Refocusing the Focus Group: AIRing as a Basis for Effective Workplace Planning

Organizations commonly make use of focus groups for planning purposes while giving little thought to the dimensions on which those groups are formed. This paper argues that the dimensions of group formation have a significant effect on the ultimate success of any planning exercise. This is because in all organizations people necessarily self‐categorize as members of groups that shape the way they think and act at work. However, there is often a lack of fit between the way organizations categorize employees and the way those employees categorize themselves. To the extent that there is a lack of fit between imposed and self‐identified categories, we argue that organizations will fail to effectively harness group resources. Any planning strategy that makes use of groups should organize people in terms of identities that are most relevant to their work in order (a) to have an impact on the way people think and act and (b) to ensure that people have (and feel that they have) the opportunity to provide input that is relevant, useful and important for the organization. The paper discusses a technique, AIRing, that allows organizations to address this issue effectively. This is the first stage of the ASPIRe negotiation‐based planning model (Eggins et al., Social Identity at Work: Developing Theory for Organizational Practice, pp. 241–260, Philadelphia, PA: Taylor & Francis, 2003; Haslam et al., British Journal of Management, 14 (2003), pp. 357–369).     

Support for Climate Change Policy: Social Psychological and Social Structural Influences*

Abstract We investigated preferences for climate change mitigation policies and factors contributing to higher levels of policy support. The sample was comprised of 316 Michigan and Virginia residents, all of whom completed mail surveys. Of the eight policies proposed to reduce the burning of fossil fuels, respondents overwhelmingly indicated they would not support a gas tax, while support was highest for shifting subsidies away from fossil fuels and towards sustainable energy strategies. With the exception of taxes on gasoline and “gas guzzlers,” a majority of respondents supported all other mitigation policies. Multivariate analyses revealed that greater trust in environmentalists and less trust in industry, greater recognition of the consequences of climate change, higher income, being black, and older age were predictive of greater policy support. Personal values (e.g., altruism), future orientation, and political affiliation were strong predictors of policy support but only indirectly via worldviews and environmental beliefs.     

Developmental Idealism and Cultural Models of the Family in Malawi

This paper examines the extent to which developmental idealism has been disseminated in Malawi. Developmental idealism is a set of beliefs and values about development and the relationships between development and family structures and behavior. Developmental idealism states that attributes of societies and families defined as modern are better than attributes defined as traditional, that modern societies help produce modern families, that modern families facilitate the achievement of modern societies, and that the future will bring family change in the direction of modernity. Previous research has demonstrated that knowledge of developmental idealism is widespread in many places around the world, but provides little systematic data about it in sub-Saharan Africa or how knowledge of it is associated with certain demographic characteristics in that region. In this paper, we address this issue by examining whether ordinary people in two settings in Malawi, a sub-Saharan African country, have received and understood messages that are intended to associate development with certain types of family forms and family behaviors. We then examine associations between demographic characteristics and developmental idealism to investigate possible mechanisms linking global discourse about development to the grassroots. We analyze data collected in face-to-face surveys from two samples of Malawian men in 2009 and 2010, one rural, the other in a low-to-medium income neighborhood of a city. Our analysis of these survey data shows considerable evidence that many developmental idealism beliefs have been spread in that country and that education has positive effects on beliefs in the association between development and family attributes. We also find higher levels of developmental idealism awareness in the urban sample than we do in the rural sample, but once dissimilarities in education and wealth between the two samples are controlled, awareness levels no longer differed between urban and rural respondents. We explore how these beliefs intersect with longstanding local values and beliefs in Malawi.     

Reports of Conferences, Institutes, and Seminars: ASIS&T 2008 Annual Meeting

This installment of “Serials Spoken Here” features reports on the ASIS&T (American Society for Information Science & Technology) 2008 Annual Meeting, the EDUCAUSE 2008 Annual Conference, and the 2008 Charleston Conference.     

Usage and Usability Assessment

Abstract

This article describes Online Information Exchange (ONIX) for Serials, a set of XML-based messages parallel to the ONIX for Books format described in an earlier “Standards Update.” These messages are being developed by a joint working party of National Information Standards Organization (NISO) and EDItEUR, the European EDI organization that oversees ONIX development and maintenance. The article describes the messages, their development, and some of the applications in which it is envisioned the messages will be used.     

Risk Perceptions of Offshore Workers on UK Oil and Gas Platforms

Knowledge of the workforce's risk perceptions and attitudes to safety is necessary for the development of a safety culture, where each person accepts responsibility for working safely. The ACSNI Human Factors report stresses the importance of assessing workforce perceptions of risk to achieve a proper safety culture. Risk perception research has been criticized for insufficient analysis of the causal relationships between risk factors and perceived risk. The present study reports some of the factors which predicted risk perception in a sample of 622 employees from six UKCS offshore oil installations who completed a 15-section questionnaire. This paper focuses on the accuracy of workers' risk perceptions and what underlying factors predict the perception of personal risk from both major and minor hazards.     

Forced marriage of people with learning disabilities: a human rights issue

This paper reports some of the findings of an exploratory study which sought to better understand the demographics of forced marriage of people with learning disabilities and the contexts in which such marriages may occur. It was found that forced marriages of people with and without learning disabilities showed broad similarities in relation to ethnicity, some differences in terms of age and substantial differences in terms of gender. Men and women with learning disabilities are equally likely to be victims of forced marriage. The reasons for people with learning disabilities being forced to marry are most often associated with a desire on the part of families to secure permanent care, but can also be associated with cultural (mis)understandings of the nature of disability. These findings are contextualised by considering the relationship between forced marriage, human rights and learning disability.     

Population density and annual and seasonal space use by feral cats in an exurban area

Urban Ecosystems - Feral cats (Felis catus) exhibit contrasting behavior in urban and rural areas. Urban cats form dense social groups with small home range sizes while feral cats occupying rural...     

The influence of wives’ and husbands’ fertility preferences on progression to a third birth in Nepal, 1997–2009

As couples across the globe increasingly exercise conscious control over their reproduction, both spouses’ family-size preferences have the opportunity to influence their fertility. Using couple-level measures of rural Nepalese spouses’ family-size preferences and more than a decade of monthly panel data collected subsequently on fertility outcomes, we investigate how both spouses’ preferences influence progression to a third birth in a country where the widely professed ideal family size is two children. Contrary to expectations based on women's relative disadvantage, we find that it is wives’ preferences that drive couples’ progression to a third birth. We find also that the influence of wives’ preferences is not explained by contraceptive use but that this influence is moderated by couple communication about family planning. Wives’ preferences drive progression to a third birth among couples who had discussed how many children to have.