Value systems of self and of Australian expatriates as perceived by indigenous students in Papua New Guinea

The Rokeach Value Survey was administered to 112 students at Goroka Teachers' College in Papua New Guinea. About half of the respondents ranked the values for self and the remainder ranked for Australian expatriates working in Papua New Guinea. There were several differences in the relative importance assigned to the terminal and instrumental values when the two types of ranking were compared. The students assigned more importance to general social and orthodox religious values, to some moral values, and to values involving rules of conduct related to status and authority when rankings were for self than when they were for expatriates. They ranked stimulus-seeking and materialistic values and values concerned with striving and competence higher in importance when rankings were for expatriates rather than for self. The average value systems (medians) for self and for expatriates were also compared for similarity with those obtained from groups previously tested in Papua New Guinea and in Australia. Similarity coefficients involving average rankings for self were much higher when comparisons were made within each nation than between the two nations. It was doubtful that the students were judging expatriate value systems accurately because similarity coefficients were close to zero (terminal values) and low positive (instrumental values) when average value systems for expatriates were compared with corresponding average rankings for self of Australians actually tested in Australia. Results were discussed in relation to the consequences of discrepancies in value systems between the indigenous population and expatriates and more generally as illustrating the importance of developing an ecology of values within and across nations.     

ACCURACY OF JUDGMENT OF VALUE SYSTEMS: A FIELD STUDY OF OWN AND ATTRIBUTED VALUE PRIORITIES IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA

Australian expatriate students and indigenous Niuginean students in the higher grades of secondary schools in Papua New Guinea ranked either the terminal or instrumental values from the Rokeach Value Survey, first for self then for the other group. Results indicated that there were distinctive differences in the average value systems pertaining to self when the two groups were compared and that neither group was able to make accurate judgments of the value priorities of the other. These results were discussed in terms of the various influences affecting value systems in different national groups, the effects of limited social contact on accuracy of judgment, and the difficulty of making accurate judgments about the value priorities of other groups considered in the aggregate.     

CONSERVATION IN COMMUNITY SCHOOL CHILDREN FROM THE MILNE BAY AND MOROBE PROVINCES OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA

Three hundred and forty primary level boys and girls from the Milne Bay and Morobe Provinces of Papua New Guinea were tested for conservation of number, length, quantity, and area. Relationships observed between schooling, age, sex and conservation confirmed previous conclusions from work in Papua New Guinea about the importance of the first two of these variables for conservation. Comparisons between different language-culture groups suggested that explanations of any lag in achieving conservation in Papua New Guinean children must give attention to specific characteristics of children's environments since groups which were significantly superior performers on some tasks were significantly inferior on others.     

THE BENDER GESTALT VISUAL MOTOR TEST IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA

Although the Bender Gestalt Visual Motor Test has been used across cultures, evidence indicates that performance may be related to differences in experience including exposure to Western acculturation. Thus in Papua New Guinea (PNG), with relatively recent exposure to Western systems of education, it might be expected, particularly in view of available cognitive research data, that performance would lag somewhat by comparison with norms from American or other Western samples. Thus normative data for PNG is required before the V.M.T. may be systematically used for diagnostic work. The present paper describes the V.M.T. performance of 245 children from the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, and 74 Australian children living in the same area. V.M.T. scores were compared also with American data. Consistent with the research on cognitive development in the literature, V.M.T. scores for the PNG children seemed to be about three to four years delayed, though the same kind of decrease in error scores with chronological age was evident.     

Culture contact and national sentiment

This study investigated the relationship between culture contact and national sentiment in the unique social setting of a newly independent nation. The study tested the hypothesis that for a group of Australian expatriate students at a multi-racial school in Papua New Guinea there would be a positive relationship between number of years of residence in Papua New Guinea and positive attitudes towards national independence. A sample of 75 Australian expatriate students answered a questionnaire that included attitude items, Cantril's ladder measures, and various measures relating to social interaction, social distance, and perceived similarity. Results supported the hypothesis and in general they were consistent with its underlying assumptions, although it was noted that a selective migration interpretation of the findings was also possible.     

