Kerryn E. Bell’s article, “Gender and Gangs: A Quantitative Comparison”, discusses her investigation of the risk factors involved in gang membership. Using data taken from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) Bell seeks to answer the question: “are there gender differences in the risk factors associated with gand membership ?”. The data Bell took from the records of Add Health was collected from a national sample of children from grades 7 to 12, in the form of surveys, questionnaires, and in-home interviews. Using this data, Bell looked at neighborhood characteristics, parent-child relationship quality, family disadvantage, safety, and numerous other characteristics to see if they influenced the gang involvement of boys and girls differently. As a whole, she found little variation between how risk factors affected each gender. Interestingly, however, Bell did find differences for Hispanics and immigrants. Hispanic girls are far more likely to join a gang than boys, while first generation girls tend to be less likely than their male counterparts. It should also be noted that this quantitative research differed from qualitative work on the same subject in that it indicates neighborhood disadvantage has a minimal affect on gang membership.

As a whole, I found the article to be interesting and thorough. I was impressed that Bell was carful to use data taken from a national sample, and appreciated how she discussed minor variance between genders and gang-members vs non-members while still emphasizing that these differences were not pronounced enough to be concluded as the results of the study. However, she does admit that because the data is taken from schools, it does not include serious gang youth, meaning that the research must be considered in the light that it is based on incomplete data.

crime and Delinquency, Vol. 55, #3, July 2009, SAGE Publications

“Don’t Rock the Boat: Women’s Benevolent Sexism Predicts Fears of Marital Violence” Francisca Exposito, M. Carmen Herrera, and Miguel Moya- Universidad de Granada

http://0-journals.sagepub.com.books.redlands.edu/doi/full/10.1111/j.1471-6402.2009.01539.x

The article examines how Spanish women’s ideology affects their perception on whether a hypothetical husband feels threatened by his wife’s success at work. Benevolent sexism is a sex role attitude where women accept their traditional status as a wife and mother in order to receive men’s protection and provision. A social perception study was conducted. The subjects were 210 undergraduate psychology students at the Universidad de Granada, they read a vignette where a husband and wife argued over her job promotion. Women’s benevolent sexism confirmed the hypothesis that they perceived the husband to feel more threatened by his wife’s success and thus would be more likely to be violent towards her. When provided with background information on the husband’s ideology (traditional, egalitarian, no information) this had no significance. Other data produced  was the scores for ASI (Ambivalent Sexism Inventory)  used to measure hostile sexism and benevolent sexism. Thus women who scored higher on benevolent sexism (compared to those who scored low on benevolent sexism) perceived aggression even when the man was egalitarian. The method of data analysis used is, “multiple regression analysis to assess participants’ perceived probability that the husband was threatened as a function of women’s benevolent and hostile sexism scores and the husband’s ideology.” In conclusion, the findings supports the hypothesis that women who endorse benevolent sexism are in psychological conflict where they abide by traditional norms and are threatened if they challenge the status quo; however, they have a desire for intimacy with their partner. The data produced is valid because it further confirms past research where men who are gender traditional are more likely to be aggressive towards women.

Herrera, M. Carmen, and Miguel Moya. “Don’t Rock the Boat: Women’s Benevolent Sexism Predicts Fears of Marital Violence.” Psychology of Women Quarterly 34, no. 1 (March 2010): 36-42. doi:10.1111/pwqu.2010.34.issue-3.

In Journal of International Studies Vol 38 No 1 the 2009 article   “‘A Fresh Crop of Human Misery’: Representations of Bosnian ‘War Babies’ in the Global Print Media”, 1991-2006 written by R. Charlie Carpenter discusses the effect that media had on not only infants born during the war in Yugoslavia in the ’90s but also the population as a whole in general. And how that media coverage effected the world’s perception of what was going on during that time. One of the topics I’m interested in is Sarajevo and the steps the city has taken towards recovery since the end of the war. However I’m also interested in the media’s role and what effect they had on it. Carpenter mentions how media. He specifically Western media and how it “has been severely criticized for its role in human rights reporting during and after the war, particularly around the sensitive issue of sexual violence” ( 33) which I’m surprised to hear because as dishonest as the media can be at times I would have thought that in volatile situation like this where the entire country is at war and a city (Sarajevo) is under siege the media would have been much more direct and honest. The topic of sexual violence in the war is something I had never heard prior to this article. However if the media is covering the conflict and the conditions of those suffering why would they cover something as sensitive as sexual violence with dishonesty? I understand that it’s their job to cover the latest events but have some integrity as well.

