Category Archives: Sociology

High rate of arrests among NFL players?

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Going into the Super Bowl, everyone knows about the legal issues Ben Roethlisberger has faced in recent years. But one sociologist has found that behavior that breaks the law is not unknown to NFL players. One website suggests that sociologist Eric Carter found “nearly 35% of all players in the league have been arrested.” Elsewhere, Carter goes into more detail about why so many NFL players are arrested at some point and how religion could help players deal with anomie:

Eric has conducted over 100 interviews with NFL players, some who have led happy and well-adjusted lives but also with many who have not.  We talk about the typical pressures that a professional player faces, coming into sudden fame and fortune.  Prof. Carter brings the research ideas of Emile Durkheim, particulary “social anomie,” to bear on what a number of these athletes face when moving into the professional ranks.  The sudden change in lifestyle combined with intense pressures to perform often leave many of them unhappy, confused and susceptible to all sorts of deviant behavior (some of which makes the news).  We talk then about the role of religion in helping players cope with these changes.  Our discussion looks at what factors might help players make adjustments to their new environments, including: a religious upbringing; the support networks they have access to at college; and religious role models in the locker room.

More details about Carter’s study of NFL players can be found here. Although this is a small sample of 104 players (there are at least 1440 players in the NFL each year – 45 players on 32 rosters), Carter found that 33 of the players had been arrested (31.7%). And Carter wrote a book, Boys Gone Wild, based on his study.

What is interesting about this is that the NFL seems to avoid scrutiny in the public eye about this. Whereas baseball stars are vilified for cheating, NFL players are regularly arrested (if this arrest rate holds true across the NFL – and even if it was really 10-20% lower, it still is a decent number) and the popularity of the NFL has continued to grow. Even with players like Roethlisberger or Rae Carruth or Michael Vick or Ray Lewis or Donte Stallworth or Marvin Harrison getting into trouble, this sort of news gets overwhelmed by the behemoth that is NFL entertainment.

In a more recent interview, Carter talks about how the NFL is able to keep this information out of the public eye:

“We see a lot of what goes on, because of the media,” Carter said. “But I was amazed at how much goes on that isn’t picked up — how powerful the NFL is in combating some of the potential bad media. I couldn’t believe how many guys contemplated suicide or attempted it, or were that unhappy with their lives that they engaged in these self-destructive behaviors.”

Carter found that 32 percent of the players he interviewed had been arrested after they entered the league — and others said they often evaded arrest by dispensing autographs to star-struck police officers — and nearly half described themselves as unhappy people.

“Fifty percent? That’s a big number,” he said, especially when you consider that these are young men who make on average more than $1 million a year to play football, and many of them much more than that.

“It just goes against our contemporary American conceptions of what happiness is. They have it all. They have the wealth, the fame, the power, the status — all of those things that many people equate with a happy life.”

Perhaps the NFL is able to bury these stories or minimize them. Or perhaps the American public doesn’t want to face this kind of information or thinks the athletes are compensated enough and can deal with the problems on their own.

Trying to count the people on the streets in Cairo

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This is a problem that occasionally pops up in American marches or rallies: how exactly should one estimate the number of people in the crowd? This has actually been quite controversial at points as certain organizers of rallies have produced larger figures than official government or media estimates. And with the ongoing protests taking place in Cairo, the same question has arisen: just how many Egyptians have taken to the streets in Cairo? There is a more scientific process to this beyond a journalist simply making a guess:

To fact-check varying claims of Cairo crowd sizes, Clark McPhail, a sociologist at the University of Illinois and a veteran crowd counter, started by figuring out the area of Tahrir Square. McPhail used Google Earth’s satellite imagery, taken before the protest, and came up with a maximum area of 380,000 square feet that could hold protesters. He used a technique of area and density pioneered in the 1960s by Herbert A. Jacobs, a former newspaper reporter who later in his career lectured at the University of California, Berkeley, as chronicled in a Time Magazine article noting that “If the crowd is largely coeducational, he adds, it is conceivable that people might press closer together just for the fun of it.”

