Willingness to pay to address environmental problems is influenced by partisanship in Australia. Ceteris paribus, the support base of environmental concerns is generally much stronger among Labor and ...Green supporters, postmaterialists, those who engage in eastern spiritual practices and professionals. Women are more likely than men to favour environmental protection over economic growth, to pay extra tax to protect the environment and to believe global warming will pose a serious threat during their lifetime. Support for renewable energy is stronger among younger Australians, suggesting demand may increase with generational replacement. Political leaders influence public concerns over global warming and other environmental issues across the partisan divide, yet while political elites remain divided over the implications of climatic change, the shift in public opinion and behaviour necessary to avert such problems is unlikely to occur.
Attitude polarization between conservative and progressive politicians over global warming has an important influence upon public acceptance of action on climate change. Political party ...identification theorists claim that political elites provide cues that guide party supporters on complex political issues. In Australia, as in the USA, the UK and elsewhere, public attitudes on climate change are deeply divided on the basis of party identification and political ideology. Multivariate analyses of Australian candidate and voter survey data show that coalition candidates and their supporters are far less likely than their Labor or Greens counterparts to believe global warming will pose a serious threat to their way of life. Attitudes toward global warming are also more polarized according to party allegiance among candidates than among voters. Controlling for social background and political ideology, Coalition identifiers are less concerned about the dangers of climate change, far less supportive of the carbon tax and less likely to support renewable energy options than Greens or Labor identifiers are, but much more supportive of nuclear power as an alternative energy source.
National data from the 2018 Australian Survey of Social Attitudes show that knowledge of climate change is positively associated with the scientific consensus position on anthropogenic climate ...change. Responses to factual quiz questions that include climate trigger terms such as “greenhouse gas” or reference to increased ocean temperature and acidification are influenced by one’s political party identification, with Liberal and National party identifiers tending to score lower than Labor partisans on climate knowledge scales. Yet, responses to climate-related factual questions sans trigger terms are not influenced by political partisanship. Climate skeptics tend to score lower on climate knowledge scales than those who accept anthropogenic climate change, although skeptics also tend to have inflated confidence in their factual knowledge of climate change.
Sociologists and psychologists now agree on the significance of belonging to the experience of loneliness. Yet to date, this is unevenly reflected in both survey instruments and qualitative inquiry ...where the focus is mostly on belongingness attributed to social connectivity, social support, intimate social bonds and interpersonal relationships. While these are very important, recent work on belonging itself has stressed the significance of much wider bases of belonging, including place, temporality, memory, mobilities, generation, culture, labour processes, kinship systems, residential arrangements, settlement patterns, the public sphere and more-than-human factors. Drawing on evidence from sociology and other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, this paper brings these insights together for the first time in order to develop a deeper consideration of belonging for loneliness research, and especially to identify further sources of variation in loneliness. In this article we will concentrate on kinship, cultural, spatial, temporal and generational bases of belonging, which while discrete are also often interrelated and linked to wider social structural developments associated with individualism and neoliberalism. We argue that this research is a necessary foundation for the "all-of-government" strategies on loneliness that are just beginning to gain favour and traction through their consideration of individual and structural solutions.
KEY POINTS
What is already known about this topic:
(1) One of the defining aspects of loneliness is where people feel an absence of belonging.
(2) We know that most people obtain a sense of belonging from interpersonal relationships.
(3) We know that belongingness needs for interpersonal relationships vary considerably, from those individuals satisfied by a very small numbers of relationships, to those with needs for far more.
What this topic adds:
(1) A discussion of historical, sociological and anthropological research that identifies family and kinship systems (and associated residential and group formation) as key cultural sources of variation in belonginess needs in migrant societies.
(2) Identifies other bases of belonging beyond those of interpersonal relationships that have a bearing on loneliness: a sense of belonging to place; a temporal sense of belonging, and belonging to other "more-than-human" sources entities (aesthetics, natures, companion animals, material cultures).
(3) A discussion of how other bases of belonging have a bearing on ameliorating loneliness, with implications for new "all-of government" strategies to address it.
Objectives
To develop a reliable and valid dementia knowledge scale to address limitations of existing measures, support knowledge evaluation in diverse populations, and inform educational ...intervention development.
Design
A five‐stage, systematic scale development process was employed to construct and assess the psychometric properties of the Dementia Knowledge Assessment Scale (DKAS).
Setting
Data for the study were generated in an online environment and during clinical dementia care placements from Australian (n = 1,321) and international respondents (n = 446).
Participants
Volunteers from a dementia‐related massive open online course (n = 1,651), medical students on clinical placement in a residential aged care facility (n = 40), and members of the Australian health workforce (n = 76).
Measurements
Psychometric properties of the DKAS were established using a literature review to assess the veracity of scale items, respondent feedback during pilot testing, a Delphi study with dementia experts, construction and review by an expert panel, evaluation of item difficulty, item‐total and interitem correlations. Principal components analysis (PCA) was also performed along with measures of test–retest reliability, internal consistency, construct validity, and concurrent validity.
Results
The pilot DKAS was reduced from 40 to 27 items during analysis. PCA identified four distinct and interpretable factors. The revised DKAS displays high levels of test–retest reliability; internal consistency; and preliminary construct, concurrent, and factorial validity.
