Populism is usually studied by looking at the electoral and rhetorical strategies of parties considered to be populist. In contrast, this article attempts to measure the support for the core ...propositions of populism among voters and explain the social differences in that support. On the basis of a survey of the Dutch-speaking population of Belgium (N: 2,330) we find that this support for populism turns out not to be directly influenced by a weak or uncertain economic position, by dissatisfaction with personal life or feelings of anomie. Support for populism appears foremost as a consequence of a very negative view of the evolution of society – declinism – and of the feeling of belonging to a group of people that is unfairly treated by society.
To investigate how social support relates to mental health problems for Belgian late adolescents and young adults 15-25 years of age. Additionally, we examine changes in mental health problems ...between 2008 and 2013 and investigate gender differences.
Multivariate analysis of variance was used to investigate (1) psychological distress, (2) anxiety and (3) depression among 713 boys and 720 girls taken from two successive waves (2008 and 2013) of a representative sample of the Belgian population (Belgian Health Interview survey). Psychological distress was measured by the General Health Questionnaire, anxiety and depression by the Symptom Check-List-90-Revised.
Gender differences were found for psychological distress, anxiety and depression with girls reporting significantly higher scores than boys. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) revealed that adolescents who are dissatisfied with their social contacts and experience poor social support reported more psychological distress, anxiety and depression. In addition, young adult boys (20-25 years of age) were more likely to experience psychological distress when compared to late adolescent boys (15-19 years of age). Finally, the prevalence of anxiety and depression increased substantially between 2008 and 2013 for girls and to a lesser extent for boys.
Especially girls and young people with poor social support experience mental health problems more frequently than boys and those with strong social support. Improving social support among young people may serve as a protective buffer to mental health problems.
Research on the supply side of politics demonstrates that populism acts as a common denominator even though populist parties possess very different ideological positions. However, it is uncertain ...whether this translates to the demand side: Do voters support left and right‐wing populist parties for similar reasons? Using the Netherlands as our case study, we investigate the common demand side characteristics of supporters of populist radical right and populist radical left parties. The paper concludes that populist attitudes (i.e. a people‐centered notion of political representation) unify supporters of both populist radical left and populist radical right parties. Supporters of both parties also demonstrate lower levels of political trust (than voters for other parties): this is particularly the case for PVV supporters. Beyond these similarities we find that the PVV and the SP attract very different supporters. PVV supporters demonstrate low immigrant tolerance, while SP voters support more income equality.
When choosing between political candidates of different educational levels, do voters show ingroup bias or base their vote choice on candidates’ perceived competence? We aim to investigate how ...(fictional) political candidates of different educational levels are evaluated and voted for, how this is affected by voters’ educational level, and the role of perceived (Study 1) and manipulated competence (Study 2). Higher educated participants preferred higher to less educated candidates over and above their level of competence, particularly when they identified strongly with their educational level. This reflects ingroup bias among the higher educated. Less educated participants preferred higher educated candidates in Study 1, but did not prefer higher educated candidates when competence was manipulated independently from education in Study 2. The less educated, unlike the higher educated, therefore, seem to show deference to the assumed competence of the higher educated, because it disappears when more reliable competence information is available.
In order to use attendance monitoring within an integrative strategy for preventing, assessing and addressing cases of youth with school absenteeism, we need to know whether the attendance data ...collected by schools cover all students with (emerging) school attendance problems (SAPs). The current article addresses this issue by comparing administrative attendance data collected by schools with self-reported attendance data from the same group of students (age 15-16) in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium (
= 4344). We seek to answer the following question: does an estimation of unauthorized absenteeism based on attendance data as collected by schools through electronic registration differ from self-reported unauthorized absenteeism and, if so, are the differences between administrative and self-reported unauthorized absenteeism systematic? Our results revealed a weak association between self-reported unauthorized school absenteeism and registered unauthorized school absenteeism. Boys, students in technical and vocational tracks and students who speak a foreign language at home, with a less-educated mother and who receive a school allowance, received more registered unauthorized absences than they reported themselves. In addition, pupils with school refusal and who were often authorized absent from school received more registered unauthorized absences compared to their self-reported unauthorized school absenteeism. In the discussion, we elaborate on the implications of our findings.
Supervisor support is crucial for the successful and timely completion of the PhD and the largest contributor to PhD students' overall job satisfaction. The COVID-19 pandemic affected PhD students' ...life substantially through delayed experiments, missed timelines, running out of funding, change to online team- and supervisor meetings, mandatory working from home, and social confinement.
