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Participatory research of social issues: practical experience from a research project on homelessness
40-61Views:115This article is an account of our practical research and cooperation experience from a
participatory research project on homelessness and psychosocial disability carried out in a
Hungarian university context, by a student and two experts by experience in a researcher role.
We argue for the involvement of disadvantaged people using social services in research related
to disadvantaged people and social services, highlighting the advantages and challenges of this
kind of research based on our experience. Finally, we formulate practical recommendations that
migh be useful for beginners – like we used to be – in participatory research in this field. -
The linkage between motivation, work experience and sense of deadline-keeping in product development projects of those working in the automotive industry
37-53Views:40Nowadays, numerous new automobiles are being developed by various companies and their
suppliers around the globe. On account of the reduction of the product’s economic lifetime and
effects of the global market, n the automotive segments the time factor plays a key role in the
successful implementation of the project and consequently in the sale of the product. The current
study, focusing on human conditions, scrutinizes the behaviour of the members engaged in the project. It’s primary focus is not to reveal the hindering factors due to time-losses arising from
the shortage of resources or inadequate planning. These conspicuous reasons and the demonstration as well as treatment of risk, belong to the scope of the board of project portfolio management, which operates well among larger project organizations. Each project member is taking
an individual approach towards meeting deadlines, and their motivation about the execution
of the given tasks also vary. Beyond the results found both in the professional literature as well
as general research, I study whether the unique features of the actual automotive organizational projects can be identified or not. The ongoing research observes, based on the experience
acquired from the automobile development project, motivation and adherence to deadlines, the
composition of the team impacting work efficiency. -
The place and role of field studies in teaching medical sociology
44-55Views:70Introduction: The goals of the subject of Medical sociology are to familiarize and explain the relationships between social environment and health. The theoretical and practical elements of the medical sociology education and the field studies that form a part of practical work serve these goals. During filed studies, we build on the previous knowledge and experience of the
students. Method: The themes of the field studies change from semester to semester. From the series of studies we picked three themes that were connected to and built on each other. We present the role of field studies through their description and the explanation of our experiences. Results: Field studies add empirical skills and experience to the knowledge acquired during the
theoretical and practical training of medical sociology. The field study assignments also serve to strengthen the effects of the “hidden curriculum”, the process of the indirect professional socialization at the medical school. Furthermore, the new knowledge and skills give the students a better understanding of the scientific literature helping them in the interpretation of statistical
and methodological aspects of biomedical results and concepts. Conclusion: Our experiences show that field studies are an efficient teaching method. Its most important outcome is sensitizing medical students towards health related social problems and helping them to understand and handle such problems. -
Pastoral care for the Gypsies/Romas: Societal engagement of the Churches
86-106Views:50In my adolescence, I noticed that in my small hometown village of Nógrád County, the majority
of the Romani don’t attend mass and sever their ties with Roman Catholic religion. This tendency
remains to this very day, and I continue to experience the same thing where I now live in Pest
County. What could be the reason for this separation? I set out to find the answer with the help
of twenty years of experience as a divinity teacher and my previous empirical sociology research.
Is the clergy to be blamed for the large numbers of Gypsies and non-Gypsies leaving the fold?
I wanted to personally find an answer to the question from the concerned parties. Therefore,
at the permission of the bishop of the Diocese of Vác, as a Roman Catholic civilian theologian,
I visited the pastors of the Historical Churches at the various offices and parishes to ask them
questions about the Romani. -
Functions of global career management
49-64.Views:69Maintaining competitiveness is one of the long-term strategic goals for companies. Beside
tangible and intangible assets, the value of human capital is continuously growing, due to
changes in the labour market. A loyal, highly skilled employee makes a significant contribution
to organizational success through competencies, experience, and skills. The career management
system of multinational companies became more attractive by the possibility of international
assignments, which is a very complicated process requiring complex planning. This system is
considered global for several reasons: its transnational nature, international experience gained
by the employees and the achievable career on a global scale for the individual (as a part of a
successful process).
Creating a global career management system thus involves a number of HR functions.
