Taylor is testing three hypothesis. First, to see individuals who view sexual television content will have more permissive sexual attitudes and beliefs than individuals who do not. Secondly, testing to see if individuals who view sexual television content as realistic are more likely to have sexual attitudes and beliefs than those who view them to be less realistic. Lastly, Taylor is testing to see if individuals who read sexual television content will have more permissive sexual attitudes and beliefs than whose who view similar behaviors visually. Taylor does this through 188 undergraduates who are taking an introductory communications courses. They were then divided into two control groups and an experimental group. The experimental group received stimulus materials, whether watched or read, randomly. The first control group received paragraphs from magazines and the second received nonsexual television content. After viewing, participants were asked to measure sexual attitudes and beliefs in a survey. To test sexual attitudes and beliefs, Taylor used a Premarital Sexual Permissiveness Scale. This includes a five-item measure of statements that include sexual intercourse on the first date, casually dating, serious dating, and so on. Sexual beliefs were measured by asking to estimate how many males and females were sexually active. When viewing clips, they were asked to indicate on a scale from one to five (five being realistic). For the first hypothesis, it was found that there was no significant difference between sexually permissive attitudes, estimates of sexually active male peers or female peers. For the second hypothesis, there was a difference between different kinds of sexual content and how realistic it is. Lastly, viewing had an effect on sexual beliefs with those with are higher in perceived realism. An interesting find was that gender played a major affect on beliefs about a females sexual activity.

Taylor, Laramie D. 2005. “Effects of Visual and Verbal Sexual Television Content and Perceived Realism on Attitudes and Beliefs”. The Journal of Sex Research (42) (2).Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 130-137.

In the article “Conditions for Effective Children’s Participation, According to Children’s Voices”, the authors investigate the conditions that children’s participation in different settings, such as school, leisure, or student council, should fulfill. The multiple case study, spanning 6 different educational experiences, used information provided by children to developed 3 main categories found to make child participation more meaningful and authentic. These catagories were: 1) acknowledgement of the rights of childhood, 2) how the participation-based experience works, and 3) the role of educators.

To delve into their topic of child participation, the researchers focused on the question: “what conditions must be gaurunteed by children’s participation experiences in  order to be effective from the standpoint of the children participating in them?”. In order to answer this query, the authors collected data consisting primarily of the opinions and attitudes of children. This was done using focus groups of children ages 10 to 12 who were involved in the experiences. Then, the data was analyzed through the process of organizing it, coding it, and then using the process of data triangulation with the catagories of school, leisure, and community to obtain results. Interestingly, the results obtained from asking children their thoughts were similar to the results obtained by other projects on the same topic which did not do so.

I found the research project to be interesting and well done. I appreciated the idea behind the project as well, I feel that asking those involved in such participatory experiences about their ideas is a vital part of improving any such experiences. I also appreciated the attention to minimizing the range of the project age-wise, and by selecting equal numbers of each gender of participant, so as to ensure a better set of results. My only complaint is that the authors indicated they chose groups with shared cultural and social values, which I fear may have limited the range of the study too much, so that it might not be applicable to a broader range of individuals. Otherwise, I found the article to be engaging and the research to be commendable.

AGUD, I., Ana María, N. C., & Asun, L. B. (2014). Conditions for effective children’s participation, according to children’s voices. Revista De Cercetare Si Interventie Sociala, 46, 9-21. Retrieved from http://0-search.proquest.com.books.redlands.edu/docview/1665217576?accountid=14729

In the article Raising Achievement Test Scores of Early Elementary School Students Through Comprehensive School Counseling Programs, Christopher Sink makes the argument that, “, elementary and secondary schools have not been immune to the accelerating pace of societal evolution (e.g., socio-technological  advances or
changes in the family structure)”. There fore in this study he seeks out to answer the following broad research question: Does school counselors’ work in elementary schools with well established  CSCPs promote  higher  academic achievement in students? Because the question is rather broad the research created a list of alternative hypotheses to respond to the question posed. The hypotheses are as followed: (1) After accounting for SES differences, third and fourth grade students enrolled in elementary schools with a CSCP will significantly out perform those  children who were attending schools with no systemic guidance and counseling program on various formal measures of academic achievement ; (2) After accounting  for  SES differences,  third  and fourth grade students enrolled continuously in elementary schools with at least  5 years of CSCP implementation will significantly  out perform those children who were attending schools with no systemic guidance and counseling program on various formal measures of academic achievement; (3) After accounting for student differences in SES, there are significant  gender differences  across achievement domains in  schools with or without a well-established CSCP.

Sink was able to answer his research question by telephone surveying 150 randomly selected public schools in Washington State. Of the total population of the school 39% of students enrolled were eligible for U.S. Government financial assistance. Thirty one of the school surveyed did not have a educated counselor on staff.

