The Role of Family Background, School Success, and Career Orientation in the Development of Sense of Coherence

This study investigates family background (child-centered parenting, parental socioeconomic status), school success in adolescence, and career orientation (education, stability of career line) in adulthood as antecedents of adult sense of coherence (SOC; Antonovsky, 1987a ), which has been posited to be a disposition crucial to understanding individual differences in successful coping with stress. Participants (104 men and 98 women) were drawn from the ongoing Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Personality and Social Development (JYLS), which was started when the participants were 8- or 9-year-old children (in 1968). Data gathered at ages 14, 27, 36, and 42 were used in this study. The results of structural equation modeling (SEM) indicated that child-centered parenting in adolescence and a stable career line in adulthood were directly associated with a high SOC at age 42. In addition, child-centered parenting, high parental socioeconomic status, and school success at age 14 were indirectly associated with adult SOC via education and stability of career line. The SEM multigroup comparison showed that the obtained associations were similar for men and women.

American State Supreme Court Justices, 1900-1970

What are the paths that lead to the state supreme court bench? If we can identify these paths, can we then determine that they produce distinctive patterns in a court3 decision making? Based on a study of 694 judges who sat on 16selected American state supreme courts between 1900 and 1970, this article finds that the appellate judiciary was drawn from a variety of legal and political backgrounds rather than from any single career line. The judges came from both non-elite and elite law schools. About half had no substantial lower court judicial experience. Over one-third had been public prosecutors, another third had held other elective political office, and only a small minority had practiced in multilawyer big-city law firms. The article reports changes over time in these and other judicial characteristics (such CIS age, turnover, political party affiliations) and describes interstate differences. Few significant statistical relationships are found, however, between the background characteristics of judges and selected characteristics of state supreme court opinions.