Children’s life outcomes differ markedly as a function of their family’s socioeconomic conditions. Some pronounced and intractable disparities are in the development of human capital. By the early years of childhood, disparities in language acquisition, school readiness, and executive functions are evident.
Proving that any program designed to change our social behavior is doing what it set out to do is one of the most difficult problems faced by social science. Yet those responsible for such a program must attempt an evaluation of its results if they are to achieve the support they need. Edward A. Suchman, one of the world's foremost experts in measuring social behavior, presents the most comprehensive study of evaluation available to date.
In Evaluative Research he describes the techniques used to determine empirically the extent to which social goals are actually being achieved, to locate the barriers to the achievement of these goals, and to discover the unanticipated consequences of social actions.
The book is divided into three main sections, representing the conceptual, the methodological, and the administrative aspects of evaluation. It begins with a brief historical account and a general critique of the current status of evaluation studies. The introduction is followed by a conceptual analysis of the evaluative process, including a discussion of different levels of objectives. The methodological section includes an analysis of various research designs applicable to evaluative research. The place of evaluation in the administrative process is related to program planning, demonstration, and operation. Administrative resistance and barriers to evaluation are examined along with the problems in the utilization of the findings.
The book concludes with a brief exposition on the relationship of evaluative research to social experimentation stressing the potential contribution which public service and social action programs can make to our knowledge of administrative science and social change.
This book will have many uses. It will aid the evaluative research person in striking a balance between rigorous method and the situation in which he must function. For the operating practitioner, the book will explain what competent evaluation involves. Administrators will find the volume and invaluable aid.
Proceedings of a conference on the prospective work of Carson College for Girls and Charles E. Ellis College, called by the Department of Child-Helping of the Russell Sage Foundation, held at Philadelphia, October 13–14, 1915, on invitation of the Trustees of Carson College and Ellis College.
Foreword by Hastings H. Hart, president of the conference.
“Status is an important book, both as a statement of the author’s accumulated insights about status in general and as an explanation of our current predicaments. Cecilia Ridgeway is a major figure in the hot area of interpersonal and small group enactment of status, power, and hierarchy. Ridgeway was one who came early to this topic, and she has guided many subsequent efforts. The book represents her life’s work, to a great extent. Because she is so central, the book will be required reading for anyone serious about this domain. This lays out the Ridgeway theory and research program, all in one place and from the source herself, in her prime. Status is the work of a pro: readable, authoritative, written at the right level, with the audience in mind. Readers will benefit from the logical argument and the collected citations.”
—SUSAN T. FISKE, Eugene Higgins Professor and professor of psychology and public affairs, Princeton University
“By integrating cultural schemas into an influential theoretical framework, Cecilia Ridgeway’s book marks the culminating point of the status expectation theory tradition which has had a considerable influence in American social psychology. Status represents a significant broadening of the analytical toolkit we will draw on to make sense of this aspect of inequality and captures Ridgeway’s most lasting contributions.”
—MICHÈLE LAMONT, professor of sociology and of African and African American studies and the Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies, Harvard University
“Cecilia Ridgeway’s treatment, Status, is essential reading for anyone who seriously wants to understand why resources are allocated on the basis of social status. The insight that status hierarchies necessarily emerge from social coordination is crucial, as are Ridgeway’s novel ideas about how status embeds itself in our culture as a grammar.”
—EZRA ZUCKERMAN SIVAN, deputy dean and Alvin J. Siteman (1948) Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, MIT Sloan School of Management
Status is ubiquitous in modern life, yet our understanding of its role as a driver of inequality is limited. In Status, sociologist and social psychologist Cecilia Ridgeway examines how this ancient and universal form of inequality influences today’s ostensibly meritocratic institutions and why it matters. Ridgeway illuminates the complex ways in which status affects human interactions as we work together towards common goals, such as in classroom discussions, family decisions, or workplace deliberations.
Ridgeway’s research on status has important implications for our understanding of social inequality. Distinct from power or wealth, status is prized because it provides affirmation from others and affords access to valuable resources. Ridgeway demonstrates how the conferral of status inevitably contributes to differing life outcomes for individuals, with impacts on pay, wealth creation, and health and well-being. Status beliefs are widely held views about who is better in society than others in terms of esteem, wealth, or competence. These beliefs confer advantages that can exacerbate social inequality. Ridgeway notes that status advantages based on race, gender, and class—such as the belief that white men are more competent than others—are the most likely to increase inequality by facilitating greater social and economic opportunities.
Ridgeway argues that status beliefs greatly enhance higher status groups’ ability to maintain their advantages in resources and access to positions of power and make lower status groups less likely to challenge the status quo. Many lower status people will accept their lower status when given a baseline level of dignity and respect—being seen, for example, as poor but hardworking. She also shows that people remain willfully blind to status beliefs and their effects because recognizing them can lead to emotional discomfort. Acknowledging the insidious role of status in our lives would require many higher-status individuals to accept that they may not have succeeded based on their own merit; many lower-status individuals would have to acknowledge that they may have been discriminated against.
