2/21/2012 The Huffington Post: Observations on infancy and mortality with data and findings from the National Children's StudyResearchers hope to learn more about these and other factors, including genetics, child rearing and exposure to chemicals, through the National Children's Study, an ambitious undertaking in which researchers are examining the lives of more than 100,000 children from before birth to age 21. The Southern California coordinating center is at UCLA in collaboration with Cedars-Sinai, The Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, the University of Southern California, the Los Angeles Department of Public Health, the Research Triangle Institute, the Rand Corporation and several Ventura County organizations.
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2/21/2012 The Wall Street Journal: NLSY97 cited in determining the links between obesity and behaviorTo test this hypothesis, we use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 and panel data techniques and find that obesity is negatively related to arrest. In one specification, for example, we found that the odds of an obese man being arrested are 64 percent of those of a healthy weight man. The social costs of obesity may be overstated if obesity reduces the likelihood of arrest because the obese are less criminally active.
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2/20/2012 MSN Dinero: The ten happiest jobs, with data and findings from the GSSLa General Social Survey de la Universidad de Chicago ha elaborado una lista con
los diez trabajos más felices del momento. Este ranking destaca porque incluye
profesiones que generalmente no están bien pagadas y que responderían a la
perfección con aquello de que 'el dinero no da la felicidad'.
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2/10/2012 MSN Careers: "America at age 24: An education and employment snapshot" featuring data from NLSYThat's why the Bureau of Labor Statistic's National Longitudinal Survey of Youth in 1997 is so fascinating. Findings from the study -- called longitudinal because it follows the same group of people over time -- were just released on the education and employment experiences of America at age 24. The study follows a nationally representative sample of approximately 9,000 men and women who were born during the years 1980 and 1984, were ages 12 to 17 when first interviewed in 1997, and were ages 24 to 30 when interviewed for the 13th time in 2009-2010.
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2/9/2012 University of Chicago Medical Center Science Life Blog: "Treating Pain on a Social Scale" with research and data from NSHAPShega and Dale would like to continue their study of chronic pain’s ties to social engagement by working with longitudinal data from the National Social Life Health and Aging Project (NSHAP), a study by investigators from NORC and the University of Chicago that contains multiple waves of data over five to 10 years and rich social network data. Using this long-term data will allow them to assess whether pain leads to more social isolation, and how the structure of the relationship changes over time.
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2/9/2012 Chronicle of Higher Education: "Here's More Bad News About Death" featuring research from NORC's Leonid GavrilovA new paper, though, finds that mortality deceleration for human beings is a myth. The husband-and-wife team of Leonid Gavrilov and Natalia Gavrilova, part of NORC's at the University of Chicago’s Center on Aging, have re-crunched the numbers, examined the assumptions, and found that it’s not the case. The mistake was likely to have been caused by mixing sets of disparate data (combining, say, groups of people with different mortality rates) along with the tendency to exaggerate the ages of really old people.
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2/8/2012 Yahoo! News: "Employee Owners' Jobs More Stable in Nervous Economy" featuring the GSSSpecifically, the 2010 GSS, funded primarily by the National Science Foundation and conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago, found that 3% of employees with employee stock ownership, which include the ESOP model and other forms of employee ownership, were laid off in 2009-2010 compared to a 12% rate for employees without employee stock ownership
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2/6/2012 UPI.com: Pondering mortality rates after 80, with research from NORC Expert Leonid GavrilovDue to an error in computation, the odds of living to a ripe old age in the United States are much lower than previously thought, researchers said. Leonid A. Gavrilov and Natalia S. Gavrilova of NORC at the University of Chicago, formerly known as the National Opinion Research Center, said the findings contradict a long-held belief that the mortality rate of Americans flattens out after age 80. The researchers' work explains why the U.S. Census Bureau was wrong when it predicted six years ago that there would be 114,000 centenarians in the country by 2010 when the actual number turned out to be half that at 53,364.
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2/4/2012 The New York Times: Single life versus married life, with research and findings from the General Social SurveyCompared with their married counterparts, single people are more likely to spend time with friends and neighbors, go to restaurants and attend art classes and lectures. There is much research suggesting that single people get out more — and not only the younger ones. Erin Cornwell, a sociologist at Cornell, analyzed results from the General Social Survey (which draws on a nationally representative sample of the United States population) from 2000 to 2008 and found that single people 35 and older were more likely than those who lived with a spouse or a romantic partner to spend a social evening with neighbors or friends.
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2/4/2012 Reuters: "Fuzzy numbers on guns" with data and research from NORCBut gun safety advocates such as the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence counter with a regular survey on gun ownership conducted by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center, which has been conducted 28 times since 1972, most recently in 2010. It has shown gun ownership declining steadily for years.
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2/2/2012 Yahoo! News: Valentine's Day: or, how I learned to be a more attentive husband with help from the GSS and NLSYTHE REPORT presents results from a new, nationally representative survey of 1,630 young married couples: "The Survey of Marital Generosity," conducted by Knowledge Networks in December of 2010 and January of 2011 and funded by the Science of Generosity initiative at the University of Notre Dame. The report also relies on new analyses of nationally representative data from the General Social Survey and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth.
