Eric Woodrum

“Mainstreaming” content analysis in social science: Methodological advantages, obstacles, and solutions☆

Abstract The history of content analysis is reviewed and reasons for its continuing underutilization are identified. The techniques isolation from mainstream social science results in low-quality studies and methodological underdevelopment. Still, advantages of the method indicate it has great potential for social science. Specific suggestions are made for applying established research techniques to content analysis. Sampling, research design, reliability and validity assessment, concept operationalization, and related principles and techniques are illustrated with a content analysis study of religious belief popularization. The relative merits of coding manifest content versus latent, thematic analysis are assessed. Manifest characteristics can be coded more reliably but thematic indicators provide greater measurement efficiency in the example. Implications for computerized coding are discussed. Inference from communication texts and the value of empirically studying communication patterns for social scientific objectives are presented as complementing research on individuals and social structures.

Environmental Worldview and Behavior: Consequences of Dimensionality in a Survey of North Carolinians

This research investigates the potential dimensionality of environmental worldviews using a scale derived from the New Environmental Paradigm (NEP). It delineates the substantive consequences of dimensionality for our understanding of environmental behavior and both demographic and religious correlates of environmentalism. We found that our NEP-based Scale of Worldview contained two distinct dimensions that were differentially predicted by demographic and religious variables. Of particular importance was the relationship of religious fundamentalism to the two subscales thereby highlighting the inherent religious implications of NEP item wording. In general, we found that Worldviews do not contribute substantially to the prediction of Environmental Behavior. Additionally, Worldviews do not allow us to account for demographic differences in the performance of Environmental Behavior. We concluded that environmental worldviews have limited policy implications given the lack of correspondence to behavior but that they remain an important prerequisite to such behavior which is deserving of careful study.

Determinants of Moral Attitudes

Contemporary controversies over abortion, pornography, homosexual rights, family relations, and prayer in school pit traditional moral conservatives against modern liberal relativists. Prior analyses, especially status politics interpretations, are regularly biased by presuming liberal relativist attitudes and treating moral conservatism alone as warranting explanation. In fact, the spectrum of moral attitudes, from liberal relativist to conservative absolutist, is normally distributed in the urban research site reported on here. A causal model for the determinants of moral attitudes is proposed and tested with data from a city-wide survey in Raleigh, North Carolina, as a specific alternative to status politics explanations. Among the exogenous variables, age and education have significant effects throughout, while sex and race are significant only in the early stages of the model. Church membership and type, worship frequency, religious program listening, and political selfidentification are endogenous variables which directly affect moral attitudes as well. The proposed model explains over 47% of the variation in moral attitudes.

Denominational subcultures of environmentalism

Utilizing a national sample, six denominational subcultures are examined for average member adherence to dominion belief net of demographic variables. In a test of Lynn White style expectations, denominational subcultures with higher average levels of dominion belief are hypothesized to have lower average levels of environmental concern and behavior; likewise, subcultures with lower average levels of dominion belief are hypothesized to have higher levels of environmental concern and behavior. In no cases are the hypotheses supported; this indicates that denominational differences in dominion belief do not translate into differences in denominational environmentalism. Two additional findings are also discussed: 1) independent of dominion belief, Black Protestant denominations have lower average levels of environmentalism than other subcultures ; and 2) religious salience is found to have a positive effect on environmental concern and behavior when dominion belief is statistically controlled. Implications of this research for the study of religion and environmentalism are discussed.

Religious effects on environmentalism

Understanding of religious influences on environmentalism has been biased by political conflicts. This article summarizes the demographic parameters of environmental concern, then evaluates religious and political influences on that concern and related activity, using General Social Surveys data. It assesses influences on willingness to pay for environmental programs, individual environmental behaviors, and participation in political activities for related causes. Young people and women express greater environmental concern, but older persons more often engage in individual environmental activities such as recycling. The association of fundamentalism with political conservatism compounds interpretation of religion because political conservatives are antagonistic to environmentalism. Religious affiliation strength has positive effects on environmental concern, and worship attendance has positive effects on individual environmental behaviors, when fundamentalism and political variables are controlled. This ...

Moral Conservatism and the 1984 Presidential Election

Moral conservatism asserts traditional absolutes in lifestyle, personal relations, and sexuality. Many evaluations of moral conservatisms political influence focus on the New Christian Right. This study assesses moral conservatism among voters directly and its effects on presidential preferences in a causal model with data from a city-wide survey. Moral conservatism effects are significant and contributed to Reagans victory. Although weaker than race effects, moral conservatism is at least as politically consequential as gender. Moral conservatism suppresses gender effects and mediates the political effects of age, education, and church membership. The influence of moral conservatism is greatest among older, less educated voters belonging to churches. Political implications are discussed.

Pornography and moral attitudes

Previous research identifies two dissimilar strains of anti‐pornography sentiment: conservative moral traditionalism and feminism. Spokespersons for each of these sources of opposition to pornography have achieved some visibility in the media and political arena, but their general level of support is undetermined. This study analyzes the underpinnings of attitudes toward pornography in the public with data from a citywide survey. Initially, five demographic factors, five religiosity factors, three political indicators, and sexual restrictiveness are examined as pornography attitude predictors using bivariate and multivariate techniques. Women and elderly, married, and less educated persons are most condemning of pornography as are religious traditionalists, political conservatives, and persons with restrictive attitudes toward sexuality. These patterns are analyzed further with the estimation of a causal model, gender interaction terms, and a decomposition of the predictor variables’ effects. Although wom...

The Black Spiritual Movement: A Religious Response to Racism.

Spiritual churches in the United States represent one of several religious movements that African Americans have adopted in their efforts to cope with mainstream society. In this groundbreaking work, first published in 1984, Hans A. Baer explores the richness and creativity of Black Spiritualism, setting forth an illuminating ethnography of the movement that corrects numerous stereotypes of African American religion. Baer shows that the Spiritual churches blend diverse elements, borrowing aspects of African American Protestantism, American Spiritualism, Roman Catholicism, Voodoo, and black ethno-medicine, occasionally even including aspects of Islam, Judaism, New Thought, and Ethiopianism. He describes not only the history, structure, ideology, and practices of the churches but also the process of syncretism within them and their role within the African American community. In addition, Baer examines how the Spiritual movement juxtaposes elements of protest and accommodation to racism and class stratification in U.S. society This second edition includes a new preface and a new epilogue in which Baer discusses his methodology in researching the Black Spiritual Movement, describes his meetings with pastors and congregation members, and summarizes his most recent research in the field.