General Social Trends Research Articles

Private practice dentists' conceptions of overtreatment: A qualitative study from Norway.

As overtreatment has gained attention and is a threat to sustainable healthcare, the objective of this study is to investigate Norwegian private practice dentists' conceptions of overtreatment. Material and Methods: Six private practice dentists were interviewed. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed by thematic analysis in a six-step process including coding and identifying main- and sub-themes. The main themes identified were conceptions of overtreatment, internal factors, and external conditions of importance for overtreatment. Norwegian private practice dentists are familiar with the concept overtreatment and provide several examples of overtreatment. Although they see overtreatment as a problem, they express that the boundaries of what is considered necessary or professionally justified treatment have changed over time - particularly towards aesthetic and cosmetic treatment. Overtreatment is considered to be less problematic if the patients are informed and consent. The participants point to several internal factors and external conditions furthering overtreatment: professional status and prestige, general social trends, social media, demographicchanges, overcapacity, and the expansion of commercial chains. The dentists in the interviews demonstrated that they are aware of their power, but also acknowledge their responsibility. Conclusion: Private practice dentists in Norway are aware of overtreatment and their drivers. They acknowledge their power to promote overtreatment, but also that this gives them responsibility. This raises important issues about dentists' professional accountability and integrity.

ЛІТЕРАТУРНІ ВИДАННЯ МУРу: ІСТОРІЯ, ЗМІСТ, НАПРЯМ

The article analyzes the important literary publications of the Ukrainian Artistic Movement (MUR), devoted to artistic, literary-critical, art history issues (in particular, the collections "MUR", MUR's аlmanac, "Arсh"). The issues of history, content, and direction of these publications are investigated, each of which is considered as a kind of integrity and is considered in the context of the literary activity of the MUR. The historical, cultural and socio-political prerequisites of MUR's publications, their ideological and aesthetic foundations, and functions are clarified. It is argued that the MUR's literary projects reflect general culture and social moods and trends, ideological and aesthetic changes in the Ukrainian emigration literary process of the late 1940s, that these publications present the most important ideas and works of that time. It is noted that the priority of the three Collections of Literary and Artistic Issues "MUR" was programmatic, and the MUR аlmanac aimed to reflect artistic diversity of literary life, in particular stylistic. The main attention is devoted to the "Arch" as an outstanding and unique phenomenon in the history of Ukrainian literary and literary-critical thought, in particular, the history of its creation, changes in editorial policy are revealed, its assessments are recorder in the views of contemporaries. Periodicals published under the auspices of the MUR had a great influence on the cultural and literary process of the late 1940s, contributing, in particular, to the consolidation of creative efforts, the duration and continuity of Ukrainian modernists and Europeanists literary trends. Memoirs, letters, papers of the creators and members of the MUR, in particular, Yuri Sherekh (Shevelov), Ulas Samchuk, Gregory Kostyuk, Yuri Lavrinenko and other became the source base for the study.

IDENTIFICATION OF PATTERNS IN GRADUATES’ PROFESSIONAL INTENTIONS WHEN PROCESSING THE RESULTS OF THE UNIFIED STATE EXAM IN THE UDMURT REPUBLIC

The article summarizes the experience of research devoted to statistical analysis and data processing of the results of the unified state exam (USE) of school graduates of the Udmurt Republic for different periods. It is shown, that the rank-power law of Zipf-Mandelbrot makes it possible to identify the professional intentions of USE respondents who have the property of self-similarity. Thus, the distribution of USE respondents of the Udmurt Republic is similar to the distribution in a separate school or district, which means that the object of study has a fractal-like structure. The metric characteristic of the structure under study is the fractal dimension determined from the Zipf-Mandelbrot regularity. The fractal nature of such an instrument of pedagogical measurement and diagnostics of the control of the education system, which in essence should be the Unified State Exam, has a psychological conditioning: any pedagogical object has its own measure and dimension and is didactically unique, as each individual is unique. This technique allows us to identify a kind of vector of professional intentions, general social trends of professional orientation of school graduates. Therefore, it seems appropriate to include such an analysis in the relevant reporting documents of the upcoming Unified State Exam and to take these trends into account when planning the career guidance work of universities.

