not, therefore, really a new social form as much as a new medium through which traditional social forms exist. But another interesting question is what happens when those institutions are confronted with new technology and, potentially, forced to adapt.

This has been brought to light in a thread at Orgtheory.net where the appropriateness of blogging the content of academic talks given at university seminars. The discussion has also continued to Jeremy Freese's Weblog. Jeremy has taken the position that "anything that is cv'able is blogable"—a position, which, in my opinion is very sensible. Jeremy has certainly taken some heat in the Orgtheory thread and feels that he is "staking out a lonely position" there. The main objection (and, indeed, the main thrust of the thread) is expressed by Ezra Zuckerman's position that early adapters to the blogosphere have a huge advantage if they can institutionalize blogging as an academic norm whereby late adapters and people who have higher costs (i.e. those that do not derive enjoyment from blogging) are forced to adapt. This, Ezra argues, cedes an incredible advantage to early adapters that, I perceive, he thinks is unwarrented^[2].

This brings up several interesting sociological questions that I find really interesting, in no small part because sociologists are the subjects of a sociological inquiry (very postmodern). The first question to me is the role of institutional norms in the development of new technology -- a topic which I discussed in my Wikipedia post mentioned above. Ezra brings up one of my main points from that post when he says "the main reason I don’t do this is that I have no time." While, overall, I agree with Jeremy that public discussion is a positive for the discipline, I also recognize the externalities considered by Ezra. If academics are required to respond to online discussions about their work that they did not initiate, it represents a significant investment in time that is required for which one might not receive any formalized institutional recognition. Where does this work fit in the academic triumvirate of teaching, service and research — especially when we know that the last of those is prioritized the highest? If, as Ezra suspects, bloggers are able to transform the academic norms to require that professors respond to online comments, then some recognition of this responsibility needs to be recognized by departments and institutions. This is particularly true for non-tenured faculty members who give up valuable research time responding to blogs and is probably part of the reason why Jeremy keeps emphasizing that his ideas are most applicable to senior faculty.

The second interesting question presented by this discussion is the role of social norms and scripts. The general consensus over the course of the Orgtheory.net thread is that permission should be requested to blog about an academic presentation. Jeremy brings up the fact that there are two forms of permission: 1) a request for permission where the receiver of the request has a legitimate claim to deny that permission (i.e. a child asking his parents for an extra scoop of ice cream for desert), or 2) a request for permission that is a linguistic hedge to show deference where the receiver of the request is expected to oblige (i.e. asking someone to turn the volume down if one has a headache). There are legitimate reasons to ask for permission. The most important, in my view, is allowing the author to respond if s/he so desires. I think that Jeremy would agree that the goal of discourse is not furthered if the original author is not given a chance to respond. In fact, a lack of response would be antithetical to Jeremy's goal. It reminds me of a similar thread at Crooked Timber where academics place the request "Please do not cite or quote without permission" at the tops of papers. This is essentially a form of moderation to ensure that researchers citing the work have the latest version or that the authors know where their work is being used to contribute to an academic discourse. To me, this is the second sense of permission.

The other reason that I find it to be appropriate to ask for permission is because, as an author, I might have stronger or weaker confidence about particular conclusions. If I were a faculty member and Jeremy came to me and asked "Would you mind if I wrote about your presentation on my blog?" my response would be "Yes, please feel free. Let me make sure that you have a copy of the paper. I should tell you that I believe conclusion A to be very robust, but I am more hesitant about conclusion B. Therefore, I plan to do more work on that part of the paper - so you might want to keep that in mind when you are writing." (In my head, I would also be thinking, "Whoo hoo! Now the hundreds of people who read Jeremy's blog will read about my research!"). In this way, I am not restricting what Jeremy writes or limiting the benefits to the field, but am, in a sense, providing a guide to replicate the kind of fruitful discussion that can happen at academic seminars where constructive criticism is created to a wider audience than those who attend a single academic seminar at a single (or a couple) of institutions^[3].

