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Kinds of Views Selected AbstractsTHE WELFARE STATE WE'RE IN: VIEWS FROM WESTMINSTERECONOMIC AFFAIRS, Issue 3 2005Article first published online: 28 JUN 200 The Welfare State We're In by James Bartholomew, published last year by Methuen, has had a significant impact on policy-makers and their advisers. Here, politicians representing the three major political parties give differing views of Bartholomew's analysis and the economic and social consequences of the welfare state. [source] OLDER ADULTS' VIEWS OF "SUCCESSFUL AGING": COMPARISON OF OLDER JAPANESE AND AMERICANSJOURNAL OF AMERICAN GERIATRICS SOCIETY, Issue 1 2006Kozo Matsubayashi MD First page of article [source] PUBLIC UNDERSTANDING OF FOOD RISK ISSUES AND FOOD RISK MESSAGES ON THE ISLAND OF IRELAND: THE VIEWS OF FOOD SAFETY EXPERTSJOURNAL OF FOOD SAFETY, Issue 4 2005MARTINE DE BOER ABSTRACT Food safety experts have a key role in constructing food risk messages and thus their perceptions will influence how food risk issues are communicated to the public. This research examined the perceptions of food safety experts regarding public understanding of food risk issues and food risk messages on the island of Ireland. It also looked into expert views of the barriers to effective food risk communication and how to improve food risk messages. One hundred and forty-three experts, working in areas related to food safety, completed an online questionnaire. Questionnaire and statement design was guided by the results of four in-depth interviews with food safety experts. The findings indicate that most experts surveyed have little confidence in the public's understanding of food risk issues, their assessment of food risks, their ability to deal with scientific information and their food safety practices. Experts are of the view that the public under-assesses the risk associated with some microbiological hazards and over-assesses the risk associated with other hazards such as genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and bovine spongiform encephalopathy. The opinion of experts with regard to GMOs is not supported by previous consumer research. Experts noted that the level of education and age were important determinants for the level of understanding of food risk issues and messages. Experts were of the view that early intervention via school curricula was the best method to improve public understanding of food risk messages in the long term. Furthermore, experts are of the view that the media have the ability to improve awareness and knowledge about food risk issues but believe that the media tend to communicate information that is misleading. The majority of experts also believe that they should communicate uncertainty but are not confident that the public is able to cope with this uncertainty. Many of the experts also indicated a desire for training on how to interact with the media. The results may be used by those experts who are involved in the construction of food risk messages to improve the design and communication of food risk messages. [source] SPANISH NEPHROLOGY NURSES' VIEWS AND ATTITUDES TOWARDS CARING FOR DYING PATIENTSJOURNAL OF RENAL CARE, Issue 1 2010Tai Mooi Ho RN SUMMARY Patients with advanced chronic kidney disease are increasingly elderly with increasing numbers of co-morbidites. Some may not be suitable for dialysis, some will choose to withdraw from treatment after a period of time and some will reach the end of their lives while still on dialysis. Studies have shown nurses' attitudes towards caring for dying patients affect the quality of care. A descriptive study was conducted to explore Spanish nurses' views and attitudes in this context and to assess any relationship between demographic variables and attitudes. Two measurement tools were used: a demographic survey and the Frommelt Attitude Toward Care of the Dying Scale,Form B. Two hundred and two completed questionnaires were returned. Although respondents demonstrated positive attitudes in this domain, 88.9% viewed end-of-life (EOL) care as an emotionally demanding task, 95.3% manifested that addressing death issue require special skills and 92.6% reported that education on EOL care is necessary. This paper suggests strategies which could ease the burden in this area of care. [source] NEWS AND VIEWS: Heterozygosity of the Yellowstone wolvesMOLECULAR ECOLOGY, Issue 16 2010IVANA JANKOVIC First page of article [source] BREACH AND FULFILLMENT OF THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CONTRACT: A COMPARISON OF TRADITIONAL AND EXPANDED VIEWSPERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 4 2003LISA SCHURER LAMBERT Breach and fulfillment in a psychological contract has traditionally been studied with approaches that are conceptually and methodologically limited. We compared predictions derived from the traditional view to predictions from an expanded view that maintains the distinction between promised and delivered inducements and examines their joint relationship with employee satisfaction. The traditional and expanded views were compared using longitudinal data and polynomial regression analysis. Results provided little support for the traditional view. In contrast, results supported the expanded view and revealed that relationships for breach and fulfillment are more complex than previously suggested. Specifically, satisfaction depended on whether breach represented deficient or excess inducements and the particular inducement under consideration. Moreover, satisfaction was more strongly related to delivered inducements than promised inducements. These results question