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This study reports on the operation of trust and reciprocity in a secondary relationship of the restaurant organization. Working for tips rather than contract wages, the waitress is required to trust the customer and depend on the rule of reciprocity for her wages. Each restaurant customer is extended credit or trust during the service interaction. The restaurant worker develops a disposition or attitude towards this act of credit. The question for investigation is which conditions, structural or interactional, exert the greatest influence on the credit attitude expressed by the waitress? The table service staff of eight restaurants serve as the sample. When both models are tested, only the structural conditions exert a significant influence on the credit attitude. Findings suggest that acts of trust and reciprocity are influenced more by the climate or orientation of the employing organization than by conditions of work interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on advertising by professionals in the U.S. Many have resisted advertising, believing it runs contrary to the very core of professional ideology. Advertising, instead of benefiting the public, is thought to increase the likelihood of professional practitioners making unethical and fraudulent claims. The actual effect of advertising has yet to be documented. Researchers have begun examining professionals and advertising, focusing on opinions of professionals and consumers toward advertising, the impact on the profession per se, the effect of selected background factors on the use of advertising, and the acceptability of types of advertisements used by professionals. Two factors may aid the increase in advertising by professionals in the future. First, are the contingencies of the marketplace. Competition and the economic demands of maintaining a practice may negate the ideals of the "old" professionalism. Second, the legality of advertising and the fact that at least some practitioners are already doing it is likely to change professional ideology. Emphasis is likely to be on not whether it is professional to advertise, but on how it is professional to advertise--on regulation of the types of appeals and media to be used.

The article discusses gender roles and women's issues as an area of interest among sociologists. A way to examine developments in gender issues is to take as a base population only those individuals citing an interest in this specialty and then to examine the proportions of males and females represented. Gender issues as a specialty originated with observations and concerns occurring principally within the female population of sociologists. The trends, however, do raise several interesting questions on increase in male representation within gender issues. Seventeen percent of the manuscripts submitted to the journal "Sociological Inquiry" over the past two years were concerned with gender roles and women's issue although they do explain why all but one of the authors were female gender roles and women's issues as an area of interest. Thus, the percentage of submissions is much greater than the percentage of those interested in gender roles and women's issues. There are several possible explanations for this situation. First, it may be that the data are not representative of the total population of sociologists. Second, individuals with an interest in gender roles and women's issues may be more likely to submit manuscripts than those with other areas of interest.

The question for research is: what effect does job autonomy have on the sense of vulnerability expressed by those working for tips rather than for contracted wages? Vulnerability, the dependent variable, is a measure of the worker's perception of risk attached to working under such an arrangement. Autonomy, the independent variable evaluates organizational conditions which permit or limit control over one's work. It is measured by restaurant procedures of surveillance and discipline. Sixty-one waitresses employed as the dining room staff of a stratified sample of 8 restaurants provided the data to test the relationship between autonomy and occupational vulnerability. A positive association was found between procedures of autonomy and the restaurant worker's expression of vulnerability. Study findings suggest that the less control restaurant management allows the waitress over the execution of her work, the more vulnerable and less satisfied she is with the tipping/wage arrangement. In addition, study findings suggest that autonomy is as critical a variable for women in their work as it has been reported to be in studies of the male labor force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This report explores the division of labor by sex in sociology. Using the Guide to Graduate Departments for the years 1975, 1980 and 1985, first-cited specialty areas for all women and a one- fifth sample for men were obtained. Comparison of these specialty areas for women and men suggests that a division of labor b) sex exists in sociology. Further, the correlations between specialty areas for men and women are decreasing over time, indicating an increasing division of labor by sex. Of particular interest are: 1) the nearly exclusive participation of women in Gender Studies and the incense of women over time who choose this as a first-cited specialty; 2) the decline in the core area of Methods by both men and women; 3) the decline in the core area of Theory by women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This research traces medical students' perceptions of the first year of medical training in an experimental, problem-based curriculum. The purpose of the study was to ascertain whether their learning experiences differ from what has been reported about perceptions in traditional training programs. A content analysis of structured student diaries revealed that their experiences follow closely the three-phase model described by Becker, Geer, Strauss and Hughes (1961). The students shift from their initial perspective of "wanting to learn it all," to a provisional perspective of "can't learn it all," to a final perspective of `learn what the faculty wants." We conclude that, without changing the institutional structure of the medical school, curricular reforms are not likely to change students' perception of their socialization into medicine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section presents an analysis of the sociological meaning, usage and significance of public nicknames of famous football players and coaches. The use of nicknames is ancient in origin, particularly as they are applied to individuals of athletic prowess. The word nickname is derived from the Old English eke name based on the verb econ meaning to add or augment. Thus, nicknames provide a richer and more explicit denotation than do given names. The sociological significance of nicknames in the U.S. society is a topic which few sociologists have commented upon, in fact the subject has attracted little attention from scholars in any discipline. In the field of football, the public names given to players are directly related to what phases of the game are most valued. They also demonstrate some of the changes in society which have resulted in the reduction in the use of public nicknames. In one sense, the distribution of nicknames verifies the common sense notion about what skills are most emphasized in football, but in a larger sense it suggests which positions are most valued in the organization.

