This study explores how victims of violent crime construct meaning around crime, justice and reconciliation. It further aims to gain insight into how victims of crime construct expectations of which actions should ensue after the crime and whether their constructions encompass elements of reconciliation and restorative justice. The study is conducted from a social constructionist position and uses a critical discourse analysis framework in analysing the data. In-depth interviews were conducted with nine victims of serious crimes such as armed robbery, hi-jacking, attempted murder and rape. From the analysis it appears that participants have a need to experience justice and have a high demand for vengeance. This however may itself have grown out of a lack of a more positive experience of justice. Participants’ constructions of their experience of being a victim of crime center on notions of power, equality, prejudice and dominance. They draw on socially constructed differences based on race and gender to define both their identity as a victim of crime as well as the identity of their offender. These distinctions, based on categories of identity, serve to create an oppositional construction of “us” against “them” and also serve to dehumanise the offender. The analysis further indicates that participants draw on multiple constructions of restorative justice and despite strong support for punitive beliefs it appears that a discourse of restorative justice is also present in participants’ discussions. A key theme running through the data is the loss of personal power as a result of victimization. Instead of returning a sense of power to participants by allowing them to participate in the justice process, the legal system becomes the holder of the power and compounds the injury against the victim. The study has implications for how victims of crime are positioned in the justice system and how notions of restorative justice can be advanced in South African discourses. Copyright / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Psychology / unrestricted

Diploma thesis "The Intensive Motherhood in the Czech Society" deals with the motherhood. It focuses on finding the forms of motherhood in two different social environments in the Czech Republic reflecting the Ideology of Intensive Mothering. In response to identified information from secondary sources in this thesis I consider motherhood a social construct that is proved by the analysis of primary data too. The qualitative research strategy was chosen to achieve defined goals. Outcomes of analysis of the Problem-Centered Interviews, realized with mothers of young children from different social backgrounds, show two different realities of motherhood. This distinction also proves that The Intensive Mothering is not accepted by all mothers. Although the cited authors present it like dominant model, it can't be automatically considered the dominant model in practice.

Bibliography: p. 675-681. / This study, the first of its kind in Southern Africa, was undertaken in order to determine and compare the incidence of various alternate conceptions in some areas in mechanics amongst pupils from standards 4 through to 9, i.e. from ages ca. 11 to 17, in selected schools in the Western Cape and Transkei, South Africa. After a careful study of the relevant literature a questionnaire was designed for the purpose of identifying the frequency of various alternate conceptions in the selected areas in mechanics. This questionnaire was administered to 2326 pupils under carefully controlled conditions during August and September 1987. In analysing the data the frequency of particular alternate conceptions in the following groups of pupils were compared: (i) by school standard (ii) by geographical area (iii) by language group (iv) by gender (v) by urban and rural regions in the Cape (vi) by subject choice i.e. science pupils and non-science pupils An analysis of the data shows that in most of the areas in the field investigated remarkably small differences exist in the frequency with which different alternate conceptions are held by different groups of pupils. In most cases differences could be related to the pupils' school standard. However, in the fields of circular motion, projectile motion and static equilibrium, clear differences were found to exist between boys and girls as well as between pupils in schools in the Western Cape and Transkei. Furthermore, in most cases examined the accepted scientific conception was the least popular, particularly in the field of force and motion where conceptions linking force and motion were overwhelmingly selected by pupils in all of the groups. However, an exception was the standard 9 science pupils, i.e. 16- 17 year olds following the science course in high school, who in some cases favour the accepted scientific conceptions by a small majority. The implications of the findings of the study for classroom teaching are discussed.

This research examines escalation of commitment in capital investment decisions and the extent to which it can be mitigated using a cognitive prime. Specifically, I examine the use of a cognitive prime as a way to mitigate escalation in three decision-making settings: (1) individual, (2) face-to-face team, and (3) computer-mediated team. Continued investment in failing projects is costly for firms. The use of a cognitive prime to reduce escalation would provide a low cost way to mitigate escalation. In this study, participants are primed to think about sunk costs. The expectation is that priming individuals to think about sunk costs will increase the accessibility of sunk cost knowledge and reduce the likelihood of continued investment in the failing project. Further, based on Persuasive Arguments Theory, it is expected that the prime will reduce escalation in teams communicating in a computer-mediated setting more than in any other decision setting. The results of the experiment support the prediction that priming will reduce escalation and did so in all decision making settings. Further, the results indicate that, in the computer-mediated setting, primed teams had the least amount of escalation behavior coupled with the largest difference in escalation compared to teams that were not primed.

The major purpose of this dissertation was to investigate the construct validity of a new parent rating scale, the Home and Community Social Behavior Scales (HCSBS), that was used to measure the social skills and antisocial behaviors of at-risk youth in Northern Utah. The results indicate that the HCSBS possesses strong internal consistency with high alphas. Convergent validity with both teacher ratings and student self-ratings of social competence and antisocial behavior appeared slight. Discriminant validity was indicated by the near zero correlations between the HCSBS and the KTEA. The instrument appeared able to detect group differences as indicated by the large and clinically significant effect size differences between at-risk and non-at-risk sample mean scores, as well as a 92.37 correct classification percentage. Finally, the factor analysis of the HCSBS suggested four social competency factors and three antisocial behavior factors, which were extremely similar to the results obtained for the teacher version of the instrument. Directions for future research, as well as implications and limitations of the current study, are noted.

