This paper reports on literature related to the assessment of barriers to educational technology assessment. It surveys the development of technology acceptance models from social cognitive theory and innovation diffusion theory through to a unified theory that considers performance expectancy, effort expectancy, and social influence. Because risk…

This paper analyses the financial circumstances and social income of nearly one hundred unaccompanied minors who have come to Hamburg as refugees from various regions of Africa. It is based on extensive qualitative surveys, analysing their objective conditions of life and in particular their legal situation. A wide range of interview material and…

The purpose of this study was to identify the factors that influence electronic collaboration technology acceptance and predicted usage for virtual team collaboration projects in higher education courses. The research combined the unified theory of acceptance and usage of technology (UTAUT) with a virtual team-training model. All 108 participants…

Three questions bearing on M. Janowitz's community-integration hypothesis were pursued in a study for which community ties and newspaper subscribing were the focal dimensions. The questions addressed were the following: (1) Are community-church ties positively associated with subscribing to a local church newspaper? (2) Are church ties positively…

Twenty-three "social effect" concept statements were investigated in this study dealing with advertising's portrayal of married life; vanity, sexual, snob, and fear appeals; the use of black models in ads; product puffery--conformity to other's social lifestyles; and over-the-counter drug advertising. A questionnaire was mailed to 393 Atlanta,…

To discover what effects the political, religious, social, and economic climate had on naming children, 100 families (representing almost 700 individuals) were interviewed to identify patterns in first names given over three generations. The sample of 100 families includes people from different religious backgrounds and from different parts of…

A student survey at a metropolitan university examined priorities of both traditional and non-traditional students; the survey resulted from anxieties expressed by some students about not having a traditional college experience. The administration was trying to decide whether to allocate resources to create a football program within this commuter,…

This paper discusses three aspects of bias crimes against sexual minorities: (1) perpetration rates among young adults; (2) perpetrators' motivations; and (3) factors that prevent some people from committing hate crimes. In an anonymous survey of 484 students at 6 community colleges: one in 10 respondents admitted physical violence or threats…

Since television both reflects and affects society, how blacks are portrayed in television drama is significant for program producers, the audience, and for consideration in debates on multicultural content, minority access, and integrated casting. Previous work in the field of blacks and television has been based on observational sociology,…

A study of social and cultural factors that affect the appropriateness of verbal expressions in different languages focuses on the comparative uses of three common expressions ("thank you, I'm sorry, excuse me" and their equivalents) in English and Chinese. First, the usage patterns of the three expressions are explained briefly, and the…

The study reported in this paper identified and interviewed a representative sample of the former Doukhobor residents of 13 Canadian villages and compared responses of three generations of Doukhobors regarding the nature and strength of their present identity. The results of the survey are summarized in 5 idea components: Awareness of Culture;…

The paper develops a theory of political alienation based upon interactions among three antecedent conditions. Political alienation is interpreted as combining feelings of inefficacy, discontent, cynicism, estrangement, and hopelessness. The factors evaluated for their contribution to political alienation are: (1) critical perceptions of…

The research investigated political and psychological reactance among adolescents. Political reactance is interpreted to include feelings of political alienation and distrust. Psychological reactance is defined as behavior by an individual in response to reduction or threatened reduction of freedom. A model was created which expanded existing…