Using 2005 data from Gallup public opinion surveys on attitudes toward immigration policy in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom this study explores the factors that impact attitudes. Additional analysis is conducted on the United States exploring how economic, political and associative measures impact attitudes.

Background and problems: All that is stated in social media might not always sometimes be right, which has consequences for the individual's view of the described phenomena. The individual interprets and takes in mass media messages, which can lead to that the wrong information makes believed to be is correct one. The news media’s photo illustrations might pictures result in bad images of the suburbs. Hovsjö, residential area in the city of Södertälje, occurs in the media depicted as is a bad place to live due to the high rate of crime there. Purpose and Issues: My main research question is: How do young people view their residential area Hovsjö in comparison with the image they believe consider is given in that the news media gives the area? Further questions of the study are: How do the young people of the district describe their residential area? How do the youth's react to the news media images of Hovsjö? Has the neighborhood helped to form their identity? Method: In my data collection I have chosen a qualitative approach with observation and semistructured interviews. The reason I chose to do interviews is because it gives respondents the opportunity to give their own experiences and feelings of living in Hovsjö. My method has been ethnographic for the reason that I want to describe but also to understand the informants' world. Results: According to the interviews the news media has generalized Hovsjö as poor housing site pointing out mainly negative messages from the area. The informants have a different view on their residential area which does not correspond with the news media's version. They see their neighborhood in a positive way, and they explain that the environment has formed them to be good people. They do not deny the “crime incidents” in Hovsjö but they believe that the news media exaggerate events to depict the residential area as a criminal and dangerous area. As summary, I have come to a conclusion that the respondents have a positive view of their neighborhood which they consider a safe and a social area to live in.

Previous investigations of the Level of Service Inventory Ontario Revision (LSI-OR) have examined individual subgroups of offenders (e.g., women, Aboriginal offenders), which has made comparisons of its predictive validity between specific offender groups suspect. This study was conducted on a complete cohort of 26,450 offenders who were released from Ontario provincial correctional facilities, sentenced to a conditional sentence, or who began a term of probation in 2004. Participants were followed up for at least four years to collect recidivism information on numerous subgroups of offenders including males (81.7%), females (18.3%), Aboriginal (6.4%), Black (7.3%) and Caucasian offenders (59.2%). Analyses revealed that the LSI-OR scores are positively correlated with recidivism (r = .441, p < .001), and similar correlations were found for all offenders regardless of gender or race, (Aboriginal r = .377, p < .001; Black, r = .420, p < .001; Caucasian, r = .417, p < .001; Male, r = .439, p < .001; Female, r = .426, p < .001). LSI-OR scores are also correlated with severity of the recidivism offence, (r = .098, p <.001) indicating that higher LSI-OR scores are related to higher offence severity for all ethnicities, sentence types, and genders. These findings indicate that the LSI-OR is an effective risk assessment tool for use among different ethnicities, sentence types and genders for provincially sentenced offenders in Ontario.

The hypotheses of the current study are that (1) black women will be more spiritual and (2) will have more knowledge of the Holy Spirit than white women, and (3) spirituality will be negatively correlated with eating disorder symptomatology and body dissatisfaction. (4) African American women will have lower body dissatisfaction and (5) less eating disorder symptomatology than Caucasian women. It is predicted that (6) ethnicity will have more influence on eating disorder symptomatology and spirituality than current and ideal weight. (7) Current weight will have more influence on body dissatisfaction than ethnicity or ideal weight. Finally, (8) the ideal weight of black women will be higher than that of white women. Participants included 95 African American and Caucasian female college students. All the hypotheses were supported. Prospective research can discern whether racial differences in spirituality have causal influence on healthier body image held by many black women.

At the end of the nineteenth century, Canada sought “desirable” immigrants to “settle” the Northwest. At the same time, nearly eight thousand members of the Dukhobori (commonly transliterated as “Doukhobors” and translated as “Spirit Wrestlers”) sought refuge from escalating religious persecution perpetrated by Russian church and state authorities. Initially, the Doukhobors’ immigration to Canada in 1899 seemed to satisfy the needs of host and newcomer alike. Both parties soon realized, however, that the Doukhobors’ transition would prove more difficult than anticipated. The Doukhobors’ collective memory of persecution negatively influenced their perception of state interventions in their private affairs. In addition, their expectation that they would be able to preserve their ethno-religious identity on their own terms clashed with Canadian expectations that they would soon integrate into the Canadian mainstream. This study focuses on the historical evolution of the “Doukhobor problem” in Russia and in Canada. It argues that the “problem,” commonly misunderstood by political and legal authorities as a law-and-order issue, was actually an extended identity struggle, both among Doukhobors of opposed factions, and between Doukhobors and state authorities in Russia and in Canada who insisted on conformity to social, economic, legal, and political “norms.” It uses the Doukhobors’ historical experience in Canada to showcase a wide spectrum of possible “newcomer” responses to the Canadian “host” society, drawing attention to subtleties which may be missed in the study of less extreme cases. Using orally articulated collective memory narratives and print journalism sources to access Doukhobor and Canadian identity perceptions, this study argues that newcomers’ impact on Canadian identity definitions predated the multicultural shift of the late 1960s and early 1970s. By pointing out the way in which immigrants such as the Doukhobors did, or did not, conform to (Anglo-) Canadian “norms” in public discourse, Canadians articulated their national identity perceptions in the early decades of the twentieth century. This study concludes that the “Doukhobor problem” could only be solved when the contested identity narratives and collective memories which were at the root of the Doukhobors’ discontent were publicly addressed in “truth and reconciliation” style symposia called in the 1970s and 1980s.

