This study uses industrial pollution data from the Environmental Protection Agency's Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) and tract-level demographic data from the 2000 U.S. census to determine whether environmental racial inequality existed in the Detroit metropolitan area in the year 2000. This study differs from prior environmental inequality…

How the social density of a household affects interpersonal relations, physical health, and psychological well-being in neighborhoods with very low outside density, such as rural areas has not been examined. Two questionnaire studies of women in rural Georgia examined how social density affected respondents' interpersonal relations, physical…

A recent concern with the informal support systems of elderly people has focused on the ways in which the eldery live independently with the help of others, primarily the family. In order to explore the dimensions of social space (emotional closeness, and physical distance) as they relate to friendship, elderly, unmarried women (N=70) living in a…

In order to investigate developmental trends in the sex differences of two dimensions of proxemic behavior, distance and shoulder orientation, 406 elementary and junior high school students were studied while interacting in same-sex and heterosexual pairs. After engaging in discussion for one minute, the pairs were asked to stop and hold still…

To determine whether instructor effectiveness depends, in part, on where students sit in the classroom, student ratings of teachers on a comprehensive university-wide teacher evaluation form were analyzed. The form, The University of Connecticut Survey of Courses and Teaching, consisted of 5 demographic variables, an 11-item rating scale, and a…

Examining social and economic change associated with a recent mass exodus of Spanish surnamed populations from rural villages in north-central New Mexico, this article addresses attitudes of those left behind and postulates that while the impact of migration has been felt throughout the area, its intensity has fluctuated among villages. (Author/JC)

Illustrates some of the problems of second language (French) acquisition by adult Spanish-speaking immigrants in a natural setting through analysis of the European Project data (Perdue, 1982) in three areas: acquisition and use of the over-generalized marker "c'est"; acquisition of reference to time; and acquisition of reference to…

Three- and four-year-old children were tested in their comprehension of locative prepositions. Results showed that those prepositions characterized as positive were comprehended less well than their ostensibly negative counterparts, contrary to theoretical predictions. An explanatory hypothesis concerning children's developing spatial…

Interracial interaction patterns were observed in a school whose sixth and seventh grades came close to meeting Allport's conditions conducive to improved intergroup relations. As predicted, compared to students who entered the school's eighth grade the previous year from largely segregated schools, these students interacted more across racial…

Examines the determinants of postdivorce contact between nonresidential fathers and their children after martial disruption and to evaluate the relative merit of three sociological perspectives on postdivorce contact: social parenting, marital-involvement parenting, and socioeconomic-advantaged parenting. Results suggest that fathers have limited…

Experimental analysis of social stimuli has typically been restricted to the presence or absence of verbal attention. In the present study, an ABAB design was used to assess the influence of proximity as a social stimulus. Close and distant proximity of a familiar adult was systematically manipulated to evaluate the effect of proximity on the…

Ethological research indicates that during courtship, men and women usually communicate their interests via body language and interpersonal space (kinesics and proxemics). Many studies have validated the usage of kinesics and the ebb and flow of proximity during the process of courtship. Although the majority of studies have focused on young…

In an effort to explain the spatial patterning of violence, we expanded Sutherland's (1947) concept of differential social organization to include the level of deviance exhibited by neighboring areas. To test the value of this extension, the geographic clustering of Japanese suicide and homicide rates is assessed using 1985 and 1995 data for…

In this study, the effectiveness of secondary education teachers' interpersonal behaviour is investigated by analysing data from 2 samples: a study on 45 Physics teachers and their 3rd-year classes and a study on 32 English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers and their 3rd-year classes. Teacher interpersonal behaviour was studied by means of…

The goal of this comparative study was to explore the online interactions among members of two learning communities. The two cases examined two different cohorts in the same professional preparation program for school principals and administrators: a distance-learning cohort and an onsite university-district partnership cohort in which online…