Attachment Styles, Conflict Perception, and Adolescents' Strategies of Coping with Interpersonal Conflict

In this study, we examined the relationships between and among adolescents' attachment styles, conflict perceptions, and strategies for coping with conflicts with their peers. The study participants were 146 pupils at a junior high school who completed self-report questionnaires about their attachment styles (secure, anxious, or avoidant), conflict coping styles (avoiding, dominating, obliging, compromising, and integrating), and conflict perceptions (positive or negative), as well as social and academic status and the frequency with which they and their friends were involved in conflicts.
We found strong, statistically significant correlations between attachment style, coping strategy, and conflict perception. Generally, participants whose secure attachment scores were higher reported that they held more positive attitudes toward conflict, used more cooperative strategies to cope with conflicts, and were involved in conflicts less often; they also seemed to be less obliging and more dominating in their coping strategies. Avoidant attachment adolescents in our study displayed more negative conflict perceptions and made greater use of dominating strategies.
We also found that participants' conflict perceptions mediated the relationship between their attachment styles and coping styles. Because it is generally easier to change attitudes than it is to change attachment styles, which are more fixed, our findings suggest that changing adolescents' conflict perceptions, through school curricula, for example, may be an effective way to improve their ability to cope with conflict.     

Perceptions and attitudes with regard to teleworking among public sector officials in Pretoria: applying the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM)

Abstract

The research described in this article can be described as an explorative study that focused on obtaining and analysing perceptions and attitudes of public sector officials in Pretoria regarding the possible introduction of teleworking in their working environment. The term teleworking was understood in the sense of using computers to work from home or working at a distance away from the office. The research question that was posed was: What perceptions and attitudes exist among public sector officials in Pretoria that could contribute to, or impede, the acceptance of teleworking in South African government departments? Specific attention was given to perceptions of possible benefits or other impacts of teleworking, indications of public sector officials' ability to use computers for teleworking purposes, attitudes toward computers and teleworking, and the behavioural intention to use teleworking in future. The questionnaire and results were structured along the lines of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) of Davis. It was found that there was firm support among the officials for public sector teleworking – especially in terms of those views and perceptions that served as indicators for relevant TAM constructs such as ‘perceived ease of use regarding teleworking’, ‘perceived usefulness of teleworking’, ‘attitude toward teleworking’ and ‘intention to use teleworking’.     

Television and attitudes toward foreign countries: A report on a survey of Scandinavian children

Children of all ages are more likely to use electronic sources of information such as television and radio-than they are print sources-such as newspapers and magazines-according to a variety of studies. This study examines whether this tendency continues if the children are forced by their primary and secondary school teachers to use multiple news sources-of their own choice-to follow an election campaign. Based on responses from an extraordinarily large sample of 24,348 children, this study focuses on media use by participants in the Kids Voting USA civics education program. Study results demonstrate that even when seeking campaign information in 1994, a non-presidential election year when the emphasis was more on state and local races, children overwhelmingly preferred television and radio as sources of information. Newspaper usage trailed both electronic forms even when a child's family subscribed to a paper. The study found no significant difference between White and non-White children in their choices and uses of information sources. The large sample size also allowed for a detailed look at often neglected subgroups such as Native American children (n = 1,114) and Asian-American children (n = 768).     

Children's perceptions of poverty,participation, and local governance in Uganda

Children under the age of 18 years represent 62 percent of the poor in Uganda. To date, their perspective has not been incorporated in the many poverty analyses that have been conducted. The survey reported in this paper asked children between the ages of 10 and 14 years about their perceptions of poverty, and also about the effectiveness of local government in addressing issues of concern to them. The survey found that children have a different perspective on poverty from that of the adult key informants consulted in our sample; they have a positive view of their own potential role in mitigating poverty, and are highly critical of the current performance of local government.     

Editor's note

This study applies Elisabeth Noelle‐Neumann's spiral of silence theory to the controversial issue of whether children with AIDS should be allowed to attend public school. The study tests the theory's hypotheses in light of two content analyses of the media's treatment of the issue. The findings offer tentative and qualified support for Noelle‐Neumann's theoretical propositions about the relationship between individuals' perceptions of the issue and the media's tenor of the issue; particularly that of television. The findings suggest the need to address the role of other agents of influence, including reference groups, and to use time‐based data to unravel the causal order of the relationships.     

Can school children reliably collect rural household data in developing countries? Evidence from Nepal

Household surveys are an important tool for assessing the status or trends of rural households, farms, and communities, and for conducting research. Conducting surveys in rural communities in developing countries is expensive and logistically challenging. We investigated whether primary school children could efficiently collect household or farm data as part of their homework. We hypothesised that primary school students can collect accurate data and therefore it should not be different from the data collected by trained interviewers. The results indicate that primary schools may be an excellent resource for efficiently collecting information about rural households and farm families in developing countries.     

Causes of absenteeism at the secondary level in Jamaica: parents' perspectives

This article examines parents' views on the causes of students' absenteeism at the secondary level, using a sample of 221 parents from nine schools across Jamaica. The key factors identified as causes are little value for education, lack of resources, and factors within the immediate school environment. Apart from improvements to the school environment, the article underscores the need to provide employment-generating opportunities to enable parents to meet the needs of their children, and emphasises that efforts to address students' absenteeism must involve multi-agency partnerships including parents, community members, and social workers.     

