The present historical moment may seem a particularly inopportune time to review Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam's latest exploration of civic decline in America. After all, the outpouring of volunteerism, solidarity, patriotism, and self-sacrifice displayed by Americans in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks appears to fly in the face of Putnam's central argument: that \"social capital\" -defined as \"social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them\" (p. 19)'has declined to dangerously low levels in America over the last three decades. However, Putnam is not fazed in the least by the recent effusion of solidarity. Quite the contrary, he sees in it the potential to \"reverse what has been a 30to 40-year steady decline in most measures of connectedness or community.\"' As an example of how the current \"war on terrorism\" could generate a durable civic renewal, Putnam points to the burst in civic practices that occurred during and after World War II, which he says \"permanently marked\" the generation that lived through it and had a \"terrific effect on American public life over the last half-century.\" 3 If Americans can follow this example and channel their current civic

Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community

1. Introduction and Overview. 2. Detecting Influential Observations and Outliers. 3. Detecting and Assessing Collinearity. 4. Applications and Remedies. 5. Research Issues and Directions for Extensions. Bibliography. Author Index. Subject Index.

Regression Diagnostics: Identifying Influential Data and Sources of Collinearity

The Rise of the Creative Class

In this innovative approach to the practice of social science, Charles Ragin explores the use of fuzzy sets to bridge the divide between quantitative and qualitative methods. Paradoxically, the fuzzy set is a powerful tool because it replaces an unwieldy, "fuzzy" instrument—the variable, which establishes only the positions of cases relative to each other, with a precise one—degree of membership in a well-defined set. Ragin argues that fuzzy sets allow a far richer dialogue between ideas and evidence in social research than previously possible. They let quantitative researchers abandon "homogenizing assumptions" about cases and causes, they extend diversity-oriented research strategies, and they provide a powerful connection between theory and data analysis. Most important, fuzzy sets can be carefully tailored to fit evolving theoretical concepts, sharpening quantitative tools with in-depth knowledge gained through qualitative, case-oriented inquiry. This book will revolutionize research methods not only in sociology, political science, and anthropology but in any field of inquiry dealing with complex patterns of causation.

Fuzzy-Set Social Science

福祉関連職におけるMaslach Burnout Inventoryの因子構造の比較

In 1988, James Coleman observed that “social capital is defined by its function. It is not a single entity but a variety of different entities, with two elements in common: they all consist of some aspect of social structures, and they facilitate certain actions of actors-whether persons or corporate actors-within the structure.” If one looks at the state of social capital research, it is clear that this is truer than ever before. This paper seeks to help researchers overcome the major challenges of social capital research, namely, measuring a concept that is notoriously difficult for measurement and choosing among the exhaustive list of direct, casual and consequential measures. It does so by arguing for a typology of social capital that considers five major types of social capital and then reviewing a diverse selection of data available from national surveys. This provides a resource for scholars wishing to pursue large-scale social capital research. Additionally, it draws six lessons from this body of theory and measurement to improve the study of social capital.

Theory and Measurement in Social Capital Research

ings to some places and to the urban space as a whole’’ (p. 103). In some instances, arguments are based around errors: the towers of New York’s World Trade Center, for example, were definitely not the tallest buildings in the world at the time of their destruction. For many chapters, what would have been a solid idiographic analysis is not helped by the addition of sociological platitudes about cities as symbols. The book states that it is based on two approaches to the study of urban symbolism, ‘‘urban symbolic ecology’’ and ‘‘hypercity.’’ Symbolic ecology ‘‘pursues the study of the cultural dimension of the city, oriented towards establishing the distribution and meaning of symbols and rituals in relation to the cultivated surroundings’’ (p. 7), aiming to establish that various aspects of the urban environment and urban practice transmit symbolic meaning. Hypercity theory ‘‘proposes that the symbolic side of a city is so compelling that it can be seen as being detached from reality’’ (p. 8)—that the symbolic life of the city is relatively autonomous from urban forms and processes themselves, producing a kind of Baudrillardian ‘‘hyperreality’’ in the shape of a city. The concluding chapter explains that the book has also been developing a ‘‘third approach’’ that it calls ‘‘feeling at home in the city,’’ focused on examining how symbols and rituals foster ‘‘mental bonding to the city and contribute to feeling at home there’’ (p. 284). Offered as ‘‘a clear direction for future research’’ (p. 286), this late-breaking emphasis on urban intimacy and social cohesion seems like an afterthought. These ideas, developed in recent decades by Nas and his co-authors, are clearly important and influential, but the book declines the opportunity to fully explain them and their significance. As they are presented here, these concepts seem to be products of a somewhat insular scholarly network. The fact that cities and landscapes are richly meaningladen, semiotic phenomena has long been recognized. It was a major preoccupation for a wide range of thinkers including Kevin Lynch, Henri Lefebvre, J. B. Harley, Sharon Zukin, Martin Krampen, Mark Gottdiener, and numerous representatives of various generations of the Chicago School. Aside from some occasional discussions of Lynch and a few cursory references to others, the book does not engage in any significant way with any other work on symbolism and urbanism. This insularity is not inherently a problem, but it does mean that a number of the book’s foundational assumptions— including the idea that cities are unified objects that can be seen to have meaning in the sense in which it is analyzed here—go without debate or justification. The book thus creates a sense of déjà vu. Most of its main points are by now generally accepted by urbanists. But it has not taken on any of the criticisms directed toward symbolic or cultural approaches to the city. It does not critically reflect on its central method of mental mapping. And there is almost no attention paid to politics, struggle, or conflict. The closest the book comes to engaging with the conflictual, antagonistic side of urban life is in its overly simple distinction between ‘‘top-down’’ and ‘‘bottom-up’’ symbols and a few words about how urban images can be subject to ‘‘manipulation.’’ Overall, the book certainly demonstrates that cities are full of symbols, but it does not offer a distinctive theory of urban space and culture. Scholars of urbanism and semiotics may very well find it useful, and it is a good resource for a number of specific cities. But, at least for this reviewer, the book’s quirks, overstatements, and simplifications are overriding, and its contributions to urban theory remain somewhat murky.

