The merton thesis: Oetinger and German Pietism,a significant negative case

The Merton thesis identifies two movements — English Puritanism and German Pietism — as causally significant in the development of the scientific revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries. It attributes this connection to a strong compatibility between the values of ascetic Protestantism and those associated with modern science. This article questions Merton's conclusion regarding one of these movements, German Pietism, by arguing that the Pietist ethos stood in sharp conflict with what Merton has called the normative structure of science. One manifestation of this conflict involves Friedrich Oetinger's articulation of a contending religious-mystical conception of science, which assigned a central place to feeling, intuition, the role of the divine, and a qualitative approach to nature. This conception of science, it is argued, provides the clearest indication of the conceptual and valuative distance that tended to separate Pietists from the new science of the 17th and 18th centuries.An earlier version of this article was presented at the 1990 meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, in Virginia Beach.     

Seasonal patterns of fertility measures: theory and data

The distribution of births by month exhibits a seasonal pattern in most populations. The monthly marital fertility rate for an area of Bangladesh provides a good example of the seasonal periodicity. Seasonal patterns of measures of reproduction in a population of married women are considered. Equations are developed that predict the seasonal patterns of these alternative measures under the assumption that the fertility rate (R) follows a trigonometric curve. This is followed by an empirical analysis of the measures in a Bangladesh population that has a pronounced seasonal fertility. The investigation is intended both to validate the theoretical framework developed in the 1st part of the paper as well as to determine whether seasonal variation in actual populations is sufficiently large to affect the alternative measures significantly. 4 measures are considered: pregnancy prevalence (PP)--the proportion of married women who are pregnant at the survey date; mean open birth interval (MOI)--the time from the last live birth to the date of the survey for parous women and from the time of marriage to the date of the survey for nulliparous women; mean closed interval-birth (MCIB)--the mean interval between the last 2 live births for married women who have a birth in the period immediately preceding the survey date; and mean closed interval-woman (MCIW)--the mean interval between the last 2 live births for women who have had at least 2 children by the time of the survey. It is assumed that the seasonal pattern of the fertility rate of a population follows a cosine curve and that there is no trend in annual fertility from year to year. The lag and relative variability of the other measures are considered in comparison with the fertility rate curve. The predictions from this theoretical effort, when compared with observed patterns and trigonometric regression results for each measure in data from Bangladesh, are shown to be quite accurate. The figure and regression results show that R, PP, and MOI have definite seasonal periodicity, but MCIB and MCIW do not display any seasonal patterns. If there is a secular trend in fertility in addition to seasonality, these relationships between the seasonal patterns of the measures may no longer hold. There is a disadvantage to using closed interval measures, for they are unable to detect effects of limiting of childbearing in a population since they are based only on information from women who have births.     

Contraceptive behavior among unmarried young women: A theoretical framework for research

Adoption of the most effective methods of contraception requires individual decision-making and negotiation with contraceptive providers. In order to take account of both behavioral elements, a two-dimensional framework for understanding contraceptive adoption and continuation by unmarried young is proposed, incorporating a "social-psychological model" of individual decision-making and an "interpersonal model" of factors affecting provider-client interaction. The social-psychological model is based on an earlier value-expectancy theory of behavior motivation as applied to health-related behaviors. The interpersonal model is derived from conflict-bargaining perspectives on professional-client interaction; it is suggested that expectations for this interaction are based on a limited number of internalized "models": the "professional"; the "bureaucratic"; the "commercial"; and the "parental." Insofar as client and professional "models" disagree, communication may break down and client understanding and/or acceptance of provider advice cannot be assured. The components of the social-psychological and interpersonal models are described in detail, and a combined framework is proposed.     