Determinants of Regional Political Distinctiveness

Scholarly research exploring the phenomenon of regional distinctiveness in Europe, since at least the 1960s, has generated a variety of competing theories to explain the phenomenon, including the following: the persistence of linguistic distinctiveness; the impact of economic distinctiveness; and remoteness. Often these studies operationalize “regional distinctiveness” in different ways, impeding the evaluation of different types of theories against one another. This study develops a novel measure for regional distinctiveness, applied to 161 regions in 11 European countries from 1990–2014, and demonstrates that language, economics, and remoteness work through regional parties to generate regional political distinctiveness, while only linguistic distinctiveness also has a direct effect on such distinctiveness.     

Why terrorists target children: Outbidding,desperation, and extremism in the Peshawar and Beslan school massacres

ABSTRACT

Why do terrorists engage in behavior that is extreme even by their own admission—killing children? This behavior poses a major puzzle to our understanding of terrorism, but it has been surprisingly underexplored. This article addresses the question of why terrorists intentionally target children with a comparative study of the two deadliest attacks in which children were deliberately targeted by a militant organization: the Peshawar (2014) and Beslan (2004) school massacres. The article identifies two factors that increase the likelihood that a terrorist group will target children. The first is the presence of internal rifts within an already highly violent organization. This is likely to trigger outbidding and, thus, result in more brutal attacks. The second is existentially threatening external pressure, which seriously weakens the group and, thus, leads it to select soft and shocking targets, such as schools. The findings are based on evidence drawn from primary and secondary sources, including interviews conducted in Peshawar and Islamabad, Pakistan, and Moscow, Russia.     

The Effects of Satellite Technology on Newsgathering from Remote Locations

Over the course of the last decade, the equipment used by news organizations to transmit text, voice, and images from locations without fixed or operational communications links has changed radically. Whereas remote real-time transmissions once required tons of satellite uplink equipment, generators, and a stable of technicians, approximately the same can be accomplished today with a laptop sized device and handheld digital camera. This sort of technological prowess was seen most recently in the 2003 war in Iraq. We hypothesize that, as a result of these technological developments, the likelihood of newsgathering from remote locations has increased. By “remote location,” we mean any place without the standard technical infrastructure (fixed satellite uplinks or high-speed terrestrial lines). Most often, remoteness of this sort is a feature of nonurban, less developed regions of the world. This hypothesis is a critical but untested presumption underlying recent debates concerning the CNN effect, event-driven news, and other aspects of the changing nature of the relationships between news media and policy. In our analysis, we find evidence of a decrease in the effects of remoteness on levels of U.S. media coverage of distant events.     

Hostile Media Perceptions: Partisan Assessments of Press and Public during the 1997 United Parcel Service Strike

This study investigated partisan perceptions of hostile bias in news coverage of the 1997 Teamsters Union strike against United Parcel Service (UPS), and the processes by which Teamster and UPS partisans formed impressions of public opinion regarding the strike. As predicted, both partisan groups perceived neutral news coverage as biased against their respective sides. However, perceptions of hostile media bias did not produce corresponding perceptions of hostile public opinion; instead, partisans appeared to rely on their personal opinions when estimating the opinions of others. Nonpartisan control-group subjects, however, did infer public opinion in part from their subjective assessments of news content. Findings suggest that level of involvement is crucial in predicting the effect that perceived media coverage of social issues will have on perceptions of public opinion regarding those issues.     

Poverty reduction

The idea of poverty reduction naturally attracts all kinds of angels – in NGOs, government departments and international financial institutions – but their ministrations are frustrated by many obstacles. These include the narrow and static way in which economists define the poor; the remoteness of the poor, their social invisibility and elusiveness to most forms of targeting; and the absence of political will to engage in poverty-reduction policies. The angelic response to these obstacles has been to trumpet a global campaign of poverty reduction with millennial goals, international aid targets, and poverty-reduction strategy papers. It would be better to re-discover the language of risk, vulnerability, and social insurance. The message of the association between risk and reward, and the collective need for social mechanisms that will allow individuals to bear increased risk without exposure to irreversible damage, is the one that really needs to be delivered.     

Procedural Justice and Conflict Management at School

In this research, we explored the contributions of perceived procedural justice (PPJ) to the conflict management behaviors of adolescents when they experience conflict with their teachers. We tested an extensive model to determine how PPJ contributes to conflict management. We also extended research on PPJ to examine its impact on adolescents. Our results, acquired from a large and diverse sample of 256 high school students, indicate that PPJ had an impact on adolescents' approach to managing conflicts with their teachers. Students who perceived that their teachers' decision processes were just were less dominating and more avoiding, obliging, and compromising. In addition, we found that students' perceptions about the legitimacy of their teachers' authority mediated the relationships between PPJ and conflict management style. This study contributes to the rather scarce research on PPJ's role in conflict management and should be useful for educators searching for constructive, relationship‐based tools for conflict management.     