Once the surveys were conducted they were coded and tabulated. Once data was coded the numerical data was analyzed for normality’s. Sink’s hypotheses were tested using a general linear model. The independent variables used consisted of length of enrollment, groups, and gender. Student ITBS, and WASL achievement test scores were used for dependent variable.

This study is helpful for the current study at hand, because it offers perspective and work done towards having sources within the school for students who may be struggling. Hence I found this article to be very beneficial, and offered great insight in the results section.

The image of the Welfare Queen has played a prominent role in the public discourse of welfare which in turn shapes public opinion. This demonstrates the politics of disgust, the Welfare Queen was used to categorize all welfare recipients as “lazy.” Our past president Ronald Reagan described women having countless children to collect many checks and that they would trade food stamps for cigarettes and alcohol. The gendered racism that recipients of welfare have to face were overall attributed to their own personal failures rather than the structural flaws of the market. It is no coincidence that 90% of welfare recipients are single mothers. The overall study demonstrates that there is an intersection of race, gender, class on public opinion on welfare.

The data was taken from two public opinion surveys, the “Poverty in America” survey conducted by National Public Radio, Kaiser Family Foundation and the Kennedy School of Government, and the “Race and Politics” survey conducted by the Survey Research Center at UC Berkeley.  Logistic regression models were used to analyze the data, as well as Beta to determine the strength of relationship in the variables from the Poverty in America survey. In the National Race and Politics Survey they asked “experimental questions in which a hypothetical welfare mother with a 10 year old child is described to half of the respondents as a black woman, and to the other half of the respondents as a white woman. Respondents are then asked to predict how likely it is that this racially defined hypothetical welfare mother will “try hard to find a job in next year” and how likely it is that she will “have another child to get a bigger welfare check.”  The findings revealed that 54% believed that welfare recipients do not try very hard to find work and 61% thought mothers had children for financial gain. The respondents opinions are influenced by race, gender, and class. Overall, the public opinion of the Welfare Queen shapes their views on welfare.

Foster, C. H. (2008). THE WELFARE QUEEN: RACE, GENDER, CLASS, AND PUBLIC OPINION. Race, Gender & Class, 15(3), 162-179. Retrieved from http://0-search.proquest.com.books.redlands.edu/docview/218869573?accountid=14729

The purpose of this research was to find what types of food markets are available in three communities, and the quality of the food provided at these locations. The study areas were chosen based on their demographic representation of income and race in Los Angeles. The data collection was fairly simple, consisting of recording where any sources of food were located, and what type of source, such as a supermarket, convenience store, fast food outlet, sit-down restaurant, food truck etc. At relevant locations, they also recorded what specific foods were available, which they hose from a USDA list of “low cost and healthy foods,” called the Thrifty Food Plan. They also conducted a couple of focus group interviews to gain some insight to the experiences of residents of the study areas. The data analysis was just descriptive. The article’s background description established that supermarkets are the best source of healthy foods that re preventative of obesity-related health problems, but they found that supermarkets made up less than two percent of the available food sources in these areas. Additionally, supermarkets were found to have 100% of the foods listed on the Thrifty Food Plan, while convenience stores (which were second most common after fast food), were found to have around half of these items, but always carried low-nutrition snack foods. They found in their focus groups that there are several barriers to getting healthy food, mainly cost and distance, so the interviewees mostly ate fast food. They conclude that food access is, indeed, “a problem in urban Los Angeles.”

Azuma, A. M., Gilliland, S., Vallianatos, M., Gottlieb, R. (2010). Food Access, Availability, and Affordability in 3 Los Angeles Communities, Project CAFE, 2004-2006. Preventing chronic disease: Public health research, practice and policy, 7 (2). Retrieved at http://scholar.oxy.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1032&context=uep_faculty

This article focused on pesticide use in the Central Valley of California. The specific question examined how estrogenic compounds, from the degradation of pesticides over time, travel through groundwater or runoff into rivers and aquifers. Estrogenic compounds are known to cause cancer and mutations in organisms, from alligators to water fowl, and there presence in water is of major concern. This study collected samples from various areas of runoff and infiltration into groundwater, through satellite images and data from the California Integrated Pest Management Program. Once they had their samples they ran t-tests to see the correlation with distance from farm runoff and spray areas to see if there was a correlation, which there was. The data needed was action and events for both the amount of pesticides used and where as well as the collection of water samples both contaminated and uncontaminated. Their collection method was simple observation. The analysis was correlational and a simple T-test was used. Overall I think the research was a good examination into the effects of pesticide use, however by only sampling waters close to surface they may have underestimated the amounts of estrogenic compounds in the water. The most interesting piece of information from this article is the fact that the degradation of pesticides doesn’t remove its damaging effects to the environment, but almost makes it worse, as estrogenic compounds.