As part of a larger study surveying the attitudes and behaviors of restaurant workers, it was discovered that 75% of those waitresses questioned had accumulated less than one year of service in their current job and that 63% claimed restaurant work as their last job. These findings confirm an industrywide pattern: on the average, the table service worker turns over the position in the restaurant organization two to five times per year. This extreme example of horizontal mobility in the labor force is referred to by the waitress as "working the circuit." The turnover pattern raises a sociological question that serves as the subject of analysis: What social forces account for the cycling of workers in and out of the table service positions? Two types of variables are used to investigate the question, individual variables, which focus on employee work history, and variables of the organization, which represent conditions of the work place. Variable analysis provides an evaluation of the turnover phenomena, first in terms of the relationship between restaurant organization and table service position. Analysis suggests that with the exception of a place to work, there is little investment made by the restaurant in the position. An additional factor contributing to the turnover phenomenon is identified in evaluating the waitress occupation. The occupation of waitressing is structured by the organization in a way that requires both an independent contractor and a dependent employee. Turnover can be understood as the individual's inability to reconcile these contradictory forces. The individual decision to leave the current job and assume the same relative position in another organization, or work the circuit, can be seen as a renewed effort to balance the forces of contradiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Official statistics and numerous sociological studies indicate that rural areas generate lower rates of delinquency than do urban areas. This study attempts to explain these differential rates by drawing on the social control theory of Hrischi. Questionnaires were administered to a rural and an urban juvenile detention center population to investigate both extent of delinquency involvement and degree of commitment to five Institutional orders: family, church, school, peers, and formal authority. As hypothesized, the rural sample reported significantly less delinquent activity than the urban sample. Control theory also received support from the data. A strong inverse relationship was found between commitment and delinquency. When introduced as a control variable, commitment specified the original relationship between locality and delinquency. The specified relationships were strongest for rural youth with high commitment and for urban youth with low commitment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this research was to examine the relationship between musical preference, commitment to popular music and behavior problems of teenagers in an optional middle school. This research tested three hypotheses. 1) Musical preference is related to race, 2) Musical preference can predict behavior problems, and 3) Commitment to popular music, measured in hours, can predict behavior problems. Data were gathered from a survey distributed to 80 students, school records, and participant observation. Results indicated that musical preference can predict race but can not predict identification as a behavior problem. Commitment to particular types of popular music did not predict behavior problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This report examines the public use of personal nicknames for notorious American Twentieth Century Deviants. The analysis documents the frequency of nicknames by decade in the twentieth century, the category of the deviant act committed by the person nicknamed, and the connotations of the nicknames. The relationship between the use of nicknames for deviants, and deviants as folk heroes is explored. The data indicate that the public use of personal nicknames for deviants peaks in the 1920's and 1930's and has been declining ever since. This phenomenon parallels the decline in American's belief in the "rags to riches" type of folk hero. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we present findings from a study of pornographic bookstores and sex paraphernalia shops. Our focus was on the Salon and Tack Room, two work settings located in a major U.S. city and catering to the sexual interests of the gay community. The most important finding was that the settings manifested an expressive orientation to work with the convergence of work and individual identity clearly evident. This was not the case with the majority of other stores we examined. The paper includes transcription of rich and colorful interview material and a discussion of the implications of these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the U.S., many students at the introductory level resisted the notion of a social class structure and the idea that they or their families were a part of it. In fact, some students believed that social class was no more and no less than the product of the social scientists' imagination. This research paper anticipated this bias and aimed at accelerate understanding of the degree to which perceptions of social class exist and sometimes are used as a basis for action. It uses Family Name Social Class Index to explain the phenemena and further derives a Nickname Social Class Index along the same lines as the Family Names Social Class Index to see whether nicknames could be used as effectively as family names in teaching about social class in the introductory course. The students' rankings suggest that people make assumptions about a family's social class not only on the basis of family names but even on the basis of a male nickname. It appears that when students made choices, they resorted to ethnicity in ranking. This finding supports the theory that ethnicity as well as race continues to be linked closely to social class in American society.