basic tenets of psychological contract research and indicate new avenues for research that build on the expanded view developed in this article. [source] PATIENT VIEWS ON THE MANAGEMENT OF RHEUMATIC FEVER AND RHEUMATIC HEART DISEASE IN THE KIMBERLEY: A QUALITATIVE STUDYAUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF RURAL HEALTH, Issue 6 2003Christine M. Mincham ABSTRACT Objective:,To describe, from a patient perspective, factors leading to suboptimal management of individuals with rheumatic fever (RF) and rheumatic heart disease (RHD) among members of the Kimberley population. Method:,Qualitative in-depth semistructured and repeated interviews of seven Kimberley patients, or parents of children, with rheumatic fever and/or rheumatic heart disease, during 1998. Results:,Participants showed variable levels of understanding about RF/RHD, often relating to the need for secondary prophylaxis. Compliance with medication was closely linked with positive patient,staff interactions. From the perspective of health care, living in a remote location was frequently described as a negative influence. Participants desire more accessible and culturally appropriate opportunities for learning about their disease. Conclusions:,Participants focused on issues closely related to effective and ineffective management of RF/RHD. The lessons learned are indicators for health staff attempting to improve the quality of management that people receive. [source] THE PROMOTION OF HEALTH CAREERS TO HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS IN THE NEW ENGLAND HEALTH AREA: THE VIEWS OF HIGH SCHOOL CAREERS ADVISERSAUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF RURAL HEALTH, Issue 4 2001Christian Alexander ABSTRACT: One way to impact positively on the shortage of health professionals in rural areas is to effectively promote health careers to rural high school students. Rural high school careers advisers play a pivotal role in this. In order to assess how rural health careers advisers working in the north-west of New South Wales currently promote health careers to their students, the New England Area Rural Training Unit carried out a survey of the area's high school careers advisers. Of the 47 high school careers advisers, 38 returned completed questionnaires, yielding a response rate of 81%. While only about one-third of careers advisers use visits by undergraduate students enrolled in tertiary health courses (42%), visits by locally practising health professionals (39%) and/or health careers site visits (27%), all careers advisers consider such promotional activities to be most effective. Improved exposure to such effective health career promotional activities for the area's high school, increasing collaboration between careers advisers and health professionals, as well as renewed efforts to identify and to foster interested students prior to Year 10, should lead to an increasing number of rural high school students enrolling in tertiary health courses. [source] Investigative Visual Analysis of Global TerrorismCOMPUTER GRAPHICS FORUM, Issue 3 2008Xiaoyu Wang Abstract Recent increases in terrorist activity around the world have made analyzing and understanding such activities more critical than ever. With the help of organizations such as the National Center for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), we now have detailed historical information on each terrorist event around the world since 1970. However, due to the size and complexity of the data, identifying terrorists' patterns and trends has been difficult. To better enable investigators in understanding terrorist activities, we propose a visual analytical system that focuses on depicting one of the most fundamental concepts in investigative analysis, the five W's (who, what, where, when, and why). Views in our system are highly correlated, and each represents one of the W's. With this approach, an investigator can interactively explore terrorist activities efficiently and discover reasons of attacks (why) by identifying patterns temporally (when), geo-spatially (where), between multiple terrorist groups (who), and across different methods or modes of attacks (what). By coupling a global perspective with the details gleaned from asking these five questions, the system allows analysts to think both tactically and strategically. [source] Conservation Biology: Views from the Ecological SciencesCONSERVATION BIOLOGY, Issue 3 2006JOSÉ SARUKHÁN No abstract is available for this article. [source] The voice of detainees in a high security setting on services for people with personality disorderCRIMINAL BEHAVIOUR AND MENTAL HEALTH, Issue 4 2002Sue Ryan Background British government Home and Health Departments have been consulting widely about service development for people with ,dangerous severe personality disorder' (DSPD). There has, however, been no consultation with service users, nor is there any user view literature in this area. Methods All people detained in one high security hospital under the legal classification of psychopathic disorder were eligible but those on the admission or intensive care wards were not approached. Views of service were elicited using a purpose designed semi-structured interview. The principal researcher was independent of all clinical teams. Confidentiality about patients' views was assured. Aims To establish views on services from one subgroup of people nominated by the government department as having ,DSPD'. Results Sixty-one of 89 agreed to interview. With security a given, about half expressed a preference for a high security hospital setting, 20% prison and 25% elsewhere, generally