Search Results

Author: Saperstein, Aliya
Resulting in 7 citations.
1. Penner, Andrew M.
Saperstein, Aliya
Engendering Racial Perceptions: An Intersectional Analysis of How Social Status Shapes Race
Gender and Society 27,3 (June 2013): 319-344.
Also: http://gas.sagepub.com/content/27/3/319.abstract
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Sage Publications
Keyword(s): Gender Differences; Racial Differences; Racial Studies; Socioeconomic Status (SES); Stratification

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Intersectionality emphasizes that race, class, and gender distinctions are inextricably intertwined, but fully interrogating the co-constitution of these axes of stratification has proven difficult to implement in large-scale quantitative analyses. We address this gap by exploring gender differences in how social status shapes race in the United States. Building on previous research showing that changes in the racial classifications of others are influenced by social status, we use longitudinal data to examine how differences in social class position might affect racial classification differently for women and men. In doing so, we provide further support for the claim that race, class, and gender are not independent axes of stratification; rather they intersect, creating dynamic feedback loops that maintain the complex structure of social inequality in the United States.
Bibliography Citation
Penner, Andrew M. and Aliya Saperstein. "Engendering Racial Perceptions: An Intersectional Analysis of How Social Status Shapes Race." Gender and Society 27,3 (June 2013): 319-344.
2. Penner, Andrew M.
Saperstein, Aliya
How Social Status Shapes Race
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 105,50 (December 16, 2008): 19628-19630.
Also: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2604956
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: National Academy of Sciences (NAS), United States
Keyword(s): Ethnic Groups/Ethnicity; Modeling, Fixed Effects; Racial Differences; Socioeconomic Status (SES)

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

We show that racial perceptions are fluid; how individuals perceive their own race and how they are perceived by others depends in part on their social position. Using longitudinal data from a representative sample of Americans, we find that individuals who are unemployed, incarcerated, or impoverished are more likely to be seen and identify as black and less likely to be seen and identify as white, regardless of how they were classified or identified previously. This is consistent with the view that race is not a fixed individual attribute, but rather a changeable marker of status.
Bibliography Citation
Penner, Andrew M. and Aliya Saperstein. "How Social Status Shapes Race." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 105,50 (December 16, 2008): 19628-19630.
3. Saperstein, Aliya
Penner, Andrew M.
Racial Fluidity and Inequality in the United States
American Journal of Sociology 118,3 (November 2012): 676-727.
Also: http://www.jstor.org/stable/info/10.1086/667722
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Keyword(s): Racial Differences; Racial Equality/Inequality; Racial Studies

The authors link the literature on racial fluidity and inequality in the United States and offer new evidence of the reciprocal relationship between the two processes. Using two decades of longitudinal data from a national survey, they demonstrate that not only does an individual’s race change over time, it changes in response to myriad changes in social position, and the patterns are similar for both self-identification and classification by others. These findings suggest that, in the contemporary United States, microlevel racial fluidity serves to reinforce existing disparities by redefining successful or high-status people as white (or not black) and unsuccessful or low-status people as black (or not white). Thus, racial differences are both an input and an output in stratification processes; this relationship has implications for theorizing and measuring race in research, as well as for crafting policies that attempt to address racialized inequality.
Bibliography Citation
Saperstein, Aliya and Andrew M. Penner. "Racial Fluidity and Inequality in the United States." American Journal of Sociology 118,3 (November 2012): 676-727.
4. Saperstein, Aliya
Penner, Andrew M.
The Race of a Criminal Record: How Incarceration Colors Racial Perceptions
Social Problems 57,1 (February 2010): 92-113.
Also: http://www.jstor.org/pss/10.1525/sp.2010.57.1.92
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: University of California Press
Keyword(s): Incarceration/Jail; Racial Studies; Self-Perception

The article reports on research conducted to determine whether being incarcerated in the United States affects how individuals perceive their own race and how they are perceived by others. Researchers used unique longitudinal data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. They found that respondents who have been incarcerated are more likely to identify as and be seen as black, and less likely to identify and be seen as white, regardless of how they were perceived or identified previously. Researchers concluded that their research results suggest that race is not a fixed characteristic of individuals but is flexible and continually negotiated in everyday interactions.
Bibliography Citation
Saperstein, Aliya and Andrew M. Penner. "The Race of a Criminal Record: How Incarceration Colors Racial Perceptions." Social Problems 57,1 (February 2010): 92-113.
5. Saperstein, Aliya
Pickett, Robert
Penner, Andrew M.
Placing Racial Fluidity in Context
Presented: San Diego CA, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, April-May 2015
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Geocoded Data; Racial Differences; Racial Studies

