Research Ethics in Japanese Higher Education: Faculty Attitudes and Cultural Mediation

Principles of research ethics, derived largely from Western philosophical thought, are spreading across the world of higher education. Since 2006 the Japanese Ministry of Education has required universities in Japan to establish codes of ethical conduct and ensure that procedures are in place to punish research misconduct. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 13 academics in a research-intensive university in Japan, this paper considers how research ethics is interpreted in relation to their own practice. Interviewees articulated a range of ethical issues connected with data gathering and interpretation, applying for and using research funds, relationships with peers and research subjects, and the dissemination of results. The paper also explores the effect of personal values and cultural norms on the Japanese interpretation of research ethics identifying the impact in terms of the treatment of graduate research students and decision-making processes.     

Impact of Culture and Context on Psychosocial Adaptation: The Cultural and Contextual Guide Process

The growing diversity of the American population requires of counselors an increased understanding of inter- and intracultural factors. All clients have culture, and contextualized cultural variables can and do affect an individual's ability to adapt to his or her environment. Adaptation difficulties typically produce concerns that further affect the individual's functioning. Counselors need to incorporate contextualized cultural factors into their conceptualization of the individual's concerns and the treatment process. Use of the Cultural and Contextual Guide Process to facilitate inclusion of contextualized culture in the counseling process is discussed and a case study is used to exemplify the process.     

中国文化价值观和未来时间取向对幸福感的影响

幸福感是个体根据自定的标准对其生活质量的整体性评估。本研究探讨了中国文化价值观对大学生幸福感的影响,并揭示了时间取向在中国文化价值观和幸福感间的中介作用。结果表明,中国文化价值观可分为刻苦上进、自然知足、重视家庭、谦逊克己、团结和谐、正义利他、服从权威和中庸守序等八个维度;自然知足、正义利他和谦逊克己与幸福感显著正相关,并通过未来取向的中介作用影响幸福感体验。     

A Comparative Study of Educational and Cultural Determinants of Adolescent Values

This article compares the results of three surveys in adolescent values. The subjects comprise young people with a modal age of 15 years from three countries‐‐England, Saudi Arabia and the United States. The contrasting educational systems of these countries are described with particular reference to the place of religious education within their curricula. An open‐ended questionnaire, designed to prompt statements from young people about their values, is introduced and its provenance is described. Similarities but also significant differences are found in the values expressed across the three cultures. Most marked is the high value placed on parents and friendship by the English young people, the importance attached to being well adjusted and feeling good about oneself in the American group and the prominence given to Islam by the Saudi Arabian adolescents.     

Cultural Values and Racial Identity Attitudes Among Asian American Students: An Exploratory Investigation

The content and structure of cultural value orientations were investigated in a group of Asian American undergraduate and graduate students. Cultural value differences were influenced by the participant's gender and racial identity status. Findings suggest a strong preference for distinct cultural value orientations that reflect both traditional Asian and European American cultural values. Implications for counseling and future research are addressed.     

Adherence to Asian Cultural Values and Cultural Fit in Korean American Undergraduates' Help‐Seeking Attitudes

Differences in and relationships of Asian cultural values, cultural congruity, perception of the university environment, and help‐seeking attitudes for 1st‐and 2nd‐generation Korean American undergraduates (N = 228) were examined. Women reported significantly higher cultural congruity and more positive help‐seeking attitudes than did men. Asian values adherence negatively predicted help‐seeking attitudes for women and 2nd‐generation students only. Implications for Korean American undergraduate support services are discussed, and suggestions are presented for future research.     

Values Voters: The Conditional Effect of Income on the Relationship Between Core Values and Political Attitudes and Behavior

The postmaterialism thesis contends that newer cultural and social justice issues will supplant traditional, class‐based economic concerns as societies become increasingly wealthy. Although macrolevel evidence broadly supports this prediction, individual‐level evidence for the theory in the United States has been sparse. Moreover, alternative theories predict that postmaterialism will not travel well to the American context because religious cleavages that divide the major parties will be most salient. We test the postmaterialism thesis at the individual level using unique data that enable us to evaluate citizens' value‐preference structures across income levels, as well as the conditional effect of income on the relationship between individuals' ranked value preferences and political attitudes and behavior. Consistent with the theory, greater income strengthens the association between egalitarianism and ideology, partisanship, evaluations of President Obama, and presidential vote choice, and weakens the relationship between moral traditionalism and these same variables. However, income does not moderate the association between economic security and individuals' identities, evaluations, or behavior. Additionally, value‐preference hierarchies are quite similar across income groups after controlling for partisanship and ideology. The results lend insight into the nature of value‐ and income‐based cleavages in American politics.     