medium secure hospitals. Participants most valued caring, understanding and ,experience' among staff. An ideal service was considered to be one within small, domestic living units, providing group and individual therapies. Some found living with people with mental illness difficult, but some specified not wanting segregated units. Views were affected by gender and comorbidity. Conclusions As the sample were all in hospital, the emphasis on treatment may reflect a placement bias. All but five participants, however, had had experience of both health and criminal justice services, so were well placed to talk with authority about preferences. Copyright © 2002 Whurr Publishers Ltd. [source] Four Views of Areolar Melanosis: Clinical Appearance, Dermoscopy, Confocal Microscopy, and HistopathologyDERMATOLOGIC SURGERY, Issue 8 2008MARYANN MIKHAIL MD No abstract is available for this article. [source] Views from divergent stakeholders on the Macquarie,Cudgegong River Management CommitteeECOLOGICAL MANAGEMENT & RESTORATION, Issue 2 2001C. Max Finlayson [source] ,Playing the Game called Writing': Children's Views and VoicesENGLISH IN EDUCATION, Issue 2 2003Teresa Grainger Abstract Teachers' perceptions of their changing practice in the context of the National Literacy Strategy have been well documented in recent years. However, few studies have collected pupils' views or voices. As part of a collaborative research and development project into the teaching and learning of writing, 390 primary pupils' views were collected. A marked difference in attitude to writing and self-esteem as writers was found between Key Stages 1 and 2, as well as a degree of indifference and disengagement from in-school writing for some KS2 writers. A strong desire for choice and greater autonomy as writers was expressed and a preference for narrative emerged. This part of the research project ,We're Writers' has underlined the importance of listening to pupils' views about literacy, in order to create a more open dialogue about language and learning, and to negotiate the content of the curriculum in response to their perspectives. [source] The Impact of Environment and Entrepreneurial Perceptions on Venture-Creation Efforts: Bridging the Discovery and Creation Views of EntrepreneurshipENTREPRENEURSHIP THEORY AND PRACTICE, Issue 5 2010Linda Edelman Recent literature has highlighted two conflicting theories of entrepreneurship. In the "discovery" perspective, objective environmental conditions are considered to be the source of entrepreneurial opportunities and thus drivers of subsequent entrepreneurial action. The "creation" view, in contrast, is based on entrepreneurial perceptions and socio-cognitive enactment processes. While empirical studies have separately utilized each of these perspectives, few attempts have been made to integrate insights from both theories to empirically examine the interrelationships among environmental conditions, entrepreneurial perceptions, entrepreneurial action, and outcomes. In this article, we explicate the roles that both objective environmental conditions and entrepreneurial perceptions of opportunity and resource availability play in the process of firm creation. Utilizing longitudinal data on nascent entrepreneurs, we find that as hypothesized, entrepreneurs' opportunity perceptions mediate between objective characteristics of the environment and the entrepreneurs' efforts to start a new venture. Contrary to our expectations, we do not find a similar mediating effect for perceived resource availability. These findings have important implications for further theory development in entrepreneurship as well as for practice and education in the field. [source] Confabulation Views from Neuroscience, Psychiatry, Psychology and PhilosophyEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF NEUROLOGY, Issue 1 2010K. A. Jellinger No abstract is available for this article. [source] Distorted Views Through the Glass Ceiling: The Construction of Women's Understandings of Promotion and Senior Management PositionsGENDER, WORK & ORGANISATION, Issue 1 2001Sonia Liff The article explores the issue of whether women's under-representation in senior management positions can be explained in part by the messages they are given about the promotion process and the requirements of senior jobs. Through interviews with over 50 male and female junior and senior managers in a UK high street bank, issues relating to the required personality and behaviour characteristics seen to be associated with success and with the long hours culture emerged as important. In many cases men and women identified the same issues but the significance of them for their own decision-making and the way others interpreted their behaviour varied , particularly in relation to the perceived incompatibility between active parenting and senior roles. The findings provide an account of the context in which women make career choices which highlights the limitations of analyses which see women's absence as the result either of procedural discrimination or women's primary orientation towards home and family. The findings also highlight the problems of treating commitments towards gender equality as an isolated issue and stress the importance of understanding responses to policies and ways of achieving change within the broader context of an analysis of the organization's culture. [source] Stakeholders' Views on Vapor IntrusionGROUND WATER MONITORING & REMEDIATION, Issue 1 2009Lenny Siegel First page of article [source] Listening to the views of people affected by cancer about cancer research: an example of participatory research in setting