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2/1/2012 Yahoo! News: The links between education, economics, and marriage, featuring information from NLSY79Musick and her colleagues used data from a sample of 3,200 Americans from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, a group that was followed from adolescence into adulthood. They estimated the propensity of men's and women's college attendance based on family income, parental education and other indicators of social background and early academic achievement. They then grouped their subjects into social strata based on these propensity scores and compared marriage chances of college- and non-college-goers within each stratum.
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1/31/2012 Chicago Magazine: A new school of thought on medicine, featuring commentary from NORC's Tom SmithIn fact, he doesn’t need to worry much about being controversial. Not when his in-your-face denunciation of the $2.6 trillion health care industry is resonating so well with an increasingly frustrated segment of the population. With health costs zooming and no convincing plan in place to curb them, “there is public dislike of Big Pharma and many managed care and health insurance companies,” says Tom Smith, director of the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.
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1/30/2012 The Huffington Post: "Artists Bring What Schools Need" by NORC expert Nick RabkinThe practice of teachers in classrooms is what matters most when it comes to students learning in school. The principle strategies of school reform -- 'higher' standards, school and teacher 'accountability', intensified testing, and 'choice' -- may affect teacher practice indirectly, but the the relatively poor record of school reform over the last three decades, especially in schools serving low-income students, suggests that those strategies are of no great consequence to the quality of teaching.
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1/30/2012 The Los Angeles Times: "That bad attitude? Blame the birth month" with commentary from NORC's Leonid Gavrilov"Siblings of centenarians born in September to November have 30 to 50% higher chances to live to 100 years compared to those born in March," says Leonid Gavrilov of the Center on the Demography and Economics of Aging at the University of Chicago, who coauthored the study with his wife, Natalia. He points to a variety of possible causes: maternal nutrition during the last months of pregnancy, seasonal infections, temperature during birth or conception and levels of vitamin D. All may influence the likelihood of health problems later in life.
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1/27/2012 Discover Magazine: The link between social conservatism and IQ, with data and research from the GSSIn light of my previous posts on GRE scores and educational interests (by the way, Education Realist points out that the low GRE verbal scores are only marginally affected by international students) I was amused to see this write-up at LiveScience, Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice. Naturally over at Jezebel there is a respectful treatment of this research. This is rather like the fact that people who would otherwise be skeptical of the predictive power of I.Q. tests become convinced of their precision of measurement when it comes to assessing whether a criminal facing the death penalty is mentally retarded or not.
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1/24/2012 The Cornell Chronicle: "Among disadvantaged, college reduces odds for marriage" with research from NLSY79For the study, Musick and sociologists at the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) estimated the propensity of men's and women's college attendance based on family income, parental education and other indicators of social background and early academic achievement. They then grouped their subjects into social strata based on these propensity scores and compared marriage chances of college- and non-college-goers within each stratum. Estimates were based on a sample of about 3,200 Americans from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, followed from adolescence into adulthood.
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1/21/2012 The Wall Street Journal: Pondering the "American Way of Life," with findings from the GSSAmericans also account for much more nonreligious social capital than their secular neighbors. In that context, it is worrisome for the culture that the U.S. as a whole has become markedly more secular since 1960, and especially worrisome that Fishtown has become much more secular than Belmont. It runs against the prevailing narrative of secular elites versus a working class still clinging to religion, but the evidence from the General Social Survey, the most widely used database on American attitudes and values, does not leave much room for argument.
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1/18/2012 Business Insider: Begging the question, "Which people are happiest?" with NORC research and dataMarried people are happier (but, we have to take this with a grain of salt because 1) the stats do not include people who were married and got divorced because they were unhappy, 2) as the study does reference, happy people are more likely to marry.) "...over the 1970's and 1980's, 24% of never-married adults, but 39% of married adults, told NORC at the University of Chicago that they were very happy"
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1/17/2012 The Daily Illini: "Debt and likelihood of graduation related, according to study" featuring NLSY79Michael Sherraden, the founder of the Center for Social Development, worked with Min Zhan to compile information from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, an ongoing survey that takes information from adults born between 1957 and 1964. The two professors studied the links between household assets, debts and success in college for 1,162 students whose parents took part in the survey.
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1/14/2012 The Seattle Times: "Study: Nearly one in three arrested by age 26" featuring data from NLSY97The study analyzed data collected as part of the federal government's National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. The 7,335 participants were nationally representative and ranged in age from 12 to 16 when they were enrolled in the survey in 1996. The first interviews were conducted in 1997. Follow-up interviews have been carried out annually since then. The researchers found that the probability of a first arrest accelerated in late adolescence and early adulthood — at 18, 15.9 percent of the participants reported having been arrested — and then began to flatten out as the youths entered their 20s.