Conclusion
The 27‐item DKAS is reliable and shows preliminary validity for the assessment of knowledge deficiencies and change in those who provide care and treatment for people with dementia.
The environmental movement is no longer a 'new' movement and what passed as 'new' and unconventional forms of action have waned, increasingly displaced by cyber campaigns and conventional lobbying of ...governments by environmental movement organisations. Examination of the social and political backgrounds of Australian environmental group members shows that members of protest-oriented environmental groups tend to be leftwing and younger than average. However, those who play active roles in environmental groups are not young and are far less likely to join protest groups. While young Australians are more environmentally aware than ever before, they may associate participation in environmental groups beyond monetary donations and virtual activism with the behaviour of their protest-oriented parents and grandparents.
Objectives
To compare the psychometric performance of the Dementia Knowledge Assessment Scale (DKAS) and the Alzheimer's Disease Knowledge Scale (ADKS) when administered to a large international ...cohort before and after online dementia education.
Design
Comparative psychometric analysis with pre‐ and posteducation scale responses.
Setting
The setting for this research encompassed 7,909 individuals from 124 countries who completed the 9‐week Understanding Dementia Massive Open Online Course (MOOC).
Participants
Volunteer respondents who completed the DKAS and ADKS before (n = 3,649) and after (n = 878) completion of the Understanding Dementia MOOC.
Measurements
Assessment and comparison of the DKAS and ADKS included evaluation of scale development procedures, interscale correlations, response distribution, internal consistency, and construct validity.
Results
The DKAS had superior internal consistency, wider response distribution with less ceiling effect, and better discrimination between pre‐ and posteducation scores and occupational cohorts than the ADKS.
Conclusion
The 27‐item DKAS is a reliable and preliminarily valid measure of dementia knowledge that is psychometrically and conceptually sound, overcomes limitations of existing instruments, and can be administered to diverse cohorts to measure baseline understanding and knowledge change.
This research highlights the influence of political context upon the measurement of postmaterial value orientations. Drawing upon a variety of international survey data, Inglehart claims that since ...World War II a shift has occurred in advanced industrialized nations from material toward postmaterial values. However, cross-sectional data from Australian Election Study surveys collected over more than two decades indicate that atypically for an advanced democracy, Australian value orientations tend toward the materialist pole. Australian Election Study values estimates are also at odds with those from other national social surveys that portray Australia as a far more postmaterialist nation. Regression analysis demonstrates that after controlling for election issues, attitudes toward political leaders, political party identification, and social background, predicted values estimates are substantially more postmaterial than the raw estimates. The findings have international implications as they suggest that measuring values during or soon after election campaigns may affect the measurement of postmaterial value orientations.
•Climate scepticism is highest in Australia, New Zealand, Norway and the USA.•Higher levels of CO2 emissions per capita are positively associated with scepticism.•Country vulnerability to climate ...change is correlated positively with climate scepticism.•Political conservatism, gender and low environmental concern are key predictors of scepticism.
Despite the findings of climate scientists, the proportions of climate sceptics appear to be increasing in many countries. We model social and political background, value orientations and the influence of CO2 emissions per capita and vulnerability to climate change upon climate scepticism, drawing upon data from the International Social Survey Programme. Substantial differences in the levels of climate scepticism are apparent between nations. Yet cross national data show that climate sceptics are not merely the mirror image of environmentalists. Typical predictors of environmental issue concern, such as education level, postmaterial value orientations and age are poor predictors of climate scepticism. Affiliation with conservative political parties, gender, being unconcerned about ‘the environment’ or having little trust in government are consistent predictors of scepticism. Climate change scepticism is also correlated positively with CO2 emissions and vulnerability to climate change. While high levels of scepticism have been documented among citizens of the United States, scepticism is as high or higher in countries such as Australia, Norway and New Zealand.
Recent quantitative investigations consistently single out considerable gender variations in the experience of loneliness in Australia, and in particular how men are especially prone to protracted ...and serious episodes of loneliness. In 2017 the Director of Lifeline implicated loneliness as a significant factor in suicide among Australian men - currently three times the rate of suicide among women. Compared to women men also struggle to talk about loneliness or seek help from a range of informal and professional sources. We know very little about men's experience of loneliness or why they are so susceptible to it currently and research is urgently needed in order to design specific interventions for them. To date, psychology has dominated the theoretical research on loneliness but in this article we argue that sociology has a key role to play in broadening out the theoretical terrain of this understanding so as to create culturally informed interventions. Most researchers agree that loneliness occurs when belongingess needs remain unmet, yet it is also acknowledged that such needs are culturally specific and changing. We need to understand how loneliness and gender cultures configure for men; how they are located in different ethnic, class and age cohort cultures as well as the changing social/economic/spatial/public/institutional bases for belonging across Australia. Theoretical enquiry must encompass the broader social structural narratives (Bauman, Giddens and Sennett) and link these to the changing nature of belonging in everyday life - across the public sphere, the domestic sphere, work, in kinship systems, housing and settlement patterns, associational life, in embodied relationships and online.
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