1,720,958 research outputs found
Assessing environmental activism among young adults: development and validation of the YA-EAS scale
No full textIn response to the ongoing climate crisis (Hopkins, 2020), young adults have become a significant force advocating for environmental causes, engaging in a range of actions from moderate activities like sit-ins and marches to more extreme forms such as blocking traffic and symbolic artifact destruction (Arya & Henn, 2021). Understanding the extent of environmental activism among young adults is therefore crucial to channeling this passion. Although measures like the Environmental Action Scale (Alisat & Reimer, 2015) exist to assess environmental activism, many of these instruments primarily target general populations without specific consideration for young adults. Given the unique challenges this demographic faces regarding environmental issues, there is an urgent need to develop and validate measurement scales tailored explicitly to their context. This research aims to address this gap by introducing the Young Adults Environmental Activism Scale (YA-EAS), a comprehensive tool designed to measure environmental activism specifically among young adults (age 18-26). The YA-EAS aims to differentiate between extreme and non-extreme behaviors. In Study 1, an exploratory factor analysis involving 300 participants revealed a reliable scale with two factors: "extreme activism," representing engagement in radical actions, and "non-extreme activism," indicating moderate or conventional involvement in environmental causes. Additionally, to assess the scale's structural validity, participants evaluated the relevance of YA-EAS items to environmental activism and the perceived extremism of the mentioned behaviors. In Study 2, using a new sample of young adults (N=300), a confirmatory factor analysis validated the two factors identified in Study 1. Furthermore, correlations were examined between the two YA-EAS subscales and relevant variables to evaluate the scale's convergent and discriminant validity
Stability and Change in Intolerance of Uncertainty and Its Association with Interpretation Bias in Social Situations: A Longitudinal Study of Italian Adolescents
Full text linkBackground: Intolerance of Uncertainty (IU) is a transdiagnostic factor measured using the Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale-Revised (IUS-R). This study evaluated the stability and change in adolescents' IU over a three-month period using a modified version of the scale. Methods: A two-wave study was conducted, with 290 adolescents responding to an online survey at baseline and 199 at follow-up. The original IUS-R was modified to probe the rating of the current perceived state of IU, rather than typical experience. The link between IU variability and the development of interpretation bias in ambiguous social situations at follow-up was explored. Structural Equation Modeling and Linear Mixed Model analyses were performed to assess the longitudinal measurement invariance and responsiveness of the Modified IUS-R scale. Results: The scale demonstrated good psychometric properties and full measurement invariance. Individual participants showed significant variability in baseline IU levels but not in the degree of change. A reliable change in scores was observed in 8% of adolescents. The Modified IUS-R predicted interpretation bias in social situations at follow-up. Conclusions: Significant inter-individual-level variation in IU suggests this tool may be useful for detecting changes in IU and predicting significant health outcomes. Future studies should further address the assessment of changing IU with longer timeframes
Representations of Populism, Pandemic, and War Among Italian Citizens of Different Political Orientations: A Psycho-Linguistic Analysis of Their Associative Productions (2019–2022)
No full textPopulism is characterized by the coexistence of antithetical categories that create a contrast between the people and institutions and between the people and ‘others’ (e.g., elites or other outgroups). This polarization is built on dynamics linked to the valorization of the ingroup seen as pure, good, and honest people—and to the stigmatization of the outgroup, politics in general, and corrupt elites—seen as bad, immoral, and harmful to the people. The present work explores this polarization through the representations of populism, pandemic, and war constructed by Italian citizens of different political orientations over four years (2019–2022). Our research is framed on the theoretical tradition of social representations (SR), which privileges free associations to study representations’ most profound and unconscious aspects. To retrieve these social representations, we used five stimulus words (S-Ws) linked to populism—PEOPLE, LEADER, ELITE, PARTY, POLITICS—three to the pandemic—COVID, NATURE, SCIENCE—and two to the Russian-Ukrainian war—PEACE, and WAR. Our analyses were synchronic (on the associations of the voters of four parties, regardless of the year) and diachronic (on the associations of the voters of four parties in the four years). Based on the literature and previous empirical investigations, we formulated some research questions for the synchronic analysisSynchronic analysis and conducted an explorative study for the diachronic one. We sampled N = 2687 Italians balanced for gender (M = 35.3). The participants consisted of Italian voters of three populist parties—Fratelli d'Italia (radical right-wing, n = 393), La Lega (center-right, n = 332), Movimento 5 Stelle (eclectic, more center-left oriented, n = 960)—and a center-left-mainstream partyParty—the Partito Democratico (n = 1002). The associations to S-Ws were elaborated with the VOSPEC step of the SPAD-T statistical package. The representations of populism, the pandemic, and war differ, in terms of processes and contents, according to the political orientations of those who construct them and the socio-political context in which the participants in our survey found themselves. In some cases, the results confirm what is stated in the literature. Thus, for example, they showed the founding role of polarized and antinomic thinkingAntinomic thinking and evaluative and emotional factors in the constructing populist representations. The emotional aspects are then more characterized by negative polarity and mainly concern the voters of populist parties in syntony with their leaders. Then, some results present new elements, such as in evaluating the elites and the politics. For the ELITES, it appears markedly negative only for M5S voters. For POLITICS, it is more negative for M5S and PD voters than the voters of the other two populist parties. Furthermore, for voters of the mainstream center-left party PD, the association of to the LEADER stimulus is highlighted, which does not align with their political culture. A possible interpretation linked to the situation of widespread uncertainty is provided for this result. Concerning COVID, some results confirm what is stated in the literature regarding the denialist and conspiracy-mongering attitudes that emerge among the voters of the two right-wing populist parties. On the contrary, about SCIENCE, the associations appear positive for everyone, with the sole exception of FdI voters who also express some negative associations, a clear signal of the no-vax positions of this political area. Finally, relating to PEACE, more positive associations unexpectedly prevail among right-wing populist voters than the other voters, while for WAR, voters of the mainstream center-left party are those with the greatest negative associations. These results are interpreted in light of the political context preceding the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war, which may have influenced the associative responses
Immigrants’ Threat Perception Increases Polarization and Populist Tendencies: The Mediation Role of Quest for Significance in a Stratified Representative Sample of Italians
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Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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