Ask: Research and Methods. Volume 17, Issue 1 (2008)

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https://kb.osu.edu/handle/1811/69455

The Quality of the Measurement of Interest in the Political Issues in the Media in the ESS
Oberski, Daniel; Coromina, Lluís; Saris, Willem E. pp. 7-37
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Understanding Refusals
Sztabinski, Pawel B.; Dyjas-Pokorska, Anna; Zmijewska-Jedrzejczyk, Teresa pp. 39-84
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How Can We Account for Intersectionality in Quantitative Analysis of Survey Data? Empirical Illustration for Central and Eastern Europe
Dubrow, Joshua Kjerulf pp. 85-100
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Decomposition of Long-term Changes in Political Opinions According to Group-Specific Markov Processes
Tomescu-Dubrow, Irina pp. 101-113
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The Attitude of Poles towards Primary Disease Prevention and Health Promotion
Lignowska, Izabella; Borowiec, Agnieszka; Slonska, Zofia; Makowska, Marta pp. 117-126
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Now showing 1 - 5 of 5

The Attitude of Poles towards Primary Disease Prevention and Health Promotion
(IFiS Publishers, 2008) Lignowska, Izabella; Borowiec, Agnieszka; Słońska, Zofia; Makowska, Marta
Primary prevention and health promotion actions bring varied effects which do not always correspond to expectations of those who implement them. The source of that discrepancy might be seek in the diversification of people’s attitudes towards institutional actions aiming at the change of their behaviour. People’s attitudes towards primary prevention and health promotion institutional actions and their determinants have not been of much interest to researchers so far. This is why the current knowledge of them is exceptionally poor. The purpose of this article is to present the design of the research project “Lay meanings of health and life orientations of Poles and the attitudes towards prevention and health promotion” conducted by Institute of Cardiology in Warsaw. The project’s aim is to identify attitudes towards institutional educational actions being undertaken within primary prevention and health promotion area, and most of all to recognize their determinants and to assess the frequency of their occurrence.
Decomposition of Long-term Changes in Political Opinions According to Group-Specific Markov Processes
(IFiS Publishers, 2008) Tomescu-Dubrow, Irina
;In this paper I use longitudinal data for Poland to test the assumption that political opinion change through time is not entirely due to some universal and time-constant processes; rather, it depends on the initial conditions in a person’s state. Information on Poles’ evaluations of the past socialist regime available for repeated intervals, and over a sufficiently long time period—ten years—allows me to decompose long-term changes in assessment of socialism into short-term change, and the reliability of responses according to group-specific Markov processes. I obtain three types of stochastic matrices: Mt, t+10, Mt, t+1, Mrel = R, where M refers to a matrix of opinions in time t by opinions in subsequent time, t refers to specific years, and R is the reliability matrix from the measurement of opinions in one-month period. To assess the fit of the observed transition matrix for the 10-year period as a linear combination of matrices Mt, t+1 and Mrel, I apply the random effect maximum likelihood function in STATA, with the bootstrap option for obtaining the standard errors of the coefficients. Results demonstrate that Markovtype processes do not have significant explanatory power for long-term change in opinions about socialism. Substantively, this means that the ‘subjective’ legacy of the past, namely peoples’ views of the former regime, matters.
How Can We Account for Intersectionality in Quantitative Analysis of Survey Data? Empirical Illustration for Central and Eastern Europe
(IFiS Publishers, 2008) Dubrow, Joshua Kjerulf
Qualitative research in political science and sociology commonly explores intersectionality, but practical methodological guides for the quantitative researcher are few. I examine methodological challenges in testing intersectionality theory by comparing and contrasting two most frequently used statistical approaches to the quantitative analysis of intersectional demographics: the unitary, or additive approach and the multiplicative approach. To illustrate these approaches I use the European Social Survey (2006) and focus on gender, ethnicity, and class, and their intersections, to explain soft political protest in Central and East European countries. Logistic regression with dichotomous explanatory variables, including multiplicative interaction terms and their main effects, is an acceptable way to explore variants of intersectionality theory and related hypotheses regarding cumulative disadvantage. The findings warrant the following guidelines for cross-national quantitative analysis of intersectionality: (1) multiplicative interaction terms are the best available way to measure an intersection as an identity beyond the sum of its parts; (2) because intersectionality frequently calls for more than two variables, care must be taken with the interpretation of main effects and higher and lower order interaction terms; and (3) each intersection has time and space-specific consequences. Accounting for intersectionality in the quantitative analysis of large cross-national survey data sets is an opportunity to advance the intersectionality paradigm.
Understanding Refusals
(IFiS Publishers, 2008) Sztabiński, Paweł B.; Dyjas-Pokorska, Anna; Żmijewska-Jędrzejczyk, Teresa
The paper presents findings from a qualitative study (depth interviews in the one-to-one and dyad format), held with European Social Survey round 3 refusers in Poland. Its objective was to gather insights into reasons behind negative attitudes towards participation in surveys. Our research has shown that there is a need to distinguish between ‘active’ refusals and cases where surveys are ignored. In cases of ‘active’, conscious refusals there are some underlying reasons for refusal that could be challenged. On the other hand, social isolators ‘by choice’ make automatic refusals, without much thinking and, therefore, conversions are hardly possible in such cases.
The Quality of the Measurement of Interest in the Political Issues in the Media in the ESS
(IFiS Publishers, 2008) Oberski, Daniel; Coromina, Lluís; Saris, Willem E.
It is simply impossible to know all about the world by one’s own experience. Therefore, the media have an important role to play in informing people about events that occur and the interpretation of these events. However, people do not have to pay attention to this information. There is a significant difference between people’s interest in a topic and following it in the media. Given the importance of the media for opinion building in Europe, the European Social Survey (ESS) included questions about the media in its questionnaire. In this study we concentrate on the measurement of “Interest in Political Issues presented in the Media”. In the context of political orientation, this variable plays an important role. We evaluate the quality of the measurement instrument and the comparability of the measures across the European countries involved in the ESS. External validity of the instrument will be studied by examining whether relationships suggested in the literature for this measure are indeed found.

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