Sampling community discourses as a method for assessing "public opinion"

In working with the topics of racial discrimination and household energy reductions it is clear that just measuring attitudes is no longer sufficient. We need a fuller social context to understand what is said about these topics, as the same words can be used for many reasons. I am working with four new methods for "sampling community discourses" on topics such as racial prejudice, to replace or supplement the measurement of attitudes. The initial analysis is whether the talk functions to get someone to do something directly, to get someone to believe the 'facts', or whether the talk functions for the establishment or maintenance of social relationships. Many problems remain, especially the representativeness of the sampling and keeping as much of the context of the talk as possible

Surveying Persons with Disabilities: A Source Guide (Version 1)

As a collaborator with the Cornell Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Disability Demographics and Statistics, Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. has been working on a project that identifies the strengths and limitations in existing disability data collection in both content and data collection methodology. The intended outcomes of this project include expanding and synthesizing knowledge of best practices and the extent existing data use those practices, informing the development of data enhancement options, and contributing to a more informed use of existing data. In an effort to provide the public with an up-to-date and easily accessible source of research on the methodological issues associated with surveying persons with disabilities, MPR has prepared a Source Guide of material related to this topic. The Source Guide contains 150 abstracts, summaries, and references, followed by a Subject Index, which cross references the sources from the Reference List under various subjects. The Source Guide is viewed as a “living document,” and will be periodically updated

Bad news: analysis of the quality of information on influenza prevention returned by Google in English and Italian

Information available to the public influences the approach of the population toward vaccination against influenza compared with other preventative approaches. In this study, we have analyzed the first 200 websites returned by searching Google on two topics (prevention of influenza and influenza vaccine), in English and Italian. For all the four searches above, websites were classified according to their typology (government, commercial, professional, portals, etc.) and for their trustworthiness as defined by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) score, which assesses whether they provide some basic elements of information quality (IQ): authorship, currency, disclosure, and references. The type of information described was also assessed to add another dimension of IQ. Websites on influenza prevention were classified according to the type of preventative approach mentioned (vaccine, lifestyle, hygiene, complementary medicine, etc.), whether the approaches were in agreement with evidence-based medicine (EBM) or not. Websites on influenza vaccination were classified as pro- or anti-vaccine, or neutral. The great majority of websites described EBM approaches to influenza prevention and had a pro-vaccine orientation. Government websites mainly pointed at EBM preventative approaches and had a pro-vaccine orientation, while there was a higher proportion of commercial websites among those which promote non-EBM approaches. Although the JAMA score was lower in commercial websites, it did not correlate with the preventative approaches suggested or the orientation toward vaccines. For each of the four search engine result pages (SERP), only one website displayed the health-of-the-net (HON) seal. In the SERP on vaccines, journalistic websites were the most abundant category and ranked higher than average in both languages. Analysis using natural language processing showed that journalistic websites were mostly reporting news about two specific topics (different in the two languages). While the ranking by Google favors EBM approaches and, in English, does not promote commercial websites, in both languages it gives a great advantage to news. Thus, the type of news published during the influenza season probably has a key importance in orienting the public opinion due to its high visibility. This raises important questions on the relationships between health IQ, trustworthiness, and newsworthiness

Analisis Karakter Bahasa Alay Kaum Remaja di Kota Makassar

In daily life, human being can never escape from language. There are two types of languages; the standard language and the non-standard languages. In Indonesia, the standard language is Bahasa Indonesia, while the non-standard languages are the languages of vernacular (local languages) and sub-cultural languages (slang, jargon, etc). Nowadays, most of teenagers use the non-standard language to communicate among their friends, which is called slang. There is a newslang in Indonesia which is called Alay language. The Alay language is popular among teenagers since 2008 until now. The purpose of this study were (1) to know the patterns used to modify Alay Language, (2) to know the effect of using Alay language on the standard form of Indonesian language, and (3) to find out the purpose of Alay Language used by teenagers in Makassar. This research uses descriptive analysis method. The research data were taken from the conversations that contained of Alay\u27s words, which were previously made on the internet by Facebook social network users. Other supporting data were the questionnaires. The results of this study indicated that (1) There were no standard rules in modifying Alay Language, but the most common process was Substitution Process with a frequency of 38%. (2) The use of Alay Language had both the positive and negative effects on the existence of standard language, Indonesian language. (3) One of the reasons of using the Alay language was to be called “cool”