When measuring (complex) attitudes within a social survey, researchers often use balanced lists of positive and negative items. The purpose of the present research is to investigate: (a) whether a specific order of measurement scale items can lead to the bipolar (single-dimensional) concept (attitude) being recognised as a dual (bi-dimensional) concept and vice-versa; and (b) whether item order can affect the consistency (metric characteristics) of a measurement scale. An experiment on a group of social science students was conducted: students were randomly split into three subgroups and three different version of a questionnaire (with three differing item orders) were applied. A multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (ŽCFAŽ) and a single group CFA for each item order separately were applied. The final conclusion of the experiment is that there is no general rule about how and when respondents form separate (dual) or unidimensional (continuous) representations of measured concepts. Item-order effects are possible, but they are not as important as one would expect. The results of the experiment also suggest that other factors should be taken into account: the content of the measured concept and the cognitive sophistication of the respondents.
COBISS.SI-ID: 30583645
Background: Historically speaking public health systems were established to guarantee every citizen equal access to health care and separate the issue of individual’s health from issues of material welbeing. Using social science methodology the study set out to explore how successful was welfare system in Slovenia in achieving this goal during the last three decades, i.e. to what extent social inequalities in Slovenia are being reproduced as health inequalities. Methods: The study is based on six waves of Slovenian Public Opinion surveys carried out between 1981 and 2011 on representative samples of adult Slovenian population. The main dependent variable is respondent’s self-assessed health and the main independent variable his or her socio-economic status. The relationship between them was examined using Chi-square tests and regression analysis. Results: The thirty year trend shows persisting inequalities health as throughout the entire period self-assessed health is significantly lower at the bottom of the educational and income scale. The largest differences between social strata are observed in the age group of 30 to 60 years when labour market pressures are most pronounced. Conclusions: Results of this and many other studies indicate that inequalities in health are almost impossible to eliminate as long as their deeper causes lie in social inequality as such. An additional factor that decreases self-assessed health in Slovenia compared to Western Europe is low level of trust in people and social institutions, which is the likely cause why relatively favourable statistical picture of social inequalities is not translated into equally favourable picture of subjective health.
COBISS.SI-ID: 30994525
The article focuses on the relationship between class and citizenship in the context of changes in both concepts occurring in the process of (post)modernisation. It primarily deals with political participation as the key way of realising citizens' rights as developed by Marshall, taking the circumstances of the class inequalities of capitalist society into account. Political participation and citizenship styles developed on this basis are understood as ways of expressing group identities, including class identity. A general model of relationships among class, citizenship, citizenship rights, participation, identity and the modernisation process is presented and explained.
COBISS.SI-ID: 30590301