We need more solution-oriented social science: on changing ourframes of reference and tackling big social problems

Solution-oriented social science makes solving problems the object of social science, and working on other people’s problems becomes the key driver of the problems to be solved. These solutions may be of relevance for everyday citizens or actors working in government, non-profits, or for-profits. Mark Western argues that approaching research in this way would influence how we choose problems, how we build teams and collaborate, and what methods, tools and techniques we employ

The complementary relationship between the Internet and traditional mass media: The case of online news and information

Background. The question whether old media are driven out of existence by new media has been a long concern in academic and industrial research but has received no definitive answer. Aim. This paper goes beyond most previous studies of Internet impact on traditional media, which have placed their relationship within a competition-based framework, to specifically investigate the complementary effect of online news and information usage on traditional sources. Method. Secondary data analysis of a national survey of 4270 Australians conducted in late 2003, employing hypothesis testing for the mean, partial correlations, and a linear regression analysis. Results. Online news and information usage at different usage levels is positively as so dated with the use of traditional news and information sources, especially those that are more information-intensive. Those who relied on the Internet the most for news and information still used traditional sources substantially. Conclusion. The findings suggest that even if a displacement effect takes place, there will be no replacement (absolute displacement): traditional media will still exist to complement the Internet in serving human beings' news and information needs

The long arm of parental advantage: socio-economic background and parental wealth transfers over adult children’s life courses

A wealth of social science scholarship has established that better-off parents make greater investments in their children, contributing to social inequalities in child development and outcomes. Yet we know comparatively little about whether or not, and if so how, better-off parents continue advantaging their adult children. In this paper we leverage 15 years of highquality Australian panel data (n=87,196 observations; 16,628 individuals) to systematically examine how socio economic background, measured by parental socio-economic status, relates to the probability and amount of wealth transfers from parents to children. We provide novel insights into how transfer patterns evolve over the adult life course, are contingent on major life-course events, transitions and stages, and differ by socio-economic background. We also contribute methodologically by estimating random-effect Heckman selection models which combine the advantages of both panel regression and sample-selection models

Marriage and money: Variations across the earnings distribution

This paper uses Australian data from the Negotiating the Life Course Project 1997 to investigate the impact of marriage on men's and women's earnings. We extend earlier earnings research and investigate whether the effect of marriage is constant for men and women at different points on the conditional earnings distribution by using robust and quantile regression techniques. We find no assoication between marriage and wages for women, but for men a large and significant premium exists with married men earning around $5,7000 per annum more than their unmarried counterparts, after adjusting for human capital, job and family characteristics. Overall, there are very few differences in the association between marriage and earnings for men and women across the wage distribution. Although, importantly, we find that the returns to marriage tend to be smaller and non-significant for men in the middle of the distribution

Gender, justice and domestic work: life course transitions and perceptions of fairness

This paper investigates changes in perceptions of housework fairness as men and women make the transition from cohabitation to marriage and experience the birth of a child. Using four waves of data from the Negotiating the Life Course project in Australia, we assess how marriage and parenthood alter perceptions of housework fairness. Consistent with previous research we find that the majority of men and women report that the division of labour at home is fair, despite women spending twice as much time on housework as men. Our results show no changes in perceptions of fairness in relation to marital transitions and only weak evidence of changes in relation to parenthood transitions. We conclude that perceptions of housework fairness are not based on an equal sharing of tasks, but are better understood in terms of distributive justice

I Incorporate Nouns of Various Structural Positions and Thematic Roles, Therefore I Am (The Verb)

The aim of this article is to present an overview of noun-incorporating verbs in Romanian, and to test whether incorporation applies not only to Themes and complements, but to nouns bearing a variety of theta-roles and occupying various structural positions, including the specifier position. In our attempt to test this, we will look at examples with noun- incorporating verbs from English and Romanian, showing that although the data supports the idea that a variety of theta-roles can get incorporated, it does not seem to equally support the idea that nouns occupying any structural position can be incorporated

Online News in Australia: Patterns of Use and Gratification

Key findings from the first national survey of the current state of play of online news consumption in Australia indicate that (1) the Internet as a news medium has reached a mainstream status in terms of audience sizes, although its penetration is still within a higher socio-economic segment of the society; (2) many distinctive features of online news have been substantially used and appreciated; and (3) from the perspective of innovation diffusion theory, online news has a notable potential to foster further adoption in the years ahead

Jamestown Rediscovery

Review of website Jamestown Rediscovery which is now Historic Jamestowne. Access: www.historicjamestowne.org The site contains a history of the Jamestown settlement with information on key figures and events, including a historical timeline