Remuneration disparities in Oceania: Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands

This paper explores the impact of remuneration differences on workers in the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. In these countries remunerative differences are linked to government policy (in Papua New Guinea) and job contracts (in the Solomon Islands), and have impacted on industrial relations in both settings (strike action). A total of N = 350 professionals (n = 60 expatriates) from 54 organizations in aid, government, higher education and industry (mean response rate = 36%) responded to an organizational survey form. Remuneration ratios between international and local respondents based on the World Bank's index of purchasing power parity approached 9:1. In both sites staff compared pay and benefits (remuneration) packages: Internationally remunerated staff rated their ability higher than their local counterparts did; locally remunerated groups reported more injustice in remuneration, were more demotivated by the gaps, and were more likely to be thinking about leaving the organization. In-country workshops of N = 40 largely local stakeholders from aid and community organizations plus government ministries considered the survey's findings and recommended: in Solomon Islands, (a) introducing a policy of localization, (b) establishing a remuneration commission (already existent in Papua New Guinea), and (c) reducing the remunerative gap; in Papua New Guinea, (d) reversing the post-Independence "dual pay system" (currently official policy), (e) instituting pay-for-performance, and (f) ensuring the existent localization policy is applied to recruitment, selection, and staff career planning and management.     

Value Systems and Social interaction: A Field Study in a Newly Independent Nation1

A field study was conducted in Papua New Guinea to test the hypothesis that extent of social interaction will be positively related to the degree to which individuals of one group perceive that members of the other group share value systems similar to their own (perceived value similarity) and see each other to have something in common (perceived commonality). Indigenous and Australian students at Port Moresby High (a multi-racial school) answered a questionnaire that involved specially constructed items and that also included the Rokeach Value Survey, the Triandis and Triandis Social Distance Scale, and some other measures. Social interaction was assessed by using both direct measures (a specially constructed index, number of good friends in other group) and indirect measures (knowledge and use of Pidgin, social distance). Results for the Australian group showed that the direct measures of social interaction were positively and significantly related to perceived similarity in instrumental value systems and that both the direct and indirect measures of social interaction were positively and significantly related to perceived commonality. But the dependent variables were unrelated to perceived similarity in terminal value systems for this group. There was a general absence of significant relationships between the measures of social interaction and either perceived value similarity or perceived commonality for the indigenous students. Results were discussed in terms of the measures used and certain theoretical issues concerning the determinants of social interaction and the importance of field research.     

STUDIES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA

This paper reviews research dealing with problem solving abilities amongst Papua New Guineans. Studies concerned with individual intelligence tests, group intelligence tests, achievement tests, conservation measures, classificatory skills, and formal operational thinking are considered. Data are discussed which compared the performance of Papua New Guinean children and adults with people elsewhere, and with foreigners resident in Papua New Guinea. As well, important differences within Papua New Guinea related in particular to schooling and language-culture group are noted. By contrast with some previous conclusions about the cognitive skills of Papua New Guineans, it is concluded that while there are differences between some Papua New Guinean groups and groups from English speaking countries in problem-solving performance, developmental patterns appear to be similar. Thus, educated. Papua New Guineans eventually achieve the highest levels of formal thinking.     

CONSERVATION IN COMMUNITY SCHOOL CHILDREN FROM THE MADANG,SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS,AND NORTH SOLOMONS PROVINCES OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA

Three hundred and eight primary level boys and girls from the Madang, North Solomons, and Southern Highlands Provinces of Papua New Guinea were tested for conservation of number, length, quantity, and area. School grade, and age were related to performance in some cases, though sex had little effect. There were significant differences between the language-culture groups tested on three of the four conservation tasks. Since there was little consistency of performance over the four tasks, it was suggested that explanations of the variations of cognitive performance found within Papua New Guinea, and between Papua New Guinean groups and others may need to give attention to specific characteristics of each group's environment.     