Such calculations of capacity say more about the size of potential gathering places than they do about the intensity of the political movements giving rise to the rallies. A government that wants to limit reported crowd sizes could cut off access to its cities’ biggest open areas.

From what I have read in the past on this topic, this is the common approach: calculate how much space is available to protesters or marchers, calculate how much space an individual needs, and then look at photos to see how much of that total space is used. The estimates can then vary quite a bit depending on how much space it is estimated each person wants or needs. These days, the quest to count is aided by better photographs and satellite images:

That is because to ensure an accurate count, some computerized systems require multiple cameras, to get high-resolution images of many parts of the crowd, in case density varies. “I don’t know of real technological solutions for this problem,” said Nuno Vasconcelos, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, San Diego. “You will have to go with the ‘photograph and ruler’ gurus right now. Interestingly, this stuff seems to be mostly of interest to journalists. The funding agencies for example, don’t seem to think that this problem is very important. For example, our project is more or less on stand-by right now, for lack of funding.”

Without any such camera setup, many have turned to some of the companies that collect terrestrial images using satellites, but these companies have collected images mostly before and after the peak of protests this week. “GeoEye and its regional affiliate e-GEOS tasked its GeoEye-1 satellite on Jan. 29, 2011 to collect half-meter resolution imagery showing central Cairo, Egypt,” GeoEye’s senior vice president of marketing, Tony Frazier, said in a written statement. “We provided the imagery to several customers, including Google Earth. GeoEye normally relies on our partners to provide their expert analysis of our imagery, such as counting the number of people in these protests.” This image was taken before the big midweek protests. DigitalGlobe, another satellite-imagery company, also didn’t capture images of the protests, according to a spokeswoman, but did take images later in the week.

Because these images are difficult to come by in Egypt, it is then difficult to make an estimate. As the article notes, this is why you will get vague estimates for crowd sizes in news stories like “thousands” or “tens of thousands.”

Since this is a problem that does come up now and then, can’t someone put together a better method for making crowd estimates? If certain kinds of images could be obtained, it seems like an algorithm could be developed that would scan the image and somehow differentiate between people.

Untimely end for source of Internet meme about Internet

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The NBC employee who released footage of Bryant Gumbel, Katie Couric, and Elizabeth Vargas struggling to define the Internet back in 1994 has been fired. So much for (corporate) information wanting to be free.

But I also don’t quite understand what all the fuss has been about. Sure, their conversation sounds silly to us today. But this was only 16 years ago. If anything, this clip and its popularity demonstrates how quickly the Internet has become an part of everyday life. Back in 1994, the Internet was not used by the common American. My family got AOL in the next year or two, I remember a friend’s family having Prodigy around this time, but most people had no access and realistically, no need for access. Couric, Gumbel, and Vargas were like many Americans: just trying to figure out what this new technology was and how it was used.

More broadly, this released video fits with patterns of more modern people laughing at or commenting on how much better life is now compared to the past. From the vantage point of 2011, we can see the benefits of the Internet and we are bombarded with messages from companies suggesting we need even more of it (in our phones, in our treadmills, etc.). But anytime new technology is introduced, it takes time for the mass public to figure out whether it is a good change or not.

Clearing snow from one of Chicago’s enduring design features: the alleys

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Crews around here are still working on clearing snow. Even this morning, several days after the major snowfall, some roads have impassable lanes. But Chicago faces an additional challenge: clearing snow from the alleys of residential neighborhoods:

But snowplows won’t be moving down alleys, arteries that are no less important to city dwellers. Streets and Sanitation Commissioner Thomas Byrne says plows might do more harm than good, pushing snow up against garage doors. Garbage trucks, however, will try force their way down alleys to make tracks for cars, he said…

Indeed, while alleys are the last to see city snowplows, they’re first in the hearts of many Chicagoans.

If the Champs-Elysees epitomizes Paris and Unter den Linden boulevard is symbolic of Berlin, the alleys that bisect Chicago’s blocks are emblematic of Chicago, no less than touristy Michigan Avenue…

Other cities, like New York, lack alleys, which means trash has to be put out on streets for pickup. Chicago’s alleys are lined with garbage cans, yet also are the ultimate urban playground.

