Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy最新文献

We explored how employed university students experience their relationships with their work colleagues and with non-employed students. Two research questions (RQs) were considered: RQ1: What experiences and conditions do employed students identify as contributing to a sense that they are a distinct and separate group from (1) their work colleagues and (2) non-employed students? RQ2: What experiences and conditions do employed students feel facilitate and/or inhibit their social adaptation and integration at work and university? We interviewed 21 part-time employed students in England, and analyzed the transcripts using reflexive thematic analysis. We adopted a deductive approach, using the Social Identity Approach as a theoretical framework. In relation to work colleagues, employed students identified a lack of empathy, being looked down upon, and experiencing hostility at the workplace as making them feel distinct from their work colleagues. In relation to non-employed students, employed students identified differences in experiences and values as increasing intergroup differentiation, which then resulted in feelings of not fitting in at university or social exclusion. Identified conditions, which supported social integration in the workplace, were working with colleagues who held positive attitudes toward students, experiencing similar workplace circumstances and a sense of common fate. Employed students felt socially integrated when non-workers had positive regard for them or by discussing their employment with other employed students.

Feelings of isolation have been prevalent worldwide since March 2020 due to COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. This has prompted increased concerns about loneliness and related mental health problems. During the first UK COVID-19 lockdown, 71 participants were asked to share their high and low point stories from lockdown. These were analyzed using thematic analysis to explore how “aloneness” was experienced at this time. A deductive analyses supported three key facets of aloneness reported in the literature: emotional loneliness, social loneliness, and existential loneliness, as well as a more positive form of aloneness, solitude. An inductive analysis identified risk and protective factors for loneliness, comprising worry, lockdown changes, and poor mental health; and social contact, emotional contact, stability and simple life. The study highlights the importance of understanding how facets of aloneness interrelate, and how understanding risk and protective factors can help us to develop social and policy interventions to alleviate loneliness. In particular, solitude is proposed as a potential mechanism for alleviating loneliness, particularly existential loneliness, alongside more common social methods.

Public health emergency, such as COVID-19 pandemic, generally has severe impacts on mental health in public. One of the often-neglected negative consequences is that the control and prevention measures of COVID-19 in the post-epidemic can pose psychological threats to public mental health. This study aimed to seek the factors and mechanisms to alleviate this mental health threat based on a sample of university students in China. Accordingly, this study proposed an environmental-individual interaction model examining the multiple mediating effects of self-esteem and resilience in the association between social support and anxiety among university students during COVID-19 control phase. A questionnaire containing multiple scales were administered on the sample of 2734 Chinese university students. Results indicated that social support negatively predicted anxiety through the serial mediating effects of self-esteem and resilience sequentially. Our results highlight the impact of social support and the internal factors on relieving anxiety among university students in COVID-19 control phase. Findings suggest that effective psychological intervention tools should be designed and offered to college students to reduce anxiety distress and improve mental health in the post-epidemic era or the similar situations in the future.

Dependency and care assistance during old age has become an increasing focus of debate and change in society. Consequently, people must cope with diverse and even contradictory values and ideas about the issue. This study aimed to understand the social representations of dependency based on the dialogical approach of the Social Representations theory. Total 26 semi-structured interviews were conducted in the Basque Country (north of Spain) with relatives, care workers, and older adult care recipients. The thematic analysis results show that social representations are articulated around seven themes, reflecting people's tensions and contradictions at cultural, organizational, and relational levels. In addition, the polyphasic and dynamic nature of social representations is discussed, addressing current public debates about the meaning of dependency in a changing sociocultural context.

The present study sought to better understand the extent to which negative perceptions of people who receive unemployment benefits is due to their poverty status, their unemployment, and/or their receipt of income support payments. We sought to differentiate these three factors in a vignette-based experiment drawing on a large Australian general population sample (N = 778). Participants rated the personality and capability of two fictional characters. The key experimental manipulation of employment status and benefit receipt was embedded in description of other characteristics. Participants rated vignette characters who received unemployment benefits less favorably on personality (conscientiousness, emotional stability, agreeableness), competence, and warmth than characters described as having a job, as being poor, or as not having a job but without mention of receiving benefits. There was a gradient in the strength of negative assessments across these conditions, but only warmth, conscientiousness and employability distinguished between individuals receiving unemployment benefits and individuals without a job but no reference to benefit receipt. This study provides new insights showing that receiving benefits due to unemployment contributes to negative perceptions over and above the effects of poverty or being unemployed.

