How Do Traditional Gender Roles Relate to Social Cohesion? Focus on Differences Between Women and Men

The aims of the present paper are to explore how traditional gender roles (focusing mainly on attitudes towards the division of labour between men and women) relate to social cohesion and to examine whether this relationship differs among men and women. The multi-dimensional concept of social cohesion is measured by two general components: a behavioural dimension (consisting of civic and political participation and the intensity of non-kin social relations) and an attitudinal dimension (institutional trust and solidarity). The analysis, based on the data of the European Values Study from Luxembourg, reveals that being more traditional is related to higher attitudinal cohesion: i.e. higher institutional trust and solidarity. Conversely, traditional attitudes are associated with less cohesive behaviour, namely with a lower intensity of non-kin social relations and political participation. Tradition-oriented women show significantly lower levels of political participation than their male counterparts, whereas traditional men tend to demonstrate less solidarity than women.     

Conceptualising and Measuring Social Cohesion in Africa: Towards a Perceptions-Based Index

Social cohesion is a key concept in development studies. Weak social cohesion is often related to slow economic growth and (violent) conflict. So far few attempts have been made to measure this complex concept in a systematic manner. This paper introduces an innovative method to measure national-level social cohesion based on survey data from 19 African countries. We distinguish three dimensions of social cohesion; i.e. the extent of perceived inequalities, the level of societal trust, and the strength of people’s adherence to their national identity. Importantly, our Social Cohesion Index (SCI) is based on individuals’ perceptions vis-à-vis these three different dimensions of social cohesion rather than certain macro-level ‘objective’ indicators such as GDP/capita or Gini-coefficients. We develop two social cohesion indices: a national average SCI and a Social Cohesion Index Variance-Adjusted (SCIVA); the latter one takes into account the level of variation across different ethnic groups within countries. The SCI and SCIVA are computed for and compared across nineteen African countries for the period 2005–2012 on the basis of Afrobarometer survey rounds 3, 4 and 5. We also investigate quantitatively the relationship between countries’ levels of social cohesion and the occurrence of a range of conflict events. As expected, we find that countries with low levels of social cohesion in a particular year according to our SCI are more likely to experience a range of different violent conflict events in the subsequent year.     

Income Inequality and Subjective Well-being: A Cross-National Study on the Conditional Effects of Individual and National Characteristics

In this study we raise the question how a nation’s income inequality affects subjective well-being. Using information on 195,091 individuals from 85 different countries from the World Value Surveys and the European Value Surveys, we established that in general, people living in more unequal countries report higher well-being than people from more equal countries. This association however does not apply to all people similarly. First, the positive effect of a nation’s income inequality is weaker when individuals express more social and institutional trust, and underscore egalitarian norms to a larger extent. Second, the positive association between national income inequality and subjective well-being is less strong for people from countries with high levels of social and institutional trust. So, our research predominantly indicates that there are far-reaching effects of an individual’s and a nation’s trust on people’s well-being.     

Community-Based Determinants of Community Engagement: A Meta-Analysis Research

In literature, several variables, both individual and collective level, have been utilized to explain community engagement: the active, voluntary involvement of individuals and groups in changing problematic conditions in communities. The purpose of this study is to identify the main community-based variables and, via meta-analysis research, calculate the effects of these variables on community engagement. These variables include sense of community, community identity, social well-being, place identity, trust in the community, trust in institutions, and community cohesion. The overall and partial effect sizes and heterogeneity between studies were calculated. Some study characteristics (i.e. type of sample, size of sample, percentage of women in the sample, and mean age) were used as moderators for subsample analysis and meta-regressions. The first six major variables (sense of community, community identity, social well-being, place identity, trust in the community, and trust in institutions) show a positive but moderate relationship with community engagement. As for the moderating variables were not found substantial variations. The data are very heterogeneous and highlight the complex and multivariate nature of community engagement. Theoretical and methodological implications were discussed.     