the cancer research agendaHEALTH EXPECTATIONS, Issue 1 2006David Wright PhD Abstract Aim, The study ,Listening to the Views of People Affected by Cancer About Cancer Research' is currently exploring the views people affected by cancer have about cancer research and identifying their research priorities. Integral to this is the broader aim of ensuring an effective, collaborative participation of patients and carers in the design and conduct of the study. On the basis of experiences with the study to date, the latter is explored in this paper. Design, The study adopts a ,participatory research' approach entailing the formation of a ,reference group' and a subsequent patient and carer co-researcher group. Patient and carer members of these groups were identified through the patient forums of UK cancer networks and by approaching ,hard to reach' representatives directly through community groups and participating study sites. Findings, Experiences from this study illustrate that a ,participatory research' approach is appropriate in engaging patients and carers in the research process. Establishing a group of people affected by cancer in the study was found to be particularly effective in enhancing the design and conduct of the research. Conclusions, ,Participatory research' offers an effective means of involving patients and carers throughout the research process, thus strengthening the relevance and appropriateness of research findings and methods. [source] French Views on Thatcherism and BlairismHISTORICAL RESEARCH, Issue 182 2000Jacques Leruez The French like terms ending in ,ism', especially when they appear to represent a substantial ideological proposition or, at the very least, a definite change in the methods of governance. Thus, both Thatcherism and Blairism have held considerable interest for both the educated public and the media. If Thatcherism was generally condemned as reactionary, there was none the less a certain amount of admiration for Lady Thatcher's ,conviction'. As for Blairism, while considered a betrayal of socialist ideals by the more traditional left wing, it is looked upon with some sympathy in centrist and even right-wing circles. [source] Teaching & Learning Guide for: The Origins of the Civil WarHISTORY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 4 2007Nicole Etcheson Author's Introduction The author argues that slavery is the root cause of the Civil War even though historians have often posited other explanations. Some other interpretations have been ideological (i.e., about the morality of slavery), others have been economic, political, or cultural. Focus Questions 1If you were to make an argument for the causes of the Civil War, what evidence or types of evidence would you want to examine? 2In what ways can the different types of arguments (ideological, economic, political, and cultural), be combined to explain the causes of the Civil War? Do such arguments exclude or reinforce each other? In what ways? Author Recommends * E. L. Ayres, In the Presence of Mine Enemies: War in the Heart of America, 1859,1863 (New York, NY: Norton, 2003). A study of two counties, one north and one south, during the end of the sectional crisis and the early Civil War. While Potter, Walther, and Wilentz offer sweeping, often political, histories, Ayres offers a microhistory approach to the sectional conflict. Although Ayres writes within the tradition of seeing cultural differences between North and South, he concludes that slavery was the issue that drove the two sections apart. * M. A. Morrison, Slavery and the American West: The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny and the Coming of the Civil War (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1997). Views the development of the sectional crisis through the lens of Manifest Destiny. Territorial expansion drove hostility between the sections. Morrison concentrates on the political developments of the period connected to the acquisition and organization of the territories to show how the issue of slavery in the territories polarized the sections. * D. M. Potter, The Impending Crisis, 1848,1861 (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1976). The most comprehensive survey of the decade before the war. Potter traces the development of slavery as a political issue that North and South could not resolve. While it is a masterly and nuanced treatment of the political history, it does not incorporate social history and is more detailed than is useful for most undergraduates. E. H. Walther, The Shattering of the Union: America in the 1850s (Wilmington, Scholarly Resources, 2004) has recently supplanted Potter as a survey of the decade. It is an easier read for undergraduates and incorporates the new literature than has emerged since Potter wrote. * S. Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (New York, NY: Norton, 2005). A sweeping history of the United States from the constitutional era to the outbreak of the Civil War. Wilentz attempts to update Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.'s synthesis The Age of Jackson by returning to a focus on the evolution of democracy while at the same time incorporating the social history that emerged after Schlesinger wrote. Only the last third of this very long book covers the 1850s, but Wilentz argues that democracy had taken differing sectional forms by that period: a free-labor version in the North and a plantation version in the South. Online Materials 1. The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War (http://valley.vcdh.virginia.edu/) A prize-winning website that profiles Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania. Material from this website formed the basis of Ayres, In the Presence of Mine Enemies. Although the website primarily concentrates on the Civil War itself, it provides access to newspapers and letters and diaries from the 1850s that show the development of, and reaction to, the sectional crisis in those counties. It also shows students the types of materials (census, tax, and church records as well as newspapers and letters and diaries) with which historians work to build an argument. 