Aage B Sorensen
Biographic Data
| ID | 220523 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Aage B Sorensen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Aage B |
| FAMILY NAME | Sorensen |
| SIGNATURE | SORENSEN A B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Harvard University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 47 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 936 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 47 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1972 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| H-INDEX | 16 |
Coleman, James Samuel (1926–95)
Theory, Measurement, and Specification Issues in Models of Network Effects on Learning: Reply to Carbonaro and to Hallinan and Kubitschek
O } ur article (Morgan and S0rensen 1999, henceforward M&S) is an attempt to spark debate and encourage research on the effects of school social systems on learning. The comments by Carbonaro (1999, henceforward C) and Hallinan and Kubitschek (1999, henceforward H&K) suggest that we have succeeded. We are thankful for C's appraisal, supplementary data analysis, and comparison to his own related research (Carbonaro 1998). We are, however, surprise…
Microfoundations, Method, and Causation: On the Philosophy of the Social Sciences
The convergence of inexactness and intelligibility in social phenomena makes social and historical inquiry fascinating. The social world is not chaotic and social processes are not unrelated strings of events. We can explain social patterns in ways that illuminate social outcomes. At the same time, the social world does not constitute a closed, determined system of variables and outcomes, in the same way that quantum chemistry systemizes the prop…
Parental Networks, Social Closure, and Mathematics Learning: A Test of Coleman's Social Capital Explanation of School Effects
Through an analysis of gains in mathematics achievement between the tenth and twelfth grades for respondents to the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988, we examine Coleman's explanation for why Catholic schools apparently produce more learning than public schools. According to Coleman, Catholic schools benefit from larger endowments of social capital, generated in part through greater intergenerational social closure (i.e., dense networ…
Theory, Measurement, and Specification Issues in Models of Network Effects on Learning
Employment Relations and Class Structure
L'A. suggere une nouvelle approche theorique pour l'analyse de la structuration du marche du travail. Il propose de se demarquer des definitions trop etroites selon lui comme celles de Marx ou de Weber tout en conservant leurs rapports structurels et leur methodologie realiste. Comme Marx, l'A. tente de definir les classes en relation avec l'exploitation, mais a la place d'une theorie discreditee de la valeur du travail, il suggere que la classe …
Ownership Organization and Firm Performance
This essay reviews research on the type and degree of fragmentation of firm ownership with an emphasis on the consequences of ownership organization for firm performance. We use a property rights approach to synthesize sociological, organizational, legal, and economic research that has examined the effect of ownership organization on firm performance. Agency theorists generally assume that shareholders are homogenous and that their influence on f…
Response to my critics
On Kings, Pietism and Rent-seeking in Scandinavian Welfare States
This paper argues that the origins of the Scandinavian welfare states are most usefully seen in the small-state absolutism and Lutheran Pietism characterizing 18th-century Denmark/Norway. Towards the end of the 18th century, the Danish monarch or, more correctly, his agents, created a quite generous set of welfare benefits in the 1799 Poor Law for the City of Copenhagen. In return for non-punitive and generous support, the state assumed that reci…
Social Theory and Social Policy: Essays in Honor of James S. Coleman
The Structural Basis of Social Inequality
This article discusses the concept of rent and its use in analysis of inequality in society. Rents are resources that provide advantages for incumbents of social positions that are independent of the characteristics of the incumbents. Inequalities created by rents generate interests in the protection and the acquisition of advantages that can be said to from "objective" interests attached to positions in social structure. Rent, therefore, is the …
Social Theory and Social Policy: Essays in Honor of James S. Coleman
Introduction Introduction: The Intellectual Contributions of James S. Coleman by Aage B. Sorensen and Seymour Spilerman Policy-Relevant Social Theory The Individual as Participant in Political Exchange by James Buchanan The Conditions of Fruitfulness of Theorizing about Mechanisms in Social Science by Arthur L. Stinchcombe Beyond the Alternative between the Homo Sociologicus and the Homo Oeconomicus: Toward a Theory of Cold Beliefs by Raymond Bou…
Diverging Pathways: Social Structure and Career Deflections. Alan C. Kerckhoff
On the Usefulness of Class Analysis in Research on Social Mobility and Socioeconomic Inequality
The article critically discusses the two main uses of the concept of class in recent stratification research. They are John Goldthorpe's analysis of social mobility from a class formation perspective and Erik O Wright's analysis of income inequality in the labor market. I argue that the main problem with both efforts is the lack of a satisfactory theory of how class generates inequality within the labor market. The logic of Gold thorpe's argument…
