This year's theme, "Eradicating
Sociological Illiteracy," was inspired by an editorial "point of view"
offered by Judith Shapiro in the March 31, 2000 edition of The Chronicle
of Higher Education. In describing the transition from sociological illiteracy
to sociological imagination, Shapiro argues that persons are generally
unaware of the social dynamics that shape everyday life experiences. Thus,
as sociologists one of our most formidable challenges both inside and outside
the classroom is to demonstrate how social forces shape our lives.
This year's meeting will be held February 15-16 in Durham. The Durham Hilton will host both the Thursday evening reception and the Friday sessions. A block of rooms will be reserved for those needing to stay Thursday night. More details on the price will be provided in the next edition of SOCIATION.
The Executive Council is busy developing sessions that offer various means of eradicating sociological illiteracy. Sessions are presently being designed in the following areas: Enhancing Sociological Literacy through the Introductory Course, Techniques for De-Mystifying Theory and Research Methods: Insuring Theoretical and Methodological Competence and Sociologically Informed Service Learning. A session focusing on the recent history and future direction of the NCSA is being planned also.
This year's meeting will offer two sessions specifically designed for students. In recent years student participation in the annual meeting has been significant, and it is important that the NCSA address issues that are important to students. The two student sessions will address the following topics: Graduate Study in Sociology: Opportunities and Expectations and Landing a Job with a Sociology Degree. Both student sessions will be offered before the Annual Awards Luncheon.
Finally, Ronald Wimberley will offer
the NCSA presidential address and an expanded exhibit section is being
planned. More details on the specific exhibitors will be provided in the
next newsletter. I hope this year's theme has caught your attention and
stimulated your curiosity. Since the sessions are still in the planning
stages, input from the membership concerning potential panel participants
is welcome. Please direct your recommendations to Robert Wortham at NCCU
(919-560-6420. Your comments will be forwarded to the appropriate session
organizers. See you in Durham!
NCSA President Ron Wimberley and members of the NCSA Executive Council encourage all sociologists, whether professionals or students, to join the state association.
"There are many good reasons to join the NCSA and to encourage your colleagues and students to join as well," said Wimberley. "Our association provides a forum where sociologists from across the state and from different institutional and applied settings can come together to discuss the issues of importance to our discipline and practice. We also maintain a website with links of interest to our members and their students. We have formed a task force to pursue means of allowing sociology graduates greater access to state jobs. To continue as a successful state organization," he added, "we need your support."
"We would like for current members to pay their dues and to recruit their colleagues and students for membership in our association as well," said Sue Pauley, Secretary-Treasurer of the NCSA. "Dues are for the calendar year beginning Jan. 1. We are now soliciting for the 2001 annual dues."
Dues are $11 per year for regular members and $3 per year for student members. There is no charge for institutions of higher learning. Payment may be sent to Sue Pauley, NCSA Secretary/Treasurer, Wingate University, P.O. Box 1015, Wingate, NC 28174. Questions about membership and dues should be directed to Dr. Pauley (704-233-8059).
In previous years, the NCSA Executive Council passed a resolution to ask members to add an optional $4 to their annual dues as a way of partially defraying the additional costs of presenting both an undergraduat e and graduate Himes Award. Members who select this option would pay a total of $15 in dues and contributions.
How can you know when you last paid your dues? Look in the upper right hand corner of the mailing label on this issue of SOCIATION. The digits there indicate the last calendar year in which your dues were paid (for example, "99" means you last paid dues for the calendar year 1999).
Every few years, the NCSA has published
a directory of members. Although there are inevitably some errors, most
members have responded favorably to the directories which included all
the colleges, universities, and community colleges in the entire state
as well as listings for active members in the NCSA. Publishing a revised
and updated directory is under consideration as is creating a listserve
of NCSA members. Every member should verify the basic information in the
current directory and add any new information (such as e-mail addresses)
which should be included in the future editions of the NCSA directory.