The Development and Validation of Stakeholder-Based Scale for Measuring University Social Responsibility (USR)

Universities are an important member of the society that are trusted with shaping future, nurturing individuals, fostering ethics, and making people more responsible towards both the corporations they work for and the society they live in. Researches that explicitly focus on measurement of social responsibility of universities are scarce. The research intends to develop and validate a measurement scale for university social responsibility (USR) by capturing the key determinants that best define the social responsibility of a university. Using systematic scale development process, the study involved both literature and focus group discussions to generate the require items. 383 respondents filled the questionnaires out of which 329 were usable. The study found that USR has seven dimensions namely: operational responsibilities, research/development responsibilities, stakeholder responsibilities, and legal responsibilities. These four responsibilities were categorized as survival level responsibilities. Intermediate responsibility included ethical responsibility while voluntary responsibilities included philanthropic and community engagement. The scale developed in the study will help to specifically look for the presence of social responsibility in universities/higher education institutions. Hence it can be important to study how well universities respond to needs of the society. There is a significant lack of research into development of a reliable and valid scale of USR. This study clearly highlights the factors that make up USR and provides a detailed scale to measure of social responsibility performance by higher education institutions.     

Social Cohesion and the Labour Market: Societal Regimes of Civic Attitudes and Labour Market Regimes

The aim of this paper is to test the connections between the indicators used in the literature on social cohesion, which usually reflect ‘general’ values or behaviours, and indicators specific to a particular space, namely the labour market. A key question is the stability of the social cohesion’s indicators when moving from a societal level to the labour market. Based on data from the World Value Survey, and following a restrictive definition of social cohesion, a comparison is done, for European countries. Examination of the situation in the two spheres makes it possible to identify more or less homogeneous groups of countries and also to point to instabilities. ‘Regimes’ of social cohesion begin to emerge. As in most analyses, the Nordic countries (excluding Finland) have high scores in all the dimensions. Conversely, most of the new EU member states from the former Eastern bloc have low scores, particularly in the horizontal dimension of trust between individuals.     

Never Waste a Good Crisis: Towards Social Sustainable Development

The report by the Stiglitz Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress highlighted the idea that sustainability in essence is about quality of life. This paper discusses and elaborates this notion. It argues that sustainable development should be seen as a process which does not focus on economic development alone, but which also includes well-balanced ecological and social development. Social aspects of sustainability deserve attention because of their instrumental and intrinsic relevance. A society needs a sense of community and commitment. The presence of social capital is very important for the liveability of a society. It is argued that the amount of social capital may fluctuate over time. This means that in the long term, future societies may be better in a social respect (more trust, more participation, less inequality) than today’s. Ensuring social sustainability is thus not only a matter of ensuring that present social cohesion is preserved, but also ensuring that this cohesion will increase or improve. The paper ends by addressing lines of research on social sustainability. The following research themes are mentioned: (1) Quality of life, social capital and social cohesion in a longitudinal perspective. (2) ‘Sustainability of what, why and for whom?’ Sustainability as an issue of choice: trade-offs. (3) Civil society and governance aspects of sustainability. (4) Public perceptions, values and opinions with regard to sustainability issues and (5) Fairness and inequality in relation to sustainability policy, both nationally and internationally.     

Education and Life Satisfaction in Relation to the Probability of Social Trust: a Conceptual Framework and Empirical Analysis

We employ cross-sectional microdata from 2010 through 2012 collected by the Italian National Institute of Statistics to investigate the proposed conceptual framework regarding the joint relationship between education, life satisfaction and the probability of social trust. The analysis has been carried out using two alternative specifications of the logit model: parametric and semiparametric. Our findings suggest that (a) both modelling methods that we utilise yield consistent results in terms of the positive effects of education and life satisfaction on social trust; (b) for unsatisfied individuals, social trust is generally low and largely unresponsive to the individual’s education level, whereas for ‘sufficiently satisfied’ individuals, social trust increases strongly with education; (c) there are some gender differences in the joint relationship between education, life satisfaction and social trust and (d) the parametric approach tends to mask some interesting patterns that are captured by the semiparametric specification. This finding implies that the parametric approach leads to a biased interpretation of the results, with an apparent failure of some of the assumptions made in the conceptual framework.     

