In less than three hundred years, the American frontier has been advanced from the Connecticut River Valley thru the fertile prairies of the Middle West to the Pacific and the frozen tundras of Alaska. Behind the crest of this pioneer wae, homeseekers rapidly occupied the bounteous regions of our great West.

This study analyzes the 1993 Survey on Social Mobility and Social Change in China and is trying to find out whether Chinese nationalism affects regime support and in what direction. The thesis begins with the theories of nationalism, whose main events took part chiefly and, almost, exclusively, in Europe of the 19th century. Then, the roots of Chinese nationalism are explained along with the need to use the plural term nationalisms in order to point out the many faces of Chinese nationalism. There are presented some typologies of it as presented in bibliography. Furthermore, theoretical concepts such as regime, diffuse and specific support among others, which are used in the present study, are introduced to pave the way for the ensuing chapters. Moreover, the model that is used in the thesis is put forth in order to underline the key concepts and to support the use of the questionnaire in a meaningful and sufficient way. The dependent, intermediate, and independent variables are presented in order to conceptualize and operationalize them. After that, the data analysis follows, which test the theories suggested for Chinese nationalism. The results of the data analysis show that in 1993 not many factors of Chinese nationalism affect regime support. It is only the attitude toward China itself and foreign countries that have a statistically significant impact on regime support, therefore a 2x2 typology concerning Chinese nationalism and regime support is introduced.

The most widely cited European data on work hours mismatches at the couple level date back to the 1990s. The general gist of analyses of these data was that "overworked" dual-earner couples frequently preferred work hours reductions, especially those with childcare responsibilities. This study uses more recent data from the European Social Survey (2010-12) to update the available evidence on actual and preferred breadwinner models and on the occurrence and determinants of work hours mismatches among couples in Europe. The focus is on differences between demographic groups and countries in the degree to which cohabiting couples are either underemployed (working fewer hours than desired) or overemployed (working more hours than desired). Our analyses show that about one third of couples are underemployed, while only one in ten report being overemployed. We identify low education and the presence of children below school age as risk factors for underemployment, whereas highly educated women and fathers of teenagers tend to be overemployed. In a comparison of 16 European countries, we find couples in Greece, Ireland, Slovenia, and Spain to be most at risk of experiencing underemployment - in the countries that were most strongly affected by the recession. The effects of children on the experience of hours mismatches are found to vary across Europe - a particularly strong association of children below school age with parental underemployment is observed in Central and Eastern Europe, Finland, and Germany and a particularly weak one in Great Britain, Greece, Ireland, and Sweden.

Trust is seen as an essential ingredient in a flourishing society. It is a well-researched subject within the political science discourse, but few have looked at how retirement affect trust. This thesis aims to examine the relation between retirement and trust using regression analysis. Two hypotheses are formulated in relation to previous research findings; that trust increases when a person retires, and that this positive effect is expected to be stronger for retirees that engage in civil society. This thesis finds little evidence that supports the first hypothesis. Instead, retirement is negatively associated with trust, and this stands true after controls for other variables (health, education, age, year of birth) and a robustness test. In relation to the second hypothesis, this thesis finds that civic participation is indeed positively related to trust among the retired, although this relationship is rather weak.

<p>Does the country people live in affect the probability of them experiencing happiness? Can a country variable in an ordinal regression model be affected when microeconomic and macroeconomic factors are added to the model? The possible outcomes are either that the country variable affects less when the additional predictors are added to the model, or that they stay the same. The micro data is collected from the European Social Survey database, the macro data is collected from the World Bank. The country variable becomes less substantial when additional variables are added to the model. The variable with the most influence over expected happiness apart from the country variable is whether the individual often socializes with friends or not. It’s statistically significant that the supervened variables make the country variable less volatile in some cases.</p>

Does the country people live in affect the probability of them experiencing happiness? Can a country variable in an ordinal regression model be affected when microeconomic and macroeconomic factors are added to the model? The possible outcomes are either that the country variable affects less when the additional predictors are added to the model, or that they stay the same. The micro data is collected from the European Social Survey database, the macro data is collected from the World Bank. The country variable becomes less substantial when additional variables are added to the model. The variable with the most influence over expected happiness apart from the country variable is whether the individual often socializes with friends or not. It’s statistically significant that the supervened variables make the country variable less volatile in some cases.