Providing a secure base for LGBTQ young people in foster care: The role of foster carers

The experiences and needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) young people in care have been overlooked in England, in both policy and research. This paper reports on findings from the first study of LGBTQ young people in care in England and focuses on the nature of foster carers' experiences and perspectives on caring for LGBTQ young people. Qualitative interviews regarding the fostering role in caring for LGBTQ young people were conducted with a sample of foster carers (n = 26) and analysed thematically. Foster carers described the importance of offering LGBTQ young people not only the nurturing relationships that all children in care need but also availability, sensitivity and acceptance to help young people manage stigma and other challenges associated with minority sexual orientation and gender identity. The Secure Base caregiving model provided a framework for analysing the different dimensions of these relationships. Understanding caregiving roles and relationships for LGBTQ young people in care has important implications for recruiting, training, matching and supporting foster carers to care for LGBTQ young people effectively.     

Einstellungen gegenüber ?lteren Besch?ftigten

The ??Beliefs About Older Workers Questionnaire?? (Hassell und Perrewe, Journal of Organizational Behavior 16(5):457?C468, 1995) was developed to analyze beliefs about older workers and comprises 27 questions. In this article we present a German version of the ??Beliefs About Older Workers Questionnaire??. We design two versions of the questionnaire, one for beliefs about older female and one for beliefs about older male workers. We report results of a study in which the German questionnaires for male and female workers were administered and tested for the first time. We observed neutral to slightly negative beliefs about older workers. The study identified impacts of the gender of subjects and objects on beliefs about older workers. However, these were rather small. Organizations could profit from instruments like the presented questionnaire to identify age stereotypes and the need for accordant measures. Repeated application of the questionnaire or simultaneous application in other organizational units or organizations would enable organizations to evaluate applied measures or to learn from good practice in other organizational units or organizations.     

Voluntary contributions and wages in nonprofit organizations

Voluntary work provides a major source of labor for many nonprofit organizations. Consequences of volunteers and paid staff working alongside each other in nonprofits are well documented. This article contributes to this strand of literature and investigates whether the presence of volunteer work influences paid employees' wages in nonprofit organizations. We estimated a multilevel wage equation accounting for personal characteristics of workers and characteristics of nonprofits. The analysis revealed that nonprofit organizations engaging volunteers pay lower wages to their employees. Our findings contribute to the understanding of wage‐setting behavior of nonprofits and improve the methodological approach of empirical research in this field.     

“Facing” leaders: Facial expression and leadership perception

This experimental study investigated the effect of a leader's expression of happy versus nervous emotions on subsequent perceptions of leadership and ratings of traits associated with implicit leadership theories (ILTs). Being fast and universally understood, emotions are ideal stimuli for investigating the dynamic effects of ILTs, which were understood in this study in terms of the constraints that expressed emotions impose on the connectionist networks that activate ILTs. The experimental design contrasted videotaped and still frame presentations of a leadership event; however, this methodological factor had no significant effects and analyses were thus collapsed across this factor. Key findings were that the expression of a happy versus nervous emotion at the end of a problem-solving sequence had multiple effects: happy emotions resulted in higher leadership ratings, higher trait ratings, greater correlations among trait ratings, and greater dependence of trait ratings on leadership perceptions. An exploratory model suggested that leadership impressions mediated the effects of facial emotions on trait ratings. The discussion further links the study findings with interpretations in terms of ILTs and many types of constraints on these cognitive structures. It also suggests ways to integrate these ideas with advances in neuroscience research.     

The sand lizard moves downtown – habitat analogues for an endangered species in a metropolitan area

Urban Ecosystems - Urbanisation can be dangerous to biological diversity, but on the other hand cities can enhance local and regional biodiversity by providing habitat analogues for many –...     

The face of leadership: Perceiving leaders from facial expression

The aim of the two studies presented here was to add to our knowledge about the contribution of facial expression to the perception of leadership. We assessed participants' prototypes of leadership. In addition, participants were shown pictures of different facial expressions. First impressions of leadership from the facial expressions were compared to the participants' prototypes. The results indicate that the participants used all available information, including facial appearance, expression, context of communication, appropriateness, and authenticity of expression to form complex prototypes. When the facial expressions in the studies matched the participants' prototypes, first impressions of leadership were higher. Therefore, understanding what is inside the perceiver's mind is significant for understanding leadership perceptions. On the basis of these two studies, we recommend that leaders should be aware of the influence their facial expressions have on their followers' perception of their leader-likeness.