2. American Memory from the Library of Congress (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html) Although not specifically devoted to the origins of the Civil War, the American Memory site provides access to the collections of the Library of Congress which contain massive amounts of primary materials for students and scholars. From the website, one can gain access to congressional documents, periodicals from the 1850s, nineteenth-century books, music, legal documents, memoirs by white and black southerners as well as slave narratives. Sample Syllabus Nicole Etcheson's ,Origins of the Civil War,' History Compass, 3/1 (2005), doi:10.1111/j.1478-0542.2005.00166.x can be used as a reading in any Civil War course. [source] W.E.B. Du Bois and Charles S. Johnson: Differing Views on the Role of Philanthropy in Higher EducationHISTORY OF EDUCATION QUARTERLY, Issue 4 2002Marybeth Gasman First page of article [source] Mechanisms of Visual Object Recognition in Infancy: Five-Month-Olds Generalize Beyond the Interpolation of Familiar ViewsINFANCY, Issue 1 2007Clay Mash This work examined predictions of the interpolation of familiar views (IFV) account of object recognition performance in 5-month-olds. Infants were familiarized to an object either from a single viewpoint or from multiple viewpoints varying in rotation around a single axis. Object recognition was then tested in both conditions with the same object rotated around a novel axis. Infants in the multiple-views condition recognized the object, whereas infants in the single-view condition provided no evidence for recognition. Under the same 2 familiarization conditions, infants in a 2nd experiment treated as novel an object that differed in only 1 component from the familiar object. Infants' object recognition is enhanced by experience with multiple views, even when that experience is around an orthogonal axis of rotation, and infants are sensitive to even subtle shape differences between components of similar objects. In general, infants' performance does not accord with the predictions of the IFV model of object recognition. These findings motivate the extension of future research and theory beyond the limits of strictly interpolative mechanisms. [source] An Examination of the Effects of Accountability when Auditors are Uncertain about the Views of Superior PartnersINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AUDITING, Issue 2 2001Steven E. Kaplan This experiment focused on the effect of accountability on senior audit managers' reporting decisions related to ambiguous scenarios, where the auditors could only speculate on the views of superior auditors on specific reporting issues. It examines the potential effect of accountability on the relationship between judgments an auditor would make versus the judgments the auditor perceives superior partners would make. In particular, accountable auditors were predicted to engage in a hybrid strategy of processing information with more effort and of complying more with views they perceived to be held by the superiors. Consistent with the acceptability heuristic, the results indicate that accountability is associated with greater agreement between self-judgments and judgments the auditor perceives superiors would make. However, contrary to Tetlock's (1992) theory but consistent with some prior research (Johnson and Kaplan, 1991; Hoffman and Patton, 1997), the accountability treatment did not significantly affect the auditors' processing of information. [source] How Views about Flow Adaptations of Benthic Stream Invertebrates Changed over the Last CenturyINTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF HYDROBIOLOGY, Issue 4-5 2008Bernhard StatznerArticle first published online: 15 OCT 200 Abstract Throughout the last century, stream ecologists tried to answer the question: how do benthic invertebrates cope with the flows prevailing in streams? Whereas the pioneers frequently sought answers using imagination and speculation in a hefty debate, subsequent research on flow adaptations of stream invertebrates relied increasingly on the transfer of concepts (from fluid mechanics to stream ecology) and technological innovations. Correspondingly, views about flow adaptations of stream invertebrates changed considerably over the last century. However, stream ecologists are still far from understanding how stream invertebrates are adapted to the many different flow conditions they face during their life, because the near-bottom flows they experience are extremely complex and create so diverse constraints that adaptation to all of them is physically impossible. This instance shows how ignorant we are of the physical factors in the environment which ultimately shape the organisms, and how difficult it is to understand the utility of a structure without knowing the requirements for which it is produced Sunder Lal Hora, 1930 (© 2008 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim) [source] Current Views of the Structure of the Mammalian Mitochondrial RibosomeISRAEL JOURNAL OF CHEMISTRY, Issue 1 2010Emine Abstract Mammalian mitochondria synthesize polypeptides crucial