Members are then asked to fill out the membership form included in this
edition of SOCIATION to reflect their most current information.
President Johnny Underwood (Carteret Community College) would like to invite everyone to this year's conference which will focus on "continuou s improvement" in the quality of our instruction.
For more information please contact
Johnny Underwood. If you would like to register for the conference
send for your materials as soon as possible to Johnny Underwood, Carteret
Community College, 3505 Arendell Street, Morehead City, NC 28557.
Nominations may be made by an individual other than the nominee, an academic department, government agency, or employer. The nomination should include a summary of appropriate evidence, including information about items such as:
This is a good opportunity to recognize
a colleague who has labored long and hard for the discipline. The deadline
for nominations is 5 PM on Dec. 15, 2000. Nominations should be sent to
George Conklin (NCCU) , Beth Davison (ASU,), or to Steve McNamee (UNC Wilmington).
Papers, graduate or undergraduate, should be submitted in triplicate to Beth Davison (ASU), George Conklin (NCCU), or to Steve McNamee (UNC Wilmington). Deadline for submission is Jan. 5, 2001. Please help us recognize the work of outstanding student sociologists by encouraging them to submit their papers for consideration.
In addition to being recognized as having written the best undergraduate or graduate paper of the year, winners of the Himes Award will receive a complementary one-year membership in the NCSA, free registration at the annual meeting and a cash award ($150 for undergraduate s, $250 for graduates).
Papers are judged according to standards
appropriate to the best in undergraduate and graduate scholarship. Papers
need not represent original research in the sense of data collection, nor
is it expected that papers conform to expectations for theses in the sense
of contribution of new knowledge to a field. Papers are judged according
to appropriateness and effectiveness of literature review; integration
of ideas from relevant sources, including application of appropriate data;
comprehensiveness and creativity of analysis; clarity and organization
of arguments; overall synthesis of data and theory toward well formulated
conclusions.
Please take a moment to update your information. Be sure to include you most current information.
Name:______________________________________________________________ Institutional Affiliation:_________________________________________ Institutional Address:_____________________________________ Office Telephone (including area code:_____________________ Office FAX: _______________________________________________ Office e-mail address: ____________________________________ Permanent Home Address:____________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________ Home phone: _______________________________________________ Home FAX: __________________________________________________ Home e-mail address: _______________________________________ I prefer to have SOCIATION mailed to me _____at my office/business/school address _____at my permanent home address Type of membership: _____student (dues $3 per year) _____professional (dues $11 per year) Voluntary Contribution to the Himes Award Fund: _____$4.00 suggested donation Total amount enclosed: __________Please enclose a check for your 2001 dues in the amount indicated above. Make all checks payable to the North Carolina Sociological Association. Mail this form and your check to:
Dr. Sue Pauley NCSA Secretary/Treasurer Wingate University P.O. Box 1015 Wingate, NC 28174
Questions about membership and dues should be directed to Dr. Pauley (704-233-8059). If you have any difficulties concerning the receipt of SOCIATION (incomplete address, misspelled name, new apartment number, etc.), please contact its editor, Lee Dodson, Rockingham Community College, P.O. Box 38, Wentworth, NC 27375-0038 (336-342-4261, ext. 2155).
Since most persons in prison are released, what happens to the incarcerated is of great social importance. The goal of prison may be debated, the effects of prison on those who are deprived of their freedom ideally should be to return to society a functioning adult who is able to get on with life in a normal manner. Do prison programs help?
Even though far fewer women than men are confined to prisons, in 1998 84,427 women were under the jurisdiction of state and federal correction authorities (Greenfield and Snell 1998). For women, the main concern upon being arrested remains, "Where are my children?" The majority of women in prison are mothers. The loss of self-esteem and identity of women in prison is associated closely with loss of contact with children and family.