Making Democratic Governance Work: How Regimes Shape Prosperity, Welfare, and Peace

Attempts to create an index of innovation have focused almost exclusively on countries or states. These existing indices also weigh various drivers of innovation equally without regard to their relative effect on economic development. This article has two distinct parts. In Part I the authors develop an index of innovation at the county level. They describe the rationale for selecting innovation measures based on the literature. This section goes into detail about measures and data. Part II statistically analyzes the data for all U.S. counties to assess the relative importance of the innovation factors on GDP-per-worker growth. The researchers also investigate whether the relative importance of the drivers of innovation differ depending on county scale and other characteristics that are often used to differentiate rural from urban. Initial analysis suggests that innovation influences can vary depending on the size of the county and the rural—urban divide.

The Index of Innovation: A New Tool for Regional Analysis

Aims and objectives The many negative effects of burnout have prompted researchers to better understand the factors contributing to it. The purpose of this paper is to add to this body of knowledge through the study of burnout among direct-care workers in nursing homes. Background Perhaps the factor most often associated with employee burnout is the level of staffing-insufficient staffing results in work overload and eventually employee burnout. A closer look at research findings suggests that there are many other factors also contributing to burnout. These range from those at the organisational level, such as availability of training and resources to individual characteristics such as self-esteem and length of employment. Methods A self-administered survey instrument was completed by 410 direct-care workers working within 11 nursing homes in the north Texas region. Regression analyses were performed, adjusting for clustering by nursing home. Beta coefficients and structure coefficients are reported. Burnout was measured through three dimensions: emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation and personal accomplishment. Results Organisational, work design, interpersonal and individual characteristics were found to be associated with one or more dimensions of burnout. Conclusions The analyses largely support previous research. Organisational variables of significance included the availability of resources to do the work, available training and fair pay. Work design variables of significance included adequate staffing. The individual characteristic, self-esteem, appeared to have the strongest impact on burnout. Commitment to the organisation also had a large impact. Relevance to clinical practice While the data do not allow for the testing of causal relationships, the data do suggest that providing adequate staffing, perceived fair pay, sufficient work resources (e.g., towels, gowns), management support and adequate training may result in less direct-care worker burnout on the job.

Burnout among direct-care workers in nursing homes: Influences of organisational, workplace, interpersonal and personal characteristics.

The current study examines the combinational effects of globalization, wealth, democracy, political stability, and legal efficiency on the perception of state corruption within 34 members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (the OECD) countries. Seminal academic literature clearly shows that all these factors can influence corruption within nations and this study focuses on the pathways through which globalization is mediated by unique combinations of other factors that work in tandem through the use of Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis. The analysis of conditions reveals that a high level of globalization is neither sufficient nor necessary condition on its own for low corruption but combines with other conditions in distinct pathways to be sufficient for either high corruption or low corruption among the research cases. Other internal factors appear more clearly associated with corruption, with low legal efficiency as a necessary condition for high corruption, while high democracy and high legal efficiency serving as important necessary conditions for low corruption.”

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10611-019-09874-1.pdf

Michael F. Thompson

Papers

Theory and Measurement in Social Capital Research

Making Democratic Governance Work: How Regimes Shape Prosperity, Welfare, and Peace

The Index of Innovation: A New Tool for Regional Analysis

Burnout among direct-care workers in nursing homes: Influences of organisational, workplace, interpersonal and personal characteristics.

Is globalization linked to low corruption in OECD countries