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1/14/2012 The New York Times: "Among the Wealthiest 1 Percent, Many Variations" with data from the SCFThe cutoff for the 1 percent varies depending on how income is calculated. On the low end, an analysis of census data puts the cutoff at $380,000 for a household and provides a wealth of demographic characteristics that were used in this article. On the high end, the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, which uses a broader measure of income that includes capital gains, yielded a cutoff of $690,000 in 2007, the most recent year of data available. The Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan group, makes projections based on Internal Revenue Service data and adjusts for people who do not file taxes. It puts the cutoff at $530,000 per tax return in 2011. Even by that gauge, though, $380,000 would still put a family well above the 95th percentile. There is little current data that would allow a measurement of the 1 percent by wealth.
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1/12/2012 The Philly Post: "In Defense of Monogamy" with commentary from NORC Expert Linda J. WaiteStudies funded by the National Institutes of Health find married couples are more financially secure, which leads to less stress and better recovery from stress when it occurs. Sociologist and NORC Expert Dr. Linda J. Waite calls marriage a “wealth-producing institution” and says spouses benefit from “economies of scale” and shared risks, which lead to better financial and health outcomes.
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1/10/2012 Psychology Today: Testosterone and the "Casanova Effect", with data from NSHAPThere are many factors that determine an individual's appeal on the mating market, and not surprisingly some of these are sex-specific. In a paper recently published in Hormones and Behavior, Thomas V. Pollet, Leander van der Meij, Kelly D. Cobey, and Abraham P. Buunk explored the relationship between individuals' levels of circulating testosterone and the self-reported number of lifetime sexual partners. They utilized a very large data set (the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project), which consists of individuals whose ages vary between 57 and 85.
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1/10/2012 Chicago Magazine: "Unemployment, Wage Stagnation, and the Balance-Sheet Recession" with data from the SCFThe Survey of Consumer Finances shows that up until the 90th percentile of the distribution, as of 2007, made up around 65 percent of people’s net worth. If you see a massive decline in the value of your home, it is kind of mechanical that if you are thinking about savings and retirement you’ll think, “I was planning on having enough equity in my home when I retire that I could just borrow against it for the rest of my life. Now I don’t, so I have to adjust my consumption path immediately.”
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1/7/2012 Discover Magazine: The General Social Survey helps ask, "How many minorities are there in the USA?"The quest for a state that “looks like America” is understandable, but the reality of lived life is more complex. And not just in racial terms (e.g., the division in politics between the white suburbs of Maryland vs. Virginia on either side of D.C.). But keeping race in mind, one consistent finding in social science is that Americans actually tend to overestimate the number of minorities. Iowa is actually more typical than we think, despite the fact that it is not typical. In the year 2000 the General Social Survey asked respondents to estimate the number of various groups in the USA.
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1/4/2012 Chicago Tonight on WTTW: "Chicago's Richest 1 Percent" with Northwestern's Benjamin Page, and work from NORCWho are Chicago’s super-rich, and what are their spending habits and views on government? A new study from a team of Northwestern University researchers with data from NORC at the Univeristy of Chicago focusing on Chicago’s wealthiest 1 percent set out to answer those questions, and its authors say it’s the first of its kind. Most other surveys have studied on the wealthiest 20 to 30 percent, but never focused on the 1 percent that has drawn the Occupy movement’s ire.
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12/29/2011 The Chicago Tribune: "How the 1 percent live, and give" with data from the Survey of Consumer FinanceBut Americans making that amount of money aren't the prime targets of the Occupy protesters and other critics, whose rhetoric is more often directed at the superwealthy, whom they accuse of hiding massive assets in stocks and other investments to avoid paying taxes. (If you're using total household wealth to measure the top 1 percent, membership would begin at about $8.7 million, according to the researchers' analysis of the best available data from the Survey of Consumer Finance.)
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12/28/2011 Yahoo! Finance: One person's difficult relationship between weight and income, with data from the NLSYA lot of people are furious with a study that shows obese women earn less money than their peers who are normal weight. I know first hand how a lighter body can carry a heavier wallet stuffed with a bigger paycheck. According to data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, in 2008 women who were obese made an average of $5,826 or 15 percent less than normal-weight females. Critics claim the study shows how obese women carry a stigma and are punished for not upholding the standard for beauty.
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12/27/2011 The Daily Beast: Considering Mitt Romney's presidential plans, with data from the GSSRecently, in the New York Times, Mitt Romney warns darkly against a government that “provides every citizen the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort and willingness to innovate, pioneer or take risk.” Polls conducted since 1972 by the General Social Survey show that by margins of two to one, voters consistently say too little is spent on the poor, on education, on health care, on drug treatment.
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12/27/2011 USA Today: License-plate readers versus auto-theft cops, a look at affecting the law with commentary from NORC's Bruce TaylorLicense plate readers pick up more stolen cars than cops alone, but police units specializing in aut0-theft. How well do they work on the street? In a recent study in the Criminal Justice Review, a team led by Bruce Taylor of the NORC at the University of Chicago center in Bethesda, Md., set up an experiment to see how well license plate readers did in helping police in Mesa, Ariz., catch car thieves. "We did find some increasing effectiveness in stolen plates being picked up," Taylor says. "The surprise in the study was the effectiveness of specialized auto theft units."