Power and Positivity: Psycholinguistic Perspectives on Word Valence in Canadian Parliament

Politicians are skilled language users who deploy words strategically and pay close attention to the emotions that those words evoke. We examined the emotional characteristics of over 92 million words spoken by Canadian Members of Parliament between 2006 and 2021. The analysis brought together the Warriner, Kuperman, and Brysbaert (Behav. Res., 2013, 45, 1191–1207) database of valence (positivity) ratings for English and the Canadian Hansard, which contains a transcription of parliamentary speech. Results revealed that the positivity of words used by politicians in parliament was significantly related to both political and social variables. Politicians increased the positivity of their language after the onset of the COVID-19 crisis. Within the time of the crisis, word positivity was linked statistically to month-by-month case counts, indicating a very fine-grained sensitivity to social realities. Our analysis also revealed a fine-grained sensitivity of word valence to political realities. As expected, parties in power used more positive language than those in opposition. In addition, our analysis revealed that individual parties have characteristic levels of word positivity and that those levels change in accordance with political changes as specific as whether or not the party in power holds a majority of seats in parliament. These findings suggest that the emotional properties of words used by Members of Parliament are reliably indexed to sociopolitical dynamics. The findings also suggest that the methodology of linking individual word ratings to Hansard Documents (which are used to document Parliamentary activities in over 25 countries) can provide a key tool for the understanding of specific crises such as the COVID-19 global pandemic as well as more general social and political trends across countries and languages.

Economic arguments in the Polish thought on peace. John Bloch’s views against the background of the Polish thought on peace

The history of the Polish irenological thought goes back to the Middle Ages. The author presents, in a synthetic form and chronological order, concepts of peace developed before the beginning of the twentieth century. Economic arguments have always accompanied the Polish concept of peace. Their strength varied depending on the general social and intellectual trends prevailing in particular epochs. However, until the publication of The Future of War by John Bloch (1836–1902), economic arguments were never the main arguments for peace. This article is an attempt to show the originality and meaning of the thought of John Bloch – the creator of the concept of peace based strictly on economic arguments.

ДІАЛЕКТИКА СТАНОВЛЕННЯ АКСІОЛОГІЧНОЇ ПЛАТФОРМИ ОСОБИСТОСТІ В ПЕДАГОГІЧНОМУ ПРОЦЕСІ

The process of forming values in the education system takes place in the field of freedom of choice by the subject of the value system which they perceive as being their own and corresponding to their worldview and life priorities. Forming personal values is directly or indirectly influenced by the understanding (and awareness) of a person (a child, pupil or student) of the meaning and role of the values in the process of comparing them with historic realities, the present and vision of the perspectives for development. The latter is formed by culture, education and upbringing. The school plays the primary role in forming the value palette in a personality. Without underestimating the physical and mathematical or natural and geographical cycles of subjects, we note that the current values are formed primarily through the cycle of socio-humanities, the leading among which are literature, philosophy and history. This is where examples of the realization of values of various nature are directly considered, and students draw certain conclusions about the moral or immoral behavior of the character in a piece, patriotic or unpatriotic actions of a historical figure, etc. At the same time, forming the values in the education system cannot occur apart from general social processes and trends, which in turn form a demand for a particular education system and probable influences of hereditary structures, collective unconscious and intellectual, moral, emotional and social development. The purpose of the article is to determine the principles of the axiological platform of the personality in the pedagogical process. The results of the research. Self-development of values in the pedagogical process is one of the ways of forming the personality and an important basis for self-realization and self-actualization of the personality in the social environment. Teaching and self-developing the values in the pedagogical process promotes the development of all subjects and objects of educational activity, increases the degree of their spirituality, and it enriches the means of self-expression.

