University of Arizona Phoenix in Tucson: Arizona\u27s Department of Communication\u27s Campaign for Fairness and Survival

This article provides information on a campaign for fairness and survival by the Department of Communication at the University of Arizona in Tucson, as of September 1995. The faculty of the department consists of four professors and six associate professors. The department uses few adjunct faculty. The undergraduate curriculum is carefully constructed to provide students in the first year with an introduction to the field, along with courses on communication skills. Two years ago, the university initiated an intensive self-study of all its administrative units, including al academic departments. The Program for the Assessment of Institutional Priorities, or PAIP, as it came to be called, required that each academic department submit a report on its activities, which was to include information on its scholarly accomplishments, student load and contributions to graduate and undergraduate instruction among others

Dimensions of Majority and Minority Groups

Several definitions of majority and minority groups can be found in the social psychological literature. They involve numeric size, power/status, and counternormative position, but size is most commonly used in experimental research to manipulate minority/minority status. Does this practice mirror real-world conceptualizations? To address this question, 77 participants were asked to describe majority and minority groups using a structured openended measure. Content analysis of their responses revealed that majority and minority groups were conceptualized along eight dimensions, which included power, number, distinctiveness, social category, group context, dispositions, and being the source or target of behavior. Although these dimensions were relevant to both majorities and minorities, they often were applied differentially. Also, minorities were associated with more divergent thinking and viewed more negatively than were majorities. On the basis of these findings, a new typology of groups was proposed that could be used in future experimental research to advance our understanding of majorities and minorities

Reflections on Gabriel Mugny’s Contributions to Attitude-Centric Theory and Research on Minority Influence

Pérez and Mugny (1987) extended the scope of minority influence research in a classic study that explicitly drew a distinction between in-group and out-group minority influence sources and their effects on majority acceptance. Their study also refocused the field from a social influence, perception-oriented view to a more dynamic persuasion, attitude-centric orientation. This paper reflects upon the generative nature of the original research, and that which followed, with a reflection on its impact on our own theorizing and research. The current work is focused on factors that affect the fundamental processes of minority influence, as viewed from the perspective of the leniency contract. Important factors considered in the model include (a) the in-group or out-group nature of the influence source, (b) the subjective or objective features of the judgment task, (c) the role of conflict with, and accommodation to the minority, (d) the genesis and potential outcome of indirect change effects on focal attitudes in response to persuasive minority communications and (e) the importance and utility of considering the structural interconnections among attitudes, and their implications for focal attitude change. Research by Mugny and his colleagues stimulated these and other important features of contemporary scholarship on minority influence. Progress and understanding of the intriguing minority-induced change process, a clear departure from the classic majority-based persuasion model, owes a great debt to Gabriel Mugny and his team of talented collaborators

Food reputation and food preferences:Application of the Food Reputation Map (FRM) in Italy, USA, and China

Given the food challenges that society is facing, we draw upon recent developments in the study of how food reputation affects food preferences and food choices, providing here a starting standard point for measuring every aspect of food reputation in different cultural contexts across the world. Specifically, while previous attempts focused either on specific aspects of food or on measures of food features validated in one language only, the present research validates the Food Reputation Map (FRM) in Italian, English and Chinese over 2,250 participants worldwide. Here we successfully measure food reputation across 23 specific indicators, further grouped into six synthetic indicators of food reputation. Critically, results show that: (a) the specific measurement tool of food reputation can vary across cultural contexts, and that (b) people's reputation of food products or categories changes significantly across different cultural contexts. Therefore, in order to understand people's food preferences and consumption, it is important to take into account the repertoire of cultural differences that underlies the contexts of analysis: the three context-specific versions of the FRM presented here effectively deal with this issue and provide reliable context-specific insights on stakeholders' interests, perspectives, attitudes and behaviors related to food perceptions, assessment, and consumption, which can be effectively leveraged to foster food sustainability

Principles and methods of social research, 3rd ed./ Crano

xx, 484 p. : ill, tab.; 25 cm

Principles and methods of social research, 3rd ed./ Crano

xx, 484 p. : ill, tab.; 25 cm

Desenvolvimento de uma medida de autoconceito em português

Este é um trabalho metodológico, no campo da psicometria, visando a adaptação de uma escala de medida de autoconceito (Janis e Field) para o português. O Estudo 1 aqui relatado descreve o procedimento adotado para tradução e cálculo de fidedignidade do instrumento traduzido, tendo-se obtido um alpha de 0.86 com uma amostra de 286 estudantes do Colégio de Aplicação da UFRGS. O grau de fidedignidade de cada item foi também verificado através da técnica de correlação item-escore total. O estudo 2 relata a pesquisa em que se verificou a validade do instrumento, através das relações entre categorizações que professores fizeram do autoconceito dos alunos e escores no referido instrumento de medida.This is a methodological study in the field of psychometris, with the aim of adapting a sellf-concept scale (Janis-Field) to the Portuguese language. Study 1 describes the translations procedures and the establishment of the reliability of the translated scale. An alpha of 0,86 was obtained with a sample of 286 students from the Colegio de Aplicação of the UFRGS. The reliability indices of each item were also verified through the item-corrected total score technique. Study 2 reports on the validity check wich was done by comparing scores on the test to teacher's categorization of students into high, medium, and low self-concept