Public Perceptions of Elections: An Australia-New Zealand Comparison

his collection of essays honouring the late Emeritus Keith Jackson addresses the public interest in New Zealand. This subject is of increasing importance at a time when politicians are grappling with serious issues that call into question the boundaries between the private and public spheres. The essays, by leading scholars and acknowledged experts in their field, reflect Keith's own preoccupations with institutional politics and with communication

Effects of corporate support of a charity on public perceptions of the charity

A quasi-experimental design (N=517) was used to investigate the effect on audience response to a supported charity if corporate support is featured in an advertisement. The results indicate that corporate support of a charity appears not to influence audience attitudes and donation intentions for the charity. A small portion of the audience may be motivated to donate when learning of a large corporate donation to the charity. The level of individual's favourability for the charity was the strongest predictor of their attitudes and intentions. Gender was also a predictor of more positive charity attitudes, with females reporting more positive attitudes than males for three of four charities. Managerial implications and areas for future research are discussed.

Linking public perceptions of socioeconmic change and marine resource management in rural Maine

Rural coastal regions across the United States are coping with dramatic social and environmental changes. Historically, these areas relied heavily on fishing and marine commerce and these economic activities defined the character of coastal communities. However, shifting ocean and climate conditions, together with inadequate management strategies, have led to sharp declines in harvestable marine resources. These trends, along with increasing competition from aquaculture and international sources of fish, have led to the steady decline of fishing as the central economic activity in many rural coastal communities. (PDF contains 3 pages)

Public perceptions of personalised nutrition through the lens of Social Cognitive Theory

Social Cognitive Theory has been used to explain findings derived from focus group discussions (N = 4) held in the United Kingdom with the aim of informing best practice in personalised nutrition. Positive expectancies included weight loss and negative expectancies surrounded on-line security. Monitoring and feedback were crucial to goal setting and progress. Coaching by the service provider, family and friends was deemed important for self-efficacy. Paying for personalised nutrition symbolised commitment to behaviour change. The social context of eating, however, was perceived a problem and should be considered when designing personalised diets. Social Cognitive Theory could provide an effective framework through which to deliver personalised nutrition.

Mathematics, computers in Mathematics, and gender : public perceptions in context. 'Matemáticas, ordenadores en Matemáticas y género : percepciones públicas en contexto'.

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Public perceptions of the causes and prevention of obesity among primary school children

OBJECTIVE: To investigate lay perceptions of the causes and prevention of obesity among primary school children.

DESIGN: A cross-sectional survey of randomly selected sample of adults in a shopping centre.

SUBJECTS: 315 adults in Melbourne, Australia.

MEASUREMENTS: Subjects completed a self-completion questionnaire, in which they rated the importance of 25 possible causes of obesity and the importance of 13 preventive measures on four-point scales: not important; quite important; very important; extremely important. Demographic information about the respondents' age, sex, marital status, education level and parental status was also collected.

RESULTS: The most important reported causes of childhood obesity were related to overconsumption of unhealthy food, parental responsibility, modern technology and the mass media. The most popular prevention activities were associated with specific actions aimed at children. Principal components analysis of the causes data revealed eight factors, provisionally named: parental responsibility, modern technology and media, overconsumption of unhealthy food, children's lack of knowledge and motivation, physical activity environment, lack of healthy food, lack of physical activity and genes. Two prevention factors were also derived, named government action and children's health promotion. Parents saw modern technology and media, and government activities as more important causes, and government policy as a more important means of prevention than nonparents and men. Women's responses tended to be similar to those of parents. There were few educational differences, although nontertiary educated respondents reported that modern technology and media were more important causes of obesity than did the tertiary educated.

CONCLUSION: The findings suggest that the public appears to hold quite sophisticated views of the causes and prevention of children's obesity. They suggest that a number of prevention strategies would be widely supported by the public, especially by parents.

Government involvement in entrepreneurship and new business creation in Australia : a quantitative analysis of public perceptions and opinions

In order to determine the range of Australian perceptions on new venture creation at the end of the decade of the 1980s, and in particular attitudes towards government involvement in fostering entrepreneurship, a major quantitative study was conducted. The survey involved more than 1500 Australians in face-to-face interviews (300 in each mainland capital city) chosen on a random basis.

An analysis of the data provides an assessment of the Australian general public&s perceptions in three key areas: their understanding of the word 'entrepreneur' their rating of importance of new venture creation; their belief in government involvement in fostering new venture creation.

It is believed to be the first study attempting to quantify an entire nation&s perceptions in three areas vital to creators of national economic and industry policies.

Any one of these boat people could be a terrorist for all we know! Media representations and public perceptions of ‘boat people’ arrivals in Australia

In April 2009 a boat (named the ‘SIEV 36’ by the Australian Navy) carrying 49 asylum seekers exploded off the north coast of Australia. Media and public debate about Australia’s responsibility to individuals seeking asylum by boat was instantaneous. This paper investigates the media representation of the ‘SIEV 36’ incident and the public responses to media reports through online news fora. 

Post-9/11 Terrorism Threats, News Coverage, and Public Perceptions in the United States

Terrorists, policy-makers, and terrorism scholars have long assumed that the mere threat of terrorist strikes affects societies that have experienced actual acts of terrorism. For this reason, most definitions of terrorism include the threat of violent political acts against civilians. But so far research has neither validated this conventional wisdom nor demonstrated how actual and mass-mediated threat messages by terrorists and terror alerts and threat assessments by government officials affect the public in targeted states. This paper fills the gap providing evidence that who conveys such messages matters and that mass-mediated threat messages by al Qaeda leaders and announced alerts and threat assessments by U.S. administration officials had a significant impact on the American public’s threat perceptions in the post-9/11 years.