This study is a content analysis of sexual incidents in prime time television programming aired during the fall of 1990. This research replicates the content analysis of Sapolsky and Tabarlet (1991), while offering several methodological advances: the Fox network is included, in addition to programs on ABC, CBS and NBC; the context of sexual incidents is analyzed; multiple episodes of each program are coded and compared to find out if presentations of sexuality vary over time; and programs broadcast during network ratings "sweeps" are compared to non-sweeps programs to test the assumption that sweeps programs contain more sexuality. / In addition, this study considers two theories that may explain the possible effects of televised sexuality. Cultivation Analysis contends that viewers of television, over time, come to see television as a real and accurate reflection of the world. Sexual socialization, based on Social Learning Theory, argues that children and adolescents will tend to imitate the activities they see on television. Socialization into dating and sexual responsibility behaviors is thus affected by what is available on television. / The study found that the number of sexual incidents on prime time television has fallen significantly since the study of Sapolsky and Tabarlet (1991), and that programs broadcast during the fall, 1990 ratings sweeps period did not have significantly more sexual content than those broadcast before and after the sweeps. In addition, no significant difference was found between the amount of visual portrayals and sexual language on the Fox network and the amount on ABC, CBS and NBC. However, Fox programs did have significantly more innuendo and suggestiveness. Analysis of the programs by scene showed that some visual behaviors such as kissing and verbal references such as verbal innuendo tend to occur many times per scene, while other behaviors such as implied intercourse happen only once per scene. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 54-04, Section: A, page: 1138. / Major Professor: Barry S. Sapolsky. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1993.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 34-10, Section: A, page: 6754. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1973.

<p> Some contemporary choreographers alienate audiences by presenting grossly oversimplified work or creating work so esoteric that audience members feel lost. I argue that audience members are highly capable of abstraction and analysis, and that by creating dance works with layers of information and complexity, choreographers can engage audiences in a sociable exchange of sharing and consumption. Similarly, audience members can enhance their own participation in this exchange by practicing strategies that will help them be more attentive to choreography. By defining concert dance as a conversation between the choreographer and audience and applying some of Georg Simmel&rsquo;s theories of sociability, both choreographers and audience members can enhance dance&rsquo;s power as a tool for expression and communication.</p>

The tremendous growth of internal organizational grievance mechanisms, including the use of ombuds, has not been met with an equal increase in research. Currently, little is known about the functioning of these grievance mechanisms. This dissertation presents an empirical study of an academic ombud. Using normative pragmatics and a social context approach to disputing as an analytic framework, 50 disputants who pursued grievances through an academic ombud were interviewed at various stages of the disputing process. This study offers a processual account of disputants' experiences with the dispute process by combining interview data with multi-perspectival analyses (member checks, artifacts) and triangulation with quantitative survey data. Additionally, design features of the ombud office are examined for their ability to achieve the goals of the office given the context of the dispute. The study concludes that the flexibility of the ombud is a strength for dealing with the varied grievances brought to the office. Disputants are generally satisfied with the process, and have a restored sense of faith in the organization having gone through the ombud. The social context of academics, however, prevents the ombud process from reconciling relationships between disputants. The study further concludes that any design of disputing systems must take into account the social context of tile disputing arena. The framework generated by combining tile study of design features with social context provides researchers and practitioners a more productive way of analyzing and designing disputing systems.

This research is an in-depth exploration of turning points and adaptations in the lives of four women living below the poverty line in Tucson, Arizona. From the most extremely impoverished woman living on the streets to the housed, poor working woman, a life history approach is used to explore the mechanisms by which these four women fell into, stayed in, and may eventually climb out of poverty. While the life history reveals great complexity among the women, it also reveals common turning points among their troubled lives. All four women have had a least one parent who was an alcoholic and/or drug addict, all four women quit pursuing their education after high school and have a history of low-wage, low-mobility jobs. All four women have had prolonged relationships with men who were alcoholic and/or drug addicts and were physically abusive. Finally, all four women have had major health problems which have hindered their ability to work. It is concluded that the life history method and the emphasis on turning points and adaptations is an improvement over quantitative studies which gloss over the true mechanisms behind poverty and fail to capture real lives.

Different explanations have been given for the sex gap in pay between male and female occupations. Comparable worth proponents argue predominantly female occupations pay less than comparable male occupations because of their sex composition, that occupations' sex composition affects their wages. In contrast, Reskin and Roos (1990) and Strober (1984) argue the correspondence between occupational sex composition and wages is due to employers' preferences for male workers. Given first choice of occupations, males choose the better compensated occupations, which results in a causal effect of occupational wages on sex composition. Despite these opposing causal claims, few studies have attempted to ascertain the causal order between occupational sex composition and wages. This research focuses on the relationship between occupational sex composition and wages during the 1980s. Consistent with causal assumption of comparable worth proponents, analyses of Current Population Survey data (Study 1) support a causal effect of occupational sex composition on wages. Study 1 demonstrates that sex composition has a linear effect on wages for females and a nonlinear effect on wages for males. For both males and females, sex composition has a negative effect on wages over the entire range of sex composition. Study 2 revisits the causality question using 1980 and 1990 Census data, supplemented by additional controls from other data sets and finds a nonlinear effect of occupational sex composition on wages for females, but not for males. A negative effect of wages on sex composition was not found in any of the models. These results suggest that males may be less susceptible to the negative effects of sex composition than females. Study III uses an experimental study to determine if a "devaluation by association process" accounts for the lower wages of female occupations. The study found males but not females engage in a devaluation by association process, but neither males nor females devalue occupations based on their association with women. This may be indicative of a decline in the importance of sex as a diffuse status characteristic. The combined results of these studies suggest cautious optimism as far as reducing the sex gap in pay is concerned.

