Input from the Membership

As reported above, the Open Forum brought to the Task Force concerns about relevance and inclusion (e.g., subfields, editorial boards, editors and reviewers) as well as suggestions for data for the Task Force's work and for the journals (e.g., increasing page numbers, special sections, expanding opportunities for potential authors and reviewers). In addition, the Task Force received three detailed and thoughtful responses from the membership. First, members expressed consternation over the perennial nature of the concerns about diversity and the places where progress has been made. That is, gains are being made but they may be made on committees and the specialty journals but the ASR is perceived to be more impenetrable. They expressed concern that the "transom issue", accepted (and acceptable) in earlier periods of the discipline's history is now a "cop out". They expressed concerns particularly over the role that graduate student networks play in the exclusion of sociologists who are involved in multi-disciplinary, policy-oriented and practice-oriented research. They wondered why well-known and well-respected individuals from their subfield did not have their work appear in the ASR. (Note: This was a common concern expressed in all forums in which the Task Force issues were discussed.) Others were concerned about the restriction of the Task Force's work to journals, a concern that has been expressed in other venues (e.g., in Footnotes articles and letters). Still others were concerned about whether the journal format, with increasing pressure to reduce the length of articles, can ever be suited to the quality representation of qualitative work. Finally, members expressed reservations about the time and resources necessary to do an adequate analysis of the comprehensive and complex issues that are raised by the Task Force mandate.

Existing Data

The earlier 1996 existing report echoes the perennial concern with the lack of empirical data. However, their choice, as described above, was to do the one-year comparison of only two general journals. However, there are data from the ASA on journal subscriptions and on the editors of ASA journals. In addition, ASA Journal Editor's Reports provide some data on editorial board members and reviewers, offering some insights into the ramifications of the 1996 report. Finally, as other sources of available data became known to the Task Force (e.g., in published and unpublished sources), they were requested and used where appropriate.

The list below indicates the analyses that were conducted using these available data. Graphs were created that marked A) the trend in ASA journal subscriptions, B) the socio-demographic profile of ASR editors across time and across journals; and C) the representation of women and under-represented groups on editorial boards and as reviewers, as possible.

A. Data on Subscriptions to ASA Journals

Figure 1 reports the percentage of ASA members who subscribe to the ASA journals. These data do suggest that the percentage of members subscribing to the ASR has declined over time. In 1979, almost 80% of ASA members received the ASR. The decline has been steady over time, currently holding at 50%. This general trend is reflected, at least to some degree, for all but three of the remaining ASA journals. Sociological Methodology and Sociological Theory have remained stable. Teaching Sociology has increased in the percentage of ASA members subscribing. The reason for these trends, particularly the declines, are open to speculation. Both the concerns raised by the membership in the Open Forum, as well as changes in journal subcription options with membership represent plausible explanations.

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B. Data on the ASA Editors Across Time and Journals

As Figure 2 on the following page indicates, across the entire set of ASA journal editors (N=115), 22.6% have been women. The proportion of ASA journal editors that have been women across the "run" of each journal ranges from a low of 0% (Sociological Theory) to 41.7% (Sociology of Education). Also, for most ASA journals, Figure 3 and a comparison with Figure 2 suggests that women became editors fairly late in the journal's run. In fact, two-thirds of the women editors were appointed on or after 1990. SOE, JHSB and the Rose Monograph Series, which had all named women editors by the early 1980's, stand as exceptions. The most dramatic shift in gender profiles occurs in SPQ with a historical representation of 26.7% women editors over its run to 80% women editors in the most recent decade.

Diversity on race/ethnicity falls far behind that of gender. No specific table is present due to the lack of variation. According to the listing provided by the ASA and assistance in coding from Emeritus Professor Sheldon Stryker, there have been 2 African-American editors of ASA journals - the current co-editor and the editor of JHSB who served between 1973-1975. There have been three editors of Asian-American background - the 1973-1975 editor of SOE, the 1997-1999 editor of TS and one of the current co-editors of the Rose Monograph Series. Only one sociologist of Hispanic background, to our knowledge, has been appointed as an ASA editor (1994-1997 JHSB). Detailed list of all ASA journal editors provided in Appendix I.

