<p>One important issue in this dissertation is understanding the concept of ambivalence in academic settings. This is addressed in two empirical studies. The first is an interview study on Swedish sociologists, focusing on how they look at and understand their own research as well as their place within academia. The second study is based on political documents and offers two possible perspectives on the historical development of research policy. On the one hand it can be viewed as a linear development toward more commercialized science, and on the other hand it can be viewed as an ongoing struggle between traditionalists and non-traditionalists. An important perspective in the interpretation of the results is Pierre Bourdieu's theory of cultural fields. This theory is especially useful in pinpointing the issues of ambivalence in science, showing how both the sociologists and the political documents can be understandable through the concept of "positions". Another important issue in the dissertation is understanding what type of norms are connected ambivalence in relationship to academia. In the final part of the dissertation, Robert Merton's CUDOS norms and John Ziman's PLACE norms are used to explain both the ambivalence itself as well as what kind of norms are related to different "positions".</p>

Between fall 2009 and fall 2010 I conducted semi-structured in-depth interviews with 19 young-adult women and men of mixed race in Edmonton, Alberta. A prominent theme that emerged was being asked the question ‘what are you?’. I position the ‘moment’ of being questioned as a manifestation of the external gaze. People of mixed race are subject to questioning because they do not fit within dominant racial binaries: they exceed the limited horizon of possible narratives of racial discourse and are socially identified as ambivalent (Anzaldua 1987). Within the literature on the ‘racial gaze,’ it is often positioned as something that fixes (Fanon 1967). However, the very ambivalence people of mixed race pose to the gaze allows them to negotiate it. The narratives of my respondents demonstrate that the inability of the social gaze to ‘fix’ them opens up the possibility of making identity through negotiating the gaze in multiple ways.

One important issue in this dissertation is understanding the concept of ambivalence in academic settings. This is addressed in two empirical studies. The first is an interview study on Swedish sociologists, focusing on how they look at and understand their own research as well as their place within academia. The second study is based on political documents and offers two possible perspectives on the historical development of research policy. On the one hand it can be viewed as a linear development toward more commercialized science, and on the other hand it can be viewed as an ongoing struggle between traditionalists and non-traditionalists. An important perspective in the interpretation of the results is Pierre Bourdieu's theory of cultural fields. This theory is especially useful in pinpointing the issues of ambivalence in science, showing how both the sociologists and the political documents can be understandable through the concept of "positions". Another important issue in the dissertation is understanding what type of norms are connected ambivalence in relationship to academia. In the final part of the dissertation, Robert Merton's CUDOS norms and John Ziman's PLACE norms are used to explain both the ambivalence itself as well as what kind of norms are related to different "positions".