Throwing the Sociologists Out? A Reply to Smith
T he late George Homans was a naval commander as well as a sociologist. Commanding men came naturally to him, which may be why his ASA presidential address was entitled Bringing Men Back (Homans 1964). This title has inspired several sociologists of labor market, so that we now have articles such as Bringing Boss Back (Stolzenberg 1978), Bringing Workers Back (Kalleberg 1989), and Bringing Firms Back (Baron and Bielby 1980). Evidently sociologist…
Human Development and the Life Course: Multidisciplinary Perspectives
High School Achievement: Public, Catholic and Private Schools Compared. James S. Coleman , Thomas Hoffer , Sally Kilgore Public and Private High Schools: The Impact of Communities. James S. Coleman , …
Longitudinal Analysis of Labor Market Data
Ability Grouping and Sex Differences in Mathematics Achievement
desegregated and segregated schools. The results show that sex is a factor in the assignment of students to ability groups: Males are more likely than females to be assigned to the high-ability group. Nevertheless, the analyses do not reveal an effect of ability-group level on growth in mathematics achievement
Progress in Studying Change Social Dynamics: Models and Methods. Nancy Brandon Tuma , Michael T. Hannan
Effects of Ability Grouping on Growth in Academic Achievement
This paper applies a theory of growth in academic achievement to the study of the effects of ability grouping on reading achievement. The theory sees students’ ability and effort determining how they utilize opportunities for learning provided by instruction. The mathematical specification of the theory allows for the estimation of models that show (a) ability grouping provides fewer opportunities for learning than whole class instruction but gre…
Student Characteristics and Assignment to Ability Groups: Two Conceptual Formulations
This article discusses two conceptual formulations of the relationship between students' ascribed and achieved characteristics and their assignment to ability groups for instruction in school. The first formulation is a sophisticated specification of the commonly used educational rationale for within-class ability grouping. It is based on the work of Barr and Dreeben (1983) as elaborated in their book How Schools Work. The second is a sociologica…
Class Size, Ability Group Size, and Student Achievement
This article examines the effects of class size on student achievement in two kinds of classrooms: those in which teachers engage in whole class instruction and those in which students are assigned to ability groups for instruction. It is argued that a class size effect will occur through its impact on the length and quality of instruction and that the magnitude of the effect will differ by the type of instruction. Cross-sectional and longitudina…
Social Mobility and Social Structure: A Comparison of Scandinavian Countries
Ability Grouping and Student Friendships
This study examines the effects of membership in the same ability group on student friendships. We argue that assignment to the same instructional group increases opportunities for student interaction, underscores student similarities, and produces new similarities, and that these factors foster friendship. The relationship between grouping and friendship is examined in a longitudinal data set containing information on students in 110 reading gro…
The Sociology of Labor Markets
The term intersectionality references the critical insight that race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, ability, and age operate not as unitary, mutually exclusive entities, but rather as reciprocally constructing phenomena. Despite this ...Read More
Parental Networks, Social Closure, and Mathematics Learning: A Test of Coleman's Social Capital Explanation of School Effects
Through an analysis of gains in mathematics achievement between the tenth and twelfth grades for respondents to the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988, we examine Coleman's explanation for why Catholic schools apparently produce more learning than public schools. According to Coleman, Catholic schools benefit from larger endowments of social capital, generated in part through greater intergenerational social closure (i.e., dense networ…
The Structure of Inequality and the Process of Attainment
This paper proposes a model for the process of attaining occupational status and income, where change in attainment is generated by the creation of vacant positions in social structure. The distribution of attainments, or the structure of inequality, is assumedfixed and is described by a simple exponential or geometric distribution function (depending on whether attainment levels are assumed discrete or continuous). Persons leaving the labor forc…
The Structural Basis of Social Inequality
This article discusses the concept of rent and its use in analysis of inequality in society. Rents are resources that provide advantages for incumbents of social positions that are independent of the characteristics of the incumbents. Inequalities created by rents generate interests in the protection and the acquisition of advantages that can be said to from "objective" interests attached to positions in social structure. Rent, therefore, is the …
The Structure of Intragenerational Mobility
This paper analyzes mobility rates for black and white men using life-history data on intragenerational mobility. Mobility is linked to the process of occupational achievement. It is argued that job mobility is generated by persons' attempts to maximize their status and income. Since opportunities for better jobs will be fewer the higher the occupational achievement already attained, the rate of mobility will depend on time in the labor force. Th…