A major disadvantage of using mail questionnaires to obtain research data is the possibility of a very low rate of return. In a study of hospitalized patients, personal face-to-face contact with respondents by a sponsor of a study before questionnaires were mailed was found to be an effective method for increasing returns. This technique appears suited for research in the health fields where patients may be contacted while they are under medical care, and then later mailed a questionnaire concerning information about their activities and behavior when they are no longer under treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most universal complaints of hospitalized patients in Western society is that they do not have enough communication with hospitalized functionaries. This paper briefly reviews the meaning and function of communication to hospitalized patients and some barriers to that communication. Possible reasons for lack of communication between patients and hospital functionaries are examined from the standpoint of their relation to the ends of the hospital as a social organization and the possible anticipated and unanticipated consequences of such a policy for the therapeutic process. Finally, a series of propositions are developed in regard to communication between nurses and hospitalized patients, and physicians and hospitalized patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the role of nurses in treating a patient. Researchers postulated that the pattern of expectations constituting the nursing role is characterized by disinterest, functional specificity, affective neutrality, universalism, and performance-oriented achievement. The therapeutic process requires as a condition of its effectiveness that the patient's functionally diffuse needs for response and sup port be met in part. To this extent the patient must be treated as a person. Thus nurses should treat patients as cases, except when it is therapeutically necessary to treat them as persons. Since patients are often demanding, unreasonable, irritating, suffer and die, the nurse, to keep from collapsing under the strain, should not be allowed to become emotionally attached to her patients. In recent years, the concept of "comprehensive medicine" has mushroomed. Today the idea that a patient is more than just an organism, that he is an individual acting and interacting in a social context that his loves, hates, likes, dislikes, understandings, misunderstandings, and fears, affect not only his attitudes toward medical care, but also his motivation to stay well, his very desire to live or die is commonly known if not totally accepted. The fact that many schools of nursing now include courses in psychology and sociology is testimony to the influence of this concept of medical care upon the training of nurses.

