Search results for "050401 social sciences methods"
showing 10 items of 191 documents
Fighting the Crocodiles: Immigrant Students and Their Perilous Routes at Campus
2018
This article is about what institutional frameworks do to our immigrant students, or how such frames may open or close opportunities. As my text unfolds, my students will speak. What stories do they provide us with? and What stories pass unnoticed? This text is also about voice and academic texts as muted lives, or as flat versions on a felt board.
Political candidates in infotainment programmes and their emotional effects on Twitter: an analysis of the 2015 Spanish general elections pre-campaig…
2017
[EN] The infotainment format offers candidates an informal setting to show a more personal side of themselves to the electorate, opening themselves up to potential voters. An example of media hybridisation, social networks users can immediately comment on infotainment television programmes, a process known as second screening. These second screeners tend to be especially active in politics. This paper analyses the immediate emotional reaction of these users as they watch infotainment programmes that air during the campaign or pre-campaign seasons and feature political candidates as guests. We have confirmed that second screeners react more emotionally towards the candidate when his or her p…
Frame building and frame sponsorship in the 2011 Spanish election: the practices of polarised pluralism
2017
ABSTRACTThis study assesses if the well-established polarised pluralism of the Spanish news media system translated into frame sponsorship during the 2011 Spanish General Election. After reviewing the historical and cultural influences that shaped the 2011 Spanish electoral campaign, I conduct a qualitative discourse analysis of 96 news releases issued by the 2 main Spanish political parties, the Socialist Party and the People’s Party, to identify their sponsored diagnostic and prognostic frames. I then compare the partisan news releases with 27 El Pais and El Mundo editorials that evaluated the party-sponsored frames to explore if and to what extent both Spanish leading newspapers adopted …
An inquiry-based learning path to introduce modern physics in high-school
2018
Although Modern Physics (MP) is a scientific field of increasingly interest, due to its mathematical and conceptual difficulty, it was not generally taught in Italian high-schools. Recently, in order to reduce the gap between school curricula and modern technology, the Ministry of Education promoted the inclusion of MP in Italian secondary schools. MP hot topics produce interest and enthusiasm in learners at all ages, but to address this topic in high school in an effective way it is necessary to translate complex theories and highly-advanced experiments into an understandable language appreciated by students. In this contribution, we discuss an inquiry-driven learning sequence suitable to …
Political communication in election processes: an overview
2018
Influenced by both the impact of digital technologies and the social and political changes experienced in Western societies, the processes of political communication have undergone profound transfo...
The formation of aggregate expectations: wisdom of the crowds or media influence?
2017
ABSTRACTThe general elections of 2015 in Spain were elections of change. Two new parties for which voters had no previous historical reference points burst onto the parliamentary scene. Two (partially) opposed theories vie to offer an explanation as to how voters build their aggregate electoral expectations. In this paper, we investigate which mechanism has the greatest influence on the formation of expectations: published opinion or social interactions. Likewise, we also study if there is an ideological bias in the voters’ perception of the future results of the electoral battle. Based on analysis of microdata from a survey (sample size = 14,262) conducted in Spain on the occasion of the g…
Burning the Book: A Biographical Study of a Pedagogically Inspired Identity Crisis in Physical Education
1999
This paper focuses upon a fateful moment in the life of a Spanish student of physical education called Guillem (a pseudonym) in which the reading of a particular text as part of his course requirements instigated a powerful identity crisis. Biographical data are provided to contextualize the crisis and the impact it had on the life of this student. Next, the strategies used by Guillem to resolve his identity crisis are considered and the problems of self-change are highlighted. Finally, attention is given to the implications of this case for those who seek to engage in critical forms of pedagogy.
Cautionary Note on the Two-Step Transformation to Normality
2019
ABSTRACT Templeton and Burney (2017) proposed a two-step normality transformation as a remedy for non-normally distributed data, which are commonly found in AIS research. We argue that, rather than transforming the data toward normality, researchers should first seek to analyze and understand the sources of non-normality. Using simulated datasets, we demonstrate three sources of non-normality and their consequences for regression estimation. We then demonstrate that the two-step transformation cannot solve any of these problems and that each source of non-normality can be handled with alternative, existing techniques. We further present two empirical examples to demonstrate these issues wit…
Measurement Advances and Challenges in Competency Assessment in Higher Education
2016
Domain-specific and generic competencies have become target outcomes of students' learning in higher education, and competency assessment plays an increasingly important role in higher education on an international scale. Recent reviews of the literature show that there is still a substantial lack of research on assessment practices in higher education, especially on measurement models and valid instruments for competency assessment. This special issue provides an overview of current international research and innovative developments in this research area, covering a broad range of assessment perspectives, addressing prevalent shortcomings of educational assessment practices, and presenting…
Surveying and Observing Political Elites
2017
Surveys and observation are two strategies of inquiry that gather rich amounts of data about political elites’ opinions, attitudes, and behavior. These research techniques have experienced advances benefitting from the development of the Internet and new technological tools. Survey research has evolved from country studies to comparative research with greater amounts of units and cases. However, such studies face important challenges regarding questionnaire design, sampling, interviewing, and data analysis. In particular, problems of representativity and lack of control may threaten comparative analysis. On their side, observation techniques raise the question of accessibility, of potential…