Sociology

Path analysis is too concerned with the observable and not concerned enough with the conceptual. Many path analyses are rendered trivial, and overly complicated by this emphasis. A method proposed by Hope (1971) within the framework of path analysis is shown to add its own further confusion, and to be invalid. The same data is analysed by two (differing) approaches which are less concerned with the observed and more concerned with what underlies the observed. Basic deductions from both methods (one is regression-based, the other factor analysis-based) are the same. One, the data armed by Hope contains much redundancy in conceptual terms: two, the underlying process is very simple: `A person's level of education is predicted (caused?) by his mental ability and type of parental home environment, with ability being a more important factor. Most systematic variation in a person's occupational prestige is "caused" by the person's level of education'.

Much has been written about individual voting behaviour in Britain and the United States but relatively little work has been done with aggregate data in the study of total electoral situations. A partial correlation and multiple regression analysis of local elections in a large English city shows that class, housing tenure, age, and coloured immigrants are closely related to voting patterns of total electorates, but geographical mobility and density of hoeing occupation are not. The political variables of marginality, size of majority, and number of candidates are not noticeably related to either turnout or party voting, although the presence of a Liberal candidate does increase turnout in some circumstances. Housing tenure has a particularly strong and complex relationship with voting patterns which suggests that the concept of housing class may be useful in the analysis of voting as well as more general social patterns. There is no persistent pattern of support for the Liberals who gain or lose votes according to the popularity of the two main parties.

Despite an extremely hostile environment, Christian religion has persisted in the Soviet Union. Three types of explanation are most frequently encountered in the Soviet sociological and philosophical literature: the first explanation is in terms of limited and temporary social inequalities, the second points to psychological factors, the third ascribes the survival of religion to its adaptability to changing social circumstances. Each of these explanations is critically examined in the light of empirical sociological work. The author suggests that religion serves as a vehicle of ideological protest; more specifically, it is hypothesized that religion, especially in its sectarian form, has become an alternative world view for a small, but significant number of people who, during a period of great social upheaval and rapid social change, have found Communist ideology unacceptable or insufficient as an integrating value system.

In this study a comparison was made of the questions asked by two groups of seven year old boys differing in social class. This issue arose from the results of comparative studies of answers given by five and seven year old children and their mothers of middle class (MC) and lower working class (LWC) groups, (Robinson and Rackstraw 1972). Answers had been found to differ in line with Bernstein's ideas of the functional differences in speech in LWC and MC language use. It was expected that similar differences would be found in questions. In general the results of this study clearly indicated the expected differences. The LWC boys were weaker semantically and syntactically. These results were discussed in terms of the difference in orientation to language use and its possible influence upon motivation and cognitive development in terms of a Piagetian model, with implications relating to education.

This paper reports on a Hungarian study of social class differences in the speech of 65 six year old children from s primary schools in Budapest. Speech samples were collected from stories which were elicited by a series of pictures. Five quantitative indices of context-dependence were constructed; and, on the basis of these indices, context-dependence was related to the child's own social background and to the social composition of the school. It was found that the speech of `advantaged' children was structurally more complex and less context-dependent than the speech of `disadvantaged' children. Overall, the study demonstrates the applicability of the concept of context-dependence in a non-English speaking country, and provides yet another demonstration of the influence of social class differences on speech codes.

The paper examines the school background of leaders in eight occupational groups: the civil service, foreign service, judiciary, Royal Navy, army, Royal Air Force, Church of England, and clearing banks. These elite groups were studied at four time intervals: 1939, 1950, 1960, and 1971. With the exception of the civil service, no significant change was discernible in the proportion of men who had attended public school. The paper also examine the university background of leaders in five of the. groups: the civil service, foreign service, judiciary, Church of England, and clearing banks. Except for the Church of England, no significant change was recorded in the proportion of men who had attended Oxbridge.