It would seem that the loss of contact with family results in a serious problem of depression for women in prison. Daniel (et al. 1988) found that 22 percent of women in prison may be meet the DMS-III criteria for major depression. In North Carolina Martin (et al. 1995) found 70 percent of women in prison had levels suggesting clinical depression using the well-known CES-D scale (see Radloff 1977). A control group of women not in prison using the same scale showed only 20-30 percent so affected.
Like many 20-item scales, the CES-D scale asks respondents to answer a question using a Likert scale. For example, in the past week you might be asked, "I had trouble keeping my mind on what I was doing." The possible responses are: rarely or none of the time (score 0); some of the time (1-2 days) (score 1), occasionally or a moderate amount of time (3-4 days) (score 3); and finally, most or all of the time (5-7 days) (score 3).
The literature on adjustment of women to prison also suggests that women who participate in prison activities such as bible clubs, attend classes on child rearing skills or participate in similar activies may be more successful upon release than those women who simply ignore the prison programs designed by officials to 'help' them.
The current study was designed to study the effects of prison visitation, family contact and prison programs on measured depression in women. A facility for women in North Carolina was studied with a total of 62 women responding, a majority of those in the facility. A factor analysis of the 20 questions of the CES-D scale revealed 5 groupings reflecting depression, feelings of despair, expressions of happiness, feelings of dejection and lastly expressions of failure and disappointment. These variables were considered dependent while prison activities, visitations and other factors such as a history of alcohol abuse are the independent variables.
The results find that symptoms of depression among women in prison decrease as the number of visits goes up. Happiness also increases with the number of visits. Women who have no children under the age of 18 are also happier than average, showing that separation of children from the mother is a major problem for the prison system. The young show more symptoms of distress than older offenders, while white inmates show more despair than non-whites. A history of alcohol abuse is another predictor of increased depressive symptoms in prison.
Women who were most likely to participate in prison groups were in fact least happy when stepwise regression analysis was undertaken, confirming the zero-order correlation (see Table 1). From a policy point of view this is somewhat surprising, since prison activity programs are set up to help an inmate adjust not only to prison, but to life on the outside.
Table 1 Stepwise Regession Analysis of Happiness Among Women in Prison Variable multiple r Standardized Beta Significance Number of visits in the past week .331 .343 .004 Total number of prison groups participated in .443 -.323 .007 Children under age 18: 1=yes, 2= no. .502 .238 .044
On the other measures, there was no correlation beteween the number of prison groups participated in and any of the scales.
In conclusion, there is no doubt that the more involved women were with the outside world, the fewer symptoms of depression they showed. Happiness went up. The findings do show that women in prison need frequent visitations from family and friends to maintain positive mental health.
But from a policy view, it would seem that prison programs designed to help the inmate adjust to prison are probably irrelevant in relieving symptoms of depression or boosting happiness among the inmates. For most scales, group participation had no effect, whole those who were in the most groups were unhappy. Perhaps the best interpretation which can be put on this finding is one of self-selection. Those who were least happy were jumping into activities to take their minds off their current situation.
Or, could we conclude that prison programs need to be reconsidered and that they actually increase unhappiness? That is certainly one possibility raised. Is it really surprising to find that family contact helps while contact with officials reduces happiness? Of course, perhaps we should not even consider such a reductionistic possibility!
References
Daniel, A. E. et al (1988). "Lifetime and six-month Prevalence of Psychiatric Disorders among Sentenced Female Offenders." Bulletin of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law 16(4): 333-342.
Martin, S. (et al.) (1995). "Family Violence and Depressive Symptomology among Incarcerated Women." Journal of Family Violence 10 (4):399-411.
Greenfield. L.A. and T. Snell (1999). Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report: Women Offenders. U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, DC.
Radloff, L. S. (1977). "The CES-D Scale: A Self-Report Depression Scale for Research in the General Population." Applied Psychological Measurement 1 (3): 385-401.
Review by George H. Conklin
Thesis advisor: George H. Conklin
Source: Sociation 26:3, October/November 2000, p.
2.
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