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12/25/2011 The New York Times: "The Anti-Entitlement Strategy", featuring research and findings from the GSS. Mitt Romney wants to stigmatize most “safety net” spending – the array of social insurance programs from Medicare to food stamps to unemployment compensation to free school lunches — as a form of welfare that is “cultivating government dependence.” The 2-to-1 level of support found for spending on the poor for health care and other social services disappears when voters are asked specifically about welfare, according to the General Social Survey; when that word is used, voters by a better than 2-to-1 margin, 49.3 percent to 21 percent, say that “too much” is spent.
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12/21/2011 The Wall Street Journal: Roth IRAs versus retirement accounts, with data support from NLSY 1979A new academic study finds that, literally, smarter investors prefer Roth IRAs to traditional individual retirement accounts. Contributions to Roth IRAs are not tax-deductible, but withdrawals in retirement generally are tax-free – and there are no withdrawal requirements, as there are with traditional IRAs. A doctoral candidate and two associate professors of personal financial planning at Texas Tech University analyzed data from the 2004 and 2008 “National Longitudinal Survey of Youth” (looking at people who were 14-22 years old in 1979).
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12/20/2011 Forbes: Reflections on the modern job market, with insight from the General Social SurveyThis time of year, many people try to reflect on what brings real value into their lives and what their deepest hopes for the coming year might be. Such thoughts will lead at least some to sobering conclusions about the value of their jobs and career choices. If recent findings are any indicator, the starkest judgments may well come from the corporate ranks. Among the happiest ten were jobs held by clergy, authors, teachers, and operating engineers (who play with big toys), according to the General Social Survey conducted by the NORC at the University of Chicago. The ten most hated jobs were populated almost entirely by managers (of sales, marketing, products, and so on), and technical people.
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12/20/2011 USA Today: Recent NLSY findings suggest that pediatricians could help children stay out of troubleReferrals might be for substance abuse services or mental health counseling, Braverman said. With child abuse or neglect, "we report to the appropriate authorities," she said, but the doctor's responsibility doesn't end there. "We would facilitate referrals for appropriate treatment and support children through that." The new study appears online Dec. 12 and in the January 2012 print issue of Pediatrics. The researchers used National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data from 1997 to 2008 for 7,335 young people aged 8 to 23.
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12/19/2011 The New York Times: "Many in U.S. Are Arrested by Age 23" with data from NLSYThe study analyzed data collected as part of the federal government’s National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. The 7,335 participants were nationally representative and ranged in age from 12 to 16 when they were enrolled in the survey in 1996. The first interviews were conducted in 1997. Follow-up interviews have been carried out annually since then.
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12/19/2011 MSNBC.com: "Obesity Linked to Lower Paychecks" with NLSY DataObese Americans have smaller paychecks than those who aren't overweight, and this difference is especially strong among women, a new study finds. The analysis of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth revealed that in 2004, overall average annual incomes were $8,666 less for obese women and $4,772 less for obese men compared with normal weight workers.
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12/16/2011 The Washington Post: Sexual politics and the Grand Old Party, with information from the GSSWhat do American voters really think about sex and politics? While attitudes toward sexual harassment are still in flux, Americans are strongly against extramarital sex. Indeed, they are more strongly against it now than in the recent past. In the General Social Survey, a national poll of adults conducted biennially by NORC at the University of Chicago, the percentage of Americans who responded that it is “always wrong” for a married person to have sex with someone other than his or her spouse rose from 73 percent in 1991 to 81 percent in 2008.
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12/14/2011 Arch Daily: "Are architects depressed, unhealthy and divorced?" featuring research from the GSSHow often do you hear phrases with the following general undertones: “architecture isn’t a profession it is a calling,” “architecture isn’t a career it is a way of life,” or “architecture doesn’t make life possible it makes it worth living”? Perhaps not that often, but enough that many architects see themselves as uniquely sacrificing aspects of their life for a higher cause. Some claim that architects have high divorce rates, suffer from depression, and endure a special degree of stress that causes early mortality from cancer and heart disease.
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12/13/2011 The New York Times: "Who Counts as ‘Rich’? Continued" with data from the GSSSocial class also involves self-identification. According to the General Social Survey through NORC at the University of Chicago, which has been asking people what social class they belong to since 1972, more than 90 percent of Americans put themselves squarely in the middle – belonging either to the working class or the middle class.
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12/12/2011 Bloomberg: Voter apathy or animosity? Debating President Obama with NORC research.When the National Opinion Research Center asked people whether they believed the government has a responsibility “to reduce the differences in income between people with high incomes and those with low incomes,” in 2008, only 37 percent agreed. Forty-three percent disagreed, and 20 percent had no opinion. When pollsters ask people to name the top issue facing the country, almost nobody volunteers inequality.
