Reliability of the Core Items in the General Social Survey: Estimates from the Three-Wave Panels, 2006–2014

Hout, Michael; Hastings, Orestes P.

doi:10.15195/v3.a43

Cited by 89 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…We present results treating this measure as a continuous variable, which is consistent with much other work (e.g., Crooker and Near 1998;Easterlin 2003;Fischer 2008;Hout and Hastings 2014) and has been shown to have high reliability across the GSS panels (Hout and Hastings 2016). For interpretability, we standardize this measure so units are in standard deviations (SD).…”

Section: Happinesssupporting

confidence: 78%

“…people report greater happiness when relaxing with friends or having sex, and less happiness when driving in traffic or talking to their bosses, see Krueger and Schkade 2008) and longer-term assessments, judgements, and comparisons (e.g., Easterlin 2003;Fischer 2008;Smith, Diener, and Wedell 1989). Fortunately, this latter part is relatively durable (Crooker and Near 1998;Frey and Stutzer 2002) and does well in measures of test-retest reliability (Hout and Hastings 2016;Krueger and Schkade 2008), making self-reported happiness something that can be quantified and systematically analyzed in relation to other "durable" factors. 1 Numerous studies have found a strong negative relationship between unemployment and happiness (Clark and Oswald 1994;Darity and Goldsmith 1996;Di Tella et al 2001;Korpi 1997;McKee-Ryan et al 2005).…”

Section: Happiness and Unemploymentmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Happiness in Hard Times: Does Religion Buffer the Negative Effect of Unemployment on Happiness?

Hastings¹,

Roeser²

2020

Preprint

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Two well-known findings are that the religious are happier than the non-religious, and people are less happy when they lose their job. We investigate a link between these by asking whether religion buffers against the negative effect of unemployment on happiness. Although theorized or implicitly assumed in many studies, empirical demonstrations of a causal, moderating effect of religion have been infrequent and often not strong methodologically. We conduct individual-level fixed effects models to test for the buffering effect in the U.S. context using recent panel data from the 2006-2014 General Social Surveys (GSS). Religious service attendance, belief in life after death, and trying to carry one’s religious beliefs over into other dealings in life all substantially buffered the effect of unemployment on happiness. Praying daily, believing God exists, identifying as a religious person, and having a religious affiliation did not. We discuss these results in the context of prior work and existing theory. To further support a causal interpretation of these findings, we also conduct a secondary analysis showing that unemployment does not appear to increase or decrease religiousness. This paper makes an important sociological contribution to the growing field of happiness research and to our understanding of how religion matters to people during hard times.

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Section: Happinesssupporting

confidence: 78%

Section: Happiness and Unemploymentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Happiness in Hard Times: Does Religion Buffer the Negative Effect of Unemployment on Happiness?

Hastings¹,

Roeser²

2020

Preprint

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“…Because of potential biases and variations in reliability, all models also control for the GSS wave being used. Recent analyses by Hout and Hastings (2016) of core GSS items between 2006 and 2014 demonstrated significant reliability (i.e., >0.85) overall, especially on demographics indicators, but somewhat less reliability when it comes to both the 2007-2009 recession period and indicators that have more subjective dimensions, such as race and gender interpretations of inequality. 10 I control for each GSS wave in the models that follow in an effort to account for such variability across years as well as the possibility that particular dimensions of status become more or less salient owing to prominent national events or media attention.…”

Section: Controls: Job Tenure Organizational Attributes Sector Geomentioning

confidence: 99%

Discrimination, Sexual Harassment, and the Impact of Workplace Power

Roscigno

2019

Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World

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Research on workplace discrimination has tended to focus on a singular axis of inequality or a discrete type of closure, with much less attention to how positional and relational power within the employment context can bolster or mitigate vulnerability. In this article, the author draws on nearly 6,000 full-time workers from five waves of the General Social Survey (2002–2018) to analyze discrimination, sexual harassment, and the extent to which occupational status and vertical and horizontal workplace relations matter. Results demonstrate important and persistent race, gender, and age vulnerabilities, with positive vertical (i.e., supervisory) and horizontal (i.e., coworker) relations generally reducing the likelihood of discriminatory and sexually harassing encounters. Interaction modeling further reveals a heightened likelihood of both gender and age discrimination for those in higher status occupational positions but uniform vulnerabilities across the occupational hierarchy when it comes to women’s experiences of sexual harassment and minority encounters with racial discrimination.

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“…As noted earlier, battery items have lower reliability and validity than other types of items; some of this lack of reliability or validity could arise because of these types of interviewer behaviors. Unfortunately, we cannot directly test this hypothesis; we do not have reinterviews with the same respondents, so we cannot directly evaluate reliability of attitudes over time with these data (for examples, see Alwin 2007;Hout and Hastings 2016). We might anticipate seeing more changes in answers over time to battery questions where the interviewer probed respondent answers using the response options, suggesting weaker or less crystallized attitudes (Smith 1985).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Item Location, the Interviewer–Respondent Interaction, and Responses to Battery Questions in Telephone Surveys

Olson

Smyth

Cochran

2018

Sociological Methodology

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Survey researchers often ask a series of attitudinal questions with a common question stem and response options, known as battery questions. Interviewers have substantial latitude in deciding how to administer these items, including whether to reread the common question stem on items after the first one or to probe respondents' answers. Despite the ubiquity of use of these items, there is virtually no research on whether respondent and interviewer behaviors on battery questions differ over items in a battery or whether interview behaviors are associated with answers to these questions. This article uses a nationally representative telephone survey with audio-recorded interviews and randomized placement of items within four different batteries to examine interviewer and respondent behaviors and respondent answers in battery

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Reliability of the Core Items in the General Social Survey: Estimates from the Three-Wave Panels, 2006–2014

Cited by 89 publications

References 22 publications

Happiness in Hard Times: Does Religion Buffer the Negative Effect of Unemployment on Happiness?

Happiness in Hard Times: Does Religion Buffer the Negative Effect of Unemployment on Happiness?

Discrimination, Sexual Harassment, and the Impact of Workplace Power

Item Location, the Interviewer–Respondent Interaction, and Responses to Battery Questions in Telephone Surveys

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