Involuntary childlessness is a big problem around the world. One way to solve the problem is to receive oocytes or semen from a donor. In Sweden, semen donation has been regulated by law since 1985 and oocyte donation since 2003. The aim of this study was to investigate what motivations women and men in Sweden have to donate gametes, if they feel any ambivalence to donate, and to compare if there is any difference in motivation and ambivalence between women and men. Motivation was measured with eight statements based on previous results and clinical experience. Ambivalence was measured with a scale consisting of seven statements that addressed thoughts and feelings about the donation. The participants in the study were donors at some of the seven infertility clinics in Sweden. The dropout rate for the sperm donors was 19 %. For the egg donors the dropout rate was 17 %.. The main result showed that the main motivation for donating oocytes or semen was helping childless couples. The significant differences between women’s and men’s motivations for donating oocytes or semen were that the women were keener to helping others, while the men to a higher extent wanted to do something important, spread their genes and find out about their own fertility. The oocyte and semen donors did not feel any particular ambivalence about the decision to donate, most of them did not find it difficult to make the decision, and they would have been disappointed if they had not been allowed to donate for some reason. The conclusions to be drawn from this study are that once the donors have decided to donate, they don’t feel any particular ambivalence about the donation, and women and men have different motivations to why they are donating, even if the main motivation is the same. / Ofrivillig barnlöshet är ett stort problem världen över. Ett sätt att lösa problemet är att ta emot ägg eller spermier ifrån en donator. I Sverige har spermiedonation varit reglerat i lag sedan 1985 och äggdonation sedan 2003. Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka vilka motiv kvinnor och män i Sverige har till att donera ägg respektive spermier, om de känner någon ambivalens till att donera, samt att jämföra om det är någon skillnad i motiv och ambivalens mellan kvinnor och män. Motiv mättes med åtta påståenden konstruerade utifrån tidigare resultat och klinisk erfarenhet. Ambivalens mättes med en skala som bestod av sju påståenden som behandlade tankar och känslor kring donationen, Deltagarna i studien var donatorer vid någon av de sju infertilitetscentra i Sverige. Bortfallet för spermiedonatorerna var 19 %. För äggdonatorerna var bortfallet 17 %. Huvudresultatet visade att det främsta motivet hos kvinnor och män till att donera ägg respektive spermier i Sverige var att hjälpa barnlösa par. De signifikanta skillnaderna mellan kvinnors och mäns motiv till att donera ägg respektive spermier var att kvinnor var mer måna om att hjälpa andra, medan männen i högre grad ville göra något betydelsefullt, sprida sina gener och få reda på hur det stod till med den egna fertiliteteten. Ägg- och spermiedonatorerna kände ingen större ambivalens inför beslutet om att donera, de flesta tyckte inte att beslutet var svårt att ta, och de skulle ha blivit besvikna om de inte fick donera av någon anledning. Slutsatser som har dragits är att när ägg- respektive spermiedonatorer väl har bestämt sig för att donera känner de ingen större ambivalens inför donationen, och män och kvinnor har skilda motiv till varför de donerar även om huvudmotivet är detsamma.

The decision to become an organ donor involves considering both self-relevant risks and the needs of others. This study applied prospect theory to examine how message frames that focus on the possible survival or death of a potential organ transplant recipient affect participants' willingness to become organ donors. Perceived personal risk and ambivalence were examined as moderating variables. Results indicate that risk, rather than ambivalence, played an instrumental role in participants' decisions to donate. Although no main effects or interactions related to message frame emerged in initial analyses, a supplemental analysis revealed a modest persuasive advantage for the loss-framed message among low-risk participants. Additional analyses revealed that for low-risk participants, perceived benefits of organ donation were higher for the loss frame than the gain frame, whereas the opposite pattern was found for high-risk participants. Findings suggest that decisions about organ donation may be associated with unique responses to message frames.

This thesis studies Joseph Conrad&rsquo / s Almayer&rsquo / s Folly in terms of two theoretical concepts / othering and hybridity. The first theoretical concept, othering, is analysed from various perspectives for three main reasons: 1) The question of &ldquo / Who is other to whom?&rdquo / cannot be answered thoroughly because there is a continuous power struggle between the European and the non-European characters. 2) The theme of othering in the novel is based on a view of humanity and its conflicts that is radically ambivalent, and thus cannot be analyzed from one perspective only. 3) Conrad&rsquo / s world view which is reflected in the novel is not limited to one group of people, but tends to be universal. The second theoretical concept, hybridity, is analyzed under three subtitles: ambivalence, mimicry and hybridity.

Measuring public opinion on abortion is an ongoing concern for political scientists, mainly because the public does not always exhibit fixed attitudes on such topics. Most citizens express a centrist viewpoint between the pro choice and pro life extremes. These include a small group whose answers to abortion questions are so inconsistent that they give public officials an inaccurate measure of public opinion on this important issue. Inconsistent responses may result from context effects, such as the order in which the questions are asked or the way they are asked. Usually, researchers ask a battery of questions in which respondents say whether they approve of abortion generally and under a variety of circumstances, citing the reasons for which a woman might seek an abortion. This project includes an independent national survey using questions adopted from the General Social Survey. The sample is divided into four experimental groups with different question orders. Based on these findings, the recommended question order would be the one with the general question last and the remaining specific questions in a somewhat random pattern alternating between the so-called “hard” and “easy” individual abortion situations. One of the more surprising findings is that people didn’t recognize themselves as subtracting the specific situations from the general question when it was asked first; hardly any said that was what they were doing when they gave inconsistent answers. Otherwise, about an equal number of respondents admitted answering the questions off the top of their heads as those who showed ambivalence by claiming they were deeply committed to their inconsistent responses. The study found most people who inconsistent on abortion are moderates leaning towards pro choice. Also, politically conservative regular church-goers can be just as inconsistent on abortion as the non-religious, non-political, low-educated non-church goers, especially if they are basically pro choice. Without a full understanding of who is generating inconsistent answers on abortion, some researchers may be tempted to eliminate these respondents from their sample. This research should allow them to understand these respondents better and develop better question wording and question orders to reduce their numbers.