Researchers have long been aware that when they become part of the system they are investigating, their own behavior may a.fleet the behavior they wish to study. Little data has been collected on the effect of respondents on the researcher and the consequences of this on tho research process. The problem is described and analyzed in this paper. We contend that respondents who have special qualities may intrude upon the researcher's role and make it difficult for him to collect necessary data. An illustration is presented from the authors' study of stripteasers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many years sociologists have done research on race relations in the United States, especially between Negroes and whites. In the past decade, hospitals and the health professions have also been popular objects of sociological inquiry. But thus far, there has been relatively little study of race relations in health organizations. Although some attention has been paid to the contribution of low-status hospital workers to the therapeutic process, the extent to which the race of the low-status worker may influence the contribution has not been studied. This paper presents some data contrasting patient perceptions of subprofessional low-status Negro hospital workers with patient perceptions of the professional high-status white hospital staff. The data suggest that from the patient's point of view (1) Negro aides, orderlies, housekeepers, food service personnel, etc. are more effective in meeting the patients' needs for expressive care than white nurses and physicians; and (2) these individuals' low status, Negro race, and sub-professional affiliation directly contribute to their effectiveness. If supported by further research, these hypotheses would have important implications for the sociology of race relations and for professional practice in patient care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of party identification as a predictor of political behavior has led several researchers to investigate the process by which it is learned. The concept of party identification plays an important role in explaining voter turnout and partisan direction of the vote in the literature relating to voting behavior. The strength of party identification is positively correlated with regularity of voting, intensity of interest in politics, partisan choice, straight ticket voting and other dependent variables relating to political activity. The central hypothesis is that beliefs, no matter how unsophisticated, about how the parties stand on certain issues are important factors underlying a person's party identification. Usually, a voter's beliefs about which party will promote the values he feels strongest about, and the voter's party identification, will be congruent. This congruency of beliefs and party identification, however, tends to mask the importance of these beliefs to the voter.

This article attempts to specify a number of factors related to misperceiving party stands on issues. Researchers found that misperception varies with the type of issue involved. The average misperception scores of respondents were higher on style issues than on position issues. It is found that amount of misperception varies with education. The higher the education the less the misperception on both style and position issues. Finally, it is found that strength of party identification and strength of issue orientation are negatively related to misperception on position issues but positively related to misperception on style issues. What seems to be involved in these findings is that style issues play an important role in a person's perception of differences between the two parties and in his own party identification. But since style issues are ambiguous and emotionally charged they tend to be subject to more misperception than position issues.

