Who are these Buddhists and How Many of Them are There? Theoretical and Methodological Challenges in Counting Immigrant Buddhists: A Danish Case Study

Religious demography is generally a challenging endeavor and counting and defining religions and religious identities in an Asian context is notoriously difficult. Buddhists in both Asia and the West have a long tradition of gray-zone religiosity, which means that membership and mono-identity is less common than syncretic engagement and hybrid identity. The immigrant Buddhists in the West are generally far more numerous than the convert and new age Buddhists. Their numbers are, however, extremely difficult to ascertain. This article discusses the methodological and theoretical problems in quantifying immigrant religion and the challenges of operationalizing such constraints into concrete methods. The empirical data derive from the author’s engagement in research on Buddhism in Denmark, in which traditions from both Theravada and Mahayana groups are represented. While concrete figures are suggested, it is also concluded that further empirical research as well as comparison with more contexts are necessary for the continued refinement of usable methods in counting immigrant religion.     

Experience of Norwegian Female BRCA1 and BRCA2 Mutation-Carrying Participants in Educational Support Groups: a Qualitative Study

Women identified as BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutation carriers are advised to manage their cancer risk through intensive screening programs and/or by undergoing risk-reducing surgery. The aim of this study was to explore and describe the experiences of female BRCA1/2 mutation carriers living with cancer risk and their experiences with participation in educational support groups (ESG). This qualitative study enrolled 17 (10 + 7) ESG participants in two different ESGs. The focus group interviews were performed immediately prior to and following two ESGs. The data were analyzed using John Knodel’s (1993) practical approach. Three main themes were identified; the women’s expectation and experience with ESG, the feeling of loneliness and isolation, and the feelings of living with “something else.” In this paper we have focused on one of the main themes- the women’s expectation and experience with ESG. This main theme presents four subthemes: the women’s need for unambiguous, clear and unified information from health professionals, the need for social support, the important role of the patient representative, and increased knowledge potentially raising concern. Participation in an ESG for women with BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations can provide relevant information and support in the decision-making process related to risk-reducing surgery.     

Scientific Facts and Methods in Public Reason

Should scientific facts and methods have an epistemically privileged status in public reason? In Rawls’s public reason account he asserts what we will label the Scientific Standard Stricture: citizens engaged in public reason must be guided by non-controversial scientific methods, and public reason must be in line with non-controversial scientific conclusions. The Scientific Standard Stricture is meant to fulfill important tasks such as enabling the determinateness and publicity of the public reason framework. However, Rawls leaves us without elucidation with regard to when science is and is not ‘non-controversial’ and more importantly, we are left without a justification for a stricture which excludes certain controversial beliefs and methods of inquiry from the realm of political justification. In this article, we offer what we deem to be the most plausible interpretation of Rawls’s Scientific Standards Stricture. We then use Rawls’s general theoretical framework to examine various potential justifications for privileging these ‘non-controversial’ scientific methods and conclusions. We conclude that no viable justification is available to Rawls.     

Agreeing in Ignorance: Mapping the Routinisation of Consent in ICT-Services

Many ICT services require that users explicitly consent to conditions of use and policies for the protection of personal information. This consent may become ‘routinised’. We define the concept of routinisation and investigate to what extent routinisation occurs as well as the factors influencing routinisation in a survey study of internet use. We show that routinisation is common and that it is influenced by factors including gender, age, educational level and average daily internet use. We further explore the reasons users provide for not reading conditions and policies and show that they can be grouped in meaningful ways that may delineate different types of routinsation.     

Better Days – A randomized controlled trial of an internet-based positive psychology intervention

The internet seems promising for delivering interventions to enhance well-being in a normal population. The aim of this study was to test the effects of an internet-based positive psychology intervention targeting gratitude, pleasant activities, strengths, mastery, acts of kindness, optimism, flow, attributions, and mindfulness. One-hundred and twelve participants were randomized to the intervention and 94 to the control group, and data were collected at baseline, one, two, and six months after intervention onset. The balance of positive to negative affect increased over time among participants in the intervention group (unstandardized beta coefficient [B]?=?0.07, p?<?0.01), as compared to the controls (B?=?0.02, p?=?010). The intervention worked equally well regardless of participants’ gender, age, or education. However, optimism did not mediate the effect of the intervention on affect balance. In conclusion, the intervention had a small, but significant effect on affect balance among healthy adults.     

A cross‐cultural comparison of verbal learning and memory functions in reading disabled American and Norwegian adolescents

The present study reports the results of a cross‐cultural analysis of the role of phonetic and semantic cues in verbal learning and memory. A newly developed memory test procedure, the Bergen‐Tucson Verbal Learning Test (BTVLT), expands earlier test procedures as phonetic cues are applied in addition to semantic cues in a cued recall procedure. Samples of reading disabled and typically developed adolescents from the US and from Norway were recruited as voluntary participants. The results indicate that the stimulus materials chosen for the memory test are working well in both American and in Norwegian samples, yielding acquisition results comparable to similar list learning procedures, and also yielding high internal consistency across learning trials. The procedure also reliably differentiates between reading disabled samples in both languages, and also yields cross‐cultural differences that seem to reflect differences in transparency and differences in the orthography of the included languages. The BTVLT with its focus on phonetic coding is a promising supplement to established tests of verbal memory for assessment of reading and language impaired individuals.     

Early drinking onset: A study of prevalence and determinants among 13‐year‐old adolescents in Norway

Early drinking onset is associated with different psychosocial adjustment problems among adolescents. The aim of this study was to assess determinants associated with early drinking and to identify factors predicting early drinking onset among adolescents. The study included 1,550 eighth‐graders with a mean age of 13.5 years from 41 schools. A total of 24% (boys 29%, girls 19%) had ever drunk alcohol, while 14% had drunk some alcohol in the last 30 days. Further, early drinking was associated with gender, religion, school performance, smoking and bullying in the bivariate tests. Predictors of early drinking onset were identified by generalized linear mixed models with two multivariable models created. The first model included social and environmental variables. Entering intentions, expectancies, attitudes and norms into the multivariable analysis resulted in a significant improvement of the model fit constituting 86% in the second model. The percentage correctly classified those (56%) who had been drinking in the second model which was two times higher compared to the first model. Gender, religion and smoking emerged as significant predictors of drinking in both models.     

Social Welfare and the Psychology of Food Sharing: Short‐Term Hunger Increases Support for Social Welfare

Do politically irrelevant events influence important policy opinions? Previous research on social welfare attitudes has emphasized the role of political factors such as economic self‐interest and ideology. Here, we demonstrate that attitudes to social welfare are also influenced by short‐term fluctuations in hunger. Using theories in evolutionary psychology, we predict that hungry individuals will be greedier and take more resources from others while also attempting to induce others to share by signaling cooperative intentions and expressing support for sharing, including evolutionarily novel forms of sharing such as social welfare. We test these predictions using self‐reported hunger data as well as comparisons of subjects who participated in relevant online studies before and after eating lunch. Across four studies collected in two different welfare regimes—the United Kingdom and Denmark—we consistently find that hungry individuals act in a greedier manner but describe themselves as more cooperative and express greater support for social welfare.