title: Who theorizes age? The "socio-demographic variables" device and age-period-cohort analysis in the rhetoric of survey research.
abstract: In this paper we argue that quantitative survey-based social research essentializes age, through specific rhetorical tools. We outline the device of 'socio-demographic variables' and we discuss its argumentative functions, looking at scientific survey-based analyses of adult scientific literacy, in the Public Understanding of Science research field. 'Socio-demographics' are virtually omnipresent in survey literature: they are, as a rule, used and discussed as bundles of independent variables, requiring little, if any, theoretical and measurement attention. 'Socio-demographics' are rhetorically effective through their common-sense richness of meaning and inferential power. We identify their main argumentation functions as 'structure building', 'pacification', and 'purification'. Socio-demographics are used to uphold causal vocabularies, supporting the transmutation of the descriptive statistical jargon of 'effects' and 'explained variance' into 'explanatory factors'. Age can also be studied statistically as a main variable of interest, through the age-period-cohort (APC) disambiguation technique. While this approach has generated interesting findings, it did not mitigate the reductionism that appears when treating age as a socio-demographic variable. By working with age as a 'socio-demographic variable', quantitative researchers convert it (inadvertently) into a quasi-biological feature, symmetrical, as regards analytical treatment, with pathogens in epidemiological research.
authors.affiliation: University of Bucharest, Schitu Măgureanu 9, Bucharest 010181, Romania. Electronic address: cosima.rughinis@sas.unibuc.ro.
authors.forename: Cosima
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Rughiniș
authors.affiliation: Loughborough University, Leicestershire LE11 3TU, United Kingdom. Electronic address: B.Huma@lboro.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Bogdana
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Humă
mesh_terms: D000375:Aging; D015331:Cohort Studies; D003710:Demography / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D004812:Epidemiologic Methods; D005191:Family Characteristics; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires
keywords: Age; Aging; Public Understanding of Science; Rhetoric of inquiry; Socio-demographic variables; Survey