中美大学生性别角色平等态度比较研究

20世纪70年代以来,性别角色态度的跨文化研究一直是性别研究中的热点问题。霍夫斯泰德(Hofstede)认为．性别化(男性化与女性化)是文化差异的维度之一。在男性化社会里,两性的社会角色分化比较明显,承担着传统的社会与家庭角色;而在女性化社会里,两性的性别角色出现了部分整合．即男性进入了女性的世界,女性也承担了部分男性的角色。他认为美国属于一个比较男性化的社会。     

Values at Work: The Impact of Personal Values in Organisations

This paper reviews and integrates past research on personal values in work organisations, seeking to portray the role personal values play in shaping the choices and behaviour of individuals in work settings. We start by addressing the role of values in the occupational choice people make. We then review research on the relationships of personal values to a variety of behaviours at work. We continue with discussing the multiple paths through which managers’ values affect organisations and their members. In the last section, we address the interplay between organisational levels, and discuss the congruency between personal and organisational values and its implications for organisations and their employees. Together, the research reviewed indicates how the broadness and stability of values make them an important predictor of behaviour at various levels of the organisation. We end by discussing directions for future research on values in organisations.     

The Impact of College Education on Rape Myth Acceptance,Alcohol Expectancies,and Bystander Attitudes

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of education on rape myth acceptance, alcohol expectancies, and bystander attitudes. A sample of 126 community members and college students who had consumed alcohol within the past 90 days were administered surveys. College experience was unrelated to rape myth acceptance, alcohol expectancies, and bystander intentions. In line with previous research, two rape myth subscales were inversely related to bystander attitudes. In regard to alcohol expectancies and bystander attitudes, only one subscale was marginally significant. Ancillary analysis indicated that rape myth acceptance varied as a function of age, with older individuals less likely to support rape myths.     

The Missing Link: On Strengthening the Relationship Between Values and Attitudes

Three experiments that test whether the activation of values may result in a change in the relationship between the activated value and connected attitudes are discussed. Participants were primed with the value universalism and subsequently asked for their attitude toward organically grown food. Our results strongly suggest that values are more likely to significantly influence attitudes when the relevant value is activated and the link between the activated value and attitude is activated as well. However, merely activating a specific value is not sufficient to instigate a significant change in the relationship between a value and its related attitudes.     

Faith and Understanding: Specifying the Impact of Higher Education on Religious Belief

This study examines the impact of educational enrollment and attainment on several measures of religious belief using nationally representative panel data. Although college does not appear to substantially alter the religious beliefs of most emerging adults, findings do reveal a modest increase in skepticism toward super‐empirical religious beliefs among college students and graduates compared to those who have never attended any form of postsecondary education. This effect is dependent on college type, with students attending elite universities exhibiting the greatest increase in skepticism. Apart from changes in super‐empirical belief, graduating from college modestly increases preferences for institutionalized religion while simultaneously reducing adherence to exclusivist religious belief. Faculty commitment to secularism, the degree of student academic engagement, and developing social identities may play a role in religious belief change, particularly at elite universities.     

A Cross-Cultural Examination of the Relationship between Egalitarian Gender Role Attitudes and Life Satisfaction

In the present study, we investigated the relationship between egalitarian gender role endorsement, gender role satisfaction, and satisfaction with life among women in two cultural contexts, Kurdistan in Iraq and Norway, which differ widely in their acceptance of gender inequality according to the World Values Survey and the UN Gender Inequality Index. We predicted the relationship between egalitarian gender role endorsement (measured by the ENRICH- Equalitarian Roles Scale) and gender role satisfaction would vary across these two cultural contexts, but that gender role satisfaction would predict satisfaction with life in both cultures. Responses from 899 female university students (252 Kurdish and 246 Norwegian student teachers; 211 Kurdish and 190 Norwegian student nurses) confirmed our hypotheses. Egalitarian gender attitudes more strongly predicted gender role satisfaction in Norway than in Kurdistan (student teachers: r = .17 vs .07; nursing students: r = .37 vs. .18), but gender role satisfaction predicted life satisfaction in both cultures (r = .40 and .47; r = .49 and .47, respectively). Analyses confirmed that the mediating role of gender satisfaction was moderated by country. Our results shed light on the important role of gender satisfaction in explaining cultural differences in the relationship between egalitarian gender role attitudes and life satisfaction.     

The Impact of Social Threat on Worldview and Ideological Attitudes

Research has shown that social threat correlates with ideological authoritarianism, but the issues of causal direction and specificity of threat to particular ideological attitudes remain unclear. Here, a theoretical model is proposed in which social threat has an impact on authoritarianism specifically, with the effect mediated through social worldview. The model was experimentally tested with a sample of undergraduates who responded to one of three hypothetical scenarios describing a future New Zealand that was secure, threatening, or essentially unaltered. Both threat and security influenced social worldview, but only threat influenced authoritarianism, with differential effects on two factorially distinct subdimensions (conservative and authoritarian social control attitudes) and with the effects of threat mediated through worldview. There was a weak effect of threat on social dominance that was entirely mediated through authoritarianism. The findings support the proposed theoretical model of how personal and social contextual factors causally affect people's social worldviews and ideological attitudes.