Personality Differences Among Navy Occupational Groups

Differences among six Navy occupational groups (Administrative, Technical, Mechanical, Electrical, Construction, and Cooks) were determined for 31 personality and value scales, including the Allport-Vernon-Lindzey Study of Values, the Survey of Interpersonal Values, and the FIRO-B Inventory. Age and Navy experience were controlled by dividing groups into “experienced” and “inexperienced” categories. Significant differences between groups were present for 29 of the 62 comparisons. Most of the variance in test scores among groups could be accounted for by dichotomizing the six occupational specialties into two broad categories, “white collar” (Administrative and Technical) and “blue collar” (other groups). The results suggested relationships between choice of occupational specialty and the value systems, needs, and motivations of individuals in the naval service.     

CONSERVATION IN COMMUNITY SCHOOL CHILDREN IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA

Three hundred and thirty-nine primary level boys and girls from the Jimi Valley area of the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea were tested for conservation of four concepts, number, length, quantity, and area. Schooling, age and sex were related to conservation with some concepts, and there were interaction effects between schooling and age. When compared with other studies the results suggest that there may be considerable differences between language-culture groups within Papua New Guinea, and that the Jimi children themselves show a lag of several years, a lag which increases with the difficulty of the concept tested, in achieving the concepts tested when compared with children from more developed countries.     

A MODEL FOR THE USE OF ATTITUDE SCALES ACROSS CULTURES

To minimize the verbal content of the attitude measurement situation with Papua New Guinea students, a set of pictorial items was selected for use in the place of verbal items. Initially, 150 pictures related to concepts in the Wilson-Patterson Attitude Inventory (WPAI) were described by a group of 50 students. Seventy of these items, those which were described in a consistent way, were presented to 227 students along with a Papua New Guinea version of the WPAI. A final set of 25 pictures was selected on the basis of their discriminative power, internal consistency, and their content validity. Reliability and validity measures and the rotated factor structure of the 25 item pictorial scale were consistent with the WPAI.     

A study of area conservation using a simple method of adjustment

The method of adjustment was adapted to study conservation of area with Papua New Guinea High School students. Subjects were shown a standard field, representing “a block of land”, with a “house” in each corner. An identical comparison field. with adjustable borders was presented under one of two conditions. In one condition the houses were placed along one side, and in the other they were placed randomly about the field. Non-conservers were invited to adjust the borders of the comparison field to match the area of the standard. Non-conservers in the Edge condition reduced, and those in the Random condition increased, the size of the comparison field.     

Women,men, and aggression in an egalitarian society

Vanatinai, a small island society off New Guinea, is egalitarian, with no indigenous formal systems of rank or authority. Assertiveness and autonomy are highly valued as personal qualities and equivalent for males and females. Overt aggression is condemned and violence is rare. Women were the aggressors in four out of five incidents over ten years. Sexual jealousy was the dominant motif in all five cases. This article considers, in historical contexts, indigenous concepts of the gendered person and their relations to anger, violence, and the supernatural aggression of sorcery and witchcraft. The Vanatinai case is evidence that the rarity of intragroup violence, especially of attacks by men on women, is a characteristic of egalitarian societies.An earlier version of this paper was read at the Session on Female Aggression at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, in November 1991. I would like to thank session participants, Douglas Fry, Victoria Burbank, Robert Lepowsky, Florence Lepowsky, and the anonymous reviewers forSex Roles for their helpful comments at various points. The fieldwork in Papua New Guinea on which this paper is based was carried out over a total of eighteen months in 1977–1979, 1981, and 1987. I gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the National Science Foundation, Chancellor's Patent Fund and Department of Anthropology of the University of California, Berkeley, the Papua New Guinea Institute of Applied Social and Economic Research, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the Graduate School of the University of Wisconsin, Madison.     

VALUE SYSTEMS AND ANOMIE IN THREE CULTURES

The Rokeach Value Survey was administrated to three equivalent groups of South Africans - Africans (Blacks), Indians (Browns), and Europeans (Whites) - along with the Srole Anomie Scale. It was hypothesized that a number of differences would occur between these groups based on socio-economic structure of the country, their respective affluence, and traditional cultural differences. Values assigned relatively high importance by the Africans concerned equality and peace, while the Europeans place higher value on friendship and love. Although there were large significant differences between the Black and White groups on anomie, these scores did not correlate very highly with the instrumental or terminal values. These results were interpreted in terms of the history and culture of the three groups and the socio-political structure of the society in which they live. Limitations of research of this kind are also noted.     

