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How has university students’ drug use changed during Covid-19?
161-177Views:149The Covid-19 outbreak and the lockdown have had significant psychological and social impacts
on everyone’s life. Changing life circumstances and daily routines, job losses, uncertainty, have
put a psychological strain on us. As a consequence, we may experience risk behaviours more
often than before. The aim of the study is to analyse how risk behaviours have changed due to
Covid-19 among university students in Hungary, and to identify the psycho-social factors along which the shift can be explained. The analysis is based on the data of ‘Covid-19 International
Student Well-Being Study’ – a study initiated and coordinated by the University of Antwerpen
involving 75 universities from 26 countries. Four Hungarian universities – Corvinus University
of Budapest, the University of Debrecen, the University of Miskolc, and the University of Szeged
participated in the study. The survey was conducted among all university students who filled
in an online questtioannaire in Spring 2020. Our results show that all risk behavoiurs have
declined during the Covid-19 period. However, students who had had consumed drug before
Covid-19 have been using them more frequently during the pandemic. Our results suggest that
the recreational use have probably declined and the problematic use have probably increased
among university students during the pandemic. Our results highlight the fact that students for
whom the crisis situation imposed by the quarantine was hard to handle are more likely to use
substances more frequently, so offering them prevention and treatment options is crucial. -
How should we think about Europe? The model adaptation and model formation strategy of the Hungarian political elite
110-133Views:34In the past decades, researchers in Hungary have looked at almost all segments of the behavior and organization of elites, nevertheless they have dealt surprisingly little with how external actors (Europe, the West) affect the actions and way of thinking of the elites. The lack of approaches from this perspective is so apparent because the European orientation of the elites has changed twice in the past thirty years. (In the 1980s and starting from the second half of the 1990s.) The essay focuses on presenting two concepts of Europe, of which one is based on model adaptation (the opposition represents this approach) the other on model formation (which is characteristic of the governing parties). The essay shows the origins of both, as well as their connections to macro and micro political motifs. Within the frameworks of this, the study touches upon why the appearance of the model adaptation perspective was adequate in the 1980s as well as to why the model forming approach to Europe appeared on the right in the middle of the 1990s as its challenger. The analysis does more than just dynamically present the past thirty years, it also aims to show that we have to integrate Hungarian political history in a broader sense into our studies if we want to understand the changes that have occurred in the past decades concerning the relationship of the elites to the West. The stratum which Fidesz has brought to surface lays deep in Hungarian political history. We have to take this stratum into consideration even if we find this perhaps unattractive and we reject it.
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Contributions to the Regulation of the Referendum after 2013
5-25Views:25The purpose of this paper is to define and show the nature and functions of the referendum in
general, and to examine the legislative regulation of its institution in Hungary after 2013.
The brief introduction will be followed by an analysis of some of the institutional and
instrumental features of the referendum in the context of the constitutional law. Special attention
will be paid to the question raised by, and to the pros and cons of the referendum held in 2016.
The legal aspects and social consequences of this invalid referendum will be emphasized. -
Conflicts and democracy: Considerations on political conflicts and the need of their delimitation
8-24Views:40According to our common experience of political life, the relationship between politics and
conflicts seems to be obvious. However, it is also common to think about delimiting the intensity
of conflicts in a democratic context. This kind of complexity of the relation of democracy and
conflicts can be cexplained from two theoretical perspectives. First, in order to protect democratic
order, conflicts may lose their relevance in comparison to the value of consent or compromise. Second, even if we accept the importance of conflicts, we also should take into account the limits
of their intensity. These theoretical problems arise in the context of contemporary politics which
nature is eminently public and in which every announcement is open to discussion. This is what
discourse as a theoretical horizon means. The core concept for theorizing the conflictual character
of politics in a discursive manner is political debate. The article explores three kinds of debate
and communicative conflicts: John Stuart Mill, as a classical nineteenth century liberal, sheds
light on the importance of debate in issues of collective truth-seeking and emotional devotion
to our personal values. Márton Szabó, a leading theorist of political discourse in Hungary, also
treats debate as a core concept of political discourse studies, and theorizes debate not only as
a series of singular acts in the realm of politics, but as a mode of existence of politics itself.