All of these questions bring to mind other important questions of sociological importance. The first, who is the academic "public"? Is is the "invisible college" linked instantly through the internet or the older, established community linked through the slower academic journals? This, then, is related to a second question. As sociologists look for a greater position for public sociology, then the role of the internet needs to be part of that discussion. On the one hand, academics are not journalists. Our discipline is marked by careful consideration of all available evidence and this mission might be undermined if we are pushed to discuss work much more quickly or frequently. Trying to do both the "journalistic" side of research (responding to blogs, posting about research) and the "academic" side of research (publishing in journals, writing grant proposals) means that there either need to be benefits for doing both (in tenure reviews, for instance) or that both cannot be done as successfully without requiring more time devoted to this work.

^[1] I tend to find the same thing is also true in Wikipedia; however, what I notice more of in Wikipedia than in traditional academic published research is citations to mainstream media sources such as the Washington Post or New York Times. While this is still a very circumscribed list of potential citations, it does expand the understanding of some topics beyond their strictly academic research to at least include sources that have a much larger circulation.
^[2] Of course any summary does injustice, but in the interest of providing background, I don't want to reiterate the whole thread here.
^[3] By restricting the conversation only to people at particular institutions is also a way in which privilege is created and maintained. While early-adapters might have an advantage creating externalities to benefit bloggers, restricting conversations to academics in the ivory tower also creates externalities for those who would need to academics in those settings. The difference, I think, is that that kind of privilege is accepted while blogging changes the "winners" and "losers" of privilege and, thus, causes this much discussion. I think that this is the point that Dave made to my Wikipedia post.

Coming Up for Air

It feels nice to (finally) have a productive week! Paper submissions for the Population Association of America were due yesterday. I am sure that none of you can think of a more interesting conference than one full of demographers talking about fertility, moralitymortality and migration but I actually really enjoy these conferences. The PAA conferences are smaller than ASA and the papers in sessions are more tightly topically linked. Of course, that came to bite me in the butt when my paper didn't get accepted for a session last year because it didn't fit in any of the sessions.

I resubmitted that particular paper, investigating who would consider a redeveloped neighborhood and why, for consideration again this year. There are a few more relevant sessions this year (last year, it really didn't fit into any of the sessions very well). I am also submitting a paper with a friend adapting a statistical technique from environmental science to estimate social environmental factors. The final paper is an extension of a paper that I co-authored with a senior faculty member. We didn't have room for it in the original paper, so she asked if I wanted to submit this paper to the conference this year. It was exciting to submit it because we put quite a bit of work into this analysis before we realized that it wouldn't fit.

It feels nice to be done -- the last week has been kind of a sprint but it is cool seeing it all come together. There is something about looking at a paper with nicely formatted tables, figures and a real reference list to feel like I accomplished something. Hopefully some of these get accepted now!

Poll Troll

Most of you know that I am a quantoid sociologist meaning, among various other things that I have been told, that I am a colonizer, I am not a real sociologist, I demean women and people of color, and take money that would otherwise be spent on better research done by qualitative researchers. Now, while being called/told these things are true, I also know that qualitative researchers get their fair share of shit thrown at them, too. Luckily, I see this needless division between quantitative and qualitative reasoning becoming less of an issue.

But, I bring all of this up because the American Association of Public Opinion Researchers (AAPOR) launched a new website that describes the basics of polling. Since cleaning, formatting and analyzing survey data is what I do all day, it is difficult trying to describe to people what I do or why surveys should be critically reviewed (such as surveys saying that political bias of professors is a problem^[1]). It has an explanation of margin of sampling error, what makes a good sample and a bad one along with all other cool kinds of information. They also launched a free online class for journalists on the basics of survey methods. Just thought that I would pass it along for anyone who might be interested.

