Bulletin of Sociological Methodology/Bulletin de Méthodologie Sociologique

Another Way for Constructing Social Milieus? Why and How?: A secondary analysis of the INSEE "Education and Family" survey led us to rethinking the construction of social milieus (and sub-milieus) based on the French PCS social-professional categories and professions of a child's six parents and grandparents in an attempt to better explain child/parents relations. The milieus are characterized by a particular homogeneity/heterogeneity (equivalence/non-equivalence of PCS's). The sub-milieus are the decomposition of different milieus according to social origins (using the PCS's).

"Memory Defficiencies" in Victimization Surveys: Responses in retrospective surveys are subject to different biaises associated largely with problems of memory recall. In victimaziation surveys, it is necessary to provide exact dates for the events mentioned. Among errors of date by respondents, Wesley G. Skogan distinguished three forms of chronological displacement (telescoping). On the basis of two victimization surveys in France, it is possible to show evidence for two of these forms (backward telescoping towards the reference period and forward telescoping within the period of reference), but not for the third (forward telescoping toward the period of reference). However, a more detailed analysis of one of these surveys reveals the possible influence of the seasonal variation of delinquency on the survey responses.

All Things Otherwise Equal, Comparing Two Congresses of the French Sociological Association: This article analyzes the corpus of the 1,190 summaries of the French Sociologicial Association congress (Bordeaux, 2006) from a comparative point of view. It is focused on the multiple means and significances of a comparative study by mobilizing three approaches. The first aims at questioning the permanence of the summaries' authors and of the congress thematic organization. The second mobilizes certain Prospéro software algorithms to identify the more remarkable lexical and semantic variations. Finally, we continue the study certain objects whose heuristic value has been shown in our preceding analyses. Questioning comparative work, we show, at the same time, how the software provides a cognitive economy and empowers the interpretative inquiry of social scientists.

One Green, That's OK. Ten Greens, Hello the Debate! [a play on words associated with a French anti-alcohol slogan: "Un verre, ça va. Trois verres, bonjour les dégats"!, One glass (of wine), that's OK. Three glasses, hello the damage!]. A textometric analysis is applied to the corpus of the political declarations favorable to the Pacte écologique of Nicolas Hulot by ten of French 2007 presidential candidates. Different utilizations of the notion of "generalized type" (Tgen) converge toward two forms of discourse which differentiates the speakers.