Johannes Buridan und die Professionalisierung der Artisten

The paper does not consider the contributions of the magister artium Buridanus to the Artes liberales and the Aristotelianism of the Later Middle Ages, that is the topic of some other participants of our colloquium in Katowice. It is aiming at giving a short overview over the very few data of his biography which are known to us framing them by the general social trends of his time. First of all (I.) a sketch of his biography is given which sheds some light on his social background, his milieu and career at Paris university. Secondly (II.) there follows an outline of his main income, namely church benefices, which are given to the university master by papal allowance and are registered mainly in the Vatican Archives. Thirdly (III.) the more than three decades of teaching at the Arts Faculty of Paris are considered within the framework of general social professionalization of teaching at the universities in the Later Middle Ages.

J. Blake Perkins. Hillbilly Hellraisers: Federal Power and Populist Defiance in the Ozarks.

J. Blake Perkins’s Hillbilly Hellraisers: Federal Power and Populist Defiance in the Ozarks focuses on the Arkansas Ozarks in the hilly northern part of the state, covering the period between the 1890s and the 1970s. Its cast is primarily small-scale farmers, represented by singular characters, moonshiners, a populist governor, and rural socialists. Writers have portrayed the Upland South as isolated, lawless, and full of antigovernment sentiment. Perkins’s premise is that the people of the Arkansas Ozarks were not isolated but rather participated in America’s general social, political, and economic trends. Furthermore, they demanded government involvement to promote equal opportunity and freedom for themselves. Up until the Great Depression, the Ozarks were awash with homegrown activism. What small farmers and the area’s working class did oppose was the manipulation of federal programs by local elites and businesses to benefit themselves. Perkins begins his story in the 1890s, when the Populists ignited rural America. Laissez-faire economics was not working for the Arkansas Ozarks. Native son Jeff Davis, whom political enemies branded “the Wild Ass of the Ozarks,” embodied the Populist political revolt. Davis railed against outside economic powers like railroads that made prosperity, or even security, unobtainable by small farmers and working families. Yet Davis and other southern political leaders fell back on the support of leading business interests, limiting the vote for African Americans and poor whites and generally engaging in race-baiting.

Increasing Complexity in Performance Delivery - Management Approach for Tertiary Care Centers

Increasing Complexity in Performance Delivery - Management Approach for Tertiary Care Centers Abstract. General social trends such as individualization and female shift increase the complexity for management in both technical and system management in addition to the inherent development in the hospital industry such as subspecialization, ageing societies and multimorbidity. Reduction of complexity is therefore absolutely necessary in order to be able to manage in a patient-friendly way as a maximum care provider. Reducing complexity means resolving therapeutic conflicts. Essential tools for this are digitization, a comprehensive quality paradigm that includes patient experience, patient assessment of treatment outcomes, indication and service quality, and good management. The latter integrates the fragmentation of skills and knowledge of a subspecialized medicine through appropriate system design. This requires the appropriate functional strategies and a comprehensive process management competence that can transform the numerous interfaces into seams.

PMI (Public Media Institution Radio Television of Vojvodina the New Media Organization

The basis of the effective functioning of the media along with the changes in the environment is in a constant development of management within the media, and therefore the corporate communication as a basic tool of development. Management JMU RTV broadcasting in the new (multi) media environment should establish a system of effective management of the technical, organizational, as well as innovation in the design and distribution of media content, aiming to find a balance between the needs of the market and the insatiable appetite of the media to the public, changes in technology, media legislation and general social trends. If the organization said that "the organism", then the communication is "bloodstream" of the organism. Corporate communication is a newer discipline which is used in all business segments worldwide. Top management creates, defines and improves corporate reputation through corporate communications and image management that created it. The image of a good and successful organization begins within. The level of satisfaction and motivation of our employees is a measurable and constant process that can be influenced, eg. how often and in which way to communicate with employees, how they transmit important messages and direct them towards achieving business goals.Corporate communication includes all communication and information activities among the members of the organization, it is targeted and oriented according to the success. Because the image of the organization can be understood as the reflection of its identity created corporate communication between different public - internal and external.