Years ago, alley games contributed to local patois. “No dibs on broken windows!” was the starting signal for softball games, an announcement that only the batter would be responsible for smashing a ball through a window. The alley version of hide-and-seek was kick-the-can, accompanied by the cry “Olly olly oxen free!”

Alleys were also traditional avenues of neighborhood commerce. Today’s alley vendors, primarily scavengers, prowl the backyard byways by truck. Their predecessors drove wagons pulled by horses.

In the midst of a story about plowing, the reader receives a short education on the importance of alleys for Chicago culture. It would also be interesting to hear about alleys as a planning feature: does it enhance or detract from life on the streets? Does it allow for greater traffic flows on roads when garages and garbage cans are pushed behind buildings? How often do alleys become more of problems than assets (like in situations like this)?

This reminds me of the prominence of alleys in the designs of New Urbanists. Their neighborhoods often place garages in the backyards of homes and buildings so that cars are not such a prominent feature in front of structures. This is intended to enhance life on front porches and front sidewalks as homes can then be closer to the public areas. But this article from Chicago suggests that the alleys can also become important areas for social interaction, interaction that is not taking place on the front stoop or in more visible, public areas. If the goal of New Urbanist design is to enhance community life and interaction, does it matter if this takes place in front or behind a home?

One chart that situates the 2012 Republican presidential contenders

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One of the key purposes of a chart or graph is to distill a lot of complicated information into a simple graphic so readers can quickly draw conclusions. In the midst of a crowded field of people who may (or may not) be vying to be the Republican candidate for president in 2012, one chart attempts to do just that.

This chart has two axes: moderate to conservative and insider to outsider. While these may be fuzzy concepts, creator Nate Silver suggests these axes give us some important information:

With that said, it is exceptionally important to consider how the candidates are positioned relative to one another. Too often, I see analyses of candidates that operate through what I’d call a checkbox paradigm, tallying up individual candidates’ strengths and weaknesses but not thinking deeply about how they will compete with one another for votes.

Silver then goes on to explain two other pieces of information for each candidate that is part of the circle used to place each candidate on the graph: the color indicates the region and the size of the circle represents their relative stock on Intrade.

Based on this chart, it looks like we have a diagonal running from top left to bottom right, from moderate insider (Mitt Romney) to conservative outsider (Sarah Palin) with Tim Pawlenty and Mike Huckabee trying to straddle the middle. We will have to see how this plays out.

But as a statistics professor who is always on the lookout for cool ways of presenting information, this is an interesting graphic.

Utah legislator suggests sociology degree may be “degree to nowhere”

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A legislator in Utah made some comments recently that sociology, along with several other disciplines, do not provide helpful degrees for some students:

Stephenson, who has a four-year degree and master’s from BYU, said colleges aren’t giving sociology, psychology and philosophy majors the real story.

“These colleges refuse to inform them,” Stephenson said. “They refuse to give them the data.”

Stephenson is clarifying to say he is not calling four-year degrees undesirable. Nonetheless, his message is already being met with opposition from his legislative counterparts.

“Clearly it sends the wrong message,” said Senate Minority Leader Ross Romero, D-Salt Lake. “Basically, what we need to be saying is that these are all important and not to be pitting one against the other, because they all provide value.”

Romero pointed to sociology majors, which sometimes turn into lawyers and earn good paychecks.

“What’s most important is getting a liberal education, getting a well-rounded education and learning how to think,” he said.

Even some Republican colleagues are questioning the strength of Stephenson’s message. Tuesday, Sen. Stephen Urquhart, R-St. George, told Stephenson he was overstating the lack of value in a college degree.

Stephenson appears to be finding support for his rationale in a new Harvard University report out Wednesday. It says the education system is failing a lot of students that need to be career-ready, not college-ready.

Stephenson is calling certain four-year degrees “degrees to nowhere” as he pushes for an increase in funding for applied technology colleges.

