Reconsidering the Reference Category

Social scientists often present modeling results from categorical explanatory variables, such as gender, race, and marital status, as coefficients representing contrasts to a “reference” group. Although choosing the reference category may seem arbitrary, we argue it is an intrinsically meaningful act that affects the interpretability of results. Reference category selection foregrounds some contrasts over others. Also, selecting a culturally dominant group as the reference can subtly reify the notion that dominant groups are the most “normal.” We find that three out of four recently published tables in Demography and American Sociological Review that include race or gender explanatory variables use dominant groups (i.e. male or White) as the reference group. Furthermore, the tables rarely state what the reference is: only half of tables with race variables and one-fifth of tables with gender variables explicitly specify the reference category, while the rest leave it up to the reader to check the methods section or simply guess. As an alternative to this apparently-standard practice, we suggest guidelines for intentionally and responsibly choosing a reference category. We then discuss alternative ways to convey results from categorical explanatory variables that avoid the problems of reference categories entirely.

Reconsidering the Reference Category

Social scientists often present modeling results from categorical explanatory variables, such as gender, race, and marital status, as coefficients representing contrasts to a “reference” group. Although choosing the reference category may seem arbitrary, the authors argue that it is an intrinsically meaningful act that affects the interpretability of results. Reference category selection foregrounds some contrasts over others. Also, selecting a culturally dominant group as the reference can subtly reify the notion that dominant groups are the most “normal.” The authors find that three of four recently published tables in Demography and American Sociological Review that include race or gender explanatory variables use dominant groups (i.e., male or white) as the reference group. Furthermore, the tables rarely state what the reference is: only half of tables with race variables and one-fifth of tables with gender variables explicitly specify the reference category; the rest leave it up to the reader to check the methods section or simply guess. As an alternative to this apparently standard practice, the authors suggest guidelines for intentionally and responsibly choosing a reference category. The authors then discuss alternative ways to convey results from categorical explanatory variables that avoid the problems of reference categories entirely.

Gender Patterns of Publication in Top Sociological Journals

This article examines publication patterns over the last seventy years from the American Sociological Review and American Journal of Sociology, the two most prominent journals in sociology. We reconstructed the gender of all published authors and each author’s academic pedigree. Results would suggest that these journals published disproportionally more articles by male authors and their coauthors. These gender inequalities persisted even when considering citations and after controlling for the influence of academic affiliation. It would seem that the potentially positive advantage of working in a prestigious, elite sociology department, in terms of better learning environment and reputational signal, for higher publication opportunities only significantly benefits male authors. While our findings do not mean that these journals have biased internal policies or implicit practices, this publication pattern needs to be considered especially regarding the possibility of their “social closure” and isomorphism.

Integrating Semantic Directions with Concept Mover's Distance to Measure Binary Concept Engagement

In an earlier article published in this journal ("Concept Mover’s Distance,” 2019), we proposed a method for measuring concept engagement in texts that uses word embeddings to find the minimum cost necessary for words in an observed document to "travel" to words in a "pseudo-document" consisting only of words denoting a concept of interest. One potential limitation we noted is that, because words associated with opposing concepts will be located close to one another in the embedding space, documents will likely have similar closeness to starkly opposing concepts (e.g., "life" and "death"). Using aggregate vector differences between antonym pairs to extract a direction in the semantic space pointing toward a pole of the binary opposition (following "The Geometry of Culture," American Sociological Review, 2019), we illustrate how CMD can be used to measure a document"s engagement with binary concepts.

Sinking the Flagship: Why Communication Studies is Better Without One

Does U.S. communication research have a flagship journal? Not really, if by flagship we mean something like the American Sociological Review or the American Political Science Review. Those are unquestioned flagships, ratified (in a self-reinforcing loop) by citation metrics and by the disciplines’ tacit knowledge (Garand & Giles, 2003; Hargens, 1991; Oromaner, 2008). Ask a media studies scholar, and she might mention the Journal of Communication—but she could just as easily offer Quarterly Journal of Speech, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly or even Cinema Journal. She wouldn’t be wrong in any case. All four titles carry a major scholarly association's imprimatur. What is odd, of course, is that there are four scholarly associations all claiming the same territory. If media and communication has no flagship, it is because there no coherent discipline in the first place.Let’s stipulate that there is no media studies flagship. While our would-be discipline’s problems run deep, my view is that this is no longer one of them. Maybe it is OK, in other words, that we do not have an organ to anoint the “best” stuff. There was always something problematic about the flagship anyway: It is too easy for a narrow agenda to seize the power to consecrate. (Just ask a sociologist.) But the main reason that we are better off without a flagship, after all these years, is that its good and valuable functions can be taken up elsewhere.

Race, Legality, and the Social Policy Consequences of Anti-Immigration Mobilization

Pre-Print. Published article published in American Sociological Review and available at http://doi.org/10.1177/0003122413476712. Supplemental materials available at http://osf.io/vqnwg/.