Processes of Allocation to Open and Closed Positions in Social Structure
This paper analyses mechanisms of allocation to closed positions in social structure. Closed positions are characterized by only being available when vacated by the previous incumbent, so that new allocations resulting in new matches between people and persons cannot be linked to changes in performance or the availability of more qualified candidates. The mechanism of allocation in closed position systems, called vacancy competition, is contraste…
On Kings, Pietism and Rent-seeking in Scandinavian Welfare States
This paper argues that the origins of the Scandinavian welfare states are most usefully seen in the small-state absolutism and Lutheran Pietism characterizing 18th-century Denmark/Norway. Towards the end of the 18th century, the Danish monarch or, more correctly, his agents, created a quite generous set of welfare benefits in the 1799 Poor Law for the City of Copenhagen. In return for non-punitive and generous support, the state assumed that reci…
On the Usefulness of Class Analysis in Research on Social Mobility and Socioeconomic Inequality
The article critically discusses the two main uses of the concept of class in recent stratification research. They are John Goldthorpe's analysis of social mobility from a class formation perspective and Erik O Wright's analysis of income inequality in the labor market. I argue that the main problem with both efforts is the lack of a satisfactory theory of how class generates inequality within the labor market. The logic of Gold thorpe's argument…
Toward a concept of psychosocial maturity
A Model and a Metric for the Analysis of the Intragenerational Status Attainment Process
This paper proposes a theory of the status attainment process and specifies it in a mathematical model. The theory justifies both a transformation of the conventional status scores to a metric producing an exponential distribution of attainments and a transformation of educational attainments to a metric reflecting the competitive advantage conferred by education. The new metric produces theoretically more meaningful results than the old one when…
The Formation and Stability of Instructional Groups
This paper argues that structural and organizationalfactors affect the formation and stability of ability groups in an elementary classroom which in turn affect growth in academic achievement. Empirical evidencefrom reading and mathematics groups in a sample of 48 classes shows that structural constraints deter the creation of small, homogeneous ability groups for instructional purposes. Ability groups are found to be fairly large in size and sta…
Microfoundations, Method, and Causation: On the Philosophy of the Social Sciences
The convergence of inexactness and intelligibility in social phenomena makes social and historical inquiry fascinating. The social world is not chaotic and social processes are not unrelated strings of events. We can explain social patterns in ways that illuminate social outcomes. At the same time, the social world does not constitute a closed, determined system of variables and outcomes, in the same way that quantum chemistry systemizes the prop…
Sociological Research on the Labor Market: Conceptual and Methodological Issues
This article provides a critical analysis of recent sociological research on labor markets. Efforts by sociologists to provide structural explanations of earnings inequality that counter human capital theory have been hampered by methodological problems associated with inadequate model specification and the inappropriate use of variance as a criterion for theoretical importance. Moreover, the structural effects observed in recent studies do not h…
Ownership Organization and Firm Performance
This essay reviews research on the type and degree of fragmentation of firm ownership with an emphasis on the consequences of ownership organization for firm performance. We use a property rights approach to synthesize sociological, organizational, legal, and economic research that has examined the effect of ownership organization on firm performance. Agency theorists generally assume that shareholders are homogenous and that their influence on f…
Ability Grouping and Student Friendships
This study examines the effects of membership in the same ability group on student friendships. We argue that assignment to the same instructional group increases opportunities for student interaction, underscores student similarities, and produces new similarities, and that these factors foster friendship. The relationship between grouping and friendship is examined in a longitudinal data set containing information on students in 110 reading gro…
Mathematical Models in Sociology
The term intersectionality references the critical insight that race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, ability, and age operate not as unitary, mutually exclusive entities, but rather as reciprocally constructing phenomena. Despite this ...Read More
Effects of Ability Grouping on Growth in Academic Achievement
This paper applies a theory of growth in academic achievement to the study of the effects of ability grouping on reading achievement. The theory sees students’ ability and effort determining how they utilize opportunities for learning provided by instruction. The mathematical specification of the theory allows for the estimation of models that show (a) ability grouping provides fewer opportunities for learning than whole class instruction but gre…
