Editorial

When founding the International Journal of Public Opinion Research,the editors had a vision that the journal would be both internationaland interdisciplinary, while retaining a broad interest in boththeoretical and empirical scholarly work. We included reviews,first of books and then of articles reporting on work in thefield, and then     

Editorial

This issue of the International Journal of Public Opinion Researchonce again takes the reader on a trip around the world. Fourcontinents are looked at, counting the two Americas separately,and data from 19 individual countries feature in the analyses,which pertain to several dozens more. We begin our trip in LatinAmerica. Rodolfo Sarsfield and Fabián Echegaray presentcomparative research covering eight major countries on the continent.One always expects, in comparative studies, large tables thatpresent results     

Young people's readings of a political cartoon and the concept of multimodal literacy

This article uses young people's responses to a newspaper cartoon as a way of exploring the concept of multimodal literacy. The discussion draws on data from a study which aimed to elicit the geopolitical views of 16–19-year-olds in a multi-ethnic British city by using cartoons as a way of encouraging them to talk about their thoughts and feelings towards recent political events. We argue that, contrary to popular perceptions, political cartoons are complex and polysemous and require a particular form of literacy. This not only encompasses the ability to read visual grammar, but also an understanding of the cartoon genre and how it is constructed, with a view to conveying particular meanings within a specific social and cultural context.     

Revisiting the Strange Stories: Revealing Mentalizing Impairments in Autism

A test of advanced theory of mind (ToM), first introduced by F. Happé (1994) , was adapted for children (mental, human, animal, and nature stories plus unlinked sentences). These materials were closely matched for difficulty and were presented to forty-five 7- to 12-year-olds with autism and 27 control children. Children with autism who showed ToM impairment on independent tests performed significantly more poorly than controls solely on the mental, human, and animal stories with greatest impairment on the former and least on the latter. Thus, a mentalizing deficit may affect understanding of biologic agents even when this does not explicitly require understanding others' mental states.     

THE GERMAN REVOLUTION THE HISTORIC EXPERIMENT OF THE DIVISION AND UNIFICATION OF A NATION AS REFLECTED IN SURVEY RESEARCH FINDINGS

Rarely has social research had to meet such a challenge as inobserving the German revolution in the GDR and the unificationof East and West Germany after more than forty years of divisionand life under totalitarian and democratic systems of government.The Institut fur Demoskopie Allensbach, West Germany, foundedin 1947, had the opportunity to conduct representative surveysin the GDR beginning in February 1990 with its own staff ofinterviewers and thus to make comparisons with West German surveyfindings of recent decades on file in the Allensbach Archives.In addition, secret surveys conducted by the Zentralinstitutfur Jugendforschung in Leipzig beginning in 1970 were made available;these too are discussed in the article. The report is basedon 30 surveys in eastern Germany, comprising approximately 32,000interviews conducted up to April 1991; it compares many findingswith results from West Germany as well as from internationalsurveys. It describes the findings for a different kind of socializationand, at the same time, for a German national character heldin common.     

Publishing a well-established international environmental journal in Chinese

A Chinese-language version of Ambio – A Journal of the Human Environment – published by the Royal Swedish Academy of Science – has been published in China since 1994. We describe the background to the project and the processes and problems involved in its successful development.     

THE PUBLIC AS PROPHET: FINDINGS FROM CONTINUOUS SURVEY RESEARCH AND THEIR IMPORTANCE FOR EARLY DIAGNOSIS OF ECONOMIC GROWTH

Ever since Descartes, the scientific process has been portrayedas including an initial hypothesis, followed by a study of thehypothesis and, finally, by confirmation or refutation of thehypothesis. The following essay illustrates a different scholarlyprocess, familiar especially to natural scientists but now alsogaining ground in the social sciences, as the data availableto empirical social research grows: initially, there is a puzzle,an observation which cannot be explained by familiar scientificrules. This triggers a search for explanations, which, whenthey are successful, result in new knowledge and new theories.The case reported here involves the as yet inexplicable connectionbetween the new year's mood of the German population, as measuredat the end of the old year, and the real growth of the grossnational product in the following year.     

Language-learning disabilities: Paradigms for the nineties

We are beginning a decade, during which many traditional paradigms in education, special education, and speech-language pathology will undergo change. Among paradigms considered promising for speech-language pathology in the schools are collaborative language intervention and strategy training for language and communication. This presentation introduces management models for developing a collaborative language intervention process, among them the Deming Management Method for Total Quality (TQ) (Deming 1986). Implementation models for language assessment and IEP planning and multicultural issues are also introduced (Damico and Nye 1990; Secord and Wiig in press). While attention to processes involved in developing and implementing collaborative language intervention is paramount, content should not be neglected. To this end, strategy training for language and communication is introduced as a viable paradigm. Macro- and micro-level process models for strategy training are featured and general issues are discussed (Ellis, Deshler, and Schumaker 1989; Swanson 1989; Wiig 1989). The Samuel Torrey and June Lyday Orton Memorial Lecture, delivered at the 41st Annual Conference of The Orton Dyslexia Society, Washington, DC., November 1, 1990.     

Toward a social-contexts frame of reference for science education research

During recent decades there has been little research on social or cultural factors affecting science education. Recent literature reviews have indicated that of the studies addressing such factors, most focus on broad sociodemographic variables such as socioeconomic status, gender, ethnicity, and region. There is a need for research that depicts better-differentiated social contexts for science education in their full complexity. Social scientists from several other fields have recently developed a promising model for research in context. Three critical conceptual and methodological strands of the model are discussed, along with their implications for science education research.     

愚蠢的罪犯,可悲的结局!

这六个故事中的笨蛋终于明白了犯罪是没有好结果的被紧紧卡住德克萨斯州,登顿市通道的另一头没有亮光。当警察赶到一处