The Serbs were not just a part of violence that involved ammunition they were also reported to be involved in raping of young mothers. According to Carpenter there were “121 instances where the perpetrators of rape are identified as ‘Serb'” (39) which is horrible and is an aspect of the war I had no idea.

The article Changes of Extreme Climate Events in Latvia by Zanita Avotniece1 / Maris Klavins1 / Valerijs Rodinovs1, focuses on the topic of the recognizably increasing climate, specifically in Latvia, and the effects the changes have on human health, agriculture, forestry, and other categories. All elements of the climate system, including: air/water temperatures, precipitation, river runoffs, ice and snow cover, and many others, are affected by the change in climate.  Reports have shown that near the surface of the Earth, their have been significant worldwide increase in mean temperature, suggesting that climate is changing. Characteristics of climate change not only include changes in mean values, but also changes in the variability of climate indicators and extremes.(extreme heat events and heat waves, extreme precipitation, floods…). This article investigates the changes of indexes describing positive and negative temperature extremes together with intense precipitation as well as the structural change in extreme climate phenomenons in Latvia. The accurate data gathered by this investigation showing the climate fluctuations in a small nation in Europe, I think will be interesting to some people interested in climate change. I myself was interested in the information and data shown by the investigation, especially about the extreme climate events impact on agriculture and human health.

Data was gathered by using trend analysis of long-term changes in the frequency of extreme climate events. Another form of data collected was Climate Data collected daily by 14 major meteorological observation stations in Latvia. Variable data, which included maximum/minimum and average daily temperatures and daily precipitation, was collected by Latvian Environment, Geology and Meteorology Centre, and weather stations between years 1950-2010. Assessment of the impacts and occurrence of the climate event was done through the investigation of changes of indexes in Latvia.

Citation Information: Scientific Journal of Riga Technical University. Environmental and Climate Technologies. Volume 9, Issue , Pages 4–11, ISSN (Online) 2255-8845, ISSN (Print) 1691-5208, DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/v10145-012-0010-1, December 2012

https://www.degruyter.com/downloadpdf/j/rtuect.2012.9.issue/v10145-012-0010-1/v10145-012-0010-1.pdf

In the United States it has been shown that males have dominated the faculties of American universities in the fields of mathematics, engineering and science. Many research projects have been conducted to study this phenomenon, attempting to determine if gender actually affects intelligence. Many studies have demonstrated that females preform at higher levels when it comes to subjects requiring phonological sequencing and males preform better in analog imaging. But when it comes to gifted students, are the discrepancies still the same? That is what Paula Olszewski-kubilius and Seon-young Lee wanted to test. They did this by exploring “Gender and Other Group Differences in Performance on Off Level tests: Changes in the 21^st Century and taking organizational data from the off level test scores from 257, 829 gifted students between the years of 2000 and 2008. Of those students 111,796 took the SAT, 94,054 took the ACT and 51,976 took the EXPLORE. Their participants were 52.2 % male and 47.8% female, all between the ages of 4^th to 8^th grade. In their study, socioeconomic and racial status of the participants were also assessed, in an attempt to see the effects those factors had on the performance of the students. The study focused on three questions, the main question being “Are there differences between the scores of male and female students on the math portion of the SAT, ACT and EXPLORE tests and the importance of these differences?” They analyzed their data using  the method SPSS 16.0. For the SAT scores, specifically, they discovered that over all males averaged higher in the math portion while the females averaged higher in the reading portion.

While the study appears to be well done, there were many terms I did not understand and no explanation as to what they were. Nonetheless they were very thorough with their research and gathered a rather large sample size in an attempt to represent a decent portion of the gifted population. One fact that I found very interesting was that true to their stereotypes, Asian students over all scored the highest mean scores on the math and reading tests.