Emphasis should be placed on finding suitable employees, selecting, onboarding, mentoring, on
methods and the evaluators in the performance appraisal process, providing feedback on a
regular basis and in an appropriate manner, achieving and maintaining motivation, developing
competencies and supporting the balance in mental health. -
„He only knows about everything, but does not experience anything!” – deciding on weekly commuting in terms of educational qualifications
20-37Views:41This paper presents the group of domestic commuters who can only go home and meet their
families – in the best case – once a week. It is based on a survey conducted in 2019 in which
24 commuters together with their family members at home were interviewed about why they
had decided on working far away from home. Looking for similar and different characteristic
features, we have analyzed the interviews in terms of the respondents’ educational qualifications.
Our results prove undoubtedly that the lower qualifications the respondents have, the fewer
job options they will have; moreover, they are also in vulnerable position concerning getting
accommodation, spending free time or finding suitable means of transport to go home. -
Investigation of working conditions and risk factors for burnout of social and pedagogical professionals
3-29Views:70The 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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Soft Skills Workshops with External Trainers: Getting Them Right
54-70Views:47Soft skills development workshops can serve multinational organizations towards the
improvement of internal communication between employees of various language backgrounds
attempting to collaborate on tasks and issues in performing their daily activities. Employer and
management expectations of these workshops may not be consistent with those of employees
and this gap can lead to employee pushback and even refusal to internalise and utilise the
envisioned workshop key learning points that management wants them to develop. On the bases
of years of professional experience as co-trainers holding soft skills development workshops and
receiving employer and employee feedback on their work at dozens of multinational companies
in Europe, the authors discuss critical milestones which must be met by management, in order to
lay the groundwork for more successful soft skills workshops at their organisations. -
Similarities and Differences of Students’ Labour Market Paths Graduated in the Field of Social Science
109-140Views:67We study graduate trainees’ (short) paths of four „social courses” and their transition from higher education to the labour market. We have thought in cases of the chosen social courses, that differences can become perceivable besides similarities. It has also been assumed that sociologists of the four chosen professions can be characterized by a diverse labour market behaviour from the other ones. It can be partially explained by the objectives, the content of their courses and the flexibility of the prospective institutional system. Compared to the above in cases of other social courses a diverse picture has been experienced by us based on the socio-demographic background and experience in labour market, expectations and satisfaction. Social workers and socio-politicians’ socio-demographic indicators are quite similar just like the socio-politicians and sociologists’ indicators are. This may be due to the effect of the level of master/academic education. We analyse the results of Graduate Tracking System (GTS) 2015 data collection in our presentation. The research was carried out by the Educational Office in co-operation with higher education institutions in the form of an online questionnaire. We sorted the respondents of the four chosen courses (828) out of all graduated (20 579).
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Family plans and career plans among higher education students in the field of social sciences based on a pilot study in Eastern Hungary
71-93Views:93Our paper explores the family and career plans of social sciences students at Hungary’s second largest university based on a questionnaire-based pilot study. Nowadays, careers include more than the traditional vertical promotion within an organisation, as seen from the emergence of the self-directed “protean” career type, which prompts organisations to adapt to individuals’ values, attitudes, and own career definitions. In addition, the Kaleidoscope Career Model sets out that individuals adapt their career goals to their life stages. Thus, students’ career and family plans matter to prospective employers. Our results show that a modern self-directed career type has emerged among students, for whom it is a priority to meet their own expectations. In several cases, starting a family is preceded by career goals. Furthermore, despite the “feminine” nature of social sciences, our pilot study shows that male students in the field still tend to conform to traditional gender roles regarding the importance of family and career. Our research implies that prospective employers need to adapt their HR strategies to young people’s family and career plans. Moreover, organisations should support students in gaining relevant work experience and in achieving their subsequent career plans.
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Integrating excluded children through experiential games
58-70Views:192The study focuses on children who have been verbally, physically and/or socially bullying by their peers. In the last three decades, the investigation of the phenomenon of school bullying has become an increasingly researched field, one of the main causes of which is the significant increase in the number of child suicides. As a result, the development and application of numerous prevention and intervention programs became a priority, the aim of which is to reduce this deviant phenomenon in educational institutions. The existence of these programs and initiatives helps to create communities in which hurtful behavior occurs in low numbers. In the course of this research, I chose experiential pedagogic games. In the center of the reform pedagogy method I have chosen, the promotion of the creation of social relations and the strengthening of the existing ones becomes the priority. During experiential pedagogic games, children can experience flow, the positive benefits of interdependence, and the new knowledge they get when leaving their comfort zone. The obtained results will be presented and interpreted in the experimental part of the study. As a research tool, I chose sociometry, which demonstrates the relationship network of the given class. During the pre-survey, two children (a girl and a boy) did not have a mutual relationship, and then, through the consciously guided experiential pedagogic game, the result of the post-survey was that these children managed to establish a mutual relationship.