In the study, I assessed the persistence of students who joined fraternities at Western Kentucky University. Also included is a comparison between them and the general student population. The study includes 1467 students who joined fraternities between the Fall 1986 to Spring 1991 semesters. A five-year time period was used as the benchmark for graduation from the institution. Factors that were explored included race, initiation status, year in school when pledging, and organizational affiliation. Pearson Product-Moment Correlations and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were used to analyze the data. The results illustrated that students who join fraternities graduate at a higher percentage than the general student population. Black students who join fraternities graduate at a significantly higher percentage than black students who do not join. Pledge Year and Initiation Status proved to be significant factors.

At the end of the nineteenth century, Canada sought “desirable” immigrants to “settle” the Northwest. At the same time, nearly eight thousand members of the Dukhobori (commonly transliterated as “Doukhobors” and translated as “Spirit Wrestlers”) sought refuge from escalating religious persecution perpetrated by Russian church and state authorities. Initially, the Doukhobors’ immigration to Canada in 1899 seemed to satisfy the needs of host and newcomer alike. Both parties soon realized, however, that the Doukhobors’ transition would prove more difficult than anticipated. The Doukhobors’ collective memory of persecution negatively influenced their perception of state interventions in their private affairs. In addition, their expectation that they would be able to preserve their ethno-religious identity on their own terms clashed with Canadian expectations that they would soon integrate into the Canadian mainstream. This study focuses on the historical evolution of the “Doukhobor problem” in Russia and in Canada. It argues that the “problem,” commonly misunderstood by political and legal authorities as a law-and-order issue, was actually an extended identity struggle, both among Doukhobors of opposed factions, and between Doukhobors and state authorities in Russia and in Canada who insisted on conformity to social, economic, legal, and political “norms.” It uses the Doukhobors’ historical experience in Canada to showcase a wide spectrum of possible “newcomer” responses to the Canadian “host” society, drawing attention to subtleties which may be missed in the study of less extreme cases. Using orally articulated collective memory narratives and print journalism sources to access Doukhobor and Canadian identity perceptions, this study argues that newcomers’ impact on Canadian identity definitions predated the multicultural shift of the late 1960s and early 1970s. By pointing out the way in which immigrants such as the Doukhobors did, or did not, conform to (Anglo-) Canadian “norms” in public discourse, Canadians articulated their national identity perceptions in the early decades of the twentieth century. This study concludes that the “Doukhobor problem” could only be solved when the contested identity narratives and collective memories which were at the root of the Doukhobors’ discontent were publicly addressed in “truth and reconciliation” style symposia called in the 1970s and 1980s.

The goal of this project is to investigate the development of ethnic identity among different Black ethnic groups in the United States. The three different Black ethnic groups that will be investigated are: 1) African immigrants, 2) African-Americans, and 3) Diasporic African immigrants (Caribbean, Afro-Brazilian, etc.). These groups were selected because they broadly encompass the bulk of the range of people of African ancestry in the United States amalgamated under the term “Black.” Through thematic analysis of in-depth interviews, this project explores the impacts of immigration status, discrimination and inter-group relations (between different Black ethnic groups) on the ways that members of different Black ethnic groups form their ethnic identities. This analysis reveals that place, ethnic pride, and inter-and intra-racial relationships all affect the ethnic identity development process differently across Black ethnic groups.

This study examined autonomy and relatedness in mother adolescent interactions as longitudinal predictors of adolescent involvement in dating aggression. Research indicates that dating aggression, defined as perpetration and/or victimization of physical, psychological, or sexual aggression, affects one-third to two-thirds of adolescents. Most studies of adolescent dating aggression have been cross-sectional, have lacked a developmental theoretical perspective, and have not adequately investigated contextual differences in dating aggression. This study adds to the existing literature in that it applies a developmental framework to a multi-method, longitudinal study (n=88) of adolescent dating aggression. Adolescents’ and their mothers’ demonstrations of support for and inhibition of autonomy and relatedness during a coded interaction task observed when adolescents were 16 years old were examined as predictors of adolescents’ reports of perpetration and victimization of physical and psychological aggression two years later, exploring gender, race/ethnicity, and environmental risk as moderators. It was expected that promotion of autonomy and relatedness would be negatively related to adolescent reports of involvement in dating aggression, whereas inhibition of autonomy and relatedness would be positively related to adolescent reports of dating aggression. Hierarchical multiple regressions revealed that, as expected, maternal inhibition of relatedness predicted slight increases in reports of psychological perpetration and victimization. However, maternal support for autonomy was related to increases in perpetration of psychological aggression for all adolescents and increases in perpetration and victimization of physical aggression for girls, but not boys. Adolescent support for autonomy was related to increases in perpetration of physical aggression only for environmentally at-risk teens and to increases in psychological perpetration for racial/ethnic minority participants, but not for Caucasians. It was also found that girls reported more physical and psychological perpetration than boys, and that racial/ethnic minority participants reported more physical perpetration than Caucasians. Results indicate that autonomy is a dynamic developmental process that operates differently as a function of the various ecological contexts in which adolescents live, as marked by gender, race/ethnicity, and risk, in predicting adolescent involvement in dating aggression.

Syftet med denna uppsats har varit att undersöka vilka olika typer av konflikter med kulturella förtecken som förekommer mellan olika aktörer på mångkulturella skolor och hur konflikterna hanteras. Empirin är baserad på en kvalitativ semistrukturerad intervjustudie som utfördes under våren 2011 med sex kvinnliga lärare på två mångkulturella skolor med inriktning 7-9. Det erhållna resultatet pekar på att det förekommer kulturella konflikter av olika typer. De mest framträdande konflikterna handlar om rasism och hierarkier samt olika förhållningssätt till kroppsspråket, orden och röstläget. Respondenternas erfarenheter kring konflikthantering delades in i olika teman där medvetenhet, kommunikation, respekt och vikten av en tydlig strategi var mest framträdande.