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12/12/2011 TIME: "The Five Secrets of Happily Married Parents" with data from NLSY and the GSSThe report, which came out in early December, compiles data from two big well-known surveys, the General Social Survey and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, and another smaller survey including 1,630 married couples called The Survey of Marital Generosity, funded by the University of Notre Dame. The authors found that yes, compared with childless married couples, those with kids have lower "marital satisfaction," a measure sociologists use to determine couples' happiness.
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12/9/2011 Bloomberg: Looking into shifting attitudes towards gun ownership, with data and findings from the GSSWhile the skeptics don’t dispute that the raw number of guns, including pistols, has grown, they point to the General Social Survey conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago, which indicates more guns are being concentrated in fewer hands. That poll last year found a third of households claimed to have at least one gun, far fewer than those answering the same question in Gallup’s October poll.
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12/8/2011 Chicago Magazine: A look at "Chicago's One Percent" with help from NORCFortunately, the Russell Sage Foundation hooked up with NORC and three Northwesterners, led by Benjamin I. Page (Gordon S. Fulcher Professor of Decision Making) on the working paper "Wealthy Americans, Philanthropy, and the Common Good," a survey whose 104 Chicago-area respondents—a small sample size, granted, but the one percent is by definition small—fall mostly in the famous, mysterious not-99 percent, with an average wealth of $14 million and a median of $7.5 million.
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12/7/2011 UPI: NLSY97 findings show couples that live together, tend to stay togetherThree-fifths of young U.S. adults who cohabit eventually get married, researchers say. Dr. Susan Brown, co-director of Bowling Green State University's National Center for Family and Marriage Research, said 63 percent of women cohabited versus 57 percent of men. "Today, most marriages are preceded by cohabitation," Brown said in a statement. "It's really become a stage in the courtship process. It's unusual for couples to marry without first cohabiting." Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, the study found 61 percent of U.S. adults have formed a family by age 25.
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12/6/2011 The Huffington Post: For older couples, sex is important for happiness, with input from the GSSFor married couples to stay happy as they grow old together, a healthy and robust sex life is essential, a new study concludes -- and the more sex, the better. In examining the responses of some 238 couples aged 65 or older to the 2004 iteration of the General Social Survey, a national data-collection program focused on U.S. societal structure and development, the researchers found that the frequency of sexual activity often predicted general well-being. That remained true even after accounting for such factors as age, health and financial satisfaction.
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12/5/2011 Harvard Education Letter: Preventing middle school sexual harassment, with findings from the NIJ Dating Violence Experiment in NYCShared in the Harvard Education Letter, a separate study has shown that building-wide posters, student-drawn maps of
campus sexual harassment “danger zones,” and student-created “personal boundary
agreements” can go a long way to reducing peer-to-peer sexual harassment and
dating violence—at little expense. Reduction in sexual harassment was greatest when students received both
classroom-based and building-wide interventions, according to Bruce Taylor,
senior scientist from NORC at the University of
Chicago, who coauthored the study with Nan Stein, senior research
scientist at the Wellesley College Center for Research on
Women.
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12/2/2011 NPR Morning Edition: Barbara Schenider interviewed for study on multitasking and gender differencesA new study in the December issue of the American Sociological Review
comes up with some findings that lots of women may feel they already
know too much about: Working mothers spend significantly more time
multitasking at home than working dads. And those mothers aren't happy
about it. Researchers from Bar-Ilan
University in Israel and Michigan State University looked at 368 working
mothers and 241 fathers who worked outside the home. Turns out, the
women were on overdrive, with some even describing the hours between 5
and 8 p.m. as the "arsenic hours." "The
first thing they had to start worrying about is getting dinner,
interfacing with their kids, getting done all the housework chores,"
says sociologist Barbara Schneider
with Michigan State University, who co-authored the study. "You could
see from the data all the stresses and strains they felt as they walked
in the door, and all the tasks" they felt they had to accomplish
during those early-evening hours.
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12/2/2011 MSN Money: Black Friday 2011 has record gun sales, with data from the GSSThe FBI reported
being flooded with background check requests for prospective buyers on Nov. 25,
topping the previous single-day high by 32%.The Black Friday sales figures "might say something about marketing" but
don't reflect actual gun ownership trends in the U.S., Caroline Brewer, a
spokeswoman for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, told ABC
News, citing a University of Chicago General
Social Survey that showed 32% of Americans owned guns in 2010, down from 54%
in 1977.
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12/2/2011 MSNBC.com: Modern church-goers and who they might be, with research from the GSSWhile religious service attendance has decreased for all white Americans since the early 1970s, the rate of decline has been more than twice as high for less educated, lower and lower-middle class whites compared to more educated and presumably more affluent whites. The figures represented those aged 25-44 and were gathered from two national surveys, the General Social Survey from NORC at the University of Chicago, and the National Survey of Family Growth, which is conducted by the U.S. government's National Center for Health Statistics. The new study focused on white Americans because black and Latino religious worship is less divided by education and income, the researchers said.