A career contingency model was used to identify a sequence and interaction process that provides one explanation of how and why certain individuals become chiropractors. The majority of these thirty practitioners not only had a role model influencing them in an early, adventitious career choice, but chiropractic was found to be a large part of their early family life. Most were involved in a serious illness or injury that was not treated successfully by an osteopathic or a medical doctor, but was by a chiropractic physician. This study suggests that the personal interest manifested by these chiropractors in their patients, and in people in general, may be one important differentiation between chiropractors and the established medical profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data indicate that, independent of illness, the social environment of the hospital may produce stress for child surgical patients and their mothers. For the children, stress may result in elevated temperature, pulse rate, and blood pressure; post-operative emesis; disturbed sleep; and an extended period of recovery. Experimental data indicate that social interaction with hospital personnel, providing information and emotional support, may reduce a mother's stress and change her definition of the hospital situation. This in turn may reduce a child's stress and have indirect but profound effects on his social, psychological, and even physiological responses to hospitalization and surgery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The usefulness of kinship terminology as a means to analyze family relationships is demonstrated. Analysis of data garnered from 250 college students indicates support for the Schneider-Romans proposition that a wide variety of alternative parental kinship terms are in use in the American culture. Variation in terminology appears to occur along three dimensions: the social context in which the addressing takes place—casual, neutral, intimate, and conflict for address; and intimate, semiformal, and formal for reference; the individual's subgroup identity—sex, religious, ethnic affiliation, etc.; and the degree of affection which an individual perceives his mother and/or father has for him. The variation in terminology indicates that some rather basic differences may exist among American families in parent-child relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the relationship among physical disability, need satisfaction, and marriage satisfaction in 36 couples in which the wife was disabled. A Perception of Needs Scale and a Marital Satisfaction Scale were developed for this project. A Mobility Dimension Scale adapted from one utilized in previous research. It was found that the physical condition of the disabled woman is not a useful predictor of need or marriage satisfaction in either member of the couple. The problem of role ambiguity complicated the picture in some important ways. Need satisfaction and marriage satisfaction were found to be highly correlated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests that if it is possible to ascertain individuals' primary motivation in dating, their degree of instrumental orientation, and their degree of emotional involvement; it will be possible to predict the likelihood of conflict occurring in their relationship, which partner is likely to control the relationship, and which partner is likely to experience the greater distress. It is further suggested that motivations in dating are affected by social variables, as are the actual choice of dating partners and the course of the dating relationship. An illustrative dating situation is presented and analyzed in which the females' primary motivation in dating is courtship and the males' primary motivation is recreation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a study of the association between mother's level of advance information about her child's hospitalization for tonsillectomy and her level of distress and adaptation to the child's hospitalization. The data support the hypotheses that: a child's hospitalization for tonsillectomy is a distressful event for the mother of the child; and mothers who are given a great deal of advance information from a physician about their child's hospitalization will suffer less distress and make a more rational adaptation to the hospitalization than mothers who are given very little or no advance information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The initiation of and commitment to deviance involves an interaction between the characteristic of the individuals, their experiences, and a number of situational conditions. Thus becoming deviant is a process which includes a series of "career contingencies" on which completion of the process depends. This paper concerns stripteasing, an occupation in which women earn their living by removing their clothes in a titillating fashion before paying audiences. Included are: a description of the occupation; data concerning physical, psychological, and social characteristics of women stripping on a theater circuit; and data on the situational factors surrounding their decision to enter the occupation. It appears that the career sequence for most strippers involves three contingencies: 1) a tendency toward exhibitionistic behavior for gain, 2) an opportunity structure making stripping an accessible occupational alternative, and 3) a sudden awareness of the easy economic rewards derived from stripping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simon and Gagnon have drawn attention to the importance of linking patterns of homosexual behavior to nondeviant behavior or roles. A complementary perspective is suggested wherein the choice of sexual object is influenced by structural factors, as appears to be the case in the total institutional setting. Some occupations may provide conditions to which homosexual behavior emerges as an adaptation. Stripping appears to be such an occupation in which the following conditions exist: 1) isolation from affective social relationships, 2) unsatisfactory relationships with males, and 3) an opportunity structure allowing a wide range of sexual behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the developments related to the periodical "Sociological Inquiry." The author would like to congratulate his predecessor, professor Harry Johnson, for the excellent job he did in editing the journal "Sociological Inquiry" and for the high quality of the manuscripts published during his tenure. The author would also like to thank him for the aid he has given him during the transition period. This issue as well as Volumes 52, Number 2 and 52, Number 3 contain manuscripts which were accepted and processed during the time Professor Johnson was editor. Alpha Kappa Delta (AKD) is the International Sociology Honor Society. Its purpose is to promote an interest in sociology, sociological research, and other social and intellectual activities concerned with the human condition. "Sociological Inquiry" is the official journal of Alpha Kappa Delta. It is designed to implement the scientific aims of AKD by communicating and reviewing developments of sociological interest in the service of faculty, investigators, and students alike. Since the journal has a broad constituency, to meet its objectives it must maintain a perspective general enough to cater to the interests and needs of sociologists and other social scientists with differing theoretical and methodological backgrounds engaged in a wide variety of activities in and out of academia. Thus it supports no particular theoretical, methodological or substantive area interest, but in a larger sense is concerned with them all.

The article discusses a study which examines the profile of patients in a hospital setting with attending primary care physicians. The objective of the study was to determine the type of hospitalized patients cared for by primary care physicians and the differences among the three primary care specialties namely internist, family practitioners, and pediatricians. It gathered the list of discharge data from the nine short-term general hospitals in Lucas County, Ohio in 1970. The researchers concluded that the types of hospitalized patients served by different primary care physicians differ by age, income level, type of diseases, and the quantitative aspects of hospitalization.