Contrary to other contemporary ideas of communication and politics, discourse is therefore
inherently conflictual in its character. Similarly, but more embedded in contemporary debates
over democracy, Chantal Mouffe, one of the eminent theorists of agonism, interprets conflicts
in the context of democratic order, and emphasises the democratic conditions for constructing
democratic identities. Her ideas on agonistic democracy can fathom the relation of valuable
conflicts and their limits in a democratic regime. -
Investigation of working conditions and risk factors for burnout of social and pedagogical professionals
3-29Views:44The study scrutinizes the relationship between professional working conditions and burnout among Hungarian social and pedagogical professionals. Despite the fact that burnout and occupational well-being have been extensively researched abroad among professional helpers – primarily health care workers –, no quantitative survey has been conducted in Hungary so far in the target group we examined. Another added value of our study is that, besides work and organizational factors revealed by previous burnout studies, it points to the role of client- and fieldwork-related difficulties in the prevalence of burnout symptoms. In our exploratory, crosssectional survey, 261 social and pedagogical specialists participated from Baranya County. Our results suggest that job and task matching problems, and difficulties related to the fieldwork and clients lead to emotional exhaustion of professionals and decreased work efficiency. Deficiencies related to work motivation cause loss of efficiency as well. The results also indicate that out of the three occupational groups involved in the research, professionals working in the field of child protection are most at risk for emotional exhaustion, and the symptom of depersonalization is most relevant to child protection and family and child welfare workers. In addition, we have shown that longer professional experience can be considered a protective factor in burnout symptoms. Our results can make an important contribution to the establishment of individual and organizational level training, support, development, monitoring and evaluation programs and/or policy-level guidelines and interventions that can improve the working conditions of professionals and reduce their risk of emotional, mental and physical strain.
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Politics and media - Structure of the Hungarian media network in autumn 2018
107-129Views:42This article focusing on the changes within the Hungarian media sphere after the Orban–
Simicska conflict. After the conflict the Hungarian media sphere has changed radically. Those of
the media outlets which belonged to Lajos Simicska had cease their operation. Business persons
who have close ties to Fidesz has founded new media outlets. In my article I analyzed three
political case which happened during the Fall 2018. I assumed that the media sphere in Hungary
had become more polarized than before. In order to prove it, I created two groups of the media
outlets. The first one, which have close ties to the governing party, and the second one which has
not got ties to Fidesz. During my research I used three different methods. First, I
recorded astatistics about the articles. According to this, the media agenda shows large difference between
the groups. I did content analysis on the articles, which shows us a huge polarization between
the groups. The third one, was network analysis. The network analysis did not confirmed the
polarization hypothesis. -
The concept and measurement of health literacy and its effect on breast screening participation
167-185Views:83This study analyses the relationship of low health literacy and non-participation in breast screening. It defines health literacy, discusses its measurement tools, reports on health literacy studies in various populations, describes participation rates in the Hungarian breast screening program, reviews studies dealing with the effect of health literacy on breast screening participation
and makes recommendations for the improvement of health literacy. Health literacy is the ability to gain, understand, and appraise health related information as well as using said information in decision making. There are validated tools for measuring
it. Like in other countries, surveys in Hungary found that the health literacy of the population is rather low. About half of the population has poor or problematic health literacy. -
The Career-building effect of volunteering in higher education
146-160Views:71Nowadays the motives for volunteering are changing among higher education students, and
besides traditional altruistic motives, career-building motives also appear (the acquisition
of work experience and professional knowledge, professional development, networking,
the presentation of voluntary work in the resume). In this paper, we use data from a survey
conducted in five Central and Eastern European countries (N=2,199) to examine through linear
regression analysis the factors affecting the strength of career-building motives and to analyse
through a logistic regression model the determinants of whether or not volunteering is related to the field of study. Our hypotheses are formulated based on the literature. Our results show
that career-building motives are more pronounced among women and students who have a
close relationship with external friends outside the university, study outside Hungary, and study
something other than engineering, computer science or science. Voluntary work is more likely to
be related to the field of study among teacher education students, students with an unfavourable
financial situation, those who study in Romania, and those who have a close relationship with
faculty. -
2019 Nyíregyháza City Council election: The Rawlsian interpretation of the local electoral reform
67-92Views:44One of the main perspectives and urgent tasks of the newly formed government following the general elections of 2010 was to reform the local eletoral system. It is true, that the number of seats of the local representative bodies were significantly decreased, but it begs the question whether this change can reasonably explain the fact that the government considered this step as one of the first and most significant measures of its governance. To raise this question is justified by the fact that the reform (Act No. L of 2010 on the election of local government representatives and mayors) was introduced on June 14, 2010, with only sixteen days after the new Parliament approved and voted for the government’s program, and elected Viktor Orbán as prime minister of Hungary. After a brief presentation of the institutional framewortk of the local electoral system, the aim of this paper is twofold: first, I would examine whether the local electoral reform of 2010 could be considered as a „fair” step, based on John Ralws’ conception of „justice as fairness”, second, I would like to explain the actual process of transforming votes into local legislative seats in the case of the city of Nyíregyháza, in 2019.