While Stephenson is pushing for more vocational training, it is interesting that he picks on sociology (along with psychology and philosophy). A few thoughts about this:

1. These degrees do lead to some jobs or career paths. For example, sociology can often feed into social work or work in the criminal justice field. But some of these ties are not as obvious as perhaps business, pre-law, or pre-med.

2. It would be interesting to see the data to which Stephenson refers. Does this data say these majors can’t find work? Does it say that they earn less over a lifetime compared to some other majors? Do these majors have more student loans or debt after college? Does it say they have less meaningful jobs? Just curious.

3.  The skills of knowing how to interact with other cultures and people from different backgrounds seems valuable. See David Brooks’ argument about the difficulty of working with people.

4. The legislator Romero tries to defend these degrees but makes two interesting points of his own:

4a. The idea that these degrees and the skills developed in earning the degree have value even if it is not monetary value is a broader comment about society. If social workers, for example, are important and needed, shouldn’t the profession be better paying and more prestigious? Pay does not necessarily equate with social prestige or value.

4b. Romero then suggests that sociology can be fine if it is paired with a law degree. So the only way sociology is valuable is when paired with a prestigious and higher-earning degree?

5. The way this story is presented, the argument breaks down along party lines: the Republican thinks these degrees are not as worthwhile, the Democrat tries to defend them. Can we simply say that Stephenson thinks these degrees are not worth much because they support or promote values he disagrees with?

Blog and order

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Overthinking It has posted some analysis from a painstaking survey of Law and Order seasons 1-10 (hat tip:  Above the Law):

[I]n November 1993, at the same time the DAs of L&O were stumbling to a 59% success rate, Rudy Guiliani was elected Mayor. One of his big campaign issues had been, well, law and order, and tackling the crime rate was the centerpiece of his first year….Giuliani didn’t just fight crime, he fought crime in a lot of very visible ways that average New Yorkers would take note of. I don’t mean to take anything away from his acheivements [sic] — there was a remarkable drop in crime during his administration. But even before the murder rate started dropping, Giuliani created a strong public perception that there was a new sheriff in town. He restored people’s faith in law and order, and Law & Order immediately responded.

Here’s where art really started imitating life:

The [L&O] murder rate dropped by about 15%, and the L&O conviction rate shot up by more than 20%. There was a whole new feeling of optimism in the city and on the show (not to mention a young new DA by the name of Jack McCoy).

For those of you who want to dig into the data for yourselves, Overthinking It has posted the dataset here (Excel spreadsheet).

While no one would accuse L&O of being 100% realistic, I would never have suspected that it tracked real-world aggregates this closely.  It is one thing to base a single episode loosely on a true story, but it is impressive that the show statistically mapped NYC crime rates so directly.

Bringing nature back to the city while still accepting cars and suburbs?

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In modern history, the city has often been seen as the antithesis of nature or the countryside. With dirty factories, a multitude of noisy vehicles, and buildings crammed on top of each other, Americans (and others) responded in part by moving out from the city and into suburbs when the opportunity arose.

But there are still arguments about whether nature can return to the city and what exactly it might mean:

The following lies at the heart of the agenda of a growing number of designers and architects who refer to themselves as “landscape urbanists”: “the notion that the most important part of city planning is not the arrangement of buildings, but the natural landscape upon which those buildings stand.”…

“Proponents envision weaving nature and city together into a new hybrid that functions like a living ecosystem. And instead of pushing people closer together in service of achieving density … landscape urbanism allows for the possibility of an environmentally friendly future that includes spacious suburbs, and doesn’t demand that Americans stop driving their convenient cars. Americans have decided how they want to live, they argue, and the job of urban designers is to intelligently accommodate them while finding ways to protect the environment.”

And that’s the rub—the bit about cars and “spacious suburbs.” Architects who believe that a fresh commitment to urban living offers the best path to a sustainable future are deeply disconcerted by this quasi-green rhetoric, and by the way it’s catching on at trendy architecture schools. They call it a “a misguided surrender to suburban sprawl.”