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11/30/2011 Yahoo! News: Horatio Alger Association survey to expand with new topics, samples, and partners
The Horatio Alger
Association of Distinguished Americans will conduct the 11th State of Our
Nation's Youth survey in the spring of 2012 with two research partners and a new
poll design. The goal of the research project is to increase public
understanding of the current educational, economic, social and political
contexts for high school and college students.
The survey and subsequent report will be the
first joint State of our Nation's Youth effort between two nationally renowned
research firms. Peter D.
Hart Research Associates, Inc., of Washington, D.C., a longtime partner
of the Horatio Alger
Association in conducting the youth report, is joining forces with NORC at the University of Chicago.
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11/29/2011 The Wall Street Journal: "Who Needs Financial Planners, Anyway?"A new
analysis of data from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer
Finances estimates that 25% of U.S. households use a financial planner, up
from 21% in the late 1990s.
The study, by economist Sherman Hanna of Ohio State University, found that
willingness to take investment risk is one of the key factors in determining who
seeks out financial-planning advice. For instance, 28% of families willing to
take “average” levels of investing risk—and 33% of those who say they are
comfortable with “above average” risk—use a financial planner. Among households
who said they were unwilling to take any risks with their investments, however,
only 11% use a financial planner,
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11/22/2011 AARP: Study uses GSS data to show that "Sex After 65 Linked to Happiness"Resarch presented at the Gerontological Society of America's annual meeting in Boston used data from the General Social Survey to conclude that older married couples who still engage in sexual activity are more likely to report happiness in their relationship and with their lives overall than those who have sex infrequently.
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11/21/2011 Uptown Magazine: Begging the question, 'what percent of the '1 Percent' is African American?' with data from the Survey of Consumer FinanceUptown Magazine asks, 'how many African Americans are a part of the top 1 percent?' It turns out: not many.
Blacks comprise 13.6 percent of the U.S. population according to the 2010
Census, but account for only 1.4 percent of the top 1 percent of households by
income. Whites are the overwhelming majority of the top 1 percent of households
by income, comprising 96.2 percent. (Results were calculated from 2007 data from
the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances and the Tax Policy Center’s
tax table, The income cutoff to be a part of the top 1 percent was
$646,195.
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11/21/2011 Institutional Investor: "How Can Employers Address the Racial Divide in Pensions?"The Institutional Investor looks at racial divides in pensioons. In a new study of seven large clients by Vanguard Group, those that
automatically put new hires into a 401(k) plan increased the participation rate
by more than 60 percent among black employees — to 94 percent from 57 percent —
and by more than 40 percent among Latino employees, to 95 percent from 67
percent. As a result, the two groups statistically caught up with the rates of
white and Asian employees.When Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research analyzed the Federal
Reserve’s triennial Survey of Consumer Finances, which polled 4,500 U.S.
households for 2001, 2004 and 2007, it found that factors like a college degree,
home ownership and nonpension wealth were the most important determinants of
401(k) savings.
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11/20/2011 Forbes: The relationship between business trust and income equality, with data from the General Social SurveyFor four decades now, social trust
has declined. This may seem like a minor matter, but a modern economy
requires ever-greater levels of trust to function well. Both OWS and the Tea
Party are evidence that such trust is lacking. A leading cause of declining trust is income
inequality. And despite the problem worsening, no one in business or
politics appears willing to touch it. Too bad for us all. The General
Social Survey has been conducted in the US since 1972 by NORC at the Univeristy of Chicago. It has always contained questions about the inclination
to attribute good intentions to strangers; in short, the propensity to
trust.
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11/14/2011 The New York Times: The correlation between colleges, Catholicism, and affiliation, with data from the General Social SurveyIn the wake of the sexual abuse scandal that is roiling Penn State’s football
program, some are wondering whether there could be long-term effects on
recruiting, donations and the long-term reputation of the university. Another precedent for how people might react is the aftermath of the sexual
abuse scandals that rocked the Roman Catholic Church in the last decade. Using data from multiple research databases, including the GSS, The New York Times has been found similarities in weakened institutional affiliation in the face of scandal.
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11/12/2011 The Huffington Post: "California Congress: The Richest 1%" with information from the Survey of Consumer FinancesThe Occupy Wall Street movement has focused the national discourse on wealth inequality and, specifically, the split between the richest 1 percent and the 99 percent that's left. While most Californians, by definition, are not members of the wealthiest 1 percent, it turns out that many of us are represented in Congress by those who have attained that elite status. The cutoff for the top 1 percent of American households, in terms of net worth, is about $9 million, according to New York University economics professor Edward Wolff. His estimate is based on the Federal Reserve Board's Survey of Consumer Finances, which put the figure at $8.2 million in 2007, he said.
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11/9/2011 Business Insider: A consideration of wealth inequality utilizing data from the Survey of Consumer FinanceU.S. income inequality has exploded to levels not seen since the 1920s or perhaps even the Gilded Age of the late 19th century. Yet, there might not be the wealth gap the public sees as suggested by this handy analysis from the Cato Institute, which shows various estimates of wealth inequality utilizing information from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, the Economic Policy Institute, and Kopczuk/Saez.