This study sheds new light on social psychological research on fairness by borrowing insights from social networks research and by incorporating the evolutionary approach. First, I propose the distinction between fairness in exchange based on local comparisons (e-fairness) and fairness in allocation based on referential comparisons (a-fairness). Early studies on fairness by social exchange theorists primarily considered exchange situations, but later on distributive justice researchers, considered allocation situations only. As a result, there is a certain discrepancy between the theories and the actual settings that researchers use (Cook and Hegtvedt 1983). Using the evolutionary approach resolves this confusion. The validity of this argument is explored by use of computer simulation. Second, I propose that there is a relationship between two comparison processes, local comparison and referential comparison. Because most of the empirical research focuses on either local comparison or referential comparison (Hegtvedt and Johnson 2000), this research is the first attempt to address the potential influence of referential comparison on local comparison. Specifically, I argue that referential comparison has a dampening effect on local comparison, and that this effect is stronger for across-group referential comparison than for within-group referential comparison. This argument is tested by the experimentally. By borrowing insights from social networks research, the macro-level implication of this study is drawn. According to Nakane (1970), patterns of cross-cutting ties characterize societies. One extreme is a vertical society (in which there are no cross-cutting ties between members of sub-groups), and the other extreme is a horizontal society (in which there are many cross-cutting ties). Since across-group referential comparison is more likely to occur in horizontal societies, given the same degree of objective inequality, we can expect that the degree of perceived unfairness will be higher in vertical societies than in horizontal societies. Thus, behavioral attempts to achieve fairness will also be higher in vertical societies. As a result, we can expect that social inequality is higher in horizontal societies than in vertical societies. This seems to be the case when we consider the United States and Japan.

This case study of the New Age movement uses ethnographic methods to acquire and analyze data on a sample of movement participants in a large Southwestern U.S. city. The study provides an ecology of the local manifestation of the larger movement, looking at multiple New Age institutes, periodicals, radio broadcasts, churches, commercial expositions; participants; and rituals, beliefs and experiences of participants. The study contributes to scholarship in the sociology of religion, social movements, and general sociological theory. This study elaborates empirically and theoretically several key principles and processes in the sociology of religion. First, participants engage in five main types of rituals---regarding material recognition, healing, group-focus, spirit connections and psyche reorientation. Second, participants' most significant belief is that of "perfectionistic monism," with derivative beliefs diagnosing ego as humans' problem, prescribing awareness to ameliorate ego's ill effects, and implying that desirable results (concerning efficacy, morality, wellbeing) arise from believing along these lines. Third, participants emphasize experiences over doctrine, positively experience almost all stimuli in their lives, and benefit from a significant overlap between their movement's ideal and real cultures. This study examines rituals, beliefs and experiences to ask three questions social movements scholars sometimes neglect: How does ritual action contribute to movement persistence? How do movement participants see themselves and the world? How does movement involvement affect participants? It finds rituals to contribute to "religious value," the "perfectionistic monism" belief and the "religious logic" of the movement to contribute to participant identity, and all three of these things to contribute to movement persistence. At a more general level, the study of the interrelatedness of rituals, beliefs and experiences expands analytic possibilities for social movements scholars. Moreover, the inclusion of religious movements in the study of social movements can refine theorizations of the concept of social movement. Finally, the study suggests further questions for general sociological theory via its finding that New Agers are explicitly aware of the part they play in the social construction of reality. This finding should spur sociologists to further examine the relationship between actor awareness and sustainability of institutions that self-aware actors build.

