Suchergebnisse

In 2004, Russia experienced its most appalling act of terrorism in history, the 53-hour seizure of School No. 1 in Beslan, North Ossetia. Approximately 1,200 children, parents, and teachers were taken hostage, and over 330 were killed, hundreds more seriously wounded, and all severely traumatized. In 'After Violence', Debra Javeline analyzes the aftermath of this large-scale violence with evidence from almost all direct victims.

Few, if any, political scientists currently study climate change adaptation or are even aware that there is a large and growing interdisciplinary field of study devoted not just to mitigating greenhouse gas emissions but to reducing our vulnerability to the now-inevitable impacts of climate change. The lack of political science expertise and research represents an obstacle for adapting to climate change, because adaptation is fundamentally political. Technical advances in adaptations for infrastructure, agriculture, public health, coastal protection, conservation, and other fields all depend on political variables for their implementation and effectiveness. For example, adaptation raises questions about political economy (adaptation costs money), political theory (adaptation involves questions of social justice), comparative politics (some countries more aggressively pursue adaptation), urban politics (some cities more aggressively pursue adaptation), regime type (democracies and authoritarian regimes may differently pursue adaptation), federalism (different levels of government may be involved), and several other fields of study including political conflict, international development, bureaucracy, migration, media, political parties, elections, civil society, and public opinion. I review the field of climate change adaptation and then explore the tremendous contributions that political scientists could make to adaptation research.

Some individuals may be predisposed to agree or acquiesce more than others. If the predisposition is cultural, then studies of public attitudes that rely on questions with agree-disagree response sets may mistake response effects for substantive differences among ethnic groups. Reported here are the results of six experiments in question form conducted on a 1997 nationwide survey of 1,986 adult Kazakhstanis (47% Kazakh & 34% Russian). Acquiescence bias is found among the entire sample, but is stronger for ethnic Kazakhs than for ethnic Russians. Acquiescence bias is thus a problem of both question format & individual proclivities. Attitude statements with agree-disagree response sets are less valid measures of public attitudes than balanced questions with forced-choice response alternatives, & their use could cause erroneous inferences about ethnic differences in attitudes. 5 Tables, 1 Figure, 1 Appendix, 45 References. Adapted from the source document.