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11/7/2011 The Boston Globe: Researchers at NORC urge age-based tests for hepatitis CMillions of Americans are infected with hepatitis C, but it’s estimated that no more than half are aware of their infection. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that those with risk factors such as a history of intravenous drug use or a blood transfusion before 1992 get screened. Researchers at the NORC at University of Chicago and elsewhere found that it may be cost-effective to screen everyone born between 1945 and 1965, the group with the highest infection rates, as reported in The Boston Globe.
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11/7/2011 Education Week: Teenagers, sexual harrasment, education, and more with input from NORC's Bruce TaylorAs students navigate changing sexual and social norms in middle and high school, many of them confuse the line between joking and sexual harassment, according to a new report."It's kind of hard to educate kids who are experiencing this harassment and violence and expect them to show the same performance they would regularly," said Bruce G. Taylor, who studies sexual harassment as a principal research scientist for NORC, a research organization formerly known as the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.
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11/7/2011 National Journal: A profile of Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Elmendorf, with commentary from NORC's Jon GabelIf you are a C-SPAN junkie, you probably recognize Douglas Elmendorf, the director of the Congressional Budget Office. He’s become something of a star witness this fall, testifying at two of the four hearings held by the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction. In public, Elmendorf responds to members’ questions in a chipper tone: upbeat, friendly--a demeanor that Capitol Hill colleagues and friends say does not change behind closed doors. His appearance is equally low-key; he is the anti-Peter Orszag, deflecting the spotlight as much as possible and preferring instead to speak through CBO’s published reports.
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11/4/2011 The Atlantic: "Are Teachers Paid Too Much? How 4 Studies (Including NLSY) Answered 1 Big Question"In an article the The Atlantic, apparently American public school teachers are paid far more than their smarts are worth. That's the provocative conclusion of a new study from two high-profile conservative think tanks. Researchers from the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute found that public school teachers take home total compensation that's 52% higher than "fair market levels" for professionals with similar cognitive abilities. The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to analyze the effects of both education and IQ. When education is taken into account, teachers salaries are more than 12% lower than their peers.
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11/3/2011 The Christian Science Monitor: Texas judge's actions raise questions about discipline with data from the GSSAccording to the Christian Science Monitor, a wide majority of Americans support 'a good, hard spanking' as discipline, one study says. But the video of a Texas judge lashing his daughter with a belt is a rare, raw view of what corporal punishment really looks like – and could affect already-changing attitudes. From 1986 to 2008, it has declined from 83 percent to 70 percent, according to the General Social Survey conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago.
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11/3/2011 WIRED: Data from the GSS begs the question: Does inequality make us unhappy?In WIRED, using the General Social Survey data from 1972 to 2008, we found that Americans were on average happier in the years with less income inequality than in the years with more income inequality. We further demonstrated that the inverse relation between income inequality and happiness was explained by perceived fairness and general trust. That is, Americans trusted others less and perceived others to be less fair in the years with more income inequality than in the years with less income inequality. Americans are happier when national wealth is distributed more evenly than when it is distributed unevenly.
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11/1/2011 Seattle Times: NSHAP cited in a look at seniors and sex educationStatistics support Price's contention that older adults have not given up on sex. A comprehensive national survey of senior sexual attitudes, behaviors and problems was conducted in 2005 and 2006 by the National Opinion Research Center along with principal investigators at the University of Chicago. More than 3,000 interviews of adults age 57 to 85 showed seniors believe sexuality is an important part of life. Results from the university's National Social Life, Health and Aging Project, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed older adults participated well into their 70s and 80s.
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11/1/2011 U.S. News & World Report: NLSY97 Study Finds Idea of 'Freshman 15' to be UntrueThe National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 interviewed people between the ages of 13 and 17 in 1997 and continues to interview the same people each year since then. The idea that college freshmen gain an average of 15 pounds in their first year of school is a myth -- the average is really between 2.4 pounds for women and 3.4 pounds for men, the co-author of a new study said Tuesday.
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10/31/2011 Yahoo! News: Positive Findings for Reducing Teen Dating Violence/Harassment, featuring NORC's Bruce TaylorFindings from a National
Institute of Justice evaluation of Shifting Boundaries: Lessons on
Relationships for Students in Middle School, a youth dating violence prevention
program in New
York City middle schools, indicate that increasing awareness and
monitoring of school environments can be effective strategies for reducing
dating violence/ harassment (DV/H) among adolescents. This study was the first
to use a rigorous scientific methodology with a young population of sixth and
seventh graders; most teen dating violence projects look at
older students.
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10/28/2011 The New York Times: Presidential Candidates? Few Are the 99 Percent, featuring findings from the SCFOccupy Wall Street protesters have touched a nerve with their slogan, “We are the 99 percent.” It has focused attention on the ground gained by the rich even as a brutal economy has pushed the typical American family backward. A look at the finances of those vying for the presidency shows that almost all of them rank at the very top of the country’s earners. Membership in the 1 percent can be measured by wealth or by income. By household wealth, the cutoff point would be a projected $9 million in 2010, according to an analysis of the Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Consumer Finances by Edward Wolff, an economist at New York University.