Social Comparisons and Life Satisfaction Across Racial and Ethnic Groups: The Effects of Status,Information and Solidarity

This paper explores the role of within group social comparisons on the life satisfaction of different racial and ethnic groups in the US. For Whites, we find that higher group income levels are associated with lower levels of life satisfaction, a result that is consistent with a preference for within group status. In contrast, life satisfaction is increasing in group income for Blacks. This result is consistent with the existence of social norms that emphasize Black solidarity. It is also consistent with an information effect in which Blacks rely on peer income levels to form expectations regarding their future prospects. We introduce a theoretical framework to help to distinguish between solidarity and information effects. Our empirical results provide strong support for the hypothesis that solidarity rather than information accounts for the positive relationship between average Black income and the subjective wellbeing of US Blacks. Finally, we consider two theories of social solidarity and find support for social salience but not social density in determining the strength of solidarity effects.     

Political Distrust and Social Capital in Europe and the USA

Levels of rising political distrust in the USA and parts of Europe attracted political scientists’ attention in the 1990s, and urged them to look at possible consequences of this phenomenon for the functioning of democracies and social life. Approximately during the same period, from a sociological viewpoint, social capital theorists started studying the effects of declining social capital on political and economic life. In this article, we looked at the relationship between political distrust and social capital from an interdisciplinary perspective. We studied the relationship in six European countries from three regions (North-West, South and East), and the USA, and we were interested in the question of whether this relationship varies over the regions, or whether it is approximately the same everywhere. We used ISPP data from the 2004 wave, which included a range of social capital indicators and political distrust items. Social capital was subdivided into four dimensions, namely, networks (membership of organizations), interpersonal or social trust, social norms (citizenship norms), and linking social capital (political activities). First we studied the effect of political distrust on these four dimensions of social capital, while controlling for other variables such as political efficacy, political interest and a set of socio-structural background variables. One of our main findings was that the only significant effect of political distrust we found throughout all countries was a negative effect on one dimension of social capital, namely, interpersonal trust: the more people distrust politicians and people in government, the less they trust other people in general, even when controlled for all other variables. The reverse relationship led us to the same conclusion: the more people tend to trust people in general, the less they distrust politics, a result we found in all countries. This finding refutes the claim that there is no or either only a very weak relationship between political and social trust, as some have strongly argued before. Other important political attitudes connected to social capital were political interest and political efficacy, and for political distrust it was external efficacy. Significant socio-economic factors were religiousness and educational level for membership of voluntary organizations, educational level for interpersonal trust, religiousness for citizenship norms, and educational level and age for political activities. The reciprocal relationship was strongest in the USA and North-Western Europe, as were the explained variances of our (more extensive) regression models. In Southern and Eastern Europe other factors appear to be at work which influence both social capital and political distrust.     

Social Cohesion as a Real-life Phenomenon: Assessing the Explanatory Power of the Universalist and Particularist Perspectives

Unlike most studies on social cohesion, this study explores the concept as a real-life macro-level phenomenon. It assesses to what extent the conceptions of social cohesion suggested by several macro-level approaches represent coherent empirically observable forms of social cohesion. Additionally it discusses two perspectives on social cohesion—the universalist and the particularist perspective. The former would expect social cohesion to be related to stages of socio-economic development. The latter hypothesizes enduring, regionally unique regimes of social cohesion resisting the homogenizing pressures of modernization. The paper finds evidence for both perspectives. On the one hand, a syndrome of social cohesion was identified consisting of trust, equality, order (i.e. lack of crime) and consensus on basic values which correlates closely with indicators of socio-economic development. This finding supports the universalist perspective. On the other hand, and consistent with the particularist perspective, the study found regionally unique patterns for Latin America, Eastern Europe and Scandinavia.     