Ridgeway suggests that inequality need not be an inevitable consequence of our status beliefs. She shows how status beliefs can be subverted—as when we reject the idea that all racial and gender traits are fixed at birth, thus refuting the idea that women and people of color are less competent than their male and white counterparts. This important new book demonstrates the pervasive influence of status on social inequality and suggests ways to ensure that it has a less detrimental impact on our lives.
CECILIA L. RIDGEWAY is Lucie Stern Professor of Social Sciences, Emerita, in the Sociology Department at Stanford University.
Employers frequently pass the costs of variable customer demand onto their hourly workers, especially low-wage workers, by changing or canceling their shifts with little notice. Research has shown that schedule unpredictability is associated with adverse worker and family outcomes. Several cities and states, including San Francisco, Seattle, New York, and Oregon, now require service industry employers over a certain size to post schedules with a specified minimum lead time and to compensate workers for cancelled shifts.
Behavioral economist Linda Babcock and a team of three psychologists will investigate the impact of stereotype threat on college students’ decision making that can lead to educational disparities across categories such as race, gender, and socioeconomic status. They will examine how stereotype threat impacts students’ attitudes toward risk (risk aversion), how students weigh losses versus gains in evaluating risky situations (loss aversion), and how they spend their time on activities where the benefits will accrue now versus in the future (present bias).
PRAISE FOR THE PREVIOUS EDITIONS
“ As someone who is highly involved in conducting meta-analyses and teaching meta-analysis to students, I can say that this handbook has a chapter on every issue that arises. Each chapter is written by a major expert in the field and provides authoritative answers. The Handbook of Research Synthesis and Meta-Analysis is a must-have for anyone working on meta-analysis.”
—JANET SHIBLEY HYDE, Helen Thompson Woolley Professor, University of Wisconsin
“[A] tour de force, an indispensable reference that no meta-analyst will want to be without. It is elegantly organized, encyclopedic in breadth and coverage, and articulate in exposition of the role meta-analysis plays in advancing the cumulative nature of knowledge. [The book] is destined to become a classic . . . highly recommended and a must for any serious student or practitioner of the research enterprise.”
—FREDERIC M. WOLF, Learning Resource Center, University of Michigan
Research synthesis is the practice of systematically distilling and integrating data from many studies in order to draw more reliable conclusions about a given research issue. When the first edition of The Handbook of Research Synthesis and Meta-Analysis was published in 1994, it quickly became the definitive reference for conducting meta-analyses in both the social and behavioral sciences. In the third edition, editors Harris Cooper, Larry Hedges, and Jeff Valentine present updated versions of classic chapters and add new sections that evaluate cutting-edge developments in the field.
The Handbook of Research Synthesis and Meta-Analysis draws upon groundbreaking advances that have transformed research synthesis from a narrative craft into an important scientific process in its own right. The editors and leading scholars guide the reader through every stage of the research synthesis process—problem formulation, literature search and evaluation, statistical integration, and report preparation. The Handbook incorporates state-of-the-art techniques from all quantitative synthesis traditions and distills a vast literature to explain the most effective solutions to the problems of quantitative data integration. Among the statistical issues addressed are the synthesis of non-independent data sets, fixed and random effects methods, the performance of sensitivity analyses and model assessments, the development of machine-based abstract screening, the increased use of meta-regression and the problems of missing data. The Handbook also addresses the non-statistical aspects of research synthesis, including searching the literature and developing schemes for gathering information from study reports. Those engaged in research synthesis will find useful advice on how tables, graphs, and narration can foster communication of the results of research syntheses.
The third edition of the Handbook provides comprehensive instruction in the skills necessary to conduct research syntheses and represents the premier text on research synthesis.
HARRIS COOPER is Hugo L. Blomquist Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University.
LARRY V. HEDGES is Professor of Statistics and Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University.
JEFFREY C. VALENTINE is Professor of Education and Human Development at the University of Louisville.
CONTRIBUTORS Ariel M. Aloe, Betsy Jane Becker, Michael Borenstein, Kathleen Coburn, Thomas D. Cook, Harris Cooper, Dean Giustini, Julie Glanville, Sean Grant, Larry V. Hedges, Julian P. T. Higgins, Spyros Konstantopoulos, Huy Le, Mark W. Lipsey, Georg E. Matt, In-Sue Oh, Robert G. Orwin, Terri D. Pigott, Frank L. Schmidt, Rebecca Turner, Jeffrey C. Valentine, Jack L. Vevea, Howard D. White, David B. Wilson, Evan Mayo-Wilson, Sandra Jo Wilson, Nicole A. M. Zelinsky