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Conflicts and democracy: Considerations on political conflicts and the need of their delimitation
8-24Views:51According 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. -
What is Alpha Generation?
20-30Views:178According to Mannheim (Mannheim 1969), age group can be considered as a generation if it is
characterized by a common immanent property, generational consciousness, community status,
and three conditions are required: a common experience; actual peer-to-peer orientation and
common situational interpretation, attitudes, forms of action (Mannheim 1969). Based on this
model Strauss and Howe (Strauss – Howe 1991), states, that a generational change happens
in around 15-20 years. Based on the relationship with the information society, the X, Y and Z
generations are interpreted, but the concept of Alpha generation is also defined. Our article
describes the story of the Alpha generation, the content attributed to the generation, and tries to
answer the question: can this concept be interpreted in the paradigm of the generation of ages? -
How has university students’ drug use changed during Covid-19?
161-177Views:181The 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. -
Community is more than just a physical space: Discuss this statement with specific reference to the role of the concept and experience of contemporary community
129-145Views:40What happens if among the members of a society and among the smaller and larger units and groups making up the society trust and confidence seems to be disappearing at once? What happens if confidence reposed into each other fall victim to social differences as well as to the economic / cost-of-living boxing of modern information society? How to stop the crisis symptom that seems to be developing this way and which is shown in the fragmentation of communities?1 With other words, is it possible to “stick again together” a community or even a whole society started to disintegrate? The questions, even if not so characteristically phrased, provide sociologists actually with the scope of understanding our modern, individualistic world (Habermas 1994). Gusfield (1975) depicts dichotomy of community and society in a way that we should interpret community as a pervading, significant contrast. By now literature seems as if it was only be able to picture the changes taking place in the images both of the society and community describing them by even more pronounced, contradictory processes. The changes that send messages on the disintegration of categories and frames becoming insecure instead of the security and integration quasi missed by Habermas. It also seems as if—quasi as an answer given to this process—occlusion/seclusion both on the part of community members and the various communities from the seemingly unknown and insecure changes were more intensive (Légmán 2012). We intend to construe these phenomena on the next pages, but due to extension limits without the need for completeness of social interpretations. We want to do it with the help of mainly one dimension: value preference through the example of a given society, namely the Hungarian one. Thus we get to the stability and the solidarity of the members of the smallest unit of society, one which accepts and expresses various value preferences, the family.
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Closed institution inmates’ views about the family
138-153Views:35When researching the reasons for criminal behaviour, literature almost unequivocally emphasises the responsibility and role of the family, where as the number of studies analysing the functioning of families of inmates in closed institutions (reform schools, special children’s homes) is relatively low. The present pilot research (with the purpose of preparing a wider one) tries to fill this gap. Using semi-structured interviews, we attempted to explore the inmates’ family background, what methods were used during their upbringing, what they thought about the family and its role and importance in one’s life. Harassment had occurred in juvenile delinquents’ families in various forms: it had physical and emotional manifestations, and therefore its impact on the affected person’s personality is extremely complex. These young people did not/do not have a safe background, and thus they were more easily influenced to choose the wrong way; they did not have a real childhood, never had the experience of common games or hiking, and never felt an atmosphere of trust, love and security. It was apparent that in these young people’s families very little attention was paid to each family member’s personal sensitivity or opinion, and emotional ties were either missing or were strongly distorted. In such a family environment, the young people were unable to solve the crises of adolescence which are parts of normal development, the family did not ensure support in coping with the tension, and they were left alone with solving their problems. Consequently, it is not surprising that they had great difficulties in telling what the family meant to them and what ideas they had about their future family.
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The Career-building effect of volunteering in higher education
146-160Views:89Nowadays 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.