for energy generation using ribosomes with a number of unique features. These ribosomes are very protein rich and have very truncated ribosomal RNAs. The bulk of the mammalian mitochondrial ribosome is composed of proteins, only about half of which are homologs of ribosomal proteins found in other translational systems. A number of distinctive features are found in these ribosomes. Among these is a gate-like structure that allows entrance of the primarily leaderless mRNAs that characterize this system. The exit tunnel of the large subunit is also quite unusual and includes a site in which the nascent peptide is visible to solvent prior to the normal exit site. Further, this region of the mitochondrial ribosome is dominated by ribosomal proteins rather than rRNA and is involved in the interaction of the ribosome with the inner membrane where all of the translation products are ultimately located. The proteins of the mitochondrial ribosome appear to play a number of important roles in the cell in addition to their function in protein biosynthesis, including roles in apoptosis and in cell cycle control. [source] Clinicians' Views on Reproductive Needs and Services for Teens With Negative Pregnancy TestsJOURNAL FOR SPECIALISTS IN PEDIATRIC NURSING, Issue 2 2004Alison Moriarty Daley MSN ISSUES AND PURPOSE To explore services available to adolescent girls at the time of the negative pregnancy test (NPT) in an urban community. DESIGN AND METHODS Clinicans focus groups were conducted to identify the needs of adolescents at the time of a NPT result. RESULTS Teens access care in a variety of ways, services provided at the time of a NPT were agency and clinical dependent, and strategies for follow-up care often were unstructured. Few services were available for parents or partners. Barriers included difficulty communicating with agencies, lack of staff trained to work with adolescents, and time/financial constraints. CONCLUSION Adolescents need comprehensive, teen-friendly reproductive care at the time of a NPT results. [source] Disclosing the Diagnosis of Pediatric HIV Infection: Mothers' ViewsJOURNAL FOR SPECIALISTS IN PEDIATRIC NURSING, Issue 1 2000Wendy M. Nehring ISSUES AND PURPOSE. The stigma of HIV infection creates barriers to disclosure. The purpose of this study was to identify to whom biological and foster mothers disclose the diagnosis of HIV infection, discuss their rationale, and describe the recipient's reactions. DESIGN AND METHODS. A descriptive, qualitative study included biological (n = 9) and foster (n = 11) mothers of children with HIV infection. RESULTS. Three themes emerged from the data: Telling for support, determining who should know, and telling children. These themes were present for both biological and foster mothers. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS. It is important for nurses to realize that parental disclosure of the diagnosis of HIV infection is a long-term, age-appropriate process that will take place over many discussions and time, and should have the support of the interdisciplinary team. Additional psychological support also should be available. [source] Religion and Reproductive Genetics: Beyond Views of Embryonic Life?JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION, Issue 4 2007JOHN H. EVANS Advances in new reproductive genetic technologies have spawned a very polarized public and political debate. As with the abortion debate, most formal opposition to these technologies comes from religious organizations that are concerned about embryonic and fetal life. In this article we conduct an analysis of the first nationally representative opinion survey on religion and reproductive genetics. We find, as in the abortion debate, that evangelicals, fundamentalists, and traditionalist Catholics are more opposed than more liberal religious groups. When we compare respondents with the same views on embryonic life, we find that differences remain in the level of approval for genetic technologies, suggesting that there is more to this debate than concern about embryos. We also find that religious conservatives are more distinct from the religious nonattenders in their views of health objectives of reproductive genetic technologies and less distinct in their views of improvement objectives. [source] Changing Views of Serpent Handling: A Quasi-Experimental StudyJOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION, Issue 3 2000Ralph W. Hood Knowledge about serpent handling sects (SHS) even among social scientists and legislators has been largely influenced by biased media reports. Our own field research suggests that factual knowledge about SHS is effective in changing stereotypes about serpent handling and in altering views as to the rights of believers to handle serpents in church. In a quasi-experimental study, participants were pretested with respect to both prejudicial and reasoned evaluative views about SHS. Participants saw either a video of contemporary SHS in which handlers demonstrated and explained their faith, or a control tape in which contemporary SHS were shown but serpent handling was neither demonstrated nor defended. As predicted, viewing the serpent handling video was effective in reducing stereotyping of SHS and in changing attitudes regarding the sincerity of the believers and the right of SHS to practice their faith without legal constraints. Appropriate controls indicated that changes were not simply a function of a pretest by treatment interaction. The relevance of these data for altering laws against the practice of serpent handling is discussed. [source] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||