An exploration of values in ethical consumer decision making

Consumer concern for ethical issues has been well documented across much of the developed world. Research on values is also prominent in the literature. Neglected in consumer behaviour is an understanding of the pertinence of particular values in ethical decision making contexts. This paper outlines the results of qualitative research, which explores those values pertinent to ethical consumers in decision making and the nature of their influence in grocery consumption contexts. A questionnaire was used to ascertain the dominance and nature of values influencing consumer decision making in this context.     

Academic Guidance in Medical Student Research: How Well Do Supervisors and Students Understand the Ethics of Human Research?

Research is increasingly recognised as a key component of medical curricula, offering a range of benefits including development of skills in evidence-based medicine. The literature indicates that experienced academic supervision or mentoring is important in any research activity and positively influences research output. The aim of this project was to investigate the human research ethics experiences and knowledge of three groups: medical students, and university academic staff and clinicians eligible to supervise medical student research projects; at two Australian universities. Training in research ethics was low amongst academic staff and clinicians eligible to supervise medical student research. Only two-thirds of academic staff (67.9 %) and students (65.7 %) and less than half of clinicians surveyed (47.1 %; p?=?0.014) indicated that specific patient consent was required for a doctor to include patient medical records within a research publication. There was limited awareness of requirements for participant information and consent forms amongst all groups. In the case of clinical trials, fewer clinicians (88.4 %) and students (83.3 %) than academics (100 %) indicated there was a requirement to obtain consent (p?=?0.009). Awareness of the ethics committee focus on respect was low across all groups. This project has identified significant gaps in human research ethics understanding among medical students, and university academic staff and clinicians. The incorporation of research within medical curricula provides the impetus for medical schools and their institutions to ensure that academic staff and clinicians who are eligible and qualified to supervise students’ research projects are appropriately trained in human research ethics.     

Should victim impact influence sentences? Understanding the community's justice reasoning

Victim impact statements have been introduced in response to growing community concern about apparent neglect of victims in the criminal justice system. Their use in sentencing is a contentious issue, because victim characteristics such as resilience or fragility can contribute to impacts. Is it appropriate for sentences to be influenced by consequences arising from chance victim circumstances unforeseeable by the offender? In the interest of achieving an optimal fit between the justice system and community expectations, this research examined a neglected question: how does the public reason about the issue? Using offense vignettes presented to 260 people in Western Australia, sentencing decisions were found to vary according to consequences arising from victim characteristics. There was little to indicate participants fully appreciated the issue; thus, further research is needed to clarify how justice reasoning principles are used, and to ascertain whether different decisions are taken when people are informed about the problem.     

Gender Role Stereotyping in Advertisements on Two British Radio Stations

The portrayal of men and women in two differentsamples of British radio advertisements was examined. Itupdated an earlier British study (Furnham &Schofield, 1986) which was recently replicated in Australia (Hurtz & Durkin, 1997). Onehundred advertisements from each of two London basedradio stations were content analyzed into eightcategories referring to the central figure of thecommercial; credibility, role, location, arguments, reward,product, accent and narrator. On both radio stationswomen were significantly more likely to be portrayedpromoting products for self-enhancement and with bodily health and domestic products, and food.There was only one significant difference in portrayalbetween the two stations, suggesting somegeneralizability of these findings. The results arediscussed in terms of development and maintenance ofgender role stereotyping in different aspects of themedia.     

Measurement Models for the Subjective Utility of Children1

Measurement models of subjective child utility were derived from theoretical typologies of expected consequences of children. Maximum likelihood estimates of the goodness-of-fit of each model to observed convariation among 18 indicators of subjective child utility were obtained, using data from 349 wives and 349 husbands. The best-fitting models included three distinct factors: personal rewards, personal costs, and normative rewards.     

Boundary conditions in the common-factor-space,in the factorial analysis of ability

The author arrives at a simple rule for ascertaining when a matrix of correlations, with communalities reducing it to minimum rank, cannot be analyzed into factors such that every column of loadings has at least as many zeros as the number of common factors, as required by Thurstone. A more exact but arithmetically tedious rule is also deduced from Ridley Thompson's boundary conditions, and a correction is made to the latter.     

Functional analysis and treatment of problem behavior evoked by noise.

We conducted a four‐part investigation to develop methods for assessing and treating problem behavior evoked by noise. In Phase 1, 7 participants with developmental disabilities who were described as being hypersensitive to specific noises were exposed to a series of noises under controlled conditions. Results for 2 of the participants verified that noise was apparently an aversive event. In Phase 2, results of functional analyses indicated that these 2 participants' problem behaviors were maintained by escape from noise. In Phase 3, preference assessments were conducted to identify reinforcers that might be used during treatment. Finally, in Phase 4, the 2 participants' problem behaviors were successfully treated with extinction, stimulus fading, and a differential‐reinforcement‐of‐other‐behavior (DRO) contingency (only 1 participant required DRO). Treatment effects for both participants generalized to their home environments and were maintained during a follow‐up assessment. Procedures and results were discussed in terms of their relevance to the systematic assessment of noise as an establishing operation (EO) and, more generally, to the identification of idiosyncratic EO influences on behavior.     

Positive emotion infusions of elevation and gratitude: Increasing help-seeking intentions among people with heightened levels of depressive symptomatology

Three online studies assessed a new approach for increasing help seeking among people with depressive symptomatology (i.e. a positive emotion infusion, PEI). A PEI refers to the induction of positive emotion such that people’s mindsets – including perceptions of help-seeking – are temporarily altered. Study 1 (n = 382) indicated that help-seeking intentions are negatively correlated with depressive symptomatology and positively correlated with elevation and gratitude. Studies 2 and 3 implemented fully randomized experimental designs. In Study 2, two elevation-based (Study 2a, n = 285) and two gratitude-based (Study 2b, n = 338) emotion inductions increased levels of elevation and gratitude, respectively. Results of Study 3a (n = 390) indicate a causal relationship between experiencing the story-based elevation induction and increased help-seeking intentions. The two gratitude-based PEIs (Study 3b, n = 466) were unsuccessful at influencing help-seeking; auxiliary analyses indicate the possibility of iatrogenic effects. Overall, the potential of PEIs was indicated, as was need for caution.     

“Doing Gender” and “Doing Religion” in Science: A Cross-National Examination

Women tend to be both underrepresented in science and overrepresented in organized religion, yet the connection between these two phenomena is rarely examined. With survey data collected among 6,537 biologists and physicists from four national contexts—the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, and India—we test whether science as a social field shapes religious expressions and attitudes differently for men and women. Findings reveal a religious gender gap in India and Italy but not in the United States and the United Kingdom. Further, except in Italy, men had higher odds of perceiving religion and science to be in conflict, believing that their colleagues have a negative attitude about religion, and reporting that science made them less religious. Evidence suggests that men in science may disproportionately internalize normative pressures to masculinize by eschewing religion. Our findings have implications for selection into academic science and the practice of religion among men and women in science.