Unsolicited sexual behaviors that constitute sexual violence appear to be commonplace in nightlife settings in many countries and bystander intervention might be a way to eliminate them. However, few researchers have investigated the barriers and facilitators that affect Australian bystanders’ likelihood to help, and these should be considered in the planning of bystander intervention programs. Using a grounded theory approach, we interviewed fourteen men and women about their perceptions of factors that might influence bystander behavior in Australian nightlife settings. The categories identified suggest that it is difficult for nightlife patrons to notice and identify sexual violence occurring around them. Further, nightlife patrons respect other patrons’ right to engage in sexual behavior and will not intervene unless the recipient has been harmed by the behavior. Patrons are, also, much more likely to help when the recipient is a friend or a woman. Traditional bystander intervention programs on their own might not sufficiently address these barriers. Programs will also need to address patrons’ perceptions of sexual violence and the prevailing social and gender norms in nightlife settings regarding sexual behavior.

Concerns surrounding juvenile delinquency point to neoliberal notions of youth responsibilization with no regard to the violence of structural oppressions and daily hardships, in which deviance could be a form of response. This article discusses the influence of and response to structural violence and oppression that resulted in daily hardships for youth, and for some youth, deviant behaviors that pushed them toward the criminal justice system. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 64 participants and 532 pieces of youth writings in Hawaiʻi, this study examines how experiences with structural violence and oppression pushed youth in Hawaiʻi toward institutional control. Findings indicate the role racialized and gendered structures developed through colonialism had in the lives of youth in Hawaiʻi and their difficult experiences with family instability and patriarchal control that result in youth engaging in deviant coping mechanisms. Youth exhibited resilience in the face of hardship and methods of control that speak to the lack of choices youth have in places with histories of colonialism.

Websites, blogs, and message boards of the “manosphere” are dedicated to a worldview that celebrates hegemonic masculinity and decries feminism. In a reflexive thematic analysis of 227 posts (389,189 words) from two manosphere message boards (The Red Pill and Incel), we analyzed how posters viewed women and men. We found that beliefs about women and men formed an ideology comprised of (a) evolution-based views of gender essentialism, (b) an informal psychology of women's motivations, and (c) a typology of men. Women were seen as having three primary motives: to deceive and manipulate men, to promiscuously satisfy their own sexual needs, and to trade sex for power. Men were seen as falling into two (The Red Pill) or three (Incel) types: alpha men who are attractive, powerful, and sexually successful, beta men who give to women as their only route to sexual interactions, and incel (involuntarily celibate) men who are too unattractive to achieve sexual success. Posters acted on these beliefs either to improve themselves (The Red Pill) or give up on life and endorse suicide and/or violence (Incel). We discuss these beliefs and actions in relation to theories of sexual aggression, the psychology of radicalization, and the American Psychological Association's Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men.

The study examines whether qualitative and quantitative characteristics of intercultural service encounters (ISEs) between majority customers and ethnic minority service providers are associated with better attitudes toward the entire minority group. The study was conducted in Israel through an online survey of 402 respondents. The study revealed that the customers derived pleasure from high perceived value of services and from taking advantage of a good deal. This pleasure, in turn, was positively related to attitudes toward the outgroup. High perceived value of service was associated with higher frequency of ISE that may be interpreted as repurchasing behavior. Overall, the total effect of perceived value of services between majority population and ethnic minority on attitudes toward this minority was significant and positive. Thus, economic beneficiality, which is a very important component of ISE, may contribute to improving relationships between groups in deep conflict.

This paper explores how the individual values of self-direction, power, and benevolence predict career decisions (self- or paid employment). By observing heterogeneity in career patterns across countries, this research examines the moderating effect of cultural contexts (gender egalitarianism, performance orientation, and collectivism) on this relationship. Blending the theory of human values (THVs) and institutional theory (IT), we test hypotheses using the World Values Survey (WVS) Wave 6 data and GLOBE cultural dimensions from 21,286 individuals in 26 countries. The findings show that only self-direction value increases the likelihood of being self-employed. However, the post-hoc analysis offers more insightful findings: the decision towards innovative entrepreneurship instead of routine self-employment is explained by all values of self-direction, power, and benevolence, together with individualistic culture. Overall, this study finds that the influence of individual values is greater than cultural context on career choice and it differs between self- versus paid employment and innovative entrepreneurship versus routine self-employment.