Just very recently I finished writing my Master’s Thesis, it was graded last week, and today I’m starting my new job as a PhD Candidate. I will be working at the department of Social Risk and Safety Studies, at the University of Twente. I will be working on a project regarding cross-country differences in the [...]
Posts Tagged ‘abortion’
Unintended Consequences Catholicism and Abortion Attitudes
One of the elegances of sociology is found in the unintended consequences of our actions. In my studies of attitudes towards abortion, I found a nice example of such unintended consequences regarding the Catholic church. But, I doubt that the findings are warranted by the analyses.
Bad Science overestimates psychological consequences induced abortion
Can bad science lead us to draw wrong conclusions about the world we live in? “Of course it can“, we are inclined to think. And if so, can this have real-life consequences? Investigating these meta-questions is not as easy as it might seem, for it would require an exact manner to distinguish the good from the bad science, and it would require a subject that has been thoroughly investigated in both the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ ways to compare the outcomes.
One such subject would be the vast amount of research done on the psychological consequences of undergoing an induced abortion. This heavily researched (and heavily debated!) subject focusses primarily on the questions whether or not a women has a higher chance of suffering from anxiety, feeling of guilt, depression, or (other) mental disorders caused by undergoing an induced abortion. The conclusions drawn in the vast literature on this basic question vary form an abortion having no consequences, to an abortion having a negative impact on the psychological well-being of a woman.
Republican Schoolmaster and the Narcissism of the Minor Differences
Now that we all know who the new President of the United States will be, people are preparing for a new type of government, with a new and markedly different agenda than the previous one. Most people are very contend with this new agenda, but some will be disappointed. How does this influence the people’s opinion, one might ask? Will conflict be the result, or can one expect that in general the new agenda will be accepted and that those who voted McCain will change their opinions to generally accept the new policy?
In their classic article, Franklin and Kosaki studied something similar, although they focused on the impact of a Supreme Court ruling regarding induced abortion. Remember though, how Obama and MaCain differed on this issue, with Obama stating to protect the Roe v. Wade Court Ruling, and McCain trying to overthrow it. It is exactly the effect on public opinion of this Roe v. Wade Court Ruling that Franklin and Kosaki studied.
Graph: Abortion Attitudes in United States
I have been writing about abortion a lot, recently, so I decided to provide some more context regarding this important subject, by making some graphics. The first graph I created is on trends in American public opinion regarding induced abortion.
Women on Waves and unintended polarisation
Recently, I have been giving some thought on what might constitute polarisation of attitudes. Especially, I’m interested in whether or not the debate on induced abortion in American society has become more polarised. The recent news on the presence and activities of Women on Waves in Valencia, Spain, has spurred some more thought on this.
A [...]
Dispatches from the Culture Wars
Can blogs help scientific research? Probably, but I’m sure to have found one that helps me in my own research. The research I’m currently working on is on attitudes towards induced abortion, and especially the polarisation of these attitudes in America.
The body of literature on this subject is vast and has interesting titles as ‘Culture Wars’, and ‘Before the Shooting Begins’. The Culture Wars hypothesis, proffered by Hunter, basically states that Americans’ attitudes have increasingly been formed by two diverging fundaments. One important aspect of the Culture Wars is the (strong) impact of religious doctrine on many Americans’ life.
To get a good feeling of what is going on in these ‘Culture Wars’, I try to read more than just academic literature. Besides newspapers and, of course, what the U.S. Presidential candidates state about abortion, I recently discovered a blog named ‘Dispatches from the Culture Wars’.
Abortion Activism in 1971 Science?
Science changes, as does the way scientists report on their work. Reading a 1971 article in Science, on attitudes towards induced abortion, I was truly amazed by the sheer amount of apparent activism that might have influenced the interpretation of the findings. Let’s have a look.
Influence.ME: an R package providing tools for detecting influential data in mixed models.