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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:51vOne 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. -
Social vulnerability and interpersonal support in disaster experienced Hungarian settlements
27-53Views:58Natural disasters unequally affect poor and wealthy populations, which can be observed everywhere regardless of the economic performance of the respective country. Paradigms focusing on physical hazards and response can not be considered, while social, political and cultural causes are rarely mentioned in the discussions around particular disaster events. Marginalized households and communities, and populations with less income are more affected by disasters. A significant proportion of Hungary’s settlements are deprived or otherwise marginalized, which makes it necessary to raise social and economic questions related to disasters, and investigate them from a spatial aspect. This study is based on case studies of five disaster-affected settlements and encompasses a social vulnerability approach. The research is based on interviews with key informants involved in response to the respective disasters and broadened with an experiment to use the Interpersonal Support Evaluation List as an instrument to investigate community resilience. The ISEL is capable of observing the individuals’ self-perception of themselves in their communities and how they can rely on others in their environment. The survey, with the participation of 103 people, discovered discrepancies in the level and structure of interpersonal support, which is tangible based on the interviews.
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Visibility of marginalized social groups from a network perspective
83-108Views:182The study examines the segregation of different marginalized social groups – ex-prisoners, gypsies, gays and lesbians, homeless people – and their visibility in society. Using a size generator network method, the study builds negative binomial models to compare the segregation of marginalized groups within a representative sample of 1000 people. The alpha value in these models indicates the level of overdispersion. According to the results, the level of segregation varies between the overall network and the trust network. Specifically, the level of segregation for gypsies is the lowest in the overall network, whereas in the trust network, it is the lowest for gays/lesbians. The segregation of homeless people is extremely high, which is due to the fact that they are confined to their own space. Individuals with low education, belonging to lower classes, living in villages have the smallest network size. However, they have the highest number of marginalized social group members. A smaller network is associated with lower levels of peer support. The lack of weak bonds makes the social network homophilic and „island-like” social exlusions are formed where poverty and vulnerability are typical.
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Family perspectives for young people growing up in child protection care
1-21Views:19The study examines the factors of family perspectives among vulnerable youths – children and youth living in alternative care – with qualitative method. The target group is children who live in the Hungarian child protection system as juveniles. Children and young people experiencing different family substitute arenas may result in various family perspectives. These family perspectives are examined within a theoretical framework of family sociology and human ecology.We used a complex approach to describe the experiences and changes of these structural and family-replacer dimensions together with their impacts on the family perspective. We have found that the family perspectives of the young people are diverse and their narratives about their visions of the future are often linked to dominant family and life events previously experienced in family milieus and forms of care. At the same time, the complexity of life events and the diversity of future plans are not necessarily reflected in the institutional background and the professional-young relationships that could support young people’s autonomy. Based on the interviews, the family and community levels of the human ecology model can also be a significant factor in young people’s family perspectives, so cooperation between family and community, institutional actors can be one of the keys to providing adequate support for young people. In order to realize future plans for family perspectives, professionals need to focus more on individual needs and the diversity and variability of family perspectives.
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Online activities of Alzheimer Cafes in the 6 months preceding and following the coronavirus outbreak
19-41Views:46Alzheimer Cafés may play an important psychosocial supporting role in the life of people living with dementia and of their family caregivers by providing a community of understanding, inclusion, solidarity and mutual support. They can promote policy-, professional- and social discourses, the recognition of dementia as a social reality, and overall awareness of this complex challenge. They can also foster transdisciplinary collaboration among professionals as well as between professionals and lay people affected by dementia based on mutual understanding, catalysing the formation and operation of acting communities and networks of interest.
The active and purposeful presence and activities of Alzheimer Cafés on Internet platforms, in the increasingly prominent channels and fields of social discourse and community life in the 21st century, can be an important tool in the realization of these benefits.
This two-part paper analyses the publicly accessible online footprint and behaviour of Alzheimer Cafés from this perspective as measured by a list of 10 possible functions. It scrutinizes the realisation of possible benefits and advantages offered by Internet platforms between September 2019 and August 2020, with a special focus on technology-based adaptive responses to the coronavirus-outbreak midway through that period.
This first part of the paper, which briefly overviews the Alzheimer Café concept and its history in Hungary, and then presents the methodology of the study and the first half of the research results. The second part of the paper will continue to present the results, and will make recommendations for making more effective use of the potential of online platforms to realise the goals.