This is part of a larger debate about land, density, lifestyles, and government funding: can we be truly “green” as long as there are any suburbs and cars? It sounds like one side says we need to compromise with the pro-suburban forces in America while another is holding out for a more urban world. Such a dividing line affects issues including sprawl, gas taxes, land use, high-speed rail, and more.

I’m not sure why it has to be an either/or question. Cities could adopt different tactics. Is Central Park a failure because it is compromised by several roads running through it? This seems more like an ideological battle rather than a discussion about what could happen in American cities in the near future.

On the hidden or out of the way yet sometimes thriving web forums

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This is something I have noticed recently in several sites I visit frequently: there is a little community of consistent posters who have been drawn together and slowly get to know each other. While one of these sites, the Ask Amy column posted on the site of the Chicago Tribune, is not exactly hidden, The Economist discusses some web groups that have formed in really hard to find or unlikely places:

The programming crew had accidentally created a community of the sort that crop up all over the internet. Most online discussions take place in discussion forums designed to allow people to create an identity and interact in threaded, chronological conversations. But the hidden recesses of the web provide enough soil to root entire worlds, too. Wherever one person may post words which more than one other may read and respond to, a world is born.

Read the article to hear how devoted fans of Douglas Adams founded a group in a forum that was an afterthought and how some people unhappy with Sonic Drive-In’s service found each other.

Sounds like a start to a very interesting research study: what exactly motivates people to (1) seek out these spaces and (2) then continue with discussions and getting to know each other. The description of what happens in these settings in out of way parts of the Internet is hilarious:

It’s been thirteen years of hosting an accidental community. It’s somewhat like ignoring the vegetable drawer of your fridge for a year, then opening it to find a bunch of very grateful sentient tomatoes busily working on their third opera.

I would guess that the people who participate in groups like this are a limited number of total web users. I wouldn’t tend to be drawn to such forums: read a comment section of any blog or news story and you would likely find the conversation to be quite tedious or inflammatory. But I can remember the heady early days of AOL when chat rooms were the exciting feature of the Internet (and content took forever to load).

And these groups can be like real-life groups, meaning that they become territorial and protective:

Another surprise is that they will treat growth as a perturbation as well, and they will spontaneously erect barriers to that growth if they feel threatened by it. They will flame and troll and otherwise make it difficult for potential new members to join, and they will invent in-jokes and jargon that makes the conversation unintelligible to outsiders, as a way of raising the bar for membership.

It sounds like there is a starting period when the group might be somewhat fluid as people stumble unto such forums. But once the group coalesces and becomes a collective entity, others are not welcome and sharp boundaries are drawn to limit the influence of outsiders. So if one wants to become part of such a group, does one simply have to be lucky or have good timing?

Another question: what do the users get out of participating in such long digressions?

Politicians and their responses to snow (and other events)

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Is it any surprise that Mayor Daley of Chicago has been absent from the response to snowstorm of recent days? What exactly could he gain at this point in his career?

We know from recent history that politicians have plenty to lose in such circumstances. Look at Mayor Bloomberg in New York a month or so ago – if he can’t even get the snow plows working, how could he achieve higher office? Past Chicago mayors, such as Michael Bilandic, have been burned by snow.

My guess is that this is one of those situations where people in charge get little credit if all goes smoothly but proportionately more blame if things go poorly. People expect that services like snow plowing or garbage pick-up are just going to happen and tend to only notice this when that service is interrupted. Right now in Chicago there seems to be game of political hot-potato over the number of people trapped overnight on Tuesday on Lake Shore Drive. Who exactly is responsible – should Mayor Daley have to answer for this? Shouldn’t someone have had some plan in place? More broadly, do most cities sit and think about worst-case scenarios so that they have at least thought about some of these issues?

This may not be a fair process on the part of the public: the leader can’t control everything. But when something goes wrong, the public also expects that the leader is ultimately responsible and is responsive to the needs of the citizenry. If not, if those basic services don’t come through, the blame often goes right to the top.