A Conceptual Framework for Visualizing Composite Indicators

Social Indicators Research - Human development index (HDI) integrating greenness and fairness indicators is an important reference for global governance. This paper used the geometric method to...     

Division of Household Labor and Social Judgments in Israel: The Influence of Gender and Education

The study investigated how men and women with high and low levels of education perceive male and female targets who participate or do not participate in household chores. It was found that individuals liked both men and women who participated in the household chores more and wanted to engage in activities with them more than with the low‐participating targets. The participating man was perceived as more popular than the low‐participating man and was perceived as more feminine but not less masculine. In addition, although participants with both high and low levels of education preferred the participating man, the more educated participants preferred him more, attributed more masculinity to him, and expressed willingness to befriend him and engage in activities with him more than those with a lower level of education. It seems, then, that whereas in the 1990s both highly and less educated individuals perceive a male target who participates in household chores more favorably, this preference is more pronounced among the more educated individuals.     

Women’s attitudes towards the medicalization of childbirth and their associations with planned and actual modes of birth

Problem

Rates of medical interventions in childbirth have greatly increased in the Western world.

Civil Society and Democracy: The Israeli Experience

Civil society has been considered pivotal to democracy, but the causes of its performance have remained controversial. According to one view the political context is a critical factor in shaping the contours of civil society. Another suggests that whether democracy prevails is contingent on society itself and the associations comprising it. In a test of these views it was assumed that if society prevails associations would vary by type. If the state is more important, then associations would be expected to score similarly on the democratic scale. It was also expected that variation among the types of performance would cut across group categories, reflecting general attributes of the polity. Data were derived from a survey conducted among voluntary associations in Israel (n = 360). Findings showed that (a) associations scored similarly on the democratic scale, (b) the scores for the democratic performance were not influenced by group category, and (c) the least performed function was integration.     

THE RECOVERY OF MASADA: A STUDY IN COLLECTIVE MEMORY*

The battle of Masada in 73 A. D. was one of the least significant and least successful events in ancient Jewish history. Our concern is to understand why, after almost two thousand years of obscurity, this event was suddenly remembered and commemorated by Palestinian Jews. Precipitating the 1927 recovery of Masada was the appearance of a very popular poem which used the ancient battle as an allegory of the Jewish settlers' struggle. By restoring this poem to its social context, and by analyzing both in terms of George Herbert Mead's theory of symbolically reconstructed pasts, this article explains the modern appeal of Masada, then brings it to bear on our general knowledge of collective memory.     

Enriching the Group and Investigation in the Intercultural Classroom

Cooperative learning requires teachers to change their traditional role as transmitters of information and take on the role of guides and facilitators in the cooperative learning process. As they gain confidence in this role teachers adopt more diverse and complex cooperative procedures. When they feel that their students are used to working together to achieve academic goals, they can introduce Group Investigation as an additional cooperative learning method. Investigating in groups calls for students to apply basic cooperative learning skills to the planning of what they want to study and how they want to study. Students cooperate in carrying out their investigation, in planning how to integrate and present their findings, and, together with the teacher, collaborate in evaluating their academic and interpersonal effort.

Group Investigation places much of the responsibility for learning on the students, but the teacher must know how to prepare for the investigation project, how to prepare the students, and how to facilitate the project as it unfolds. Because the content of a Group Investigation project is determined by the diversity of the students’ interests, experiences and prior knowledge, it is the cooperative learning strategy most suited for interdisciplinary studies in an intercultural classroom.     

LIMITATIONS OF EVIDENCE-BASED PRACTICE FOR SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION: UNPACKING THE COMPLEXITY

Abstract

64 students in their first semester of a four year BA program in social work were found to have social attitudes and occupational values that differed significantly from those of their contemporaries who majored in the social sciences (N = 75). The study attempted to determine whether social background, individual occupational choice or institutional selection could account for these differences.

The attitudes of the social work students were practically identical to those of a comparison group (N = 58) of unsuccessful applicants for the same school of social work. Therefore institutional selection procedures could not account for the differences between the social work and the social science students. It was found that the differences in attitudes between social work students and candidates on the one hand and social science majors on the other hand persisted when differences in social background and previous work experience were statistically controlled. It was therefore concluded that individual occupational choice was the main source of the attitude differences found.     

Magazine Coverage of Child Sexual Abuse, 1992–2004

This article analyzes trends in the coverage of child sexual abuse in popular magazines since the early 1990s. The article employs systematic analysis to identify and analyze articles in four popular magazines. Articles are analyzed by subject, length, and publication. The results affirm established theories of newsworthiness related to the coverage of specific stories over time. However, interest in the subject waned in the past 10 years, with the brief and dramatic exception of coverage connected to the Catholic Church in 2002. The findings demonstrate systematic differences between the slants of the four magazines studied. The findings also suggest that child abuse professionals could improve the quality of coverage by agreeing to interviews in connection with articles about childhood sexual abuse.     

The Public Perception of Female and Male Violence in Marital Relationships

Most studies dealing with intimate partner violence (IPV) investigate situations where the man is the aggressor. The present study examines the participants’ social perception of IPV and the connection between social perception and the severity of the violent act and its justification when carried out by men against women and vice versa. The research is based on a structured, self-reported anonymous questionnaire answered by 240 participants. The questionnaire examined demographic variables, attitudes toward IPV, the severity of the violent act, and its justification. Findings indicate that violent behavior of women is perceived as more justified than that of men and that men’s violent behavior is perceived as more severe by women than by men, but women’s violent behavior is perceived to be equally severe by men and women. The study raises awareness of the lack of gender boundaries in violence and of gender discrimination against males.