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Research That Matters: Desmond, Matthew, Andrew Papachristos, and David Kirk. 2016. "Police Violence and Citizen Crime Reporting in the Black Community." American Sociological Review 81(5):857-876.

Journal Article 1: Van Hook, J. & Altman, C. E. (2011). Competitive food sales in schools and childhood obesity: A longitudinal study. Sociology of Education, 85(1), 23–39.

Abstract: The vast majority of American middle schools and high schools sell what are known as “competitive foods,” such as soft drinks, candy bars, and chips, to children. The relationship between consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks and snacks and childhood obesity is well established, but it remains unknown whether competitive food sales in schools are related to unhealthy weight gain among children. The authors examined this association using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class. Employing fixed effects models and a natural experimental approach, they found that children’s weight gain between fifth and eighth grades was not associated with the introduction or the duration of exposure to competitive food sales in middle school. Also, the relationship between competitive foods and weight gain did not vary significantly by gender, race/ethnicity, or family socioeconomic status, and it remained weak and insignificant across several alternative model specifications. One possible explanation is that children’s food preferences and dietary patterns are firmly established before adolescence. Also, middle school environments may dampen the effects of competitive food sales because they so highly structure children’s time and eating opportunities.

Journal Article 2: Sharpe, G. (2016). Sociological stalking? Methods, ethics and power in longitudinal criminological research. Criminology & Criminal Justice, 17(3), 233–247.

Abstract: Scholarship on criminal careers and desistance from crime employing longitudinal methodologies has paid scant attention to sociological and anthropological debates regarding epistemology, reflexivity and researcher positionality. This is surprising in light of a recent phenomenological turn in desistance research wherein (former) lawbreakers’ identity, reflexivity and self-understanding have become central preoccupations. In this article I interrogate aspects of the methodological ‘underside’ of qualitative longitudinal research with criminalized women through an examination of the surveillant position of the researcher. Focusing on methods, ethics and power, I examine some contradictions of feminist concerns to ‘give women voice’ in research involving re-tracing an over-surveilled and highly stigmatized population. I reflect on the effects of researcher positionality through a conceptualization of re-tracing methods as, at worst, a form of sociological stalking.

Journal Article 3: Duneier, M. (2006). Ethnography, the ecological fallacy, and the 1995 Chicago heat wave. American Sociological Review, 71(4), 679–688.

Abstract: In Chicago in July 1995, the Cook County Medical Examiner classified 739 heat-related deaths after one week of record high heat and humidity. In the 2002 book Heat Wave, Eric Klinenberg provides an influential account of these deaths. Klinenberg specifically contrasts mortalities in two neighboring communities, black North Lawndale and Latino South Lawndale. He explains the mortality difference by focusing on how elderly black residents, including those in “literal isolation,” were impacted by neighborhood conditions. However, Klinenberg's book provides no data on the individuals who died. The author of this Research Note reports more data obtained by traveling to these two communities and to the bordering white community of Archer Heights. The author compares his findings against data available on death certificates for all decedents. At the time of the heat wave, many of the people who died were not elderly and only two elderly victims in North Lawndale were living alone. In the bordering white community, most decedents were living alone during the heat wave and none had ever married. The author questions whether Klinenberg's theory operates at the individual level in North Lawndale and assesses whether Robinson's “ecological fallacy” pertains to Klinenberg's study.