The effects of modelling and instruction on the problem-solving performance of preschool children in Papua New Guinea and Australia(1)

Children from preschools in Australia (AUST) were compared with indigenous children from preschools at Hanuabada and Kaugere in Papua New Guinea (PNG). The effects of modelling and instruction, separately and together, on their performance in problem-solving tasks were evaluated. In addition, a within-culture comparison was made of the two PNG groups. ANCOVAS were computed with the factors group (PNG-AUST and Hanuabada-Kaugere), treatment condition (no modelling with no instruction, instruction alone, modelling alone, and instruction with modelling) and sex. Mental and chronological ages were included as covariates. The results showed that (a) the strategy adoptions were more frequent in the instruction with modelling and in the instruction alone conditions than in the control condition and the modelling alone condition was not different from the control condition, (b) PNG children in the three experimental conditions adopted the advocated strategy about three times as often as the Australian children, (c) no differences occurred between girls and boys in strategy adoptions but girls were quicker in completing the tasks than boys, and (d) chronological age was a predictor of group effects. These results were discussed in terms of a possible cognitive developmental mechanism in the performance of modelled behaviours.     

CULTURE,COUNTING AND NUMBER CONSERVATION

Children from 3 remote village populations in Papua New Guinea were administered notational counting and number conservation tasks. The results replicate previous research conducted in the United States that shows children develop the use of counting to mediate the comparison and reproduction of sets prior to understanding number conservation. The significance of these findings is discussed with respect to current models of number development.     

A national survey of health care administrators' views on the importance of various chaplain roles

A random sample of hospital administrators throughout the United States was surveyed about their views on the importance of eleven chaplain roles and functions. The 494 respondents fell into three categories: (1) directors of pastoral care departments (N = 132); (2) administrators of hospitals that have a pastoral care department (N = 180); and (3) administrators of hospitals that do not have a pastoral care department (N = 182). All three groups considered all eleven roles to be relatively important, although administrators of hospitals that do not have a pastoral care department gave lower ratings, overall. Meeting the emotional needs of patients and relatives were seen as chaplains most important roles, whereas performing religious rituals and conducting religious services were seen as least important by all three groups. In all but a few instances, the level of importance that administrators assigned to the various roles were positively related to their ratings of their own religiousness and spirituality (r's = .11 to .26, p < .05).     

International–local remuneration differences across six countries: Do they undermine poverty reduction work?

Despite the rhetoric of a single global economy, professionals in poorer countries continue to be remunerated differently depending on whether they are compensated at a local vs. international rate. Project ADDUP (Are Development Discrepancies Undermining Performance?) surveyed 1290 expatriate and local professionals (response rate = 47%) from aid, education, government, and business sectors in (1) Island Nations (Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands), (2) landlocked economies (Mala?i, Uganda), and (3) emerging economies (India, China). Difference in pay was estimated using purchasing power parity, from the World Bank's World Development Indicators 2007. Psychological measures included self‐reported pay and benefits (remuneration), self‐attributed ability, remuneration comparison, sense of justice in remuneration, remuneration‐related motivation, thoughts of turnover and thoughts about international mobility. We included control measures of candour, culture shock, cultural values (horizontal/vertical individualism/collectivism), personality (from the “big five”), job satisfaction and work engagement. Controlling for these and country (small effects) and organization effects (medium), (a) pay ratios between international and local workers exceeded what were perceived to be acceptable pay thresholds among respondents remunerated locally; who also reported a combination of a sense of relative (b) injustice and demotivation; which (c) together with job satisfaction/work engagement predicted turnover and international mobility. These findings question the wisdom of dual salary systems in general, expose and challenge a major contradiction between contemporary development policy and practice, and have a range of practical, organizational, and theoretical implications for poverty reduction work.