Social Exchange: Predicting Transactional Outcomes in Five-Event, Four-Person Systems
This paper reports an experimental test of Coleman's theory of social exchange. The theory utilizes information on interest (X) and initial control (C) to make predictions concerning the value of events (V), the resources of persons (R), and the pattern of control at equilibrium (C*). The experimental paradigm, which incorporates three distinct five-event, four-person exchange systems, shows that the theory's predictions are highly accurate for V…
A stochastic model for change in group structure
This paper develops and tests a continuous time discrete state Markov Chain as a model for change in group structure. Movement of triads among different states is focused upon. It is shown formally that a triad cannot move to a state where all the pair relationships are mutual without incurring intransitivity. An empirical test on the change in sociometric structures provides support for the model
The Measurement of the Effects of Overtraining On Job Attitudes
This paper presents various models for measuring the effect of being overtrained, where overtraining refers to a discrepancy between a person's training and the educational requirements of his job. The various assumptions regarding the effects of overtraining that are embodied in the different models are discussed. It is found that a simple additive model describes the effect of overtraining on job satisfaction, while a model adding interaction t…
Sex differences in patterns of career mobility
Using the 1970 Census data, this paper examines differences by sex in patterns of intragenerational occupational mobility over a five year period (1965–1970) for two cohorts of white, U.S. men and women. The observed mobility patterns are separated into that part due to structural factors (i.e., the different distributions over occupational origins and destinations by sex) and that due to sex-related individual and group characteristics. Most of …
Ability Grouping and Sex Differences in Mathematics Achievement
desegregated and segregated schools. The results show that sex is a factor in the assignment of students to ability groups: Males are more likely than females to be assigned to the high-ability group. Nevertheless, the analyses do not reveal an effect of ability-group level on growth in mathematics achievement
Models and strategies in research on attainment and opportunity
White and black careers during the first decade of labor force experience. Part I: Occupational status
Life events and psychological well-being: A reexamination of theoretical and methodological issues
White and black careers during the first decade of labor force experience. Part I: Occupational status
The Measurement of the Effects of Overtraining On Job Attitudes
This paper presents various models for measuring the effect of being overtrained, where overtraining refers to a discrepancy between a person's training and the educational requirements of his job. The various assumptions regarding the effects of overtraining that are embodied in the different models are discussed. It is found that a simple additive model describes the effect of overtraining on job satisfaction, while a model adding interaction t…
Toward a concept of psychosocial maturity
Elite and Status Attainment Models of Inequality of Opportunity
Resume Cet article mets en parallele deux approches employees dans l'analyse de l'egalit6 des chances occupationnelles (equality of opportunity). L'une est caracterisee par des etudes sur les elites sociales, l'autre, se r6efre a la tradition du status attainment research. Nous demontrons qu'il n'est pas possible de r6soudre les oppositions trouvees dans ces deux traditions a partir des donn6es empiriques disponibles. Les resultats ne sont pas co…
Social exchange: Predicting interpersonal outcomes in four-event, three-person systems
The Structure of Intragenerational Mobility
This paper analyzes mobility rates for black and white men using life-history data on intragenerational mobility. Mobility is linked to the process of occupational achievement. It is argued that job mobility is generated by persons' attempts to maximize their status and income. Since opportunities for better jobs will be fewer the higher the occupational achievement already attained, the rate of mobility will depend on time in the labor force. Th…
Social Stratification and Career Mobility.Walter Muller , Karl Ulrich Mayer
Models and strategies in research on attainment and opportunity
A stochastic model for change in group structure
This paper develops and tests a continuous time discrete state Markov Chain as a model for change in group structure. Movement of triads among different states is focused upon. It is shown formally that a triad cannot move to a state where all the pair relationships are mutual without incurring intransitivity. An empirical test on the change in sociometric structures provides support for the model
Estimating Rates from Retrospective Questions
In certain areas of sociological research, variables that measure the rate at which persons carry out a certain act are of central importance. This is the case in the analysis of social and geographical mobility and in the analysis of population processes. In most areas of sociology, rate variables are less frequently used. Variables that are measures of attitudes are generally preferred to variables
Social Exchange: Predicting Transactional Outcomes in Five-Event, Four-Person Systems
