We present a theory of the basis of support for a social movement. Three types of support (citizenship actions, policy support and acceptance, and personal-sphere behaviors that accord with movement principles) are empirically distinct from each other and from committed activism. Drawing on theoretical work on values and norm-activation processes, we propose a value-belief-norm (VBN) theory of movement support. Individuals who accept a movement’s basic values, believe that valued objects are threatened, and believe that their actions can help restore those values experience an obligation (personal norm) for pro-movement action that creates a predisposition to provide support; the particular type of support that results is dependent on the individual’s capabilities and constraints. Data from a national survey of 420 respondents suggest that the VBN theory, when compared with other prevalent theories, offers the best available account of support for the environmental movement.

/pdf/a-value-belief-norm-theory-of-support-for-social-movements-4eiyn3aly8.pdf

A Value-Belief-Norm Theory of Support for Social Movements: The Case of Environmentalism

A simple model was tested in which attitudinal factors and external conditions act in combination to influence behavior. The model predicts that behavior is a monotonic function of attitudes and external conditions and that the strength of the attitude-behavior relationship is a curvilinear function of the strength of the external conditions, with extreme values setting boundary conditions on the applicability of attitude models. The model also allows for interactions in which perceived costs enter into the attitudinal process. Evidence is taken from a natural experiment in recycling in which collection bins for curbside pickup had been provided to 26% of 257 survey respondents. Consistent with the model, main effects of attitudes and external conditions were found, as was an interaction effect in which the Schwartz norm-activation model predicted recycling behavior only for households without bins. Interactive models such as the one developed here can yield better policy-relevant analyses by clarifying t...

Influences on Attitude-Behavior Relationships A Natural Experiment with Curbside Recycling

The New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) scale is the most frequently used measure of environmental concern, but it has not been placed in the context of a social-psychological theory of attitude formation or attitude-behavior relationships. Using data from a northern Virginia sample, this study examines NEP in relation to the variables in a theoretical model of environmental concern. We found that the NEP is indistinguishable from a scale of awareness of consequences (AC) of general environmental conditions, both psychometrically and in terms of its relations to behavioral intentions, but somewhat different in its relations to basic value orientations and sociodemographic variables. We conclude that both NEP and AC measure generalized beliefs about the nature of human-environment interactions-or "folk ecology"—a set of beliefs that may be influenced by social structure and values and that influence attitudes, beliefs, and behavioral intentions regarding specific environmental conditions.

The New Ecological Paradigm in Social-Psychological Context

List of illustrations and tables Preface and acknowledgments List of abbreviations 1. The puzzle of insurgent collective action 2. Ethnographic research in the shadow of civil war 3. Redrawing the boundaries of class and citizenship 4. From political mobilization to armed insurgency 5. The political foundations of dual sovereignty 6. The re-emergence of civil society 7. Campesino accounts of insurgent participation 8. Explaining insurgent collective action Epilogue: legacies of an agrarian insurgency Appendix: A model of high-risk collective action by subordinate social actors Chronology of El Salvador's civil war List of references.

Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador

Bias in questionnaires is an important issue in public health research. To collect the most accurate data from respondents, investigators must understand and be able to prevent or at least minimize bias in the design of their questionnaires. This paper identifies and categorizes 48 types of bias in questionnaires based on a review of the literature and offers an example of each type. The types are categorized according to three main sources of bias: the way a question is designed, the way the questionnaire as a whole is designed, and how the questionnaire is administered. This paper is intended to help investigators in public health understand the mechanism and dynamics of problems in questionnaire design and to provide a checklist for identifying potential bias in a questionnaire before it is administered.

A catalog of biases in questionnaires.

RECENT and numerous additions to the survey methodology literature, especially in the area of random-digit-dialing, have helped researchers to generate samples of household units for telephone surveys. However, the literature on selecting survey respondents within those household units has not kept pace. In fact, after searching through the standard texts on telephone surveys (see for example, Blankenship, 1977, or Dillman, 1978) researchers might conclude that there is only one method of respondent selection-the Troldahl-Carter (1964) method. In the Troldahl-Carter method, one of four selection matrices which list various combinations of age and sex of household members is assigned randomly to telephone numbers in the sample. Thus, by asking only two questions (How many people 18 years or older live in your household, and how many of them are men?), the interviewer has enough information to select the respondent who is designated at the intersection point on the matrix. This method, which is less cumbersome and more appropriate to telephone interviews than the complete enumeration of the household proposed by Kish (1949), still requires the interviewer to ask potentially sensitive questions early in the interview. For example, two elderly women who live together

The Next-Birthday Method of Respondent Selection

Revolution in El Salvador: From Civil Strife to Civil Peace (2nd ed.)

All of the media flows in Latin America described previously in this volume are motivated primarily by profit-making commercial interests. In contrast, Radio Marti is a U.S. propaganda broadcasting operation intended to bring about political effects among the people of Cuba. The plan for Radio Marti ignores (1) past communication research showing that the mass media seldom have direct effects, and (2) the ineffectiveness of previous U.S. radio propaganda aimed at Cuba. If broadcasting to Cuba will not be effective in changing the attitudes of Cuban audiences, why is the U.S. government spending $14 million annually on Radio Marti? This article views Radio Marti as a system's response prompted by (1) a shift in inter-American relations, and (2) Cuban exiles and politically conservative groups in the United States who influenced the Reagan Administration to launch this project as a political symbol. Thus Radio Marti can be understood best as a political effect rather than as a cause of audience effects.

WHEN NOBODY LISTENS Assessing the Political Success of Radio Martí

The Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics (COIA), an alliance of 57 university faculty senates, was founded in 2002 to provide a faculty voice in the national discussion about how to best maintain academic integrity in big-time college sports. COIA’s most recent white paper, Framing the Future: Reforming Intercollegiate Athletics (2007), proposes best practices for individual universities to help ensure that college sports are more fully integrated into their academic goals, values and missions. Reported here are the results of a national survey that gauged the extent to which COIA’s best practices have been adopted by schools participating in the Football Bowl Subdivision. The findings suggest that big-time athletics programs have a number of underutilized tools at their disposal that can assist them in protecting core academic values and standards at universities competing at the highest level of intercollegiate sport.

/pdf/integration-of-athletics-and-academics-survey-of-best-1hj1fw4b6u.pdf

John Spicer Nichols

Papers

The Next-Birthday Method of Respondent Selection

Revolution in El Salvador: From Civil Strife to Civil Peace (2nd ed.)

WHEN NOBODY LISTENS Assessing the Political Success of Radio Martí

Integration of Athletics and Academics: Survey of Best Practices at FBS Schools

Testing the constitutionality of u.s. licensing of news gatherers and researchers traveling to cuba