Problem shifts in the study of welfare states and societal inequalities

This paper takes stock of questions in the field of welfare states and societal inequalities and related areas in sociology. Within general sociology, Lenski offered the question of who gets what and why, and the first generation of studies on welfare and inequality ranging from Cutright to Hewitt replaced questions about income shares for percentile groups by questions about state social security expenditures. Korpi, who initiated a second generation of studies, affected a change towards questions about individual benefit levels relative to the income of members of the working population. Commentators like Baldwin have pointed out that these questions are questions about solidarity, another problem in general sociology. This paper concludes by arguing in favour of a third problem shift, in which questions about the solidarity disfavoured people receive are complemented with questions about the solidarity advantaged people give.     

Social Capital or Social Cohesion: What Matters For Subjective Well-Being?

The theoretical analysis of the concepts of social capital and of social cohesion shows that social capital should be considered as a micro concept whereas social cohesion, being a broader concept than social capital, is a more appropriate concept for macro analysis. Therefore, we suggest that data on the individual level should only be used to analyze the relationship between social capital, social cohesion indicators and subjective well-being and that they do not allow commenting on the level of social cohesion in a society. For this last type of analyses aggregated indicators of social cohesion have to be computed which is not the issue of this paper. Our empirical analysis is based on individual data for Luxembourg in 2008. In general, our results suggest that investments in social capital generate monetary returns (increased income) and psychic returns (increased subjective well-being) even in a highly developed and multicultural country like Luxembourg. When we are adding on the micro level variables representing the economic domain of social cohesion following Bernard (1999), then we observe that this domain also has an effect on income and on subjective well-being. Therefore, we recommend including the economic domain in any future analysis using the concept of social cohesion.     

Social Capital,Government and Democracy Satisfaction,and Happiness in Turkey: A Comparison of Surveys in 1999 and 2008

Based on data from a 1999 and a 2008 European Values Survey, the main objective of this study is to explore the relationship between a variety of social capital indicators, satisfaction with government and democracy, and subjective well-being. Happiness and life satisfaction were used as outcome measures of subjective well-being. The indicators of social capital used in this study are general trust, trust in institutions, political engagement, concern for others, societal norms, and membership in volunteer organizations. The analyses reveal a significant increase in happiness, life satisfaction, and many social capital variables between 1999 and 2008. Generalized trust, trust in institutions, government satisfaction, and democracy satisfaction are positive correlates of well-being, although some relationships are significant only in 2008. Several demographic variables are also linked with subjective well-being such as income, employment status, age, gender, and education. We discuss the findings in relation to the significant societal, economic, and political changes experienced in Turkey between 1999 and 2008. Policy implications are also emphasized such as improved trust among individuals, trustworthiness of government institutions, and functioning of democracy.     

村落社会资本及其对老年人生活质量的影响

村落社会资本是一个群体概念,是指村落作为一个整体所拥有的社会资本状况,村民之间和村落内部的信任水平、团结互惠状况、集体行动能力等是衡量村落社会资本的主要指标。本文首先考察了黄果树社区的村落社会资本状况,然后利用多元回归分析模型检验村落社会资本的10个指标对老年人生活质量的影响。得出的结论是：在控制其他变量不变的情况下,只有村民之间的互惠状况影响老年人的生活质量。     

Identifying Social Trust in Cross-Country Analysis: Do We Really Measure the Same?

