Quantitative Data Analysis: Doing Social Research to Test Ideas

Quantitative Data Analysis: Conducting Informed Social Research, introduces students to quantitative data analysis, concentrating on the key issues such as how to decide which statistical procedure is suitable, and how to interpret the subsequent results. Each chapter includes illustrative examples, with exercises allowing reader to test their understanding of each topic. No previous knowledge of statistics or computing is required, as the book takes the reader step-by-step through the most common procedures and techniques, including how to conduct theoretically informed quantitative social research. Perfect for beginning graduate students in social sciences, medical sciences, and education, the book imparts a solid and practical approach to making sociological sense out of a body of quantitative data. A bonus is the book\u27s many examples using Stata software. This book can be used as a core text in courses offered through sociology and anthropology programs, under names such as Quantitative Data Analysis, Methods of Analysis in the Social Sciences, Statistical Analysis of Quantitative Data. The book can also be used in any research methods course in social and health sciences, including general/quantitative methods and survey research methods. The book, based on the authors 20 years of teaching at one of the nations leading sociology programs, covers the most key and essential topics for researchers: tabular analysis, log linear models for tabular data, regression analysis in its various forms, regression diagnostics and robust regression, ways to cope with missing data, logistic regression, factor analysis and other techniques of scale construction, measurement error, and related topics. While not a statistics text, it emphasizes the use of statistical procedures to draw substantive conclusions about how the social world works. Readers will become familiar with analysis and interpretation of nonexperimental quantitative data, focusing on sample survey and census data. The book explains the logic of analysis and problems of statistical inference, including diagnostic procedures and methods for handling complex sample survey designs. Table of Contents: 1. Quantitative Data Analysis: What It Is and How Its Used 2. Cross Tabulations 3. Interpreting Cross Tabulations 4. Manipulation of Tabular Data 5. Computerized Manipulation and Statistical Analysis of Data 6. Correlation and Regression 7. Bayesian Alternatives 8. Multiple Regression Tricks for Handling Analytic Problems 9. Multiple Imputation of Missing Data 10. Sample Design and Survey Estimation 11. Regression Diagnostics 12. Scale Construction 13. Log-linear Analysis 14. Binomial Logistic Regression 15. Multinomial and Ordinal Logistic Regression and Tobit Regression 16. Improving Causal Inference: Fixed Effects and Random Effects Modeling 17. Final Thoughts and Future Directions: Comments on Issues of Research Design and Interpretation

The Effect of Sibship Size on Educational Attainment in China: Period Variations

In industrialized nations, sibship size generally depresses educational attainment: the larger the number of siblings, the lower the educational attainment. This association is much less consistent in developing nations, however. This article examines the effect that the number of siblings has on educational attainment in China, a nation that has experienced sharp vacillations between policies designed to promote equality (between urban and rural residents and between men and women) and policies designed to promote economic development. The implementation of these policies in the educational arena has alternately reduced and increased competition for educational resources and, as we show, has correspondingly reduced and increased the effect of sibship size on educational attainment

Migration, Remittances, and Educational Stratification among Blacks in Apartheid and Post-Apartheid South Africa

This paper extends previous work on family structure and children’s education by conceptualizing migration as a distinct form of family disruption that reduces parental input but brings substantial economic benefits through remittances. It examines the multiple and countervailing effects of migration on schooling in the context of substantial migration and limited educational opportunities for blacks in South Africa. The receipt of remittances substantially increases black children’s school attendance, but has no such effect for whites. The effect for blacks is in part attributable to improved household economic conditions that increase household educational spending and reduce the demand for child labor. We also find a negative effect of parental absence due to migration, but it is largely cushioned by inflows of remittances. Sensitivity analyses using propensity score methods and contextual fixed-effect modeling suggest that the beneficial effect of remittances is relatively robust. We find further that remittances help ameliorate inter-familial socioeconomic inequality in schooling. Finally, we evaluate possible temporal changes and show that the positive and equalizing effects of remittances persisted during and after the apartheid regime. We conclude that labor migration and remittances, as institutionalized family strategies adopted by many blacks, help reconfigure structural opportunities in the educational stratification process in South Africa

