EXPERIENCE OF APPLICATION OF THE MODIFIED BOGARDUS SCALE IN THE STUDY OF INTERETHNIC TOLERANCE

The article is devoted to the analysis of the influence on the results of a sociological study of the use of various forms of questions: open and closed on the example of the study of interethnic tolerance of high school students. The study was conducted using the traditional social distance scale developed by Emory Bogardus and its modified form as an open-ended question. The authors come to the conclusion that there are no significant quantitative (the value of the social distance scale) and qualitative (the composition of nationalities, about which the opinions of the respondents and the vector of attitudes towards them are updated) differences in the data collected using open and closed questions. At the same time, it is noted that the specifics of the respondents' answers to open-ended questions became a more positive (in accordance with both qualitative and quantitative criteria) attitude towards European ethnic groups, at the same time, a large social distance versus closed-ended questions. Another distinguishing feature of the answers to the open-ended question was the radicalism of views and less social distance to representatives of other peoples in general.

Effects of Renaming Schizophrenia on Destigmatization among Medical Students in One Taiwan University

The stigma associated with serious mental illnesses causes a huge burden on patients, their families, and society. In October 2012, in Taiwan, schizophrenia was renamed to reduce the stigma associated with this disease. The aim of this study was to compare the differences of public stigma, self-stigma, and social distance associated with schizophrenia between old and new name of schizophrenia in medical students. A cross-sectional survey was administered to 180 medical students of Taipei Medical University from October 2014 to February 2015. In total, 123 complete questionnaires were included in this study. Participants completed the modified attribution questionnaire, the perceived psychiatric stigma scale, and modified social distance scale to assess public stigma, self-stigma, and social distance, respectively. We also collected basic demographic data and previous experience of contact with people with mental illness. In total, 52 and 71 of the first- and fourth-year medical students, respectively, participated in the study. Among them, there were 51 females and 72 males. A significant difference in age was observed between the first- and fourth-year groups (20.2 ± 1.7 years vs. 22.7 ± 0.9 years, p < 0.001). After renaming schizophrenia, we noted significant differences in the scores in the modified attribution questionnaire, the perceived psychiatric stigma scale, and the modified social distance scale in all participants and the fourth-year students, respectively. Female gender (Beta = 0.230, p = 0.018) was significantly associated with the difference in the score of the modified attribution questionnaire after name change. The difference in the score of the perceived psychiatric stigma scale after the name change (Beta = 0.277, p = 0.004) and age (Beta = −0.186, p = 0.049) were significantly associated with the difference in the score of the modified social distance scale after name change. In conclusion, renaming was associated with the changes in the scores of the modified attribution questionnaire, the perceived psychiatric stigma scale, and the modified social distance scale toward individuals with schizophrenia in medical students of one Taiwan university. Further studies with large sample sizes, diverse participant backgrounds, and that monitor the subsequent behavioral changes are warranted.

Assessing Outcomes

This chapter explores the possible outcomes of completing the activities in this book and revisits some of the questions raised in Chapter 2 about how to change attitudes and behaviors toward people with disabilities. Despite a desired goal of affecting implicit bias, that outcome is not guaranteed. Ultimately, the goal is to increase cultural responsivity and skill levels for therapists working with their clients with disabilities. Various measures of attitudes toward disability are reviewed (and references provided) and a link to the Harvard measure of implicit bias is included. Six ways of assessing the outcomes of doing the activities are included: the Bogardus Social Distance Scale, able-bodied privilege, and four created by the author.

Dynamical tadpoles, stringy cobordism, and the SM from spontaneous compactification

We consider string theory vacua with tadpoles for dynamical fields and uncover universal features of the resulting spacetime-dependent solutions. We argue that the solutions can extend only a finite distance ∆ away in the spacetime dimensions over which the fields vary, scaling as ∆n∼$$ \mathcal{T} $$ T with the strength of the tadpole $$ \mathcal{T} $$ T . We show that naive singularities arising at this distance scale are physically replaced by ends of spacetime, related to the cobordism defects of the swampland cobordism conjecture and involving stringy ingredients like orientifold planes and branes, or exotic variants thereof. We illustrate these phenomena in large classes of examples, including AdS5×T1,1 with 3-form fluxes, 10d massive IIA, M-theory on K3, the 10d non-supersymmetric USp(32) strings, and type IIB compactifications with 3-form fluxes and/or magnetized D-branes. We also describe a 6d string model whose tadpole triggers spontaneous compactification to a semirealistic 3-family MSSM-like particle physics model.

Soft Bigram distance for names matching

Background Bi-gram distance (BI-DIST) is a recent approach to measure the distance between two strings that have an important role in a wide range of applications in various areas. The importance of BI-DIST is due to its representational and computational efficiency, which has led to extensive research to further enhance its efficiency. However, developing an algorithm that can measure the distance of strings accurately and efficiently has posed a major challenge to many developers. Consequently, this research aims to design an algorithm that can match the names accurately. BI-DIST distance is considered the best orthographic measure for names identification; nevertheless, it lacks a distance scale between the name bigrams. Methods In this research, the Soft Bigram Distance (Soft-Bidist) measure is proposed. It is an extension of BI-DIST by softening the scale of comparison among the name Bigrams for improving the name matching. Different datasets are used to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method. Results The results show that Soft-Bidist outperforms the compared algorithms using different name matching datasets.