The article focuses on the use of statistical levels in social science. The choice of a statistical level of significance, that is, establishing the probability of rejecting the null hypothesis when in fact it is true, apparently demands little psychic energy on the part of researchers. Although statistically-inclined methodologists do not often explicitly recommend use of the arbitrary levels, their positions frequently suggest that these levels are conventional. Most textbooks in research methods and statistics recommend that the levels of significance associated with tests on the data be set in advance of actual data collection. As social scientists increasingly publish research findings in scholarly journals having a wider circulation than the scientific community of their own particular discipline, the problem becomes of increasing importance. Journals of practicing professions and occupations often reach an audience who is relatively unsophisticated in scientific methodology and techniques of statistical analysis.

As part of a larger study on the place of podiatry within the American health care system, this report suggests four critical issues facing podiatry as an independent health profession in the 1980S. The four concerns are: low visibility and credibility, lack of a strong professional self-image, struggle for more liberal hospital privileges, and the threat of loss of federal financial support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a preface by the editor. As, this would be the last issue that the editor would be responsible for; he acknowledges the support of various individuals and reviewers. He appreciated the educational institutions that provided financial support -- Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He notes that it was through their contribution that the "state of inquiry" has become what it is today. He relates that, ultimately, what does and does not appear in a professional journal is the editor's decision. He implies that he has striven for objectivity, although no one denies that editor's biases are reflected in the choice of subjects. Specially in the selection of subjects for the four special issues -- 53/2-3, 1983, "Sociology of the Environment"; 54/2, 1984, "Issues of Interest to the Profession"; 56/1, 1986, "Gender Roles and Women's Issues"; and 57/2, 1987, "Comparative/Historical Sociology of Science." He construes that journal editors act as gatekeepers by exercising control over the flow of scientific and/or scholarly knowledge. They also play a significant role in people's career. The editor says that he wrote letters to deans and/or chairpersons on behalf of sociologists being considered for promotion and/or tenure to the effect that their manuscripts were scheduled for publication.

This article discusses the intention of the author to publish issues in the journal "Sociological Inquiry," which was of importance to sociology in the 1980s. One of these topics was environmental sociology. The author hopes that the material contained in the special issue of the journal will bring its greater visibility and contribute to its future maturity. To the best of his knowledge this is the first time a major journal has featured an issue on environmental sociology. This is true despite the fact that the American Sociological Society has recognized a Section on Environmental Sociology since 1976. For the most part, what the author knows about environmental sociology he has gleaned from editing this special issue. For the special issue 9 of the 54 authors were female. For the general issues 31 of the 121 authors were female. The bulk of the articles submitted for the special issue were review and position papers. In contrast over 80 percent of those submitted for general issues were theoretical pieces and reports of empirical research. Less than one-quarter of the manuscripts submitted for the special issue were research reports.

As part of their teaching roles, social scientists sometimes develop personal and specific techniques of presenting material, which greatly facilitate the learning process in the classroom especially in difficult and controversial areas of study. Many times these techniques remain the personal property of the originator, or at best are only communicated in face-to-face interaction to his immediate colleagues. Analysis of background data collected from the students has revealed no statistically significant differences in rankings based on the student's age, sex, race, religion, social class, ethnic affiliation, academic standing or rural or urban residence. It is not uncommon to find students who are firmly convinced that the whole thing is more or less a product of the social scientists' imagination. In an attempt to anticipate this bias and to accelerate understanding of the degree to which perceptions of social class exist and are sometimes used as a basis for action, a simple classroom device is employed, named "Family Names-Social Class Index." The "Family Names-Social Class Index" is a highly effective and efficient aid in teaching about social class and the family, and its use is recommended.

Presents an introduction to articles published in the March 1984, issue of "Sociological Inquiry."

Reports on the twelfth annual meeting of the Mid-South Sociological Association in Jackson, Mississippi. Duration of the event; Theme of the meeting; Topics discussed during the sessions.