Olszewski-Kubilius, P., & Lee, S. (2010). Gender and Other Group Differences in Performance on Off-Level Tests: Changes in the 21st Century. Gifted Child Quarterly, 55(1), 54-73. doi:10.1177/0016986210382574

“Voters’ Attention, Perceived Effects, and Voting Preferences: Negative Political Advertising in the 2006 Ohio Governor’s Election.” by Jennette Lovejoy, Hong Cheng, and Daniel Riffe question how an individuals political interest is influenced through campaign news, advertising, and negative advertising. The authors conducted a statewide survey and found that individuals who stated that they paid attention to advertisements and negative advertisements experienced effects on themselves and others.  The authors conclude that this finding probably comes from the election race itself.  The authors state the two research questions being asked: Does candidate preference predict attention to political ads in general and to negative political ads in particular? and How well do candidate preference and attention to political ads in general and to negative political ads in particular predict beliefs about the effects of those ads? To gain this information they phoned randomly selected numbers and conducted surveys/questionaries through the demographic of Ohio. The respondents were given a five-point scale, one being not interested at all to five being very interested to show their interest in the governor’s race. They were also asked about the issues that the candidates spoke about and were given a scale to one meaning that they paid no attention to five meaning that they pay a lot of attention.  Lastly, they were asked if they pay attention to political advertisements on television using a scale from one being not at all to five being a great deal. The authors found that political interest was related to whether or not an individual pays attention to political advertising and negative advertising.  An interesting finding was that negative advertisements did not influence a decrease in individuals coming to elections. I think this study illustrates at a shallow level how an individuals political interest is influenced through the media. 

Lovejoy, Jennette, Hong Cheng, and Daniel Riffe. “Voters’ Attention, Perceived Effects, and Voting Preferences: Negative Political Advertising in the 2006 Ohio Governor’s Election.” Mass Communication and Society 13.5 (2010): 487-511.

Joseph Laycock’s “Where do they get these Ideas? Changing Ideas of Cults in the Mirror of Popular Culture” examines how new religious movements (NRMs) are affected by  popular culture, specifically movies and television, more than perhaps tv news stories. Laycock argues that this type of media is able to shape public discourse because it has the ability to create any type of story about NRMs. This therefor creates a population uninformed about the realities of NRMs. In the past, when researchers have looked into hypotheses concerning the media portrayal of NRMs or cults, they have only focused on the news media, but there is so much in today’s popular culture that discusses this topic as well. The author identifies three ways in which pop culture has influenced public perception of NRMs: medicalization, deviance amplification, and convergence. Medicalization applies to a process in which deviant behavior is defined as a medical problem to be treated within the medical profession. Most cults are accused of brainwashing their members, making them liable for medicalization. Deviance amplification refers to a media hype, where media has the ability to distort deviant behaviors into representations of a bigger social issue. Convergence draws a parallel between two or more activities that have been amplified, to make a problem appear even more widespread.

To  address his research topic, Laycock uses data from reports of acts, behaviors, and events, and perhaps some organizational data as well. To collect this data, he went into public records and literature concerning his topic of interest. He looked into public records of televised programs such as The Simpsons, The Manchurian Candidate , Get Smart, Family Guy, King of the Hill, Charmed, South Park, and Dollhouse. The author does recognize, in his conclusion, that to further this study, more quantitative should be done. This would allow for measurement of the effects of fictional narrative on public attitudes. That being said, most of his research is qualitative, looking at documented text, speech, and observable patterns. Overall, this article was really interesting! I do, however, agree with his concluding ideas of adding in some quantitative data to round out the research. I think this is an important subject to take on, given the negative ideas swarming around society as it pertains to cults and NRMs. It is essential to examine how public opinion is so greatly influenced by the media, especially the sectors that are given creative freedom.

Laycock, J. (2013). Where Do They Get These Ideas? Changing Ideas of Cults in the Mirror of Popular Culture. Journal of the American Academy of Religion,81(1), 80-106.

There is an article from the journal, “Criminal Justice and Behavior,” that begins to dive into a more specific segment of my research topic.  I am interested in researching crime and geography relationships and the article, “Linking different types of crime using geographical and temporal proximity,” does a good job of beginning to pull apart my research project using a more specific study. Basically what that means in lay persons’ terms is that the study is trying to analyze if there is a relationship between the type of crime that was committed, where and how far apart they are committed, and how long in between each crime. The number of days of time between each crime is the temporal proximity. The study also focused on specific types of crime. These types were violent, sexual, and property related crimes. The research question presented for this study is, is it possible to link different types of crime using simple aspects of offender behavior? The type of data elicited by this research question is reports of acts, behavior, or events because the researching is finding out what crimes people committed when and where. They did indeed find a relationship between these things in the research that they produced. While this study is a good one to beginning to narrow down such a broad topic of criminal behavior, it at the same time is a little messy. What I mean by messy is that it still leaves room to specify even more and focus the research a little harder. It allows for further research into the topic which is discussed and suggested at the end of the article.