Johnson, M. L.; Salveson, A.; Holmes, L.; Denison, M. S.; Fry, D. M. Bulletin of Environmental Contamination & Toxicology. Apr98, Vol. 60 Issue 4, p609-614. 6p. Web. March 24 2017. <http://0-web.a.ebscohost.com.books.redlands.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=14&sid=2a064c2e-00ca-438c-9218-25fda37290db%40sessionmgr4010&hid=4204 >

In the united states today, an alarming amount of high school students drop out of school every year. Each student has their own individual reasons for dropping out, but what are the contributing factors to these reasons? What pushes them over the edge? The Bill and Melinda gates foundation collected survey data through focus groups in a project in 2006 that aimed to discover some of the factors, which push students out of schools. The objective of their project was to, “paint a more in-depth picture of whom these young people are, why they dropped out of high school, and what might have helped them complete their high school education. We wanted to give their stories and insights a voice, and to offer our own views on next steps, in the hope that this report could be a further wake-up call to educators, policymakers, other leaders, and the public to summon the national will to address the high school dropout epidemic.”

Rather than producing a spreadsheet of data, through this method they compiled their data into a series of different answer categories. They provide percentages within the different responses but other than that, the data is not number based. Interestingly enough, 47% of students said that they dropped out of school because they simply were uninterested in the classes being taught. Another factor of interest was parent involvement. There were a section of questions devoted to the parent’s involvement in the student’s academic lives both while they were thriving in school and when they were struggling. They discovered that only 59% of students said that their parents were involved in their education. 68% of Students whose parents weren’t involved in their education said that only when their parents discovered that their child was on the verge of leaving school did they become involved. They addressed other factors in this study as well from the students from attendance records, to teacher effectives and collective motivation. Overall 74% of students said that if they could go back and change it that would have graduated high school. Most importantly, this study shows us the personal side to the struggle of making through high school which many students face each year. It shows us that even though the majority of them do have large life and carrier aspirations, circumstances in their lives and inadequate responses to those circumstances has led to them dropping out.

This is a very well put together study, which addresses the topic of dropping out from an individual perspective. Rather than collecting the numbers, they instead make this study more about the students and their feelings about what caused them personally to leave school before graduation. Though this study does a good job of hearing the students perspective, it leaves a large hole in the demographic and environmental factors that also most likely played a roll in their failure to complete school.

http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED513444.pdf

The article titled “Sexuality and School Shootings” by Jessie Klein is found in the Journal of Homosexuality. Klein (2006) argues that conventional explanations of lenient gun control laws, media violence, and single parents do not adequately explain school shootings. Klein (2006) suggests that a certain type of bullying called gay harassment is the common pattern in those that perpetrate school shootings. The perpetrators were relentlessly and repeatedly accused by “preps and jocks” of being gay. When boys believe they warrant privilege, and are instead harassed, they may feel driven to avenge the perceived wrong to reclaim a more dominant, powerful, and aggressive masculinity. The topic of this research is bullying, in the specific form of gay harassment, and its relation to school shootings. The proposed research questions by Klein (2006) are, “Is there textual evidence in press reports that characterize the ways in which perpetrators experienced bullying in the form of gay harassment?” and “What interventions can be implemented to end the ongoing vicious cycle of bullying and retaliation rooted in masculine expectations?” The type of data needed for this research is hidden social patterns. The data collection method is content analysis because the researcher analyzes press reports, televised news reports, radio reports, newspapers, and online news sources. Klein (2006) examines these texts to identify patterns in the way the gay harassment phenomenon is portrayed. The data analysis method employed is thematic analysis because the researcher focuses on common patterns between the perpetrators to trace relationships and tie the findings to a wider social trend of hyper-masculinity. This research successfully describes gay harassment in the wider social context of gender expectations placed on young boys. Normalized masculinity places high expectations for boys to display violence, aggression, and dominance. An interesting aspect of this research is the inclusion of the perpetrators’ claims that the adults in the community were aware of the constant ostracizing and harassment by the more powerful students. Therefore, the perpetrators believed the adults contributed to their marginalization. I appreciate that the researcher suggested solutions to gay harassment, such as anti-bullying programs, sexual orientation workshops, school-based support, classroom panel discussions, mediation, and violence intervention.

Klein, J. (2006). Sexuality and School Shootings: What role does teasing play in school      massacres?. Journal of Homosexuality, 51(4), 39-62.

