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
The paper discusses reasons of the failure of the Slovenian governmentʼs pension reform proposal in general referendum based on statistical analysis of public opinion polls and content analysis of referendum campaign. In the time of economic crisis and in the context of general anti-reform mood, the pension reform bringing reduction of existing rights didnʼt have much chances to succeed from the very beginning. Opinion polls show that low public support to the government was crucial for the reform proposal failure. Support to the reform proposal was denied by voters gravitating towards the political centre, by those who donʼt support the government coalition, by non-partisan voters and by those with secondary and lower education. Since they represent the largest part of the electoral body, no referendum can succeed without their support. The most important arguments used in the referendum campaign were those related to (in)justness of the proposed reform and to (un)founded macroeconomic arguments for the reform. Thus, if a structural reform is put on the referendum, a high public support to the government proposing the reformand the perception that, in spite of its urgency and unpleasantness, thereform is essentially fair, are crucial conditions for its adoption.
COBISS.SI-ID: 31005021
This article analyses the relationship between class structure and cultural consumption in modern societies. It deals with contemporary approaches to the relationship between culture and social class in the context of the sociology of culture, media studies, cultural studies and stratification studies. The article rejects the assumption that cultural preferences and practices are increasingly less likely to be structured along class lines. The authors argue that class differences still have clear cultural dimensions despite the empirically proven lessening distinction played by elite culture, and the ubiquity of popular culture. Strategies of symbolic distinction are therefore not disappearing but merely changing, yet at the same time they remain specific to the local environment. This article argues that although the relationship between social status and cultural practices and taste is complex and decoding strategies are not a simple function of an economically understood position within society, one can still find clearly defined class-cultural formations with the help of a historically specific understanding of cultural capital, even in societies where taxonomic boundaries between classes are weak (e.g. Slovenia). The authors illustrate their arguments with selected data from the Culture and Class empirical study conducted with the help of a questionnaire administered to 820 residents of Ljubljana and Maribor, the two biggest cities in Slovenia.
COBISS.SI-ID: 30589789