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Slightly different wordings are known to introduce important differences in the way people understand and answer survey questions and, moreover, in the quality of the items (Billiet 1991). This is what may happen also in the case of two wordings used to measure the attitude people express towards the effect of the women’s job on their children. The aim of this study is to assess which of the two almost similar items, assumed to tap this kind of attitudes, produces a better measurement in terms of validity, reliability and overall quality. For this purpose I employ original data and use OLS models as well as SQP analysis. The findings reveal some surprising differences between the two items. This study starts with a short introduction, followed by the description of the method and the presentation of the findings. A short discussion concludes the text, focusing on implications for future studies.
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This article envisages critically present the use of the personal documents, looking from a historical perspective at how it was practiced in different paradigms in the humanistic-social sciences. The exposé also considers the methodological and the ethical implications of using the method, underlining, in this respect, the aspects related to the preservation and reuse of the materials of this kind. By putting into balance the trumps and downsides of the personal documents method, the article highlights, in fact, the importance of using the personal documents method in studying a wide range of specific problems of the humanistic-social sciences. The ultimate purpose of the article is, therefore, that of prompting the social scientists to look more carefully and more trustingly at the alternative of choosing the personal documents method, as a potential powerful tool for sociological research, providing them, at the same time, with possible directions in discerning between the favourable and unfavourable situations for using it.
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There is an increasing public, political and research interest in social solidarity. Even though the concept has a long history and is embedded in solid approaches, there is not much literature concerned with its measurement. The paper falls into the area of the methodological studies of social solidarity and it deals with construct validation. The objective of this paper is to test for convergent validity and nomological validity of two sets of items aiming to measure social solidarity attitudes and acts. The main method employed is confirmatory factor analysis.
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Large scale comparative studies, such as the value surveys (EVS and WVS) or the Eurobarometer, include measurements for parental/child-rearing values. This reflects a persistent interest for the topic, which produced salient studies starting with the first half of the twentieth century (Lynd and Lund 1929; Duvall 1946). Various scholars report data on parental values which use versions of the Q-sort methodology (Kohn 1977), ranking variables (Alwin 1990; Lenski 1961), scale indicators (Tulviste et al. 2007). Q-sort methodology remains the most widely employed. One of its versions is included in the value surveys as well. However, it fails to produce comparable indicators in different countries (Rabušic 2011; Xiao 2001) or at different moments in time (Wright and Wright 1976). This paper uses original data, provided by a Romanian convenience sample, to check if using various versions of the EVS/WVS items may lead to better ways to produce synthetic indicators for parental-values at individual level. SEM models are used to show that the best analytic solution would be to use individual items instead of producing summative indexes.
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Kiedy człowiek opuszcza przestrzeń, w której przez dłuższy czas groziło mu niebezpieczeństwo, nie od razu potrafi odetchnąć z ulgą. W przywróconych mu normalnych warunkach życia często doszukuje się zagrożeń, żeby móc działać zgodnie z odruchami, które pozwalały mu wcześniej przetrwać. Przypomina w tym trochę paranoika, choć nie jest to paranoja w sensie medycznym. Bywa też, że na zwykłe niepokoje, niesione przez codzienność — od awarii autobusu po petardę odpaloną dla żartu na osiedlu — reaguje w sposób niezwykle gwałtowny. Jeśli ten stan się utrzymuje i dezorganizuje mu życie, mówimy, jak wiadomo, o zespole stresu pourazowego (PTSD).
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