PMI (Public Media Institution Radio Television of Vojvodina the New Media Organization

The basis of the effective functioning of the media along with the changes in the environment is in a constant development of management within the media, and therefore the corporate communication as a basic tool of development. Management JMU RTV broadcasting in the new (multi) media environment should establish a system of effective management of the technical, organizational, as well as innovation in the design and distribution of media content, aiming to find a balance between the needs of the market and the insatiable appetite of the media to the public, changes in technology, media legislation and general social trends. If the organization said that "the organism", then the communication is "bloodstream" of the organism. Corporate communication is a newer discipline which is used in all business segments worldwide. Top management creates, defines and improves corporate reputation through corporate communications and image management that created it. The image of a good and successful organization begins within. The level of satisfaction and motivation of our employees is a measurable and constant process that can be influenced, eg. how often and in which way to communicate with employees, how they transmit important messages and direct them towards achieving business goals.Corporate communication includes all communication and information activities among the members of the organization, it is targeted and oriented according to the success. Because the image of the organization can be understood as the reflection of its identity created corporate communication between different public - internal and external.

Prosumers in the tourism market : the characteristics and determinants of their behaviour

The goal of this article is to characterise the prosumer as a specific consumer category in the tourist market. The author presents the general characteristics of a prosumer and how his/her behaviour is conditioned as a result of general social trends as well as specific features of the tourist market. In order to empirically illustrate the issues involved the author presents results of a direct survey conducted with 3 representatives of various types of tourist companies (a tour operator, a travel agent, an airline representative). The interviewees noted their customers' intensified activity. While customers have greater expectations and requirements, their knowledge does not translate into cooperation with tourist agencies. The respondents claimed that the new customers interested in new forms of the product included primarily young people as well as business people acquainted with new technologies. It was emphasized that customers as we know them are active but not always professional. Individual customers consider themselves professionals yet oftentimes their professionalism is limited to the transactions' convenience (e.g. only telephone contacts and bank transfers) accompanied by a low price found on the Internet rather than a general knowledge of the market. (original abstract)

Preventing Youthful Substance Use and Harm—Between Effectiveness and Political Wishfulness

Drinking, smoking, and drug use are symbolic behaviors for young people, often involving a claim for adult status, and set against a “social clock” of expectations about appropriate behavior for a given age. Use is set in a social world of youth sociability, which young people strive to control themselves. Hence, it is difficult to prevent or delay use through adult-run institutions such as schools. Youth-oriented prevention initiatives succeed best when in tune with general social trends, so that youth cannot so easily feel hypocritically singled out. Regulatory approaches that apply to all have had some success in limiting and shaping youthful use and problems. Well-evaluated trials of efforts to insulate youthful use from harm are needed.

Strategic Planning Environmental Forcasting

Archived 9/11/03 at author's request.This note is a worksheet to guide the student or manager through an exercise in forecasting general political, social, economic, demographic, and technological trends.

Affordability of Family Care for an Individual With Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

Affordability of Family Care for an Individual With Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

Redesigning a class of its own: social and human capital formation in the German banking elite, 1870–1990

German bankers are renowned for their central position in the German model of ‘coordinated capitalism’ and for their elevated social status. Over the last 130 years, no other part of the entrepreneurial elite in Germany has displayed more power and stability. This article uses the concepts of social and human capital to explain this success and how German banking changed its patterns of recruitment, training and careers in response to general political and social trends. It also applies these concepts to the transformation of German banking from personal to managerial and, after 1970, to global capitalism. A conservative approach prevailed that integrated new demands but did so very cautiously. At the end of the twentieth century these features began to operate against German banking and weaken its international competitiveness, as the stock of specific social capital had created an inward-looking mindset.

Religion and Survey Non-Response Bias: Toward Explaining the Moral Voter Gap between Surveys and Voting*

In several recent elections, prospective polls have overestimated support for liberal candidates and underestimated conservative voters. I examine how religious factors might play a role in producing systematic non-response bias. Using data from the 1984-2004 General Social Surveys (GSS), present patterns and trends in the influence of religious factors on respondent cooperativeness. My findings show that respondents who believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of their gods are significantly less cooperative than other respondents. Further, trends and temporal patterns in the effects of inerrancy on cooperativeness suggest increasing non-response by conservative Christians. Together, these findings suggest that conservative non-response to surveys is not simply a function of racial issues in candidate choice, as some political scientists have claimed, but instead is motivated by religious exclusivism prevalent among religious conservatives.

