Effects of Neighborhood and School Environments on Transitions to First Sexual Intercourse
Julien O. Teitler and Christopher C. Weiss
Sociology of Education
Vol. 73, No. 2 (Apr., 2000), pp. 112-132
Published by: American Sociological Association
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2673240
I chose to read this study because it addresses the significance of neighborhoods as defined by census tract, which we've been discussing in lab, and it uses sexual activity as the outcome. On a survey, they asked students about the social (and sexual) norms in their neighborhood and school and also asked, "Have you had intercourse with someone of the opposite sex?" Now, the wording of a question seeking to gather information about sex initiation is always difficult, but a lot of information is lost when the possibility of initiation of same-sex sexual activity is excluded. But that's not the point of this study: the point was that between-school variation accounted for a significant proportion of the variation over and above the effect of neighborhood tracts, suggesting that neighborhood matters only insofar as it influences which school a student attends. However, the article proceeded to engage in a complex discussion of race, because the between-school variation for predominantly black schools disappeared, which prompted discussion of the very limited numbers of black students attending private schools or magnet (exam) public schools.
9/10 Jetts just because the method of analysis, "cross-classified multilevel hierarchical modeling," went over my head, so I could not judge the analysis for myself.
No comments:
Post a Comment