Bond, John., Bull, Ray., Palmer, Emma., Tonkin, Matthew., Woodhams, Jessica. “Linking          Different Types   of Crime Using Geographical and Temporal Proximity.” Criminal Justice      and Behavior. vol.38,  no.11 (2011) November. 1069-1085.

Researcher Mehmet Şükrü Belliba of Adıyaman University researched the topic of student success based off of their socio-economic status, and the student’s home lives. The article written is titled. Who are the Most Disadvantaged? Factors Associated with the Achievement of Students with Low SocioEconomic Backgrounds. In the study Mehmet investigated a variety of applicable students, households, and school factors all aspects which were associated with the performance of students with distinct socio economic status (SES) backgrounds in Turkey. The study was designed to compare the most disadvantaged students with the most advantaged ones. The students were compared in the subjects of reading, mathematics, and science. Mehmet evaluated the students in both economic status in the above areas to check their achievement.

Mehmet posed the following research question; What is the achievement gap between low-SES and high-SES students in Turkey, controlling for various student and school factors, as well as for student characteristics? To answer this question a multiple regression was used. Students’ scores in each subject (reading, math, and science) were set as a dependent variable, SES levels (low-SES and high-SES), as well as other variables such as, gender, language, mothers education, perseverance, home educational resources, quality of school educational resources and physical infrastructures, class size, and total school enrolment, were used as independent variables.

The data for research originates from the most current PISA (Program for International Student Assessment), which was taken by the International Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 2012. PISA intentions for the study were to assess 15-year-old students’ skills in three dominate school subjects—mathematics, science, and reading.

For the study, Mehmet used a quantitative method in which he applied inferential statistics. Inferential statistics is described by Mehmet as “a part of general linear model and includes several methods, such as t-test, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and regression.” The research article goes on to state that for this research, multiple regression model were used. Simply meaning the section, “starts with an articulation of the data sources and the sample used in the study. It then introduces dependent and independent variables. Lastly, it lays out details concerning the analysis of the data” (Mehmet 2015, 696).

The research study seems to be well though and laid out. Some of the terminology was foreign to me, however Mehmet did a good job of going into detail about certain terms that not every reader may have understood. I found those portions of the article to be very beneficial.

In reading the article I thought many of the terms used would come up during later class instructions, and being able to read ahead and have been given explanation as to what the terms meant will benefit me in the future, and possibly my classmates as well.

DOI:

10.12738/estp.2016.2.0257

The Case for Pay to Quit written by Theresa M. Marteau and Eleni Mantzari in Nature is about a randomized trial testing to see the rates of cigarette smokers being able to quit from smoking if given a financial incentive. Four different trials were observed during the research. Two trials gave people the opportunity to gain eight hundred US dollars if they had quit smoking. One was for individuals, and the second was group-based. Similarly, there were individual and group-based observances for a required refundable one hundred fifty US dollar deposit, and then a six hundred fifty US dollar reward if they were successful in quitting. Results showed that there was a ninety percent more acceptance rate for the straight cash rewards than for those who had to deposit their own money. In comparison with individual and group-based trials, there was no difference. Ultimately, results showed that there was an overall quit rate ranging from nine to sixteen percent. This was higher than the usual six percent success rate when done with what the authors name “usual-care.”

Within this article, the topic was financial incentives for cigarette smokers, and the research question was asking about the success rate of giving these smokers a monetary inventive for quitting. To answer this question, the researchers needed acts and behavior and they did this by simple observation. They did mention that they checked cotinine levels in saliva to validate whether a person had quit or not, and so reports and observation would work for that also. Lastly, comparison between two different types of incentive trials was the method for analyzing the data.

In my opinion, I think this is a new and smart idea to influencing people to quit smoking. Everyone can use extra cash and so if given the opportunity to gain some and also become a healthier person, you would think there would be an obvious answer. The only problem that I see with this is how the smoke-free public might take it. This ultimately incentivizes smokers for smoking in the first place and so there would need to be serious discussion if implemented into society.