This paper reports an experimental test of Coleman's theory of social exchange. The theory utilizes information on interest (X) and initial control (C) to make predictions concerning the value of events (V), the resources of persons (R), and the pattern of control at equilibrium (C*). The experimental paradigm, which incorporates three distinct five-event, four-person exchange systems, shows that the theory's predictions are highly accurate for V…
The Structure of Inequality and the Process of Attainment
This paper proposes a model for the process of attaining occupational status and income, where change in attainment is generated by the creation of vacant positions in social structure. The distribution of attainments, or the structure of inequality, is assumedfixed and is described by a simple exponential or geometric distribution function (depending on whether attainment levels are assumed discrete or continuous). Persons leaving the labor forc…
Reconceptualizing School Effects
Mathematical Models in Sociology
The term intersectionality references the critical insight that race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, ability, and age operate not as unitary, mutually exclusive entities, but rather as reciprocally constructing phenomena. Despite this ...Read More
Sex differences in patterns of career mobility
Using the 1970 Census data, this paper examines differences by sex in patterns of intragenerational occupational mobility over a five year period (1965–1970) for two cohorts of white, U.S. men and women. The observed mobility patterns are separated into that part due to structural factors (i.e., the different distributions over occupational origins and destinations by sex) and that due to sex-related individual and group characteristics. Most of …
The Sociology of Labor Markets
The term intersectionality references the critical insight that race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, ability, and age operate not as unitary, mutually exclusive entities, but rather as reciprocally constructing phenomena. Despite this ...Read More
A Model and a Metric for the Analysis of the Intragenerational Status Attainment Process
This paper proposes a theory of the status attainment process and specifies it in a mathematical model. The theory justifies both a transformation of the conventional status scores to a metric producing an exponential distribution of attainments and a transformation of educational attainments to a metric reflecting the competitive advantage conferred by education. The new metric produces theoretically more meaningful results than the old one when…
Applied Mathematical Demography.Nathan Keyfitz
Processes of Allocation to Open and Closed Positions in Social Structure
This paper analyses mechanisms of allocation to closed positions in social structure. Closed positions are characterized by only being available when vacated by the previous incumbent, so that new allocations resulting in new matches between people and persons cannot be linked to changes in performance or the availability of more qualified candidates. The mechanism of allocation in closed position systems, called vacancy competition, is contraste…
The Formation and Stability of Instructional Groups
This paper argues that structural and organizationalfactors affect the formation and stability of ability groups in an elementary classroom which in turn affect growth in academic achievement. Empirical evidencefrom reading and mathematics groups in a sample of 48 classes shows that structural constraints deter the creation of small, homogeneous ability groups for instructional purposes. Ability groups are found to be fairly large in size and sta…
Sociological Research on the Labor Market: Conceptual and Methodological Issues
This article provides a critical analysis of recent sociological research on labor markets. Efforts by sociologists to provide structural explanations of earnings inequality that counter human capital theory have been hampered by methodological problems associated with inadequate model specification and the inappropriate use of variance as a criterion for theoretical importance. Moreover, the structural effects observed in recent studies do not h…
Life events and psychological well-being: A reexamination of theoretical and methodological issues
Class Size, Ability Group Size, and Student Achievement
This article examines the effects of class size on student achievement in two kinds of classrooms: those in which teachers engage in whole class instruction and those in which students are assigned to ability groups for instruction. It is argued that a class size effect will occur through its impact on the length and quality of instruction and that the magnitude of the effect will differ by the type of instruction. Cross-sectional and longitudina…
Social Mobility and Social Structure: A Comparison of Scandinavian Countries
Ability Grouping and Student Friendships
This study examines the effects of membership in the same ability group on student friendships. We argue that assignment to the same instructional group increases opportunities for student interaction, underscores student similarities, and produces new similarities, and that these factors foster friendship. The relationship between grouping and friendship is examined in a longitudinal data set containing information on students in 110 reading gro…
Sociology (32 works) · Psychology (28 works) · Economics (22 works) · Computer Science (18 works) · School Choice and Performance (14 works) · Social science (12 works) · Mathematics (9 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Mathematics education (8 works) · Political science (8 works)