This thesis investigated attitudes toward sexual harassment (SH) and relationship between these attitudes, ambivalent sexism and ambivalence toward men. 311 Middle East Technical University students with a mean age of 22 participated in this study. Attitudes toward SH was measured by Sexual Harassment Attitude Scale (SHAS), which has three subfactors / accepting SH as a result of provocative behaviors of women, accepting SH as normal flirtations between men and women, and endorsement of SH as a trivial matter, respectively. Ambivalent sexism was measured by Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI) and ambivalence toward men was measured by Ambivalence toward Men Inventory (AMI). Sequential regression analysis revealed that gender, Hostile Sexism (HS) and Benevolence toward Men (BM) predicted acceptance of SH as provocative behaviors of women. Additional analysis demonstrated that gender, BM, Benevolent Sexism (BS) and age predicted acceptance of SH as normal flirtations. Finally, BS, gender, economy class and department were significantly predicting endorsement of SH as a social problem. Main contributions of this thesis were investigating (1) attitudes toward sexual harassment and its relationship with ambivalent sexist attitudes toward not only to women but also to men and (2) effects of gender, and some other demographic variables such as age, department and economy class on predicting attitudes toward SH.

The purpose of this thesis was to investigate the relationship between ambivalent sexism, gender related system justification and religious orientation with attitudes toward physical wife abuse (APWA). APWA are investigated in three facets, namely justifiability (JPWA), perceived functionality (PFPWA) and consequences (ACPWA). As measurement tools, Attitudes toward Physical Wife Abuse Scale, Content Domains for Justification of Physical Wife Abuse Scale, Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI), Ambivalence toward Men Inventory (AMI), Revised Muslim Religious Orientation Scale (MROS-R), Gender Related System Justification Scale (GSJ) and demographic information form were used. Although a total of 385 student and non-student participants responded the questionnaire, only 303 (119 males, 184 females) participants who stated their religion to be Islam were included in the study for accurate assessment of Muslim religious orientation. The age range of the participants was between 17 and 72 (M=27.30 / SD= 8.68). Since women and men significantly differed with respect to their APWA, separate hierarchical multiple regression analyses were conducted in order to further observe the differences between them. Although there were slight differences in unique contributions of the variables for the three subscales of APWAS and for men and women, a general pattern was drawn in which results revealed that intrinsic religious orientation and quest religious orientation were not related to any of the three dimensions of APWA whereas fundamentalist religious orientation was found to be a significant predictor of APWA. Among the dimensions of ASI and AMI, Hostile Sexism (HS) and Benevolence toward Men (BM) predicted more favorable attitudes toward the three dimensions of physical wife abuse, whereas hostility toward men (HM) and benevolent sexism (BS) predicted less favorable attitudes. GSJ was not found to have a unique contribution in predicting any of the three dimensions of APWA. The major contributions of the present study are / 1) Investigation of religious orientation as an individual difference affecting APWA first in a Muslim culture, 2) Investigating GSJ first in Turkey and first with relation to APWA and 3) Providing a detailed measurement tool for specific assessment of attitudes toward physical wife abuse in three dimensions and 4) Providing a re-constructed Muslim Religious Orientation Scale which was extended and improved in content, reliability and validity after revision.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2003. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 191-208). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.