Values, Framing, and Citizens' Thoughts about Policy Issues: Effects on Content and Quantity

This study examines how frames invoking a core value shape the content and quantity of citizens' thoughts about a policy issue. An experimental study showed that exposure to a pro-school voucher equality frame increased the probability that participants would invoke equality in their open-ended survey responses. Exposure to an anti-school voucher equality frame produced the same effect, as did exposure to both frames. At the same time, participants who received either frame or both frames provided fewer open-ended responses. Thus, the frames appeared to focus participants' thoughts on one value while reducing the overall extent to which they thought about the issue. In broader terms, value framing may have implications for the nature and quality of public deliberation about policy issues—a point that scholars should keep in mind when considering how to define and study framing effects.     

Civic Education in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Alternative Paths to the Development of Political Knowledge and Democratic Values

Despite the proliferation of civic education programs in the emerging democracies of Latin America, Africa, and Eastern Europe, there have been few recent evaluations of the effectiveness of civics instruction in achieving changes in democratic orientations among student populations. We present findings from a study conducted in 1998 that examined the impact of democratic civic education among South African high school students. Using a battery of items to gauge democratic orientations, including measures of political knowledge, civic duty, tolerance, institutional trust, civic skills, and approval of legal forms of political participation, we find that civic education had the largest effects on political knowledge, with the magnitude of the effect being approximately twice as large as the recent Niemi and Junn (1998 ) finding for the United States. Exposure to civic education per se had weaker effects on democratic values and skills; for these orientations, what matters are specific factors related to the quality of instruction and the use of active pedagogical methods employed by civics instructors. Further, we find that civic education changed the structure of students' orientations: a "democratic values" dimension coalesces more strongly, and in greater distinction, from a "political competence" dimension among students exposed to civic education than among those with no such training. We discuss the implications of the findings for our theoretical understanding of the role of civic education in fostering democratic attitudes, norms, and values, as well as the practical implications of the results for the implementation and funding of civic education programs in developing democracies in the future.     

When multi‐problem poor individuals' values meet practitioners' values!

Every intervention process can be thought of as a journey of partnership between people, as well as an intellectual journey of ideas and an emotional journey of relationships. This exploratory study aims at reaching a better understanding of three questions: (i) What values do individual heads of multi‐problem poor households and practitioners show regarding their relationship? (ii) How might those values inform the interaction between them, in positive and/or negative ways? (iii) What might the value system which organizes the interaction between the participants be? This study was carried out using a critical incidents technique and was based on a sample comprising two sub‐groups: 100 heads of multi‐problem poor families and 97 professionals. Findings reveal the following individual values: heads of multi‐problem poor families value instrumental support, relationships and effectiveness; while professionals' appreciate relationships, obedience to their own instructions and (in)effectiveness. These value systems seem to frame the interaction in games of responsibility avoidance that lead to the individuals' disempowerment, disguised in an aura of ‘adequate impotence’. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effects of interaction pattern on family harmony and well-being: Test of interpersonal theory, Relational-Models theory, and Confucian ethics

Two studies, involving 242 and 245 families, respectively, were conducted to explore the effects of family interaction on family harmony and well-being. Hypotheses were drawn from interpersonal theory, Relational-Models theory, and Confucian ethics. Each of the four members in a family, including father, mother, son, and daughter, completed a questionnaire designed to assess their behaviors toward each of the other three members. Six categories of interpersonal behavior were measured, including love, directing, domineering, hostility, submission, and respect. Both studies found that family affective interaction pattern following the Communal Sharing model contributed to family harmony and well-being. For each family relationship, the existence of particular forms of status differential (Authority Ranking) was beneficial, and several factors, such as role expectation and complementarity, moderated the effects of the status differential of a particular relationship. In general, positive effects were associated with interaction patterns which were consistent with Confucian ethics.     

如何推进儒教伦理与基督教伦理的融合

本文旨在阐明儒教伦理与基督教伦理在中国现代文化语境和社会场景中的确切含义,探讨克服儒教伦理与基督教伦理之间对立特征之有效途径,强调要从重叙传统和社会实践两个层面推动儒教伦理与基督教伦理的融合。     

Widows, women, and the bioethics of care.

Widows, women, and the bioethics of care must be understood within an authentic Christian ontology of gender. Men are men and women are women, and their being is ontologically marked in difference. There is an ontology of gender with important implications for the role of women in the family and the Church. The Christian Church has traditionally recognized a role for widows, deaconesses, and female monastics, which is not that of the liturgical priesthood, but one with a special relationship to care and therefore with particular implications for health care and a Christian bioethics of care in the twenty-first century. In the shadow of early male mortality, women as wives should turn to support their husbands and as widows to support those in need. Widows, in becoming authentic Christian monastics, can bring into the world an icon of rightly ordered women providing rightly ordered Christian care for those in need. They can enter the moral vacuum created by misunderstandings of the place of women and the service vacuum created by a disappearance of religious nuns in Western health care facilities with a presence that is at one with the Church of the Fathers.     

Career specialty choice: A combined research-intervention project

This research describes and evaluates a workshop aimed at promoting career specialty choice and examines relationships between measured career specialty interests, work values, and personality type. Three consecutive classes of second-year medical students (N = 161) participated in a two-session specialty choice workshop. All participants in the study rated the usefulness of the workshop and reported their level of specialty choice certainty and satisfaction. They also responded to measures of medical specialty preference, work values, and personality type. Results indicated two distinct student subgroups of career-specialty-decided and -undecided students. The former subgroup evidenced more stability and certainty of specialty choice as well satisfaction with their choice. Both groups of students reported having benefited from the workshop. Significant gender differences in the relationships between scores on a measure of medical specialty preference and scores on measures of work values and personality emerged. Implications are discussed in terms of the differential career counseling needs of students either decided or undecided about their career specialty choices.     

中药有效成分研究与中医现代化

中药有效成分的提取可以看作是炮制方法的延伸,有效成分的研究是中药现代化的关键,有助于探索中医理论的实质,可望为中医现代化打开缺口.     

心、脑科学与医学人道主义价值观

当今,心、脑科学的研究进展及成果极大支持了科学的医学人道主价值观应当以正确认识、把握、运用脑模式科学假说为基础的观点.试从意识的本质、医学人道价值观的机制、与价值相关的医者心灵的自我控制和意志自由等三个方面探讨心、脑科学同医学实践中的医学人道价值观的关系.     

易学思想与中国传统建筑

本文从卦象、易数与阴阳合德三方面论述了易学思想与中国传统建筑之间不可分割的联系,中国建筑作为中华文明的重要组成部分,其本源是来自<周易>,与易学思想的发展变化密切相关.