This piece titled “Gender and God’s Word: Another Look at Religious Fundamentalism and Sexism” is written by Charles W. Peek, George D. Lowe, and L. Susan Williams. According to these authors, there has not been enough research done to address whether or not individual measures of fundamentalism more applicable to women have different connections to sexism than the typical group measure. They come out immediately and claim, “Research on religion and sexism increasingly points to fundamentalism- an insistence that the Bible is literally true- as an important religious source of prejudice toward women.” These such sources of prejudice increase as groups become more and more fundamentalist. However, before this study came out, there was not much attention paid to this subject because of an insensitivity to gender. This piece in particular was published in 1991, but it is a good indicator of perhaps the progress gender has made in the last 3 decades.

I was not able to identify a specific research question in this study, but there is an overarching research topic of the connection between sexism and religious fundamentalism as it pertains to individual or group identification. This study identifies that they will be using data from the 1985 and 1988 General Social Surveys in their analysis. In this survey there are measures of attitudes towards women, measures of fundamentalism, and other control variables. Unfortunately (and this is noted as a limitation), this study only presents information from white respondents  because this is what fundamentalism research focused on during this time. The variables in this case are sexism, fundamentalism, and other, which included education, occupational prestige, marital status, and female work experience. After statistically analyzing the data, it is found that it is group affiliation with fundamentalism that makes males linked to greater sexism. These groups, however, are not found to influence women, most likely because of their tendency to stay away from them. For women, it is their individual convictions, rather than group,  that affect their gender attitudes. Women who are less religious tend to be less sexist. All of these findings confirm the authors’ idea that gender needs to be addressed with great importance when talking about religious fundamentalism, and it should no longer be pushed to the side. Their final push is for gender sensitivity to be thrust into the religion and sociological fields.

I thought this article was really interesting, especially because it is so relevant to the topic I am looking into myself. My only concern with it is its publication date. It is important to have this information, but having it be published almost 30 years ago makes me wonder what has changed since then. My assumption is that a ton has changed, and gender has begun to look different within fundamentalist groups.

Peek, C., Lowe, G., & Williams, L. (1991). Gender and God’s Word: Another Look at Religious Fundamentalism and Sexism. Social Forces,69(4), 1205-1221. doi:10.2307/2579309

“What’s missing? Anti-racist sex education!”, found in Volume 14 of Sex Education published in 2014, was one of the limited articles and research projects I could find on anti-racist education in combination with sex education curriculum. The paper focuses on sex education in Canada, however, I found the topics discussed relevant to U.S sex education policies. The United States curriculum for sex education is approximately 10 years behind Canadian policies that continue to grow stronger, more inclusive, and comprehensive.

The article begins by defining racism and arguing for including anti-racist theory education into sex ed curricula. Excluding race in topics of sex education, thus exluding minority communities from the discussion,  can be seen as an act of racism.  Anti-racist theory in sex education works to “challenge the education institution to see students as more than neutral, context-free youth and to expose the ways edcuation shaped and continues to shape race, class and gender on all students” (Whitten and Sethna, 415.) Although sex education curriculum in Canada, and the new California sex education act, have both worked to be more inclusive of LGBTQIAA topics, anti-racist perspectives are rarely included.

The article goes over the history of sex ed in Canada, which is very similar to the history of sex education in the United States. Sex ed began as a priority of the home and focuses specifically on controlling young peoples sexual behavior by teaching preventative sex practices and portraying sex in a negative light. When schools began teach sex education the curriculum was incorporated into health and physical education. The curriculum has become increasingly more inclusive, but, although working to include different sexualities and genders identities into the mix, have yet to come up with a specific anti-racist program. Most programs in Canada, including the new program in the U.S, tout ‘culturally sensitive’ sex education programs. These, however, are problematic as they “often rely on ethnic and racial stereotypes of groups, portraying racialised peoples as monolithic and static and decontextualising their experiences from a history of colonization, racialisation, and persistent inequity” (Whitten and Sethna, 416.) These programs often promote the idea of the difference in sexual practices in minority  communities as stemming from the absence of factual health information rather than social inequity and issues of access.

The article continues to define race, ethnicity, and multi-culturalism. Multi-culturalism being another factor that sex education programs must overcome in order to be truly inclusive. “Multi-culturalism falls short both by refusing to recognize the existence of social stratification based on the intersection of gender, class, race ethnicity, (dis)ability and other social oppressions (Whitten and Sethna, 419.) While celebrating differences can be a good thing, not acknowledging the history of racism, colonialism, and imperialism is not.

The article ends by presenting a through argument for inclusion of race in sex ed, and provides research analysis involving the coding of sex education curriculum in order to see the real amounts of inclusion involved in the sex ed programs children are given when in Canada.

This article was especially helpful to me as a lot of the problems Canada faced in 2014, California is facing in 2017.

Amanda Whitten, Christabelle Sethna. 2014. “What’s missing? Anti-racist sex education!” Sex Education, 14 (4).