Judith Porter

Bryn Mawr College | BMC · Department of Sociology

Recent studies of children's sex-role attitudes have found that, despite the efforts of the women's movement, children continue to associate sex-role stereotypes and sex-appropriate social roles with the sexes." However, one question which has not been investigated in recent research is an examination of the factors affecting children's perception...

We analyze a multi-campus collaboration in a Food Stamp Enrollment Campaign to demonstrate that a well-managed public benefits campaign, associated with broader advocacy-based community partner- ships, can result in positive outcomes for the community that include measurable benefits for clients, data needed to make policy and administrative change...

The term “secularization,” when its referent is social institutions and value-norm complexes, is viewed as an instance of differentiation. However, the process of differentiation has both structural and functional components. Confusion in the debate over the nature and extent of secularization in American society arises from the fact that there is...

We review the theoretical models and the research on self-esteem among Hispanic and Asian American subgroups and compare these findings to the existing literature on African American self-image. Group self-esteem refers to how the individual feels about racial or ethnic group membership. Personal self-esteem refers to how the individual feels about...

Using qualitative interviews conducted in 1999, we examine awareness and use of drug user treatment and social service referrals, medical care, and HIV testing provided by needle exchange programs (NEPs) among injectors who use NEPs (N=26) and injectors who get their syringes from other sources (N=20). A four-category typology of NEP service knowle...

This study describes, through ethnographic interviews, the treatment experiences of Puerto Rican long-term heroin users who are at extremely high risk for HIV infection and the barriers they perceive to drug treatment. On the basis of this information we suggest policy recommendations for increasing drug treatment access for Puerto Rican long-term...

The effect of a racially consonant medical context on reaction to physical handicap stemming from disease is explored in a sample of 90 African-American patients with vitiligo, a disfiguring skin disorder. The adjustment of sixty-nine patients in a predominantly black hospital setting is compared to that of twenty-one patients in a predominantly wh...

This paper reviews the theoretical models and the research on self-esteem among Hispanic and Asian American subgroups and compares these findings to the existing literature on African American self-image. The authors describe the major paradigms of ethnic/racial and personal self-esteem utilized in studies of Hispanics and Asian Americans. These pa...

The effect of race on reaction to impaired appearance is explored in a sample of 158 patients with vitiligo, a disfiguring skin disease. Blacks and Whites do not differ in degree of disturbance by the disorder. Psychological coping resources and variables related to negative labeling of the stigma are associated with variation in degree of disturba...

Latinos, Blacks, and non-Hispanic Whites are compared on two dimensions of attitudes toward homosexxuality utilizing a cumulated file from the General Social Survey. Latinos do not differ from Whites and are more tolerant thati Blacks on the morality dimension of attitudes toward homosexuality but are less tolerant than either of the other groups o...

To study the effect of vitiligo on interference with sexual relationships, we surveyed 158 patients by questionnaire. Although a majority of patients reported a negative impact on sexual relationships, most patients felt embarrassment when showing their body or meeting strangers. The majority of patients who reported a negative impact on sexual rel...

This article investigates the effect of age on response to impaired appearance. The sample consists of 269 patients with vitiligo, a disease that causes progressive depigmentation. Linear regression is utilized to investigate the importance of age compared to other variables in predicting degree of disturbance by the disease. Although older patient...

This study investigates sociologically the predictions of the cognitive developmental, the social learning, and the interactive models of gender-role development. We examine the effect of a variety of variables on gender-role stereotyping among a sample of 1264 four-, five-, and six-year-old children enrolled in preschool programs in a major metrop...

Vitiligo presents an excellent opportunity to focus on the effect of impaired appearance on the lives of persons with this disease. We questioned 326 patients with vitiligo and obtained an overview of how they perceived others' reactions to them, their own reactions to the disease, and their experiences with physicians. Many patients are frightened...

To ascertain the psychosocial effects of vitiligo, patients with vitiligo were compared with control subjects without skin diseases who were matched for age, sex, race, educational level, and marital status. Vitiligo patients were also compared with a matched sample of psoriasis patients and a matched sample of patients with other pigmentary disord...

Gender trait and gender role stereotypes of 759 U.S. and 452 South African children are compared. The effects of age, sex, socioreligious background, and mother's employment status are also examined both between and within country. South African children are found to sex-type the male role to a greater extent than their U.S. counterparts, although...

Coping with impaired appearance presents difficulties for children. This study is based on interviews of children with vitiligo, a disfiguring disorder that involves depigmentation of the skin, and focuses on social and psychologic factors that predict effectiveness of coping. Age plays an extremely important part in adjustment, with the junior hig...

This study examined the effect of the positive/negative quality of a gender-role stereotype on the age at which very young children are willing to associate the behavior with a member of a particular sex. The results indicate that, in comparison to 5- and 6-year olds, 4-year-old children are reluctant (1) to associate positive gender-role stereotyp...

Diseases that cause physical handicaps can seriously interfere with the life of a patient. Some disorders such as vitiligo cosmetically disfigure patients without producing any physical disabilities. The effects of such diseases as vitiligo on the life of a patient have not been widely investigated. The investigation reported here utilized a questi...

Vitiligo is a serious disease for patients because they must daily face the world disfigured by the loss of skin pigmentation, which they believe gives them an appearance that is repugnant to others. Most physicians think vitiligo is a disease of little consequence because they evaluate

As a test of the assimilationist versus the subcultural hypotheses concerning the persistence of religious value differences in modern industrial societies, the relationship between religious orientations and attitudes toward several dimensions of women's role is investigated among a sample of white, urban, middle-class women in South Africa and th...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Harvard University, 1967.