Making the Best of a Bad Job? Female Part‐Timers’ Orientations and Attitudes to Work

This article uses data from 50 qualitative interviews with female part‐time workers in low‐level jobs in Britain to illustrate their attitudes, orientations and aspirations towards paid work. The research reports two main findings. Firstly, even female part‐time workers at the bottom end of the occupational structure are not a homogeneous group of workers. Secondly, they are not all highly satisfied with their jobs. The article argues that many women (especially those in working‐class households) still do not have a genuine choice between ‘family work’ and ‘market work’. It concludes by presenting a theoretical model of orientations to work.     

Assimilation vs. multiculturalism: Views from a community in France

A recent American survey of attitudes toward societal multiculturalism vs. assimilation has found surprisingly widespread support for maintaining heritage cultures not only among immigrant minority groups but also among most subsamples of majority host groups, black and white. Working-class whites are the one exception. This pilot study explores the same attitude domain in a contrasting European setting. Randomly selected samples of middle- and working-class families (a mother, father, and teenage son or daughter) from a small city in France were interviewed. As a group, they were neutral to slightly favorable to immigrants maintaining heritage cultures and languages rather than losing them through assimilation. On measures of attitudes toward specific immigrant groups, there were marked intergroup dyfferunces with Maghrebian Arabs rated leist favorably and Southeast Asians, the model immigrants, most favorably. Comparisons of subgroups of respondents who varied in terms of (a) political left-right orientation, (b) social class standing, (c) degree of religiosity, and (d) generational level provide the base for a more general discussion of cultural assimilation and multiculturalism.     

The unemployment of women with physical disabilities in Ghana: issues and recommendations

Unemployment among persons with disabilities is high. The situation is worse for women with disabilities as they experience multiple disadvantages on account of gender and disability. The condition for women with disabilities in Ghana could be more complicated, given the intersection of disability, gender, poverty, cultural beliefs and practices. As employment provides not only income for women with disabilities but opportunities for social participation and increases psychological well-being as well as self-esteem, it is imperative to remove barriers that hinder their employment. The current study examines issues associted with the unemployment of women with physical disabilities in Tamale, Ghana, and makes recommendations to policy-makers and practitioners in order to improve the condition of persons with disabilities in general, and particularly women with disabilities.     

Support for Gay and Lesbian Civil Rights: Development and Examination of a New Scale

This research outlines the development of a psychometrically sound, uni-dimensional scale to assess support for gay and lesbian civil rights. Initial scale development involved examining item-pool responses from 224 undergraduate students. The resulting Support for Gay and Lesbian Civil Rights (SGLCR) scale consisted of 20 items. In a series of studies, the SGLCR demonstrated a stable factor structure, strong internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and construct validity. The relationships between SGLCR scores and participants' sex, religiosity, political ideology, gender role beliefs, and attitudes toward lesbians and gays were significant and in the predicted directions.     

Effects of the social dominance orientation on environmental attitudes of Chilean university students / Efectos de la orientación a la dominancia social sobre las actitudes ambientales de universitarios chilenos

By adopting a multidimensional approach to environmental attitudes (apathy, anthropocentrism, connectedness and emotional affinity with nature), this study explores the relationships between these dimensions, social dominance orientation (SDO) and political orientation. Two hundred and sixty-two Chilean university students filled out an ad hoc online questionnaire. Two confirmatory factorial analyses showed the four typologies of environmental attitudes and the two factors for SDO, which are labelled group dominance and opposition to equality. Through hierarchical regressions, group dominance showed higher explanatory power of environmental attitudes than political orientation. Furthermore, using the bootstrap procedure we showed that group dominance mediated between political orientation and attitudes of apathy, anthropocentrism and connectedness, while opposition to equality mediated between apathy and emotional affinity. We conclude that SDO is an important variable for measuring political ideology while also providing new nuances when analysing the relationships with environmental attitudes.     

Investment communities: Behavioral attitudes and economic dynamics

Using a real-world data set encompassing the daily portfolio holdings and exposures of complex investment funds, we derive a set of quantitative attributes to capture essential behavioral features of fund managers. We find the existence and stability of three investment attitudes, namely the conservative, the reactive, and the pro-active profiles, defining communities that respond differently when facing external shocks. The conservative community has behavioral similarities that tend to decrease due to external shocks, the reactive community members greatly increase their activity level especially during turmoil phases, while delegated investors in the pro-active community are more resilient to turbulence and counterbalance the impact of the events by adjusting their portfolio exposures in advance. We show that exogenous shocks only temporarily perturb the behavioral traits of the communities which then go back to their original states once the distress is embedded.     

Attitudes of social work students towards older people

Demographic ageing is a challenge for many countries. Even though Turkey has a relatively younger demographic composition, the proportion of the older people (65+) within the population is rapidly increasing. Within this framework, older people are becoming more important clients for both social work students and social workers in Turkey. This study aims to reveal the attitudes of social work students towards older people and determine the various factors that affect their views on older persons. In the scope of the project, Kogan's Attitude Towards Old People Scale was applied to 419 social work undergraduate students at a university located in Central Anatolia. The findings showed that social work students scored a mean of 130.96 and they generally had positive attitudes towards older people. The correlation between year of study, gender and age was not statistically significant. However, having lived mostly in urban areas was positively correlated with the mean Kogan scores and this finding was found to be statistically significant. Exposure to personal contact with older people at both the personal and professional levels was influential in shaping attitudes about the older people.     

Demographic and Social Factors Associated with Homophobia and Fear of AIDS in a Community Sample

Examinations of demographic and social factors associated with homophobia and fear of AIDS are limited by the frequent use of homogeneous, college student samples and limited examination of interrelationships among variables. The present study examined community attitudes toward homosexuality and fear of HIV/AIDS as a function of age, education, race/ethnicity, religious affiliation, political party affiliation, and personal contact with homosexual individuals and persons living with HIV/AIDS. A community sample of 463 adults completed standardized measures of homophobia and fear of AIDS as well as demographic and social background items. When examined separately, each demographic and social factor assessed, with the exception of race/ethnicity, was associated with homophobia and all but race/ethnicity and political party affiliation were associated with fear of AIDS. However, when entered into multiple regression analyses, 24% of the variance in homophobia was predicted by a single variable, including only personal contact with homosexual individuals, while 18% of the variance in fear of AIDS was accounted for by five variables, including personal contact with homosexual individuals, religious affiliation, political affiliation, education, and personal contact with someone living with HIV/AIDS. Findings suggest that it is important to consider intercorrelations among social and demographic factors, particularly when considering homophobia.     

Impact of a Homonegativity Awareness Workshop on Attitudes Toward Homosexuality

The current study evaluated the effects of a homonegativity awareness workshop on attitudes toward homosexuality and examined individual difference variables associated with attitude change. Participants included 71 female and 43 male students (approximate mean age?=?23). Compared to a control group of introductory psychology students, participants were less homonegative and erotophobic (F(1, 359)?=?62.47 and 15.92, ps?<?.001) after the workshop. Implications for contact with gay and lesbian persons through structured intervention programs on attitudes toward homosexuality are discussed in terms of both the practice and theory of reducing prejudice and discrimination.