The retrovirus XMRV (xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus) was first identified in association with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in 2009. Following the publication of this research there erupted a major controversy within the scientific literature over the status of the XMRV virus, that wound to a close in 2012 with the editorial retraction of the original research and the conclusion that the virus was a laboratory artefact. This paper maps the dynamics of the XMRV-CFS controversy, and how the status of the virus itself changed over the course thereof. The question of the "reality" of both the virus and its putative association with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome were pivotal to the actors involved, and the thesis focuses on how the endogenous discourses of artefactuality (along with the procedures, materials, and instrumentation with which such discourses were entangled) figured into the perpetuation and eventual resolution of the controversy. / Le rétrovirus XMRV (xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus) a été identifié pour la première fois en 2009 en association avec le Syndrome de fatigue chronique. Suite à la publication de ces recherches, une controverse importante a éclaté dans la presse scientifique quant au statut du virus XMRV. Cette controverse s'achèvera en 2012 avec la rétractation de l'article original et la révélation que le virus était en fait un artefact de laboratoire. Le présent mémoire retrace la dynamique de la controverse autour du couple XMRV-SFC en examinant de plu près le changement de statut du virus au cours de cette même controverse. La question de la « réalité » même du virus et celle de son lien putatif avec le Syndrome de fatigue chronique occupent une place centrale au sein du débat entre les scientifiques concernés. Le mémoire s'intéresse donc en particulier au rôle qu'ont joué dans la perpétuation et l'éventuelle résolution de la controverse les discours endogènes concernant l'artefactualité, ainsi que les instances matérielles (procédures, matériaux et équipements) rattachées à ces discours.

This dissertation examines a novel type of standardization in medicine by investigating the production and regulation of clinical practice guidelines. As an important tool of the Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) movement, guidelines have been at the center of polarized debates in which they are praised for rationalizing medicine and criticized for undermining humanism in health care. Based on document analysis, interviews and (participant) observation, this dissertation examines how 'evidence based' guideline developers respond to such contradictory demands and critiques. In doing so, I present an empirical examination of the way EBM practices construct, avoid or reconcile tensions between supposed binaries such as universal/local, evidence/values, standards/individuality, science/care. After the introduction and a review of the existing literature on the epistemological basis and regulatory impact of EBM guidelines, the findings are presented in two parts. The first part analyzes how formal EBM principles are understood and performed during guideline production, with Chapter three highlighting the diversity of knowledge, procedures and materials required to classify Evidence and formulate the guideline text. Chapter four analyzes how an absence of Evidence is handled and proposes the term 'Evidence Searched Guidelines' to capture the distinctive character of EBM guidelines. The second part focuses on 'guidelines for guidelines' that regulate guideline development. Chapter five presents the Guidelines International Network, which aims for a 'universal' procedure for standard-setting, but objects to the standardization of guidelines. Chapter six presents four models of Patient & Public Involvement that aim to integrate evidence with 'values' and 'context', making guidelines more personalized, democratic, locally relevant and/or objective. In aiming for Gold Standards that avoid standardization, EBM guideline developers challenge the accounts of EBM proponents and critics alike. The contested relation between the standardized (or universal) and the individualized (or local) at the heart of Evidence Based Medicine is managed not by the quantity, quality or universality of evidence, but by standardization of procedures. / Cette thèse étudie la production et la réglementation des lignes directrices pour la pratique clinique, afin d'examiner un type de standardisation médicale novateur. Servant d'outil important dans le mouvement de la médecine basée sur les données probantes (Evidence Based Medicine ou EBM), les lignes directrices ont été au centre de débats polarisés dans lesquels on fait l'éloge d'elles pour avoir rationalisées la médecine et on les critique d'avoir minées l'humanisme dans les soins de santé. Basée sur l'analyse de documents, des interviews et l'observation (participative), cette thèse examine comment les développeurs des lignes directrices répondent aux telles demandes et critiques contradictoires. Ce faisant, je présente un examen empirique des façons que les pratiques de la EBM construisent, évitent et réconcilient les tensions entre de présumés binaires, tels universel/local, données probantes/valeurs, standards/individualité et sciences/soins. Après l'introduction et l'analyse de la littérature existante sur les bases épistémologiques et l'impact de la réglementation des lignes directrices de la EBM, les résultats sont présentés en deux parties. La première partie analyse la compréhension et la performance des principes formels de la EBM durant la production des lignes directrices, le troisième chapitre mettant l'accent sur la diversité des connaissances, des procédures et des matériels nécessaires pour classifier les données probantes et formuler le texte des lignes directrices. Le quatrième chapitre analyse comment l'absence de données probantes est gérée et propose le terme «Evidence Searched Guidelines» (lignes directrices cherchantes les données probantes) pour saisir le caractère distinctif des lignes directrices de la EBM. La deuxième partie met l'accent sur les «lignes directrices pour les lignes directrices», qui régularisent le développement des lignes directrices. Le cinquième chapitre présente le Guidelines International Network, visant une procédure universelle pour l'établissement des normes, mais s'opposant à la standardisation des lignes directrices. Le sixième chapitre présente quatre modèles d'Implication du Public visant à intégrer les données probantes à des «valeurs» et des «contextes», afin de rendre les lignes directrices plus personnalisées, démocratiques, pertinentes et/ou objectives. Visant des Étalons-or qui évitent la standardisation, les développeurs des lignes directrices de la EBM mettent au défi à la fois les explications des défenseurs de la EBM et celles des détracteurs. Le rapport contesté entre standardisé (ou universel) et personnalisé (ou local) au cœur de la médecine fondée sur les données probantes n'est pas gouverné par la quantité, la qualité ou l'universalité des données probantes, mais par la standardisation des procédures.