C. Data on ASA Journal Editorial Boards Across Time and Journals

Data on the representation of female and minority editorial board members and reviewers have appeared in tabular form in Footnotes since 1990. The analyses of graphs constructed from tables indicates that many journals have increased their inclusion of women and scholars of color as reviewers and editorial board members. For example, as Figure 4 below indicates, the ASR's inclusion of women as a percentage of female reviewers has increased from the 20% range in the early 1990s to the mid-30% range late in the decade. Great change in representation over time was evidenced in the inclusion of under-represented minority groups on the editorial board which increased slowly in the early part of the decade (from 8% range to the 10% range) but which moved dramatically upward in the latter part of the decade to 29% by 2000. However, the inclusion of women on ASR's editorial board has had a more varied trend with a 40% representation early in the decade, dropping by 10% through the middle part of the decade and moving to 51% by the end of the decade.

General patterns of increase are also evidenced in Contemporary Sociology (although the patterns are not consistently upward), Sociological Theory (though the data are more sparse and the levels of representation generally lower), Sociology of Education (with some major gaps in data), and Teaching Sociology. In these analyses, the Journal of Health and Social Behavior and Social Psychology Quarterly stand out as exceptions where there is a higher than usual representation of women as editorial board members than in other journals but is coupled with some decline across the decade. (See Appendix II).

Often data are too sparse, particularly on issues of minority representation to be consistent (e.g., in JHSB on minority issues; Sociological Methodology on any of the issues considered). Currently, this information appears to be consistently reported by the ASA journal editors, removing this problem in future analyses. The summary graphs and charts for the other journals, and full data tables, including the originals from Footnotes, are presented in Appendix II.

These analyses raise a series of issues. First, marking improvements begs the question of whether the improvements are sufficient. Second, the limited nature of available data raises the question about whether these data alone are sufficient to address the concerns of the membership or for Publications Committee to monitor trends on the journals. The Task Force considered (but rejected) the feasibility of attending to other issues of diversity in this way by collecting information of approach (e.g., theoretical or methodological). However, it is encouraging to see the general trends moving in direction of greater inclusion for the gender and minority groups. In particular, many of the graphs show a change in trends around the 1996 Report suggesting that the discussion of these issues do produce efforts, and successful ones, to attend to issues of diversity, as defined narrowly by gender and race/ethnicity.

D. Other Data Requested

In response to current and previous concerns about the content of the journals, The Task Force and Publications Committee requested other data that were known to be available or fairly easy to tabulate.

Qualitative vs. Quantitative Representation

The current ASR editors provided the Task Force with additional information about this journal over time. Table 1 presents a sampling of the orientation of ASR editorial board members in four years, 1976, 1986, 1996, and 2000. These data suggest that there have been slight shifts (20-30%) in the representation of sociologists with qualitative expertise on ASR's editorial board. Under the current editor that representation has increased to over 40%.

The concerns of members also focused on both the inclusion of articles using a qualitative approach and the ability of ASR to devote adequate space to qualitative work. Again, the Task Force requested data from the current editors, given information in their original proposal for the editorship. They reported that in 1998, the average article length in ASR was 19 pages, an increase of five over the previous decade. In addition, they calculated that in the most recent volume of ASR, the articles averaged 23 pages in length, continuing the upward trend. [Note: see editorial in October 2000 issue of ASR regarding differences in the column format and page layout between AJS and ASR and the effects on article length.]

The Task Force also asked the current editors to provide information on the "transom issue" regarding qualitative and quantitative research. They report that between July 2000 and July 2002, 194 out of 769 papers submitted were based on a "qualitative" method (ethnography, comparative-historical, textual, theoretical analysis). That makes the percent of qualitative submissions 25.2%. The issues of the journal that roughly correspond to these submission dates are those running from February 2001 to December 2002. During this time, 11/40 articles, or 27.5%, were "qualitative" in the same sense. Thus, qualitative work appears in the pages of ASR roughly in the same proportion as they are submitted. These data cannot address the selection issue on the part of sociologists who do not send their work to the ASR.

Finally, the Task Force asked to review preliminary data from an ongoing project at Northwestern University. Figure 5 presents a graph of the percentage of articles in ASR and AJS that represent a particular subcategory of qualitative work - ethnography, participant observation and/or fieldwork. The data suggest a low frequency of inclusion in either journal and no consistent or meaningful trends since 1975. Overall, the mean is 1.7% of abstracts and articles are using these approaches in AJS, and 1.5% in ASR.