I think that it also describes fairly well what polls and surveys are good for and what they're not good for. If you want to know the amount of support for the president or the association between certain types of social and economic characteristics on residential preferences, they're great. If you want to know detailed information about very small or specific populations, you might have more trouble and they might not be the best way to go. If you want to know the nuance of how those social and economic characteristics are intertwined and paint a story of a life lived in society, they're awful. All of these things are valuable contributions to research -- but they all require that the research be done well and that is what this site is great for. I wish the ASA could do something similar: What is sociology? What is good sociology? What is bad sociology? Of course, it would never happen, but we can all dream...

And, for those who don't care about how it is done but love looking at the numbers, pollster.com has some awesome graphs and analysis tracking the presidential primaries (nationally and by state - see image), presidential approval (spoiler alert: it's tanking), governor's races and all kinds of cool things that readers might find an interest.

* Graph via pollster.com and created by Charles at http://politicalarithmetik.blogspot.com/
^[1] See cjg's excellent analysis of the problems with the survey here and here.

Wikipedia's Style Guide, Gender-Neutrality and the Future of The Internets

For those who might be interested in the topic, which I believe includes some readers of this blog, there is a rather heated debate on the gendered pronouns going on Wikipedia if anyone feels the desire (and has the time) to contribute.

I find the whole idea of Wikipedia interesting. If this had been a style guide published by a press, I am sure that this topic would (and has) certainly been debated, but it would have taken years on the turn-around time. One edition is published every two years, minor edits are made when people (probably in academia) object to the usage. Then, after edits are made others (again, probably in academia) would charge that standard usage shouldn't be changed so easily and the entire purpose of a guide is to use practice and, therefore, even if it might be gender-biased, we shouldn't revolutionize the world of style guides. The printed style-guides then might add that there are two acceptable ways to write with gendered pronouns.

Now, this entire debate has occurred in the process of six days going back and forth. And, while this is certainly more "democratic" than the discussions in publishing houses and academic journals, it now privileges people who can, if they desire, spend all day at the computer debating the ins and outs of usage or any of the other debatable topics on Wikipedia. If I miss a day or two in one of these discussions, or even more than a couple of hours, I might as well not participate.

It makes me think that there might be a whole new ethic of professionals that is going to develop who can do this for a living. I mean there are allegations that corporations manipulate Wiki entries and Wikipedia is often the first site someone goes to in an effort to get information on a topic on which they know nothing. We also already see professional bloggers, Markos Moulitsas, Michelle Malkin, Andrew Sullivan, etc. who have been able to give up their "day jobs" and convert blogging to those very jobs. But, if it requires constant attention to run a good blog and that blog can be converted to ad hits and the like, how long before we some kind of consolidation of the profession into large conglomerates?

I know that I am not the first to mention this, but it just seems interesting to me how the nature of Web 2.0 can change the dynamic to be both more and less democratic. It is also interesting to see if there are new rules to integrating empires including the role that blogs play in the dissemination of information. Will they continue to do a better job expressing opinions and analysis than the established print and television outlets, or will they evolve into news-gathering organizations with budgets to do the kind of investigative reporting that outlets like the New York Times, the major networks, CNN, Fox News, etc. are able to do (and, I might add, often do poorly)? Also, what will be the role of research in this world? Will academics begin to care more about Wiki entries in their topics and work on them? Will this require some kind of credit professionally (the same way one gets credit if one writes an entry for a subject encyclopedia or a textbook on a subject) and will this insertion of "experts" lead to fewer "non-experts" contributing to sites like Wikipedia? These questions bring up the democratic potentials potentials in the sense that participation is not locked to certain physical locations (e.g. newsrooms, universities, television stations). But, the ability to be able to participate in these discussions requires either a) an abundant amount of flexible time (usually associated with professional work) or b) that one gets paid enough to make a living to continuously contribute (and, therefore, creating a profession rather than a democratic "netroots" control).

I am sure that Squires and the folks at Orgtheory would have a much more elegant description of this process and its potentials, but I think that it represents a fascinating intersection of language, organizational theory and markets that still has many potential avenues along which to develop and, potentially, to influence that development. Who knows, it might even affect the progress of mankind humankind...