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Online activities of Alzheimer Cafes in the 6 months preceding and following the coronavirus outbreak
42-64Views:58Alzheimer Cafés may play an important psychosocial supporting role in the life of people living with dementia and of their family caregivers by providing a community of understanding, inclusion, solidarity and mutual support. They can promote policy-, professional- and social discourses, the recognition of dementia as a social reality, and overall awareness of this complex challenge. They can also foster transdisciplinary collaboration among professionals as well as between professionals and lay people affected by dementia based on mutual understanding, catalysing the formation and operation of acting communities and networks of interest.
The active and purposeful presence and activities of Alzheimer Cafés on Internet platforms, in the increasingly prominent channels and fields of social discourse and community life in the 21st century, can be an important tool in the realization of these benefits.
This two-part paper analyses the publicly accessible online footprint and behaviour of Alzheimer Cafés from this perspective as measured by a list of 10 possible functions. It scrutinizes the realisation of possible benefits and advantages offered by Internet platforms between September 2019 and August 2020, with a special focus on technology-based adaptive responses to the coronavirus-outbreak midway through that period.
The first part of the paper (Kucsera – Holpert 2021) briefly overviewed the Alzheimer Café concept and its history in Hungary, presented the methodology of the study and the first half of the research results. This second part of the paper presents the rest of the results, and makes recommendations for making more effective use of the potential of online platforms to realise the goals.
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Investigation of working conditions and risk factors for burnout of social and pedagogical professionals
3-29Views:43The 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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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:68Our 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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Peer support instead of community solidarity among people with psychiatric diagnosis: Examining an online, anonymous self-help website
10-33Views:30In our research, we examined the first social networking website in Hungary that was specifically and explicitly designed for people with mental health problems and their relatives, or for people interested in the topic. A unique feature is that in 2021, it will still be possible to register anonymously and post comments on the site. Our research explores the life situations of people diagnosed as psychiatrically ill based on the concept of the recovery model, and therefore a central question for us is how an online self-help, peer support group can contribute to the recovery of individuals. In addition, one of the main hypotheses of our research is that community solidarity towards people with a psychiatric diagnosis is very low at different levels of society, and therefore self-help and peer support, also provided by the site we are investigating, may be of particular importance for the people concerned. We assume that they are a group that is highly stigmatised and socially rejected. In the media they are typically either invisible or portrayed as violent, aggressive figures. The Covid19 epidemic situation has led to many people experiencing psychological difficulties because of quarantine or the long-term side effects of the virus itself, which have been thematised in the media, but we believe that the mechanisms of solidarity with those diagnosed as psychiatric patients have not fundamentally changed (see for example the first establishment of psychiatric hospital wards
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On the margin of child protection: Negative life events impact on the adolescents and youth health behavior
80-108Views:107The paper studies how negative life events affect risk behaviour of children and young people. Calculations on the database of the ‘Hungarian youth 2012’ research suggest that negative life events are strong predictors of different types of risk behaviour like alcohol, drug abuse and suicide. According to the data people who have experienced several and more serious negative life events, more likely refuse and turn away from the norms of the adult society than those whose life proves to be less stressful. To place these results into child protection context, the study calls attention to the fact that the Hungarian child protection system does not treat each group in the fragmented society equally, although, on the basis of the incidence of threat it should. Another important message of this paper is to highlight that in addition to scientific values large-scale sociological research studies have professional and practical values as well. To support it, from the questions of the well-known Holmes-Rahe scale the authors re-developed an exploration scale (Reduced Life Events Scale). The application of the Reduced Life Event Scale (or the original Holmes-Rahe scale) allows experts to focus more on the studied issues in the process of planning services, prevention and case work. The tool might propose solutions to use the insufficient resources in a more targeted way.
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Peer-group ties and a prison sentence: a chance to enhance successful re-entry
52-82Views:43Interpersonal relationships of prisoners are of key importance from the aspect of their reintegration. We focus our attention on non-kin, primarily friendship ties on a sample of young Hungarian males convicted for the first time, for a relatively short period of up to 3 years. In our longitudinal qualitative research, 80 offenders from eight penal institutions were interviewed while serving their sentence and 31 of them could also be reached 6 months after they left the prison. We analyse what significance prisoners attribute to their friendship ties, how these change during the prison sentence, which factors influence their sustainment or dissolution, weakening or strengthening.
