The Irish institute of technology sector is undergoing a major restructuring that will culminate in mergers, to form technological universities (TU). It is essential that the perspective of key ...stakeholders is fully considered throughout this process, in order to facilitate a successful transition. This research investigates the factors influencing attitudes of academic staff toward their institute becoming a TU. A theoretical model was developed, based on the extant literature, and validated using partial least squares structural equation modelling. Academic staff attitudes to the proposed change were found to relate to their sense of organisational commitment and their contribution to teaching and research. Levels of happiness and job satisfaction were also found to influence their sense of organisational affiliation and belonging. Those with greater organisational commitment and a greater research focus were more likely to report a positive attitude to the change. Academic staff with a predominately teaching focus reported a relatively more negative attitude to the change. These findings facilitate the prescription of targeted initiatives to secure stakeholder support, throughout the transition. Staff wellbeing initiatives can improve job satisfaction and cement organisational commitment, positively influencing attitude to the change. Promoting research activity, while reaffirming the importance of teaching, can also serve to promote a positive attitude to the change in status. The unique model presented in this research has the potential to inform stakeholder management in the implementation of major organisational change in higher education both nationally and internationally.
Although Greek and Roman authors wrote ethnographic texts describing foreign cultures, ethnography seems to disappear from Byzantine literature after the seventh century C.E.-a perplexing exception ...for a culture so strongly self-identified with the Roman empire. Yet the Byzantines, geographically located at the heart of the upheavals that led from the ancient to the modern world, had abundant and sophisticated knowledge of the cultures with which they struggled and bargained.Ethnography After Antiquityexamines both the instances and omissions of Byzantine ethnography, exploring the political and religious motivations for writing (or not writing) about other peoples. Through the ethnographies embedded in classical histories, military manuals, Constantine VII'sDe administrando imperio, and religious literature, Anthony Kaldellis shows Byzantine authors using accounts of foreign cultures as vehicles to critique their own state or to demonstrate Romano-Christian superiority over Islam. He comes to the startling conclusion that the Byzantines did not view cultural differences through a purely theological prism: their Roman identity, rather than their orthodoxy, was the vital distinction from cultures they considered heretic and barbarian. Filling in the previously unexplained gap between antiquity and the resurgence of ethnography in the late Byzantine period,Ethnography After Antiquityoffers new perspective on how Byzantium positioned itself with and against the dramatically shifting world.
In this study we examine the effectiveness of an intervention program to influence attitudes of elementary school students towards peers with intellectual, physical and severe physical and ...intellectual disabilities. A quasi-experimental longitudinal study was designed with an experimental group and a control group, both comprising two rural schools. An intervention program was developed for kindergarten (
n
experimental
= 22,
n
control
= 31) and elementary school students without disabilities (
n
experimental
= 91,
n
control
= 127) (age range 4–12 years old). This intervention consisted of a 3 weeks education project comprising six lessons about disabilities. The Acceptance Scale for Kindergarten-revised and the Attitude Survey to Inclusive Education were used to measure attitudes at three moments: prior to the start of the intervention, after the intervention and 1 year later. The outcomes of the multilevel analysis showed positive, immediate effects on attitudes of kindergarten students, but limited effects on elementary school students’ attitudes.
High levels of vaccination coverage in populations will be required even with vaccines that have high levels of effectiveness to prevent and stop outbreaks of coronavirus. The World Health ...Organisation has suggested that governments take a proactive response to vaccine hesitancy 'hotspots' based on social and behavioural insights.
Representative longitudinal online survey of over 3000 adults from Australia that examines the demographic, attitudinal, political and social attitudes and COVID-19 health behavior correlates of vaccine hesitance and resistance to a COVID-19 vaccine.
Overall, 59% would definitely get the vaccine, 29% had low levels of hesitancy, 7% had high levels of hesitancy and 6% were resistant. Females, those living in disadvantaged areas, those who reported that risks of COVID-19 was overstated, those who had more populist views and higher levels of religiosity were more likely to be hesitant or resistant while those who had higher levels of household income, those who had higher levels of social distancing, who downloaded the COVID-Safe App, who had more confidence in their state or territory government or confidence in their hospitals, or were more supportive of migration were more likely to intend to get vaccinated.
Our findings suggest that vaccine hesitancy, which accounts for a significant proportion of the population can be addressed by public health messaging but for a significant minority of the population with strongly held beliefs, alternative policy measures may well be needed to achieve sufficient vaccination coverage to end the pandemic.