Parental Migration and Children's Psychological and Cognitive Development in China: Differences and Mediating Mechanisms

Internal migration has resulted in a large number of left-behind children in China. Despite growing attention to this population, important gaps remain in our understanding of their cognitive development and the factors that mediate the impact of migration on children. The present study draws on a new nationally representative survey of Chinese children to study the psychological and cognitive development of left-behind children. Results show that rural children left behind by both parents (but not by one parent) are worse off in both psychological well-being and cognitive development than rural children living with both parents. The disadvantage of left-behind children is mediated by their caregivers' emotional well-being, parenting practices, and education. We also find a pronounced rural-urban difference in children's cognitive development

Embracing the Market: Entry into Self-Employment in Transitional China, 1978-1996

This paper introduces labor market transition as an intervening process by which the macro institutional transition to a market economy alters social stratification outcome. Rather than directly addressing income distribution, it examines the pattern of workers’ entry into self-employment in reform-era China (1978-1996), focusing on rural-urban differences and the temporal trend. Analyses of data from a national representative survey in China show that education, party membership and cadre status all deter urban workers’ entry into self-employment, while education promotes rural workers’ entry into self-employment. As marketization proceeds, the rate of entry into self-employment increases in both rural and urban China, but urban workers are increasingly more likely to take advantages of the new market opportunities. In urban China, college graduates and cadres are still less likely to be involved in self-employment, but they are becoming more likely to do so in the later phase of reform. The diversity of transition scenarios is attributed to rural-urban differences in labor market structures.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39897/3/wp512.pd

Long-standing nonkin relationships of older adults in the Netherlands and the United States

The main research questions of this study were (1) How long have adults in the Netherlands and the United States known members of their nonkin networks? (2) What are the predictors of long-standing nonkin relationships? and (3) Which predictors are recognizable in both societies? The data came from the NESTOR-LSN survey (3,229 adults aged 55 to 89 years in the Netherlands) and from the Northern California Community Study (n = 1,050, with 225 respondents aged 55 to 91 years in the United States). In both countries, the duration of nonkin relationships was related to the absence of network-disturbing variables (e.g., the number of years since the last move), network-sustaining variables (e.g., distance to nonkin), and other network properties (e.g., homogeneity). Nationally based differences were also observed (e.g., having a car was related to stable relationships only in the United States, and the special integrative functions of exclusive friendships were elicited only in Europe)

The Growth and Determinants of Literacy in China

In China, as in other nations, reading skills depend mainly on the level of education attained. But reading skills in China depend on other factors as well: the quality of schooling; the cultural capital of the family of origin–parental education, of course, but also such measures of cultural capital as the number of books in the household and the reading behavior of parents; gender; and the extent to which literacy is used over the life course. I exploit data from a 1996 national probability sample of Chinese Adults (N=6,090) that includes information on literacy (the number of characters identified from a list of 10 characters), measures of family cultural capital, and the usual socioeconomic data on both respondents and their families of origin, to study the determinants of the number of characters recognized. My analysis includes three components: (1) An overall assessment of the determinants of literacy in the adult population of China In addition to years of schooling, a number of factors positively affect literacy: father’s years of schooling; the “cultural capital” of parents, manifest in their reading behavior; urban residence at age 14; and male gender. Further, the effect of father’s education is entirely mediated by the effect of family cultural capital. (2) The effect of occupational experience on literacy. Net of education, those with non-manual jobs gain in literacy over the life course whereas the literacy of those with manual jobs declines. The fact that the two trends go in opposite directions suggests an age as opposed to period interpretation of the results. (3) An assessment of the effect of the Cultural Revolution on literacy. Net of years of schooling, those educated during the Cultural Revolution (especially the first years) are less literate than those educated before or after the Cultural Revolution, and the effect of the Cultural Revolution is larger in magnitude than the effect of an additional year of schooling