Age Analysis of Newspaper Coverage of Mental Illness

In this study, we examine newspaper coverage of mental illness in children and adults taken from 6 weeks during a 1-year period. Articles were coded for (1) type of article; (2) types of disorders named or described; (3) themes related to crime, attributions of the disorder, treatments, and critiques of the mental health system; and (4) “elements of responsible journalism,” including inclusion of perspectives from mental health experts, statistics related to mental illness, referrals to additional sources of information, and avoidance of slang terminology. We examine how these variables differ by the age of the group discussed in the article: children/adolescents and adults/older adults. One thousand two hundred fifty-two articles were coded for these four clusters as well as age of group discussed in the article. Inter-rater correlations of two independent judges were satisfactory for 10% of the stories. Age group comparisons revealed that the child articles contained a significantly higher proportion of feature articles; were significantly more likely to discuss behavior and conduct disorders, and alcohol and drug abuse, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), anxiety disorders, and eating disorders, and to contain themes of causation, treatment, and critiques of the mental health system. The adult articles contained a significantly higher proportion of episodic news stories and were significantly more likely to present themes of dangerousness and crime. Our analysis found that child articles were significantly more likely to incorporate elements of responsible journalism, while adult articles were significantly more likely to use stigmatizing terminology. Our report encourages journalists to develop contextually comprehensive and informative presentations of mental illness and issues surrounding the mental health system for all population groups in order to provide readers with accurate information within the context of general social trends and relevant expert opinion.

Early Twentieth Century Racial Discrimination Cases in State Supreme Courts: An Empirical Analysis

Within the realm of scholarship on American civil rights and discrimination litigation, one aspect receiving scant attention, let alone empirical investigation, is the response of state supreme courts to discrimination claims in the early Twentieth Century. Yet, the topic warrants further study, not only to set the historical record straight, but because it represents a crucial time frame - the long, fairly settled range of years falling between the legal tumult of Reconstruction/Redemption and the mid-century breakthroughs in minority rights. Conventional wisdom suggests this period was a dismal one for plaintiffs seeking to challenge discrimination, but there is no systematic support for this assumption. Our knowledge of the numbers and types of cases being heard, as well as the decisional record, remains anecdotal. This investigation rectifies this gap by providing this record, as well as making an initial foray into the determinants of these decisions, on the assumption that there was some variation in outcomes. A few clues to what these likely determinants might be emerge from the broad literature on U.S. Supreme Court doctrine and general social trends in these years. After gathering, cataloging, and coding 65 state supreme court cases from 1907-1934, I utilize these factors - type of case, region, year of decision - in a regression analysis that tests whether any exerted an impact on the likelihood of a pro-plaintiff (anti-discrimination) decision. None proved significant, undermining the validity of conventional (although not always consistent) assumptions that decisions were more supportive of minority claims in the northern states, in the latter years of this period, and in regard to the few categories of cases where the U.S. Supreme Court had issued relatively pro-civil rights decisions. Still, the empirical approach proves valuable in illustrating exactly what was occurring in these years - in particular, the different sorts of cases that northern and southern judges were hearing and the small but notable variation in how they reacted to these disparate claims.

Innovation in water legislation in Italy: ecosystem protection and stakeholders participation

Main innovations in the field of water management and pollution control, introduced by legislation in Italy in the last decade, derive from a few general social trends, such as the awareness of the need for environmental protection and demand for improved public services management. In particular, two innovative principles, namely the sustainability of water use and the stakeholders' participation in water resources planning and management, have affected the recent legislative acts. In this paper, a review of Italian water legislation development on water resources use, flood defence, and pollution control is presented, indicating main links with European directives. On the basis of such a review, it is pointed out that legislators have tried to improve the institutional structure for planning and management of water supply systems, as well as to solve the conflicts between water withdrawal uses and ecological in-stream uses and to allow a wider public access to information on water issues. However, a very slow implementation of water reform has been experienced, particularly at regional level. Efforts for putting into practice protection of water ecosystems and participation of citizens in decision-making seem be necessary and can be fostered by the new EU Water Framework Directive.