Do Mothers and Fathers of Egyptian Stuttering Children View Stuttering Differently?

Purpose: Limited research has shown that knowing or interacting with a person who stutters facilitates more positive attitudes toward stuttering. This is true when the stuttering person is a close friend or a family member. The study sought to determine if Egyptian mothers held different stuttering attitudes than fathers as joint parents of children who stuttered. Method: Public Opinion Survey of Human Attributes–Stuttering results of 25 mothers and 25 fathers of the same children who stuttered were compared. Also, children's severity scores were correlated with their parents' attitudes. Results: There were no significant differences between mothers' and fathers' stuttering attitudes; however, an unexpected trend for more positive attitudes of fathers was observed. Weak relationships between children's stuttering severity and their parents' attitudes existed, with slightly higher correlations for the fathers. Conclusion: Nonsignificant trends for slightly more positive attitudes for fathers than mothers should be explored in larger sample sizes in order to answer the question “Should information provided for parents of children who stutter be different or differently presented to mothers versus fathers?”

Polling for Peace

Reflecting on British public response to Italy’s incursion into Abyssinia in 1935, journalist F.W. Deedes argued that the 1934 Peace Ballot, a widespread national referendum evincing public support for the League of Nations, had successfully turned public opinion against interventionism. Completed by over eleven million people, the Peace Ballot was the most influential public opinion survey of the 1930s. It was also a press sensation, drawing praise by League advocates and disdain from conservative papers, which referred to it as a “Ballot of Blood.” This chapter traces both optimism and skepticism over polling when it first entered public discourse via the newspapers. While Waugh’s Scoop (1938) details the hapless efforts of the aesthete and nature-writer William Boot to provide honest reporting of the Abyssinian Crisis, the overwhelming powers of press magnates and their financial interests undermine his work by manipulating and capitalizing on public opinion. Waugh’s skeptical vision of public opinion in Scoop mirrored his public critiques of the research organization Mass-Observation, whose practices of public observation he likened to the actions of “keyhole-observers and envelope-steamers,” and whose methods, he argued, would empower authoritarians seeking to control public opinion. Mirroring similar themes of Storm Jameson’s novel None Turn Back (1936), Scoop not only critiques the newspaper trade, but also denounces institutionalized public opinion and its imbrication in the newspaper industry in the 1930s. Like other skeptics, Waugh challenges the utopian notion that polling fosters unmediated exposure to public thought; the mediation of polling through the political morass of newspapers elicited fears that polling would become just one more media cudgel with which to shape and manipulate public sentiment.

RADON RISK COMMUNICATION ISSUES: RESULTS OF THE ALL-RUSSIAN PUBLIC OPINION SURVEY

1,500 respondents took part in an Internet survey conducted in autumn 2020 in the Russian Federation. The survey was a part of the Radon Cross-Cultural Multilingual Public Opinion Survey (STEAM project) in the framework of the IAEA technical cooperation project RER9153. The survey was representative for the population of the country as per sex, age, and a region of residence. Random sampling error didn’t exceed 2.5 % for 95 % confidence interval. All respondents were given some information on radon that was as similar as possible in questionnaires published in languages spoken in all 22 coun- tries that took part in the STEAM project; it was done in order to provide an opportunity to make further cross-country com- parison of the survey results. The objective of the survey was to investigate what attitudes people had towards their health and towards radon as a possible health risk factor. The survey revealed that in the Russian Federation people were rather poorly aware about radon. Only 31.7 % re- spondents stated that they were to a greater or lesser extent informed about radon. The level of knowledge about radon as a health risk factor was at a comparable level. For the majority of respondents, information about radon received from Ro- spotrebnadzor and its subordinate research institute formed the perception of radon as a risk factor that requires actions to mitigate its impact on health. Medical specialists turned out to be the most trustworthy source of information about health risks, first of all, family doctors and physicians in polyclinics; people also trusted medical prevention centers, Rospotrebnad- zor, regional and local public health care authorities. Results of the presented survey that was the first social survey focusing on the radon problem and conducted throughout the country can be used as a basis for planning communication strategies within the framework of both national and regional radon programs.

RADON RISK COMMUNICATION ISSUES: RESULTS OF THE ALL-RUSSIAN PUBLIC OPINION SURVEY

1,500 respondents took part in an Internet survey conducted in autumn 2020 in the Russian Federation. The survey was a part of the Radon Cross-Cultural Multilingual Public Opinion Survey (STEAM project) in the framework of the IAEA technical cooperation project RER9153. The survey was representative for the population of the country as per sex, age, and a region of residence. Random sampling error didn’t exceed 2.5 % for 95 % confidence interval. All respondents were given some information on radon that was as similar as possible in questionnaires published in languages spoken in all 22 coun- tries that took part in the STEAM project; it was done in order to provide an opportunity to make further cross-country com- parison of the survey results. The objective of the survey was to investigate what attitudes people had towards their health and towards radon as a possible health risk factor. The survey revealed that in the Russian Federation people were rather poorly aware about radon. Only 31.7 % re- spondents stated that they were to a greater or lesser extent informed about radon. The level of knowledge about radon as a health risk factor was at a comparable level. For the majority of respondents, information about radon received from Ro- spotrebnadzor and its subordinate research institute formed the perception of radon as a risk factor that requires actions to mitigate its impact on health. Medical specialists turned out to be the most trustworthy source of information about health risks, first of all, family doctors and physicians in polyclinics; people also trusted medical prevention centers, Rospotrebnad- zor, regional and local public health care authorities. Results of the presented survey that was the first social survey focusing on the radon problem and conducted through- out the country can be used as a basis for planning communication strategies within the framework of both national and regional radon programs.

Prevalence of Prejudice-Denoting Words in News Media Discourse: A Chronological Analysis

This work analyzes the prevalence of words denoting prejudice in 27 million news and opinion articles written between 1970 and 2019 and published in 47 of the most popular news media outlets in the United States. Our results show that the frequency of words that denote specific prejudice types related to ethnicity, gender, sexual, and religious orientation has markedly increased within the 2010–2019 decade across most news media outlets. This phenomenon starts prior to, but appears to accelerate after, 2015. The frequency of prejudice-denoting words in news articles is not synchronous across all outlets, with the yearly prevalence of such words in some influential news media outlets being predictive of those words’ usage frequency in other outlets the following year. Increasing prevalence of prejudice-denoting words in news media discourse is often substantially correlated with U.S. public opinion survey data on growing perceptions of minorities’ mistreatment. Granger tests suggest that the prevalence of prejudice-denoting terms in news outlets might be predictive of shifts in public perceptions of prejudice severity in society for some, but not all, types of prejudice.