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10/24/2011 The Huffington Post: Did You Retire This Year? Better Get to Work.As reported by The Huffington Post, according to the Federal Reserve Board's Survey of Consumer Finances, the median amount saved in
account and rollover balance for those age 55 to 64 was around a measly $86,600
in 2009 when the median wage for that age group is about $65,000. But even
before the market slump in 2007 when the median balance was $103,600, that low
six-figure number is less than twice the median Boomer salary when it needs to
be 10-13 times that amount.
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10/18/2011 MSNBC.com: Survey of Consumer Finances cited in "When mom and dad need money help"One of the toughest days in many people's lives is the day they realize that their parents need financial help. According to the Federal Reserve's 2009 Survey of Consumer Finances, 35 percent of households headed by those 75 and older carry debt, as do 62.1 percent of households headed by those between 65 and 74, as reported by MSNBC.com.
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10/11/2011 The New York Times: Op-ed piece "Wal-Mart's Lawaway Plan" cites Survey of Consumer FinanceWal-Mart is launchin a layaway program this year, and it rasises questions over credit. In this New York Times op-ed piece, non-predatory credit is hard to come by these days, even for middle-class
shoppers, and, according to NORC's 2007 Survey of Consumer Finance, even before the
crisis 25 percent of lower-income Americans had no bank account at all.
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10/11/2011 Reuters: GSS helps provides data for "Who We Are: Hispanics" reportResearch and Markets
has announced the addition of the "Who
We Are: Hispanics - 2nd Edition" report. It has detailed spending data for hispanic households and
the latest update on hispanic household wealth including the impact of the Great
Recession on hispanic net worth, assets, and debt. Attitudinal data from the General Social Survey
compare and contrast hispanic attitudes with those of Asians, Hispanics, and
whites on a whole range of issues.
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10/7/2011 CNN: GSS reports 40-year low in America's view of Wall StreetThe General Social Survey has asked Americans about their confidence in banks and financial
institutions since 1973. Between March of 2006 and March of 2010, the percent of
Americans with a great deal of confidence in banks and financial institutions
plummeted 19 percentage points, from 30 percent to an all-time low of 11
percent.
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9/20/2011 The Wall Street Journal: More Transparency, Better Health CareAs the debate over how best to reform our wasteful health-care system continues, there is one measure we can implement immediately to improve quality and rein in runaway costs—the public release of data from the Medicare program, as required by a provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, with aid from the NORC.
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9/16/2011 The New York Times: NSHAP featured in Another Reason to Avoid His FriendsObserved by The New York Times, this is an analysis of data from the National Social Life, Health and Aging Project, a survey of older Americans by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, looked at the relationship between sexual dysfunction among men and the relationships between their friends and partners.
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9/7/2011 Associated Press: Impact from 9/11 still felt a decade laterA new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research in Chicago finds that more Americans now say Sept. 11 had an impact on their lives than said so five years ago — 57 percent today compared with 50 percent in 2006.
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9/6/2011 Associated Press: Poll: OK to trade some freedoms to fight terrorismTen years after the 9/11 attacks led to amped-up government surveillance efforts, two-thirds of Americans say it's fitting to sacrifice some privacy and freedoms in the fight against terrorism, according to a poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
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8/27/2011 Deseret News: BYU is Top-5 launching pad for PhDsNew survey results show that the University of California at Berkeley is the most prolific undergraduate institution for producing students who go onto Ph.D. programs. Between 2005-09, over 2,200 Golden Bear grads earned doctorates. BYU finished fifth nationally, with 1,336 former Cougars obtaining a Ph.D. during the same timeframe.
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8/25/2011 UPI.com: Study finds less tolerance for racismCHICAGO, Aug. 25 (UPI) -- U.S. residents are more willing to allow people with unorthodox views to speak publicly, teach and publish than they were 40 years ago, a survey finds.
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8/20/2011SF Chronicle Online: Duke Professor: Religious Faith WaningIn "American Religion: Contemporary Trends," author Mark Chaves argues that over the last generation or so, religious belief in the U.S. has experienced a "softening" that effects everything from whether people go to worship services regularly to whom they marry. Far more people are willing to say they don't belong to any religious tradition today than in the past, and signs of religious vitality may be camouflaging stagnation or decline.
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7/11/2011Seattle Times: What does 65 mean? While the accepted retirement age shifted downward between the 1950s and the mid-1980s, baby boomers are expecting to work longer, reversing the trend, according to the University of Michigan Health and Retirement Study.
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7/3/2011Psychology Today: The Monogamish Marriage: What If It's Not Cheating to Cheat?Estimates that "between 20 and 25 percent of all Americans will have sex with someone other than their spouse while they are married" are conservative, the authors wrote. In 2010, NORC, a research center at the University of Chicago, found that, among those who had ever been married, 14 percent of women and 20 percent of men admitted to affairs."
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