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

As mounting evidence demonstrates that an individual's race is subject to change, the question increasingly becomes: under what circumstances is racial fluidity more or less likely? We draw on a geocoded national longitudinal survey that allows us to link individuals to the U.S. counties in which they live. Our analysis explores whether racial fluidity is more common in some places rather than others, and whether contextual characteristics help to predict the specific racial classification of individuals either in addition to, or instead of, their personal characteristics. The results demonstrate contextual variation in the social construction of race, and underscore the important role that place plays in 'making race' in the United States.
Bibliography Citation
Saperstein, Aliya, Robert Pickett and Andrew M. Penner. "Placing Racial Fluidity in Context." Presented: San Diego CA, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, April-May 2015.
6. Westbrook, Laurel
Budnick, Jamie
Saperstein, Aliya
Dangerous Data: Seeing Social Surveys through the Sexuality Prism
Sexualities published online (10 February 2021): DOI: 10.1177/1363460720986927.
Also: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1363460720986927
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Sage Publications
Keyword(s): General Social Survey (GSS); Methods/Methodology; National Health Interview Survey (NHIS); National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (AddHealth); National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG); Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID); Sexual Behavior

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Social surveys both reflect and shape beliefs about sexuality. Social norms construct the "authorized vocabulary" of surveys and the resulting data influence the research questions that can be answered and the policies likely to be inspired by study findings. Scholars have called for balancing attention to pleasure vs. danger and normative vs. non-normative practices in studies of sexuality as well as for collection of data on sexual desires, behaviors, and identities. We combine these calls into what we term the sexuality prism. To better understand how data about sexuality are typically collected and what research they facilitate or constrain, we analyze six decades of materials from four of the largest social surveys in the United States and five national surveys focused on sexuality, health, and family formation. We find that these surveys do not allow for investigations of the full sexuality prism. Instead, they tend to assume and narrowly investigate the "charmed circle" of sexuality: heterosexual, married, monogamous, and potentially procreative couplings. When surveys ask about non-normative practices, they do so primarily in the context of risk (e.g. sexually transmitted diseases) and ignore non-normative practices that are not deemed "risky." The focus on risk likely explains the greater attention to sexual behaviors and the shortage of questions about sexual desires and identities. Moreover, most questions about sexual practices highlight the dangers of sex, rather than the pleasures. Not only does this severely limit the scope of U.S. sexuality research, it also means that, individually and collectively, these surveys reify "sex negativity."
Bibliography Citation
Westbrook, Laurel, Jamie Budnick and Aliya Saperstein. "Dangerous Data: Seeing Social Surveys through the Sexuality Prism." Sexualities published online (10 February 2021): DOI: 10.1177/1363460720986927.
7. Westbrook, Laurel
Saperstein, Aliya
New Categories Are Not Enough: Rethinking the Measurement of Sex and Gender in Social Surveys
Gender and Society 29,4 (August 2015): 534-560.
Also: http://gas.sagepub.com/content/29/4/534.full
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Sage Publications
Keyword(s): American National Election Studies (ANES); Gender; General Social Survey (GSS); Methods/Methodology; Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID)

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Recently, scholars and activists have turned their attention toward improving the measurement of sex and gender in survey research. The focus of this effort has been on including answer options beyond "male" and "female" to questions about the respondent's gender. This is an important step toward both reflecting the diversity of gendered lives and better aligning survey measurement practice with contemporary gender theory. However, our systematic examination of questionnaires, manuals, and other technical materials from four of the largest and longest-running surveys in the United States indicates that there are a number of other issues with how gender is conceptualized and measured in social surveys that also deserve attention, including essentialist practices that treat sex and gender as synonymous, easily determined by others, obvious, and unchanging over the life course. We find that these understandings extend well beyond direct questions about the respondent's gender, permeating the surveys. A hyper-gendered world of "males" and "females," "brothers" and "sisters," and "husbands" and "wives" shapes what we can see in survey data. If not altered, surveys will continue to reproduce statistical representations that erase important dimensions of variation and likely limit understanding of the processes that perpetuate social inequality.
Bibliography Citation
Westbrook, Laurel and Aliya Saperstein. "New Categories Are Not Enough: Rethinking the Measurement of Sex and Gender in Social Surveys." Gender and Society 29,4 (August 2015): 534-560.