Background: Several attitude scales have been developed to measure students' attitudes toward computer programming, including the prominent one developed by Cetin and Ozden. The development of these ...scales stemmed from the elusive nature of attitude and the lack of specific constructs to measure attitude. These instruments measure students' attitudes based on one-dimensional perspective, thus, making it difficult to interpret the meaning of some attitude evaluations such as the meaning of neutral points in a 10-point scale (for example). Objectives: The computer programming attitude scale was modified to measure ambivalence. The study also investigate attitude differences across demographic variables and used these variables to predict ambivalence. Methods: The study was conducted in two phases. In the first phase, the instrument was validated using exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. In the second phase, the revised scale was administered to another 547 students in four research universities for empirical investigation. Results: Results show that the instrument is valid and suitable for measuring students' programming attitudes. Participants' attitudes skewed toward the negative attitude dimension. Lastly, we found that both attitude and ambivalence are factors of programming experience. Conclusions: We discussed the findings, recommend the instrument to programming tutors, and strongly emphasise the evaluation of students' ambivalent attitudes.
Attitude toward science has been recognized as highly influential in students' engagement with science and future career choices. Science is important in our everyday lives as well, in a society ...demanding more scientific vocations and higher levels of scientific literacy. There is little research on how attitudes develop and evolve at early ages, which may be due to a lack of appropriate measurement tools. The objective of this study is to design and validate a tool to measure attitude toward informal science in 5 to 6‐year‐old children, who are not yet familiarized with “formal science.” Rather, these children are constantly interacting and learning about their surrounding world. These early experiences are important for future science engagement. The Leisure Time in Science (LeTiS) scale consists of eight pictures representing science learning activities in informal environments. Children's intentions of performing the activities shown in the LeTiS pictures are measured by comparing them with other leisure nonscientific activities. We also analyze parents' views on their children's leisure interests for comparison. The relationship among attitudes, intentions, and interests is also analyzed as part of this study involving 387 children and 188 parents. LeTiS is a pictographic scale, which is easy to interpret, with reliable psychometric properties, Oω = .88, and a unidimensional factorial structure. The results show that participants, aged 5–6, have a very positive attitude, with no gender‐based differences. Nevertheless, their intentions to perform the activities are less promising, as nonscientific activities are consistently the first choice. Although parents' views report considerable science interest in their children, there is a low correlation with attitudes and intentions. The findings may offer clues on the relationship between children's attitudes toward science and their actual behavior. The study may also contribute to planning science curriculum in the early educational years.
There has been relatively little study of multiple predictors of attitude strength. Eight predictors (attitude certainty; attitude importance; attitude subjective knowledge; moral basis of attitude; ...attitude elaboration; felt ambivalence; cognitive‐affective potential ambivalence; cognitive‐affective inconsistency) were tested for individual and combined impact on two defining features of attitude strength (attitude temporal stability; attitude–behaviour relationship), in a prospective study over one and two months across six COVID‐19 protection behaviours (N = 477). All eight predictors were individually associated with attitude stability in individual (except elaboration) and simultaneous (except elaboration and potential ambivalence) tests. All eight predictors (except elaboration and potential ambivalence) were significant moderators of attitude–behaviour relationships in individual tests; attitude importance and inconsistency were significant moderators of attitude–behaviour relationships in simultaneous tests (only former remained significant controlling for stability). The findings highlight attitude importance as the strongest predictor of attitude strength reflected in their impact on attitude stability and attitude–behaviour relationships.
Objective
This study is performed to examine the attitudes regarding marriage, family, and premarital sex among the students of different majors. Participants: Four hundred fifty-seven students from ...four majors studying Medical Sciences, Arts, Humanities, and Mathematics/Engineering within the age range of 18- to 24-year old. Method: Participants were selected from different universities in Tehran using stratified nonprobability sampling method. Attitudes of our participants were examined using the premarital sexual, marital, child-rearing, and family attitude Survey and demographic variables, including major, age, gender, religious beliefs, family socioeconomic level, and marital status were evaluated. Results: Most of the results of the survey showed significant differences between different majors. Art students were open to premarital sex more than other students and believed that premarital sex would cause no harm in reputation for females. By contrast, Medical sciences students had the highest agreement regarding the bad influence on the reputation of females because of premarital sex and also regarding men's tendency to virgin girls. Art students mostly approved the acceleration of the divorce process while the highest disapproval in this regard was reported from Medical sciences students. Conclusion: Art students' beliefs about premarital sex were more liberal, while Medical sciences students' beliefs in this matter were more conservative.
This article challenges the implicit assumption of many cross-national studies that gender-role attitudes fall along a single continuum between traditional and egalitarian. The authors argue that ...this approach obscures theoretically important distinctions in attitudes and renders analyses of change over time incomplete. Using latent class analysis, they investigate the multidimensional nature of gender-role attitudes in 17 postindustrial European countries. They identify three distinct varieties of egalitarianism that they designate as liberal egalitarianism, egalitarian familism, and flexible egalitarianism. They show that while traditional gender-role attitudes have precipitously and uniformly declined in accordance with the “rising tide” narrative toward greater egalitarianism, the relative prevalence of different egalitarianisms varies markedly across countries. Furthermore, they find that European nations are not converging toward one dominant egalitarian model but rather, remain differentiated by varieties of egalitarianism.
PDF
