This dissertation investigates the important role attitudes play in determining the participation levels of a large number of Americans. Over the past 30 years the prominent theories in the political participation literature have stressed the importance of socioeconomic status in explaining voter turnout. More recently, some have suggested that voting is a habit that most Americans acquire over their lifetimes. I contend that this previous work is incomplete in that it overlooks a large segment of the public that I describe as sporadic voters. Using National Election Study panel data from the early 1970s and 1990s, I find that neither socioeconomic status nor habit explains the voting behavior of sporadic voters. Sporadic voters decide to participate in elections based on their political attitudes at the time of any given election. If they have stronger partisan attachments, greater campaign interest or more external efficacy sporadic voters will be more likely to show up at the polls regardless of changes in education, age or income.

This study explored the effects of a person's God image and religiosity on his or her attitudes toward seeking mental health services. God image for participants was measured using the God Image Scale (Lawrence, 1997) and the Loving and Controlling God Scales (Benson & Spilka, 1973) and religious devotion was measured using the Religious Orientation Scale-Revised (Gorsuch & McPherson, 1989) and the Santa Clara Strength of Religious Faith Scale (Plante, Yancey, Sherman, Guertin, & Pardini, 1999). Attitudes toward counseling were measured using the Attitudes Toward Seeking Professional Psychological Help Scale-Short Form (ATSPPH-SF). Results indicated that individuals who perceive God as present, benevolent, and loving have more positive attitudes towards seeking professional help. Individuals who report higher degrees of intrinsic religiosity also indicated more positive attitudes toward counseling. Further, religious devotion did not add meaningful predictive power to God image in predicting attitudes towards counseling. Finally, religious beliefs were demonstrated to be neither a strong nor statistically significant predictor of attitudes towards counseling.

Background and purpose: The needs for the post-discharge care increases in tandem with the rapid growth of the ageing population. Discharge planning, as part of continuity of care, is parallel with nursing care. The nurses play the key role in the discharge planning process. Their understanding and attitudes towards discharge planning are likely to affect the practice and the effectiveness of discharge planning. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the nurses¡¦ understanding of the discharge planning process and their attitudes towards it. Methods: The self- administrated questionnaires were delivered to all the nurses working in a general care units in the medical center in southern Taiwan. 332 nurses were approached. The data were analyzed by SPSS 12.0 applying descriptive statistics, ANOVA, chi-square test and Pearson correlation analysis. The reliability of the questionnaire is 0.882. Results: The net response rate is 69.9 percent. About 43 percent of the respondents are with the employment length over 10 years. 43 percent of the respondents had received discharge planning education. Only 10.7 percent of respondents got involved in the discharge planning meetings frequently. The mean value of the understanding between the respondents with the discharge planning training and those without were significantly different (p < 0.001). The significant difference was found in the understanding among the respondents with the different level of involvement in the discharge planning meetings (p< 0.001). There was a significant difference found in the mean value of attitudes among the respondents with different frequency of involvement in the discharge planning meetings. The mean scores of the whole attitudes were significantly higher in the respondents with training than in those without training (p=0.014). Understanding was associated with duration of employment, the discharge planning training or education, and level of involvement in the discharge planning meetings. Attitudes were associated with the level of involvement in the discharge planning meetings and workload. The strong correlation was found between the respondents¡¦ understanding and attitudes. Conclusion: Understanding of the discharge planning process and the attitudes towards discharge planning were influenced by the duration of employment, the involvement in the discharge planning meetings and the education or training regarding discharge planning. Therefore, to increase the understanding and to change the attitudes, the nurses should be provided with the more discharge planning education and opportunities to participate in the discharge planning meetings.

I argue that there are irreducibly non-propositional intentional states, mental states that are about things (states such as fearing snakes, liking ice-cream, and so on) but which do not have a propositional content. I provide a positive account of such states and offer philosophical insights concerning concepts and content that emerge once they are recognized. / text

The current population of the United States is remarkably racially diverse relative to its past and to other nations. As a result, individuals have many opportunities to interact with others from differing racial backgrounds. However, close, intimate, friendships between individuals from differing racial groups remain uncommon, especially among European Americans. Given persistent racial tension within the U.S., it is important to understand how racial attitudes develop in children and how these attitudes influence interracial interactions. A common adage is that “hate is learned” and theorists have long argued that children adopt the racial attitudes of their family members (Allport, 1954). However, research provides inconsistent evidence for this claim. The primary goal of this dissertation is to examine the role of maternal race-related attitudes and behavior, especially mothers’ modeling of behavior during cross-race interactions, in shaping children’s racial attitudes. Specifically, we sought to test the hypothesis that Asian American, European American, and Latino mothers who exhibit more warm interactions with an African American confederate would be more likely to have children who have positive attitudes toward African American. Conversely, Asian American, European American, and Latino mothers who behave in an anxious or avoidant manner during an interaction with an African American confederate would be more likely to have children with negative attitudes toward African Americans. Additionally, we investigated the role of individual differences in predicting mothers’ nonverbal behavior in the cross-race interactions (i.e., levels of situational diversity, social network, racial attitudes, theories of prejudice, colorblindness). Mothers (N = 44; 29 to 48 years, M = 39.54) and their children (N = 44; 21 girls, 4 to 6 years ; M = 5.31 ) were placed in a room with an African American confederate. The interaction was unstructured (i.e., no task to be completed or predetermined topic to be discussed) and filmed in its entirety. Mothers and children were then separated post-interaction and completed several measures of racial attitudes. Results indicated mothers lived in moderately racially diverse environments. As expected, mothers' and children's attitudes toward African Americans were unrelated; mothers held slightly pro-African American attitudes, whereas children held slightly pro-European American attitudes. Mothers also discussed race with their children somewhat often as evidenced by their self-reported frequency of race-related messages and reported little apprehension about broaching the topic with their children. Contrary to expectations, none of the maternal measures assessed here (e.g., mothers’ racial socialization, racial beliefs, intergroup contact, nonverbal behavior) were significant predictors of their children’s racial attitudes. / text

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