Syftet med studien är att undersöka huruvida skandinaviska mäns attityd och handling gentemot jämställdhet påverkas vid ett faderskap av döttrar. Studier som tidigare genomförts visar att män med döttrar tenderar att ha större insikt i hur kvinnors position i samhället ser ut. Dock är dessa utförda på utomeuropeiska länder och resultaten visar även på att detta samband är kulturellt betingat. På grund av detta finns en vikt i att undersöka om detta fenomen även finns hos skandinaviska män, då de skandinaviska länderna ses som några av de mest jämställda samhällena i världen. Något som även saknas bortsätt från en av dessa är att studierna inte undersöks hur sambandet mellan individers attityder och faktiska handlingar ser ut. Detta kan ses som en svaghet på grund av att dessa dimensioner inte alltid är kausala. Således är denna studies syfte att undersöka om detta fenomen finns i de skandinaviska nationernas kultur. De frågeställningar som studien besvarar är: Finns det en skillnad i attityden till jämställdhet hos skandinaviska män med döttrar och män utan döttrar? samt Finns det skillnader i hur mycket hemansvar skandinaviska män tar vid faderskap av döttrar och män utan döttrar? För att besvara dessa forskningsfrågor används en kvantitativ metod, detta på grund av att resultatet går då att applicera på skandinaviska män och inte endast respondenterna. Det datamaterial som hypotesprövningarna grundar sig i är European Social Survey. En presentation av varför en individs handling samt attityd inte alltid har ett kausalt samband är inkluderad. Resultaten antyder att detta fenomen är kulturellt betingat då de skandinaviska männen inte påverkas av deras barns genus. Resultatet antyder således att ju mer jämställt land männen lever i ju mindre påverkas de av dess barns genus när det kommer till inställningen till jämställdhet. Resultaten visar även att skandinaviska män tenderar till att återgå till ett mer könsrollsstereotyp handlande i hemmet vid ett faderskap.

This study examines the hours of care giving provided to senior citizens in Canada using the 2007 General Social Survey. Using Heckman’s 2 Stage Correction to correct for sample selection bias, we find that care givers spend the most time caring for their spouses. However, women spend fewer hours caring for their spouses than men. This could be because women have a longer life expectancy than men, and therefore fewer women than men are actually providing care to a spouse. However, women spend more time caring for their parents than men do. Also, caregivers spend positive hours caring for a sibling of the same gender, but fewer hours caring for a sibling of the opposite gender than they do caring for non-immediate family members.

Denna studie ämnar undersöka skillnaden i osäkra anställningar mellan unga kvinnor och män i 14 Europeiska länder dels på landspecifik nivå samt indelat i välfärdsregimer. Underlaget för studien kommer ifrån European Social Survey från åren 2010 och 2012. För analysen har logistisk regressionsanalys tillämpats i statistikprogrammet SPSS. Genom ett uppslag i tidigare forskning och teori om faktorer på både individ- och institutionsnivå formulerades två hypoteser: Att kvinnor i större utsträckning än män innehar osäkra anställningar samt att den största skillnaden skulle gå att urskönja i den konservativa välfärdsregimen. I ett inledande skede vid kontroll för enbart kön tenderade kvinnor i den socialdemokratiska välfärdsregimen att ha en större sannolikhet till en osäker anställning. Detta resultat speglas inte i de två övriga regimgrupperna. Vid kontroller för sociodemografiska variabler, främst sektor, upphör denna tendens och en könsskillnad går inte att påvisa. När kontroller för familjebildning förs in ändras resultatet. Kvinnor i tre länder, varav två i den konservativa välfärdsregimen, har en större sannolikhet till en osäker anställning. Välfärdsregimer tycks inte vara den mest fruktbara metoden för analys i kluster men ger möjlighet till en djupare förståelse för viktiga institutionella faktorer på landspecifik nivå. Generellt har unga kvinnor inte osäkrare anställningar än män i studien men kontroller för fler relevanta variabler är något som skulle kunna fördjupa analysen.

Sociological studies of society-environment interactions are based on a premise that population well-being is dependent on the environment. Here, I argue that not only are people innately connected to the environment, but the environment also bonds people to one another. That is, people have a mutual obligation to one another to care for the environment. An often ignored factor is that individual participation toward protecting and improving the quality of the environment rests upon the local social and spatial context in which the individual is situated. The ability of individuals in a local environment to come together to identify issues, develop common interests, and act collectively toward the local environment can be understood from a social capital perspective. Social capital represents social resources such as trust, information sources, and social norms embedded in social networks that promote common environmental values and facilitate proenvironmental actions. The main objective of this study was to examine the extent to which social capital differentially influences environmentalism, net of demographic and economic characteristics, across rural and urban populations and across geographic regions. Data for this study came from the 2000 General Social Survey (GSS) Environment II Module conducted in conjunction with the 2000 International Social Survey Program. The dataset was used to operationalize dependent and independent variables and test the research hypotheses regarding differential effects of social and spatial context on environmentalism using a national cross-sectional sample. For the dependent variable, I conceptualized three dimensions of environmentalism: environmental attitudes, environmental concern, and environmental behavior. The study included three sets of independent variables: social capital, sociodemographic, and spatial context. The multivariate analysis included two parts. The first examined the relationship between environmentalism and social capital, net of sociodemographic and spatial characteristics. The second part of the analysis examined the extent to which the social capital parameters, net of other factors, changed in urban and rural contexts. The most relevant finding of the study was that the influence of social capital on various aspects of environmentalism is inconsistent. In general, results confirm social capital is an important correlate of environmentalism.