How does democracy influence citizens’ perceptions of government corruption? A cross-national study

We examine the effect of democracy as an institutional context on individuals’ perceptions of government corruption. To do so, we compile an integrated dataset from the Asian, Afro, and Latino Barometer Surveys and use a hierarchical linear regression model. Our primary finding is that the effect of democracy has different effects on ordinary citizens’ perceptions of corruption in different contexts. In general, people in countries with higher levels of democracy tend to perceive their governments to be more corrupt. However, more importantly, conditional models show that in countries with more developed democratic institutions, individuals with stronger democratic values are less likely to perceive the government to be corrupt. Moreover, people in such countries are less likely to assess their government based on their perceptions of economic situation.     

Refining the Influence of Language on National Attachment: Exploring Linguistic Threat Perceptions in Quebec

Fears related to a group's culture can negatively impact national attachment. This article brings new insight into minority groups’ national attachment by empirically exploring the influence of language threat perceptions on it. Quebec is used as a case because of its longstanding tensions with Canada. The results of the analyses not only demonstrate that perceiving French as threatened positively influences Quebecers’ support for independence and negatively impacts their feelings towards Canada, but the findings also permit the conclusion that it is an individual's linguistic perceptions that directly determine their national attachment rather than simply their linguistic group membership.     

On the front lines of democracy: perceptions of electoral officials and democratic elections

Electoral officials play a crucial role in instilling confidence in elections and democracy. They are involved in the most important tasks of running elections, from registering voters to counting the ballots. This article employs survey data from 35 countries from the sixth wave of the World Values Survey (2010–2014) which asks respondents about their perceptions of electoral integrity and the quality of democracy in their country. The analysis demonstrates the relationship between perceptions of the fairness of electoral officials and two important outcomes: confidence in the fairness of the vote count, and perceptions of the overall quality of democracy. It additionally considers under which circumstances this relationship is most pronounced and shows that the relationship between an individual’s perceptions of electoral officials and perceptions of electoral integrity is more pronounced in countries where there is a low liberal democracy index.     

Trading culture for development: assessing perceptions among rural agropastoral peoples in Tanzania

Development in rural parts of Africa is strongly desired by local people. Other views expressed by local people towards outside development initiatives vary considerably. Some perceptions are negative, as development recipients view development as a destructive agent of change in the local culture. Despite the negative effects associated with development, this study documented a unanimous desire among a stratified random sample of 418 respondents for more development interventions. Two villages in south-central Tanzania were selected based upon their adjacent proximity to Ruaha National Park. Findings suggest that a capability framework is useful for exploring local perceptions to outside development assistance.     

Principles of Persuasion

Drawing on the literatures on negotiation, communication, and persuasion as well as his research on organizational transformation, the author proposes a framework for understanding and enacting the persuasion process in organizations. He lays out key goals of persuasion and ways that skilled leaders can manage the process. The framework focuses attention on the ways leaders shape perceptions of interests and alternatives, as well as how they persuade one-on-one and from a distance. He also highlights the importance of gaining acceptance of tough, unpopular decisions, noting that the way leaders manage the process can have a major impact on outcomes in such situations.     

Should they be committed? Motivating volunteers in Phnom Penh,Cambodia

Expatriate volunteers in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, work in a country where many of their fellow expatriates are paid considerably more than they are. Such volunteers often find that the financial disparities affect the perceptions that people have of them. This paper explores the self-perceptions of volunteers working with Voluntary Service Overseas in Phnom Penh, and sets these perceptions within current theories of motivation and commitment. Two issues are then raised: whether these volunteers are willing and able to deliver quality assistance; and how perceptions of their status can affect their ability to deliver such assistance.     

Health,work opportunities and attitudes: a review of Palestinian women's situation in Lebanon

This study examined the health status, employment opportunities, and aspirations of Palestinian women refugees in Lebanon. Data were obtained from 1501 women registered with a UN relief agency and living in 5 regions; 80% lived in camps. 27.6% were aged 20-34 years, 27.1% were aged 35-44 years, and 24.7% were aged 45-60 years. 92% were women with children. About 43% of the 988 women with children had used or currently used contraception. 63% of these women had over 4 children. Among the 24 teenagers, 6 were current users; 41.7% had a child under the age of 16 years, and 62.5% had more than 1 child. Only 25% of all respondents had fewer than 3 children. Short birth intervals were common. About 16.4% of respondents were working. About 25% of mothers and 17% of all respondents never attended school. Tradition, marriage, and financial constraints were reported as reasons for education deficits. A very high rate of women miscarried. 5% had abortions. Mothers reported self-fulfillment reasons for high fertility. Health status included high and early fertility, short birth intervals, frequent miscarriages, lack or misuse of birth control, high child mortality, and lack of knowledge about women's health. Women's work, albeit very limited, was essential to the household. Employed women were older, household heads, and with multiple burdens. Women had aspirations for themselves and their children for education, work, a return to peace, and a home in Palestine. Attainment fell short of aspirations, mostly due to lack of support within the family and the school system, and tradition. Many young women with aspirations had low expectations of success.