Browsing by Author "Cech, Erin"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Different and Not Equal: How Poverty, Race, and State-Level Abortion Laws Shape Abortion Timing Among US Women
    (2015-12-03) Solazzo, Alexa; Gorman, Bridget; Denney, Justin; Cech, Erin
    The number of regulations surrounding abortion has increased drastically in recent years. How these laws relate to abortion timing is important to assess since the cost, safety, and accessibility of abortion varies by how many weeks pregnant a woman is when the procedure occurs. Research examining how state laws relate to abortion timing generally use rates or data from vital statistics, and while informative, such methods are not able to examine how these laws may be disproportionately associated with the abortion timing among select groups of women, including poor or non-white women. To fill this research gap, I analyze data from the nationally representative 2008 Abortion Patient Survey, with appended information on state laws regarding abortion in 2008. I find that the relationship between abortion timing and state-level abortion laws, such as requiring a waiting period and that doctors perform abortions, is different for black and Hispanic women compared to white women, and that poverty status moderates the association between state laws and abortion timing for black and Hispanic women, while for white women these relationships are the same regardless of poverty status. Overall, this research illustrates the relevance of state-level abortion laws for shaping abortion timing among women, and the importance of considering how these relationships differ across racial and socioeconomic groups.
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    Great Problems of Grand Challenges: Problematizing Engineering's Understandings of Its Role in Society
    (Queen’s University Library, 2012) Cech, Erin
    The U.S. National Academy of Engineering's Grand Challenges for Engineering report has received a great deal of attention from legislators, policymakers, and educators, but what does it entail for social justice considerations in engineering? This article situates the Grand Challenges report as a cultural artifact of the engineering profession--an artifact that works to reinforce engineering's professional culture, recruit new members, and reassert engineering's legitimacy in the 21st century. As such, the Grand Challenges report provides a unique opportunity to understand and critique the role engineering envisions for itself in society. The articles in this special issue of IJESJP identify four central critiques of Grand Challenges: authorial particularism, double standards in engineering's contributions to these challenges, bracketing of the “social” from “technical” realms, and deterministic definitions of progress. These critiques call for increased reflexivity and broadened participation in how engineers define problems and attempt to solve them.
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    Teacher-Student Congruence and Student Achievement in Segregated Schools
    (2015-10-30) Chukhray, Irina; Turley, Ruth N.L.; Bratter, Jenifer L.; Cech, Erin
    Students’ academic achievement is crucial to life opportunities and chances, yet minorities continue to underperform compared to whites in reading and math. One mechanism that makes a difference in student success is teachers, and especially teacher-student relationships. Since research emphasizes that feelings of social belonging positively influence student achievement, some suggest that good teacher-student relationships, potentially cultivated by sharing race (race congruence), may improve students’ achievement. This study uses data on a census of elementary and middle school students (white, Black, and Hispanic) in a large urban school district in Texas from 2009-10 through 2010-11 to investigate the potential benefits of race congruence between teachers and students on a standardized math and reading assessment. This study contributes by focusing on a heavily segregated school district. Using regression modeling to isolate the effects of congruence independent of other student and teacher characteristics, I examine race differences in any effects of congruence. The results indicate little evidence for race congruence benefiting students except for one situation: black students in reading, which may be driven by school racial composition.
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    The Deinstitutionalization of Marriage and Family among the Academic Elite: The Marriage, Family, and Career Expectations of PhD Seeking Women and Men
    (2016-09-06) Allen, Marbella Eboni; Cech, Erin
    Most sociological approaches to understanding work/family balance focus exclusively on behavior, examining how employed mothers negotiate marriage, family, and career obligations. Drawing on the socially constructed notion that these obligations are incompatible, much of this literature assumes that career-oriented mothers opt-out of the labor force in response to conflict between work and family spheres. Yet, there is a considerable gap in sociological literature concerning individuals’ perceptions of work/family balance, and how family plans are considered alongside career goals. Drawing on 47 in-depth interviews with unmarried and childless PhD students at two Research I Southern universities, I find that most of the non-partnered students are actively single and prioritize career development over marriage and family formation. Investigating the work/family desires, expectations, and perceptions of career-oriented and non-parenting individuals can provide useful insight into how notions of work and family incompatibility are constructed and reproduced. Driven by deeply rooted investments in scholar identities, these students perceive marriage and family formation as potential impediments to career success and stability. Students’ describe their experiences in graduate school in ways that align with previously discussed characterizations of greedy institutions. The students’ perception of their graduate school experience as greedy in turn informed their current behavior and expectations driving them to employ particular strategies in their current lives in order to accomplish a desired career outcome. They identified certain factors relating to graduate school and career development as impediments to pursuing a marriageable partner and starting a family. These findings contribute to research on the relationship between schooling, career orientation, and family formation as well as marital values for particular groups. The findings are of particular importance in consideration of “competing devotions” and expectations of work-family balance.