PUBLIC OPINION AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE SOVIET UNION

This article examines the relationship between public opinionand the transformation of the Soviet Union. Results of an August1990 survey showed that the majority of adults supported democraticreform, but lacked confidence in the Soviet regime. Young andmiddle-aged people, urban residents, and those with higher educationtended to be more supportive of democratic reform and more alienatedfrom the regime. The nationalities differed widely in supportfor democratic reform and confidence in the regime. In the partlydemocratized political system, Boris Yeltsin acquired a broadfollowing by appealing to the electorate and advocating radicalchange. A February 1991 poll showed that his support was greatestamong Russians who backed the Russian parliament and stronglyendorsed democratic reform and private enterprise. With suchbacking, Yeltsin won the June 1991 Russian presidential electionand then mobilized popular opposition to the August coup attempt.The coup's failure dealt a fatal blow to Communist rule, Gorbachev'sleadership, and the Soviet Union itself.     

Mixed Mode Latent Class Analysis: An Examination of Fit Index Performance for Classification

This Monte Carlo study examines the performance of fit indices commonly used by applied researchers interested in finite mixture modeling for the purposes of classification. Conditions for the simulation study were selected to reflect conditions found in applied educational and psychological research. The factors included in the investigation were metric level of indicators, sample size, and class prevalence. All models contained a combination of categorical and continuous indicators. All categorical indicators were dichotomous, and continuous indicators were normally distributed. The fit indices examined were Akaike’s information criterion, Bayesian information criterion (BIC), sample size-adjusted Bayesian information criterion (SSBIC), integrated classification likelihood criterion with Bayesian-type approximation, and Lo–Mendell–Rubin likelihood ratio test. Overall, SSBIC tended to identify the correct solution with higher frequency than other indices. BIC tended to identify the correct solution with higher frequency than the other indices in models with more continuous than categorical indicators, or when rare classes were absent.     

Politics,Paradoxes and Pragmatics of Happiness

European leaders and the popular media have shown a new-found interest in happiness as a socio-political value and goal. A growing body of research attempts to identify the conditions under which humans experience the highest levels of happiness, life-satisfaction or subjective well-being. This essay examines what makes a contemporary science and politics of happiness possible by taking a critical look at such efforts to define, measure and promote happiness, while seeking out a range of diverging, often paradoxical, cultural discourses of happiness. The essay covers the following themes: happiness is attainable; happiness is lost; happiness is obligatory; happiness is impossible; and, happiness is inauthentic. The essay critically examines political uses of the word happiness, disrupting received opinions about this contested term.     

Envisioning outcomes from choosing the midwifery model of perinatal care

This birth story illustrates one woman's view of the importance of the type of birthing care she received and the involvement of her existing child in a second birth. The value of the mother's vision and her ability to participate in fully informed choices are emphasized.     

Gender-Specific Linkages of Affective Social Competence With Peer Relations in Preschool Children

Research Findings: We examined whether affective social competence, or the ability to effectively send and receive emotional signals and to manage one's own emotional experience, contributes to preschool children's peer relations. Forty-two previously unacquainted preschoolers were observed while participating in a week-long playschool. Greater nonstereotypical emotion knowledge was related to girls' popularity and boys' likelihood of having a reciprocal friendship. Girls with greater skill at sending emotional communications and managing emotions were more likely to have a reciprocal friendship. Boys who were better at managing emotions compared to others in their group were less popular. The role of social context in the influence of affective social competence on children's peer relations is discussed. Practice or Policy: Results have implications for early childhood educators' promotion of children's socioemotional skills.     

Scientific teams and institutional collaborations: Evidence from U.S. universities, 1981-1999

This paper explores recent trends in the size of scientific teams and in institutional collaborations. The data derive from 2.4 million scientific papers written in 110 top U.S. research universities over the period 1981-1999. The top 110 account for a large share of published basic research conducted in the U.S. during this time.We measure team size by the number of authors on a scientific paper. Using this measure we find that team size increases by 50% over the 19-year period. We supplement team size with measures of domestic and foreign institutional collaborations, which capture the geographic dispersion of team workers. The time series evidence suggests that the trend towards more geographically dispersed scientific teams accelerates beginning with papers published at the start of the 1990s. This acceleration suggests a sharp decline in the cost of collaboration. Our hypothesis is that the decline is due to the deployment of the National Science Foundation's NSFNET and its connection to networks in Europe and Japan after 1987.Using a panel of top university departments we also find that private universities and departments whose scientists have earned prestigious awards participate in larger teams, as do departments that have larger amounts of federal funding. Placement of former graduate students is a key determinant of institutional collaborations, especially collaborations with firms and with foreign scientific institutions. Finally, the evidence suggests that scientific output and influence increase with team size and that influence rises along with institutional collaborations. Since increasing team size implies an increase in the division of labor, these results suggest that scientific productivity increases with the scientific division of labor.