Suchergebnisse

The Internet is a critically important research site for sociologists testing theories of technology diffusion and media effects, particularly because it is a medium uniquely capable of integrating modes of communication and forms of content. Current research tends to focus on the Internet's implications in five domains: 1) inequality (the "digital divide"); 2) community and social capital; 3) political participation; 4) organizations and other economic institutions; and 5) cultural participation and cultural diversity. A recurrent theme across domains is that the Internet tends to complement rather than displace existing media and patterns of behavior. Thus in each domain, utopian claims and dystopic warnings based on extrapolations from technical possibilities have given way to more nuanced and circumscribed understandings of how Internet use adapts to existing patterns, permits certain innovations, and reinforces particular kinds of change. Moreover, in each domain the ultimate social implications of this new technology depend on economic, legal, and policy decisions that are shaping the Internet as it becomes institutionalized. Sociologists need to study the Internet more actively and, particularly, to synthesize research findings on individual user behavior with macroscopic analyses of institutional and political-economic factors that constrain that behavior.

Criteria for scale selection and evaluation / John P. Robinson, Phillip R. Shaver, and Lawrence S. Wrightsman -- Measurement and control of response bias / Delroy L. Paulhus -- Measures of subjective well-being / Frank M. Andrews and John P. Robinson -- Measures of self-esteem / Jim Blascovich and Joseph Tomaka -- Social anxiety, shyness, and related constructs / Mark R. Leary -- Measures of depression and loneliness / Phillip R. Shaver and Kelly A. Brennan -- Alienation and anomie / Melvin Seeman -- Interpersonal trust and attitudes toward human nature / Lawrence S. Wrightsman -- Locus of control / Herbert M. Lefcourt -- Authoritarianism and related constructs / Richard Christie -- Sex roles : the measurement of masculinity, femininity, and androgyny / Ellen Lenney -- Values / Valerie A. Braithwaite and William A. Scott

For some 70 years, peoples of highly diverse origins and cultures were part of a political system called the Soviet Union. The leadership of the Soviet Union took great pride in attempting to organize that diversity into a "melting pot," in which citizens of each ethnic background were to enjoy the same basic rights and privileges. Extraordinary political effort was expended by Soviet leaders to promote and advertise the success of this union of equals.We will provide an empirical assessment of the attitudes of youth in two former Soviet republics, how they now see each other, and how they feel various minorities in each new republic should be treated politically. It involves the use of a common instrument in each of these new states that was designed to measure how each ethnic group feels about the other former Soviet peoples and basic ethnic policies in their own states. In addition, data on a variety of other political and social issues are examined, primarily to examine whether certain quality of life indicators are more positively responded to in a former Soviet republic than in Russia proper.