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Where is the truth? – Greek catholic high school youth’s justice values
105-123Views:29The purpose of our study is to present what young people think about justice, and how they
are different from the youth and society of the country. The functioning of a society requires
that fair conditions prevail in it. However, there are several types of justice. What young people,
as adults of the future, think about this value is essential for the functioning of a society. We
present philosophical interpretations and value sociological research on justice, then we define
the concept of justice for Hungarian society and Hungarian youth. In our research we asked all
eleventh and twelfth students of a Greek Catholic high school in Eastern Hungary in 2014 and
2019. Quantitative method was used to compare students’ views on justice with the other young
people in the country. According to our results during the five years of research, equality was
more important for young people, especially for the boys. The importance of the value of equality
was clearly related to the religiosity of the asked young people. -
Challenges in rural Hungary in the post-pandemic period: Perception of problems in „emerging settlements” of Sellye district
5-31Views:153The social problems of marginalised rural areas have intensified and transformed in recent years, particularly in the context of pandemic and economic crisis. In the countries of the Central and Eastern European region integration of marginalized areas is a major challenge. Unlike in the West, segregation and ghettoisation are problems of small rural settlements far from prosperous centres. In Hungarian countryside, the life of small villages, which are located far from economic centres and lack institutions, continues to be characterised by negative migration trends. In this article, we present the situation of seven small villages in southern Baranya, which are covered by the programme to help the 300 most disadvantageous Hungarian settlements to integration, in the light of the perception of problems of the population living there. Our survey aimed to explore the difficulties related to the pandemic and everyday life at local level. The assessment of subjective perceptions provided an opportunity to structure the disadvantaged rural population from a specific perspective and to analyse the problems of the characteristics of each group.
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The social representation of radicalism among young people
64-78.Views:31In the study, using data from an international research (Myplace), relying on the theory of
social representations, we examined the understanding of radicalism of young people aged 15
to 26 and living in two towns in Hungary (Ózd and Sopron) which differ significantly regarding
their political socialization. In accordance with an empirical method based on the theory,
we analyzed the relationship between young people’s attitudes towards nationalism and the
democratic principles and the representation of radicalism, following the structural and content
characterization of the representation of radicalism through the quantification of associational
responses received in the questionnaire survey conducted in 2012. -
Perceptions of families with children and the social professionals working with them on services promoting the well-being and social mobility of families
3-28Views:57In our study, we investigate how families with children living in a disadvantaged sub-region of Northern Hungary, in areas of different settlement size and in settlements belonging to the Budapest agglomeration, perceive the available educational,
education, childcare, health and social services, whether they have any information about them, and what professionals working with families with children think about the education, childcare, health and social services and services available to them.