The College Adjustment Scales (CAS) are a multidimensional psychological measure designed specifically for use in college and university settings. The purpose of this study was to assess the ability of the College Adjustment Scales (CAS) to function as outcome measures in university counseling centers. Study 1 assessed the ability of the CAS to track change following brief therapy using a nonequivalent control group design. Study 2 assessed the convergent validity of the CAS by correlating two of the nine CAS scales with two established measures. The results of a three-factor MANOV A revealed that the CAS were able to track change very well for undergraduate students. Results for graduate students showed that three of the CAS scales tracked change quite well, two scales did not track change, and four scales did not track change for graduate males. Convergent validity results were mixed for the two scales assessed. The Self-Esteem scale was determined to be a fairly good measure of global self-esteem. The CAS Anxiety scale did not correlate well with an instrument that is a good measure of anxiety characterized by physiological symptoms. Recommendations for future research are discussed.

Race is a concept that is often avoided in Sweden, and many try to detach present day racism from the antiquated racial biology by not discussing race. To Talk About Race: A Discourse Analysis of the concept of race in present day Swedish daily press aims to investigate how ”race” (in Swedish: ”ras”) is articulated in Swedish daily press within the debate about whether the word “race” should be used or not. The study focuses on looking into which arguments are presented in articles that are in favour of using the word “race” in Sweden as well as which power relations are made visible or invisible through the language that is used within the debate. The empirical material is discursively analysed with guidance from theoretical framework consisting of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s discourse theory as well as postcolonial theory. The results of the study show that the writers of the articles distinctively disagree with earlier discourses of race as racial biology, and instead articulate a discourse of race as a social construct. The use of the word “race” in Swedish daily press is often argued for with reference to the existence of biological racism in Sweden and how discussing the concept of race and using the word “race” can enable to talk about and counteract those problems. In the articles power relations such as those between white and non-white people can be see, as well as between Swedish people and non-white non-Westerners.

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CHAPTER 1: Introduction: The most common craniofacial congenital anomaly is the cleft lip and/or palate (CLP). The CLEFT-Q is the first condition-specific comprehensive patient reported outcome instrument (PROM) for patients with CLP. Other measures used in assessment of patients with CLP are Child Oral Health Impact Profile (COHIP) and Cleft Hearing, Appearance and Speech Questionnaire (CHASQ). The development and validation of the CLEFT-Q have been completed in three phases. In phase I, 138 patients with CLP from six countries were interviewed, and data were used to form 13 scales measuring appearance, facial function and health-related quality of life (HR-QOL). In phase II, scales were field-tested internationally with 2434 patients to examine reliability and validity as well as develop a common scoring algorithm for international use. Phase III, the focus of this thesis, aimed to examine further construct validity and responsiveness of the CLEFT-Q scales. CHAPTER 2: Methods: Patients were recruited at six cleft centres in Canada, USA and UK between January 2018 and October 2019. The sample included patients aged 8-29 seeking rhinoplasty, orthognathic, cleft lip scar revision and alveolar bone graft (ABG) operations. Before and six months after surgery, participants were asked to complete the CLEFT-Q scales relevant to their operation and two other PROMs frequently used in cleft research, i.e., COHIP and CHASQ. Cross-sectional construct validity was examined by testing prespecified hypotheses about expected relationships between CLEFT-Q, CHASQ and COHIP instruments. Internal responsiveness was examined using the distribution-based method. Data were analysed using paired sample t-tests and calculation of effect sizes (ESs) and minimally important differences (MIDs). CHAPTER 3: Results: Examination of cross-sectional construct validity of the CLEFT-Q scales using the COHIP and CHASQ subscale resulted in 39/53 (74%) hypotheses having been supported by the results. The required sample size to examine responsiveness using the anchor-based approach was not reached. Assessment of internal responsiveness using the distribution-based approach demonstrated that the appearance scales were highly responsive to change following cleft-specific surgeries, with statistically significant results and ESs ranging from 0.4 (small) to 1.8 (large). Change on the CLEFT-Q HR-QOL scales was not statistically significant. As predicted, the ESs on scales measuring facial aspects most affected by rhinoplasty and orthognathic surgeries were larger than the ESs on scales measuring facial aspects least affected by these surgeries. MIDs for each scale in each operation were determined. CHAPTER 4: Discussion: Assessment of cross-sectional construct validity demonstrated that CLEFT-Q performs as it was intended when compared with other similar measures (i.e., CHASQ and COHIP). The CLEFT-Q appearance scales were responsive to change following rhinoplasty, orthognathic and cleft lip scar revision operations. As predicted, the CLEFT-Q appearance scales did not detect change following the ABG operation as this operation does not result in visible difference. As hypothesized, the CLEFT-Q HR-QOL scales were less responsive to change than appearance scales as HR-QOL is a more distal construct than appearance in relation to the cleft-related surgeries performed. The preliminary MIDs estimated by the distribution-based approach should be confirmed in studies with diverse CLP populations and larger sample sizes using the anchor-based approach. The findings of this phase III study build on the results of another CLEFT-Q validation study, which demonstrated the ability of the CLEFT-Q scales to detect differences between groups with varying surgical status, i.e., need surgery, have had surgery and never needed surgery. CHAPTER 5: Conclusion: Cross-sectional construct validity of the CLEFT-Q scales was supported by most prespecified hypotheses. The CLEFT-Q scales were found to be responsive to change. MIDs were determined. The results of this phase III study should be confirmed in a larger and more culturally diverse patient population. Future studies to examine reproducibility and measurement error as well as external responsiveness of the CLEFT-Q scales may be beneficial to add to the psychometric evaluation process. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

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