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Changes in reproductive policies in Hungary between 2010 and 2022
32-57Views:154This paper examines Hungarian reproductive policies, their changes and their restrictions in relation to pronatalist objectives between 2010 and 2022. The aim of the study is to present and interpret legislative changes in reproductive policies in the context of the pronatalist policies in Hungary. Reproductive policies include the regulation of assisted reproductive technologies, adoption, abortion, contraception, and sex education. In the development of these policies, we assume that a fundamentally pronatalist approach prevails, but we also identify various specific related constraints: heteronormativity, marriage-centredness, and the maintenance and reinforcement of traditional gender roles. We assume that Hungary’s reproductive policies have become increasingly selective since 2010 after the second Orbán government. These policies can be considered selective because they do not encourage all social groups to have children. These result in the exclusion of for example socially disadvantaged groups, single people and same-sex couples from reproduction due to legal constraints, a lack of financial support, access, and transfer of information. In conclusion, selective, heteronormative and marriage-based pronatalism is most identifiable in the adoption context, but abortion regulation, the legal environment for assisted reproductive technologies and sex education, in general, may reinforce pronatalist objectives.
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Enforcement of Community Approaches in Child Protection Practice: International Trends
70-86Views:35Child protection has changed in important ways on international level in recent years. Child protection as social institution adapts to and follows social change. Global competitions, mobility
of capital and workforce, acceleration of economic processes and interdependence of national
economies, and the economic crises of 2007 has their impact on the operation and workings of
welfare systems. This study examines the trends and tendencies in international child protection practice since the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, what type of child protection
orientations can be distinguished, what kind of characteristics can be described and which way
seems to emerge—as a common challenge—in general in the field of the state’s child protection
activities. The study draws attention to the importance of some topics in international discourse, such as complex needs of the clients, importance of partnerships, support of parenthood and a
range of professional skills and competences to achieve these goals. -
An example of good practice for integrating youth into the labor market in Hungary
1-18Views:16While 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.
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Does the corruption affect to the voters? – a Bayesian econometric analysis
25-66Views:23The study examines the agenda-setting aspirations of Hungarian political life between 2010
and 2016 from a corruption research perspective. Using the available data, we estimate, based
on the monthly data series of a six-year period, using different statistical methods, whether the
allocation of European Union funds used as a proxy for corruption had an impact on the support
of the ruling party. The results of the applied Bayesian vector autoregression do not provide
evidence for the hypothesis that the increase in corruption associated with the increase in EU
subsidies reduces the popularity of the ruling party among the entire voting population. -
Positioning Opportunities for Rural Areas Through the Example of Ciuc-Basin
50-74Views:25Those development approaches that support social inclusion, exploitation of endogenous
resources and community development may be an alternative, and can offer new opportunities
for the economically and socially disadvantaged rural areas and for peripheral settlements
that have missed the mainstream of development. The new rural paradigm, and the related
regional development approaches, such as marketing-oriented settlement development, point to
a new community-based trend, where places, local communities get a more important role, the
function of local management changes and endogenous factors become the main resource. The
communication activity and positioning practice becomes more important. -
Analysis of the space-based identity structure of rural elite in a region of Szeklerland
32-49Views:24The new challenges of rural areas support expansion of the range of professional research and
analysis focusing on local or regional identity structures as a quality factor of development.
These new approaches are particularly important in the rural areas of the post-socialist
countries, which are in the initial stages of the recognition of the potential inherent in the
endogenous development paradigm. In Szeklerland, according to the new rural development
paradigm, place-based identity could be a potential for the sustainable development. The aim
of my paper is to present the major dimensions of the place-based identity structure in a microregion of Szeklerland. -
Empirical analysis of the judgment of unconditional basic income through YouTube comments
68-93.Views:20One of the world’s largest video-sharing platforms is YouTube, where viewers can comment on
the videos and their topics. The aim of this study is to examine the values and opinions about
unconditional basic income according to the comment sections of several Youtube’s videos which
topic is the previously mentioned UBI which is receiving increasing attention in parallel with
today’s economic and social changes. Our research works with a mixed method, data collection,
storage, sentiment analysis and the bag of words method which were implemented using IT
procedures, while categorization was done through manual coding. The results of the sentiment
analysis show that positive arguments appear to a lesser extent in the comments. Positive
arguments have value characteristics such as inclusion, the principle of the right to exist, justice
and freedom. Among the positive arguments feasibility enjoys the highest support. Negative
category values arise more frequently, so the emphasis on the values of injustice, exclusion,
unaffordability, and performance-orientation is dominant in the analyzed comments.