Many see trust as an important social resource for the welfare of individuals as well as nations. It is therefore important to be able to identify trust and explain its sources. Cross-country survey analysis has been an important tool in this respect, and often one single variable is used to identify social trust understood as trust in strangers, namely: “Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you can’t be too careful in dealing with people?” The question, however, is whether this variable captures the meaning of social trust equally well in all countries. This is investigated by comparing different measurements of trust across five clusters of countries in all parts of the world. The analysis shows that there are considerable problems associated with the use of the variable of “most can be trusted” as an indicator of trust in strangers, both in terms of strangers understood as “people you meet for the first time” and in terms of strangers understood as people of a different nationality and religion. These results question the validity of previous investigations of social trust based on international survey material. The analysis furthermore reveals that a new survey question about trust in people one is meeting for the first time is better suited as indicator of social trust in comparative analysis.     

The Quality of School Life: Teacher-Student Trust Relationships and the Organizational School Context

In exploring the quality of schools’ social system, this study provides insight into in which types of schools students may encounter barriers in developing supportive teacher-student relationships because of teachers exposing low levels of trust in students. Student culture and teachability perceptions are assessed as incentives for teachers’ perceptions of students’ trustworthiness. Information was gathered from 2,104 teachers across a representative sample of 84 secondary schools in Flanders (Belgium). A measure for trust in students was derived from the trust scales developed by Hoy and Tschannen-Moran. Multilevel analyses reveal that teacher perceptions of students’ teachability strongly predict teacher trust. This underscores the importance of teacher perceptions of students’ ability to meet the expectations imposed on them with regard to the formation of trust. Additionally, we show that teacher trust is affected by the organizational school context, although the academic orientation of the student culture plays no role.     

居家养老及其相关的几个问题

文章就居家养老服务的概念、内容与属性,政府、市场、社会与家庭在居家养老服务中的责任定位以及居家养老与机构养老两者间关系进行探讨。指出:从养老资金来源、养老地点与养老服务供给三个基本维度可以将养老划分为若干种基本的类型;政府在保障经济困难、失能、半失能老人养老服务中具有不可推卸的责任;居家养老与机构养老各有其优缺点与适用范围,不存在孰轻孰重问题,无需每个社区单独建立居家养老服务中心。     

Does Trust Mean the Same for Migrants and Natives? Testing Measurement Models of Political Trust with Multi-group Confirmatory Factor Analysis

Political trust is seen as an important attribute in contemporary representative democracy. Political trust can cause social trust, foster associational life and make the efficient implementation of policy easier. Political trust can also be seen as a measure of political integration of migrants in Europe. However, if we want to measure this, we need to know for sure that we measure the same concept in all countries and among all cultural groups under research. This paper describes and tests four (existing) models of political trust. We find that there are multiple dimensions of political trust that can be modeled in a structural equation model. Furthermore, we research the cross-cultural equivalence of this measurement model in 22 European Union countries among natives, EU-migrants and non-EU migrants in these countries. Our results indicate that we can compare levels of political trust within countries pretty well, however, we should be careful comparing levels of political trust between EU countries since full scalar equivalence could not be reached. On a substantive note, we find quite some differences between the EU countries concerning the political trust natives have and we find diverging results concerning the migrants. In most countries we did not find a significant difference between migrants and natives. However, when the difference was significant, migrants showed higher levels of political trust in most instances.     

Effects of Social Networks on Health from a Stress Theoretical Perspective

This paper focuses on the relevance of quantitative and qualitative aspects of social networks in a health context. The study combined a stress theoretical perspective with theories of social support and social capital in order to investigate the mechanisms behind the association of social network size and self-rated health. The main research question in the study is whether social integration affects health by changing stressor appraisal (perceived stressor intensity or anticipated stressor burden). The study used a survey of an Austrian student sample (n = 246) to measure two models of hypothetical exposure to a potentially stressful event. The findings indicate that individuals with larger trust and support networks consider potential stressors to be less threatening, which leads to a reduced level of stress symptoms and a better subjective health condition. The influence of network size on stressor appraisal is fully mediated by the perceived social embeddedness that these ties induce.