This contribution considers PhD students' satisfaction scores to reflect the extent to which PhD students felt supported by their supervisor during the COVID-19 pandemic so far and aims to investigate to what extent did PhD students' satisfaction with supervisor support changed over time.
It uses two longitudinal two cohorts of wave 4 to 5 of the PhD Survey at a Belgian university. These cohorts are representative of two different ways the COVID-19 pandemic might have impacted doctoral research. Cohort 1 (n = 345) includes a pre-COVID measurement (April-May 2019) and a measurement immediately after the start of the abrupt lockdown in April-May 2020. Cohort 2 (n = 349) includes the measurement at the onset of the pandemic in 2020 and after a year with continuously changing containment policies (April-May 2021). The composite measure of satisfaction with supervisor support is based on six items with high internal consistency.
No significant net effect of time was revealed. Instead within subject interactions with time showed that in cohort 1, PhD students at the start of their PhD trajectory and PhD students with family responsibilities reported lower supervisor satisfaction scores over time. In cohort 2, PhD students not pursuing academic careers reported lower satisfaction scores over time.
In times of crises, special attention needs to be paid to PhD students who are extra susceptible to uncertainties because of their junior status or personal situation, and especially those PhD students for whom doctoral research is not a trajectory to position themselves in academia.
It is widely believed that the school context plays a crucial role in teacher burnout. Against that background, we (1) critically review existing empirical multilevel studies on teacher burnout and ...(2) use data from the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2018 to assess the school-level variance and its correlates in emotional exhaustion, cynical depersonalization, and personal accomplishment in 2,300 primary (183 schools) and 2,700 lower secondary (190 schools) teachers in the Flemish-speaking community of Belgium, and 2,135 lower secondary (120 schools) teachers in the French-speaking community of Belgium. Our results reveal that (1) conceptual confusion exists surrounding school-context variables and (2) the between-school variance in teacher burnout is small. Implications for educational policy and teacher burnout research are discussed.
The thesis that schooling inevitably leads to secularization continues to be debated. Indeed, while education has become a central and authoritative institution across the world, religiosity seems to ...persist. An alternative hypothesis proposes that recognizing the cultural aspects of the growth of “schooled societies” may reveal unexpected compatibilities between education and religiosity. However, research that both empirically integrates these aspects and examines their relationship with religiosity from a global perspective remains scarce. Against this background, this article first constructs a macro-level indicator that taps into cross-national variation in the different dimensions of “schooled societies.” Subsequently, we examine its relationship with the subjective importance of religion in people’s lives and individual-level educational differences in religiosity. Results based on data from 94,011 respondents across 76 countries show that in societies that are more “schooled,” people generally tend to be less religious. Moreover, the development of a schooled society moderates the relationship between educational attainment and religiosity. In societies that show more characteristics of a schooled society, especially less educated people are likely to remain religious. Finally, we found that our new indicator for the schooled society explained more variance than other, less fine-grained indicators of this concept. This illustrates the added value of a more comprehensive indicator for the role of schooling as an institution. In the conclusion, we use our findings to outline a research agenda.
Police administrators are looking for concrete pathways to fight the phenomenon of (ethnic) prejudice among members of the police force. Surprisingly, few studies have assessed the effectiveness of ...existing police ethics training programs on prejudice and social dominance orientation. Therefore, we assessed the impact of a 1-day training called the Holocaust, Police, and Human Rights (HPH) program on the attitudes related to ethnic prejudice and social dominance orientation of 223 members of the Belgian police. Analyses of three-wave panel data indicate that HPH training reduced ethnic prejudice and social dominance orientation. For ethnic prejudice, the reduced effects were maintained after 1 month in the follow-up study. However, the effect of training on prejudice was weaker for police officers who were more often exposed to victims and perpetrators of crime. No lasting effect of HPH training was found for social dominance orientation.
Although it is well established that contemporary school-based pedagogy continues to be primarily oriented towards a middle-class habitus, little research has documented how crucial elements of such ...habitus, like an expressive self-conception and emotional management, became integrated in the educational institute and its philosophy. Therefore, this article reconstructs how the current middle-class habitus was institutionalized and what type of personality structuring it eventually replaced. We study the shifts in pedagogical ideas, the role of education and the position of teachers and relate these to structural factors such as state-formation and changing class structures. We draw on the process-relational approach of Elias and Bourdieu and perform a content analysis of 480 pedagogical advice articles published in Flanders (Belgium) between 1880 and 2010, to demonstrate how a discourse of formalization and self-control has been substituted by a more informalized and expressive view. We conclude with a reflection on the impact of such an expressive pedagogical regime on the reproduction of class inequality.
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