the professional content and quality of the services provided, and whether
the extent to which they can contribute to the well-being and social mobility of families. Our research included a population questionnaire survey and interviews with professionals and families with children. Our results indicate that children's abilities
the lack of services to develop their abilities, develop their talents and promote their well-being, the
existing education, health and social services with very limited capacity and therefore low quality, and limited access to cultural and recreational opportunities
mobility opportunities for children growing up in disadvantaged families are severely limited. Child welfare social work tools are scarce and social interventions are based on fire-fighting. -
Themes of medical profession and professional socialization in medical sociology textbooks
79-97Views:47Introduction: The present study examines the information on the medical profession and how the changes occurring in the medical practice, the social role and the evaluation of the physician are reflected in the English and Hungarian language medical sociology textbooks used in Hungary. Method: We analyzed chapters of Hungarian language medical sociology textbooks of the
last 25 years that discuss medical profession and student choices, and textbooks used in English language courses of Semmelweis University. Results: The corpus of the Hungarian textbooks (history of medical profession, medical role models, models of doctor-patient relationships, medical socialization) stayed relatively unchanged. While preserving the myth of the medical profession, there are criticisms towards the role and relationship models. The theme of the medical education gradually disappears from the
English language textbooks. The social positions of the medical profession and health care are discussed in a broader context, focusing on the health care system and health care provision, incorporating the allied professions, and taking aspects of patients/consumers into greater consideration. Summary: Both textbook types reflect on the changes in the social position of the medical profession. However, the English literature approaches the modernization processes from the angles of the health care system and health care provision, resulting in the diminishing importance of the topic of medical profession while the Hungarian literature focuses on the profession and professional education of physicians. -
Community resilience and social support relationships – An analytical approach and research results based on long-term series analysis of communities affected by the red sludge disaster
6-31Views:55vOne of the most serious consequences of disasters is the disruption or even the loss of social
support relationships. Hence, this paper analyses the social support relationships in the
framework of community resilience based on face-to-face interviews with direct (180 people)
and indirect (180 people) victims of the red sludge disaster, using data for 2013 and 2020.
(Hungary, Devecser district).
The focus was analysed according to four types of social support relationship: reciprocal,
donor to recipient and incomplete/disintegrated. At the time of the disaster, we identified a high
level of support activity and a strong reciprocal-donor type of aid model. In contrast, in 2013, we
found an incomplete/disintegrated - reciprocal model with low support activity, and in 2020, a
reciprocal- incomplete/disintegrated model with medium activity.
Based on a detailed statistical analysis of different social support types among the red
sludge disaster’s victims the paper explores and presents the social support activities and
their various patterns with respect to their roles in the resilience of communities. The different
patterns of social supports relationships that emerged in each period examined varied widely,
though – with different intensity – they were primarily influenced by the fact how people were
affected by disaster’s damages (directly and indirectly). Nevertheless, by 2020, other factors,
such as residence, age, and economic activity had already an equally strong impact on different
types of social support relationships as the affectedness by the disaster of 2010. We found that
communities responded to the red sludge disaster in 2010 and to the Covid-19 epidemic in 2020
in a reactive way by activating their social support relationship. -
A possible vision for young public workers or The Hungarian JWT
121-130.Views:21According to different statements more and more youngsters, under 25 years of age, appear in Public Work Programs at the present time in Hungary. Even it occurs more frequently that pa-rents, primarily because of financial reasons, take out their children from school, and send them to public workers.This paper draws attention to this phenomenon. Furthermore, it shows a possible paral-lel between those young people who are in JWT (Job Without Training) and those Hungarian youngsters who are working in Public Work Programs reflecting on the Hungarian particulari-ties of this parallel.
The concept of JWT and its categories are presented, and also which of these categories may connect with the Hungarian public workers’ state of being. Statistical data show the rate of public workers and their gender breakdown. Reports also suggest that the rate of young public workers is growing and their situation may become futureless.The author thinks that the growth of young public workers’ rate and their settled situation in this employment sector is likely to make inevitable for them to become NEET in the future. -
An example of good practice for integrating youth into the labor market in Hungary
49-66Views:36While there are positive trends in economic growth in the EU Member States, there are also challenges that are a long-term concern. These include, for example, unfavourable labour market dynamics, leading to an increase in social inequalities (Artner 2018). The European Economic and Social Committee stresses that young people can play an important role in addressing inequalities and socio-economic challenges, contributing to the future stability and prosperity of the EU (European Economic and Social Committee 2021). To this end, policies should support young people’s education, training and active participation in the labour market. The Lost Millennials project, coordinated by the HÉTFA Research Institute, and the project “Incorpora - for responsible employment”, implemented by the Maltese Care Nonprofit Ltd. and its partners, will be presented and their results analysed, while the study will also review national and international trends in the NEET group.
