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Pressure groups may be divided into 2 classes: those which speak for a particular section of the community & those which organize people with similar att's. The diff between them lies in the fact that it is the task of the former to reflect a particular interest of a group represented & of the latter to try to persuade people to subscribe to its point of view. Few attitude groups (AG's) have members of their own, but they can rely on the support of particular sections of society. They are predominantly Mc & Uc in composition. Members provide the groups with lobbyists & money. The most direct form of lobbying is interviewing Members of Parliament, but it is also important to have members scattered about the country to ask questions during elections. The AG's usually enjoy private patronage; less often the membership is large enough to provide the necessary funds by subscription. The AG's are pol'ly less influential & important than others, though some welfare societies have been consulted on legislation. The AG's are also less likely to produce pol'ly important people. IPSA.

This paper discusses the semantics of so-called de re propositional attitudes. According to the standard Kaplanian analysis, the semantics of such dicta contains existential quantifica­tion over functions that map the attitude holder and the object of their de re attitude to an individual concept by which the attitude holder identifies the object. This existential quantifi­cation has a wider scope than the universal quantification over possible worlds that is general­ly associated with the semantics of attitude dicta. We explore examples of disjunctive de re attitudes and show that these dicta have truth conditions that cannot be grasped by the stand­ard analysis. To account for them, we propose a revision of the theory of concept generators and show how the revised theory makes correct predictions.

In recent years, political discourse and election results appear to be more polarized in western countries but is this associated with increasing attitude polarization of their general public? To answer this question, many different polarization measures have been proposed in the literature but no systematic empirical comparison exists. In an exploratory analysis of 4155 attitude distributions on 11-point scales from the European Social Survey, we find that most polarization measures for single attitude distributions correlate strongly with the average attitude discrepancy between randomly selected pairs. We propose this as a catch-all measure for polarization because it can be decomposed into components related to different groups. By analyzing attitude distributions of the left–right political self-placements and several other topics, we find that distributions are typically not unimodal or bimodal, but show more so a structure with up to five modes. We exploit this structure by fitting a model with five latent groups of moderates, extremists, and centrists. Finally, we use the decomposition of polarization with respect to these groups to analyze polarization and its different aspects across topics, countries, and time establishing an overview and new perspectives on single attitude polarization in Europe.

With a background in sociolinguistics, this paper presents the theoretical, methodological and epistemological issues the author was forced to negotiate in conducting the apparently simple task of investigating a few dozen people's attitudes towards the English influence on their own language. The paper discusses the fundamental epistemological shortcomings of different approaches to attitude research. Three different orders of analysis are attempted and reflected upon, a standardized quantitative analysis, a discourse analysis and a deconstructive, nonessentialist analysis. It is the author's firm believe that this critical examination of methods is on the one hand essential for academic approaches to attitude research, and on the other essential in informing the public - you and me - about the mechanisms of opinion polls which underlies so much modern political work. In this respect, the papers "failure" to set up a new and improved approach to attitude research, and its content to point out the shortcomings of the current approaches, may not be a failure as much as a conscious plea to do away with the notion of a objective or neutral investigation of opinions.

With a background in sociolinguistics, this paper presents the theoretical, methodological and epistemological issues the author was forced to negotiate in conducting the apparently simple task of investigating a few dozen people's attitudes towards the English influence on their own language. The paper discusses the fundamental epistemological shortcomings of different approaches to attitude research. Three different orders of analysis are attempted and reflected upon, a standardized quantitative analysis, a discourse analysis and a deconstructive, nonessentialist analysis. It is the author's firm believe that this critical examination of methods is on the one hand essential for academic approaches to attitude research, and on the other essential in informing the public - you and me - about the mechanisms of opinion polls which underlies so much modern political work. In this respect, the papers "failure" to set up a new and improved approach to attitude research, and its content to point out the shortcomings of the current approaches, may not be a failure as much as a conscious plea to do away with the notion of a objective or neutral investigation of opinions.

Lebens- und Arbeitssituation von Arbeitnehmern in Frankreich.

Themen: Beurteilung der Entwicklung des Lebensstandards; Wohnsituation
und Gartenbesitz; Besitz und Anschaffungspläne für langlebige
Konsumgüter; eigene Arbeitslosigkeit in der Vergangenheit und
Einschätzung der Arbeitsplatzsicherheit; Arbeitszufriedenheit und
Aufstiegsmöglichkeiten; Charakteristika der eigenen Berufstätigkeit;
Beurteilung der Arbeitseffizienz und der Kompetenz der Mitarbeiter im
Betrieb; Beurteilung der Gewinnsituation des Unternehmens und der
Möglichkeit von Lohnerhöhungen; vermuteter Zusammenhang zwischen
Lohnerhöhungen und Preissteigerungen; Urlaubsverhalten; Beurteilung des
Systems der sozialen Sicherung; Höhe der Ersparnisse; ideale
Wochenstundenzahl; Vergleich des Lohnniveaus mit anderen Firmen; Ausmaß
der Gewerkschaftsaktivität im Betrieb; Beurteilung der
Gewerkschaftsarbeit und Interesse an der Arbeiterbewegung; Rangfolge der
Zufriedenheit von Arbeitern in ausgewählten Ländern; perzipierte
Klassenunterschiede und soziale Ungerechtigkeiten im Lande; politisches
Interesse und Mediennutzung; eigene Wahlbeteiligung; Ortsgröße.

Demographie: Alter (klassiert); Schulbildung; Beruf; berufliche
Position; Einkommen; Wohnsituation; Parteipräferenz; Besitz langlebiger
Wirtschaftsgüter; Mitgliedschaft.

Interviewerrating: Schichtzugehörigkeit des Befragten.