Browsing by Subject "attitude"

There is growing concern about the world population growth and the sufficiency of protein resources. Edible insects could be an alternative protein source for human beings. The aim of this master thesis was to examine the sensory characteristics of a new home cricket (Acheta Domesticus) product and understand the attitudes of consumers towards edible insects. The aim was to investigate the impact of consumer familiarity with edible insect food products on purchase intention and expected liking. The roles of media trust and purchase activism were expected to affect the behavior of consumers. Besides these four indicators also two more were added. These were food neophobia scale and innovativeness. The data on consumer attitudes and perception towards insect food was collected by using an electronic form that was sent to different mailing lists. Total of 167 respondents were gathered, 141 women and 63 men. 53 participants attended the sensory analysis tests on the beginning of the year 2020, ages 18 – 62. The analysis of the data was done with SPSS Statistics version 25. The findings of this study indicate that consumer familiarity contributes to purchase activism, purchase intention and expected liking. In this study the media trust did not contribute. Food neophobia scores correlated negatively to the intention to buy, expected liking and willingness to recommend the product. Innovativeness correlated positively to intention to buy and expected liking, and as expected, innovativeness correlated negatively to food neophobia scores. As people learn more about the ecological and nutritional benefits of edible insects, their attitudes towards insect food become more positive and they are more willing to try and taste insect products. The new home cricket product, PANNU Sirkka by GRiiDY, turned out to be quite suitable for Finnish consumers taste. On the just-about-right scale (1–4) the average score was 3,3 – 3,8 of all the assessed attributes. Many of the open responses mentioned the product to be ‘tasty, delicious, surprisingly good and crispy’, for instance. To overcome the preconceptions of western consumers, there should be more occasions to try and taste insect food. Marketing efforts are best targeted to consumers who are neophilic and innovative and encourage them to be the early adopters of insect food.

COVID-19-pandemian myötä vuotta 2020 on varjostanut epävarmuus ja pelko, mikä on havaittavissa sekä perinteisessä että sosiaalisessa mediassa käytävässä keskustelussa. Sosiaalisen median käytössä korostuu eri kanavien rooli sekä tiedon lähteenä että käyttäjien omien näkemysten ilmaisemisen välineenä. Lisäksi sosiaalisessa mediassa korostuu käyttäjien välinen vuorovaikutus. Sosiaalisen median käyttäminen terveyteen liittyvän tiedon lähteenä voi kuitenkin olla ongelmallista, erityisesti jos tieto erkaantuu tieteellisesti todistetusta faktasta. Sosiaalisessa mediassa esiintyvän diskurssin tarkasteleminen voi kuitenkin laajentaa ymmärrystämme käyttäjien suhtautumisesta ja asenteista uhkaavien infektiosairauksien vaaroihin sekä leviämisen estämiseen liittyviin toimenpiteisiin. Tämän tutkimuksen osalta COVID-19-pandemiaa lähestytään kasvomaskien käyttöön liittyvän diskurssin tarkastelulla suhtautumisen näkökulmasta. Analyysissa sovelletaan Martinin ja Whiten suhtautumisen teoriaa (Appraisal theory), jonka avulla voidaan havainnoida puhujien asennoitumista kasvomaskien käyttöön tarkastelemalla kielessä ilmenevää evaluaatiota. Teorian viitekehys koostuu kolmesta järjestelmästä: asennoituminen (attitude), sitoutuminen (engagement) ja asteittaisuus (graduation). Tämä tutkimus on rajattu asennoitumisen järjestelmään, joka jakautuu edelleen kolmeen alajärjestelmään: tunteiden ilmaisuun (affect), toiminnan arvosteluun (judgement) sekä esineiden ja asioiden arvottamiseen (appreciation). Suhtautumisen teoriassa kieli mielletään systeemis-funktionaalisesta kieliteoriasta lainaten merkitysten viestittämisen järjestelmänä, jossa evaluaatio toteutuu puhujan valitessa lukuisien mahdollisten merkitysten välillä. Tutkimuksen aineistona käytetään yhdysvaltalaisessa Washington Post -lehdessä julkaistua kasvomaskien oikeaoppiseen käyttöön ohjeistavan uutisartikkelin kommenttiosiota. Kommenttiosio koostuu yhteensä 137 kommentista, joista 114 sisältää kasvomaskien käyttöön liittyvää asennoitumista. Näissä 114 kommentissa ilmenee asennoitumista yhteensä 147 kertaa. Kommenttien analysoinnissa sovelletaan kvalitatiivista analyysia, jonka avulla kommenteista ensin täsmennetään asennoitumisen esiintymät. Tämän jälkeen analyysissa määritellään tarkemmin mitä kasvomaskeihin liittyvää aspektia arvioidaan, mikä on asennoitumisen polariteetti ja mihin arviointi sijoittuu asennoitumisen alajärjestelmissä. Tulokset osoittavat, että kasvomaskeihin liittyvässä diskurssissa korostuu ihmistoiminnan arvostelu, mikä ilmenee kasvomaskien käyttämättä jättämisen kielteisenä arvosteluna. Myös kasvomaskien sääntöihin sekä sääntöjen toteutumiseen ja valvontaan liittyvät epäjohdonmukaisuudet saavat osakseen kielteistä arvottamista. Tuloksissa ilmenee myös negatiivista asennoitumista poliittisia johtajia ja instituutioita kohtaan sekä näkyvää poliittista vastakkainasettelua, jossa kasvomaskien käyttämättömyys mielletään oikeistolaisen ideologian seuraukseksi. Tulokset viittaavat siihen, että kasvomaskeihin suhtaudutaan myönteisesti ja niiden tärkeys sairauden leviämisen estämiseksi tiedostetaan.

This thesis tackles the topic of the Russo-Ukrainian War to unveil the representation of Ukraine in British newspapers following the Russian invasion in 2022. In addition to analysing the representation of Ukraine, this study also makes preliminary observations on the representation of a few other social actors in the war, such as Russia and the UK. It does so by synthesising corpus methods, APPRAISAL theory (Martin & White, 2005), and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in search of patterns in the data. The data was sampled from the News on the Web (NOW) corpus (Davies, 2016-) and includes newspaper articles that: a) include the lemma UKRAINE; b) originate from the UK; and c) date from one of three selected weeks following the invasion in 2022. The three subcorpora – one for each selected week – were assessed with corpus methods as well as employed for a random selection of 15 texts which were subsequently used in the APPRAISAL analysis element of the study. The thesis’s findings suggest that the presence of and discussion around Ukraine in the UK press changes over the course of the year after the invasion. Furthermore, the APPRAISAL analysis revealed a clear distinction between appraisals of Ukraine, Russia, and the UK, the dynamic between which also changed over time. The overall majority of evaluations of Ukraine in the texts (54.6%) was negative, as was the far larger majority (84.9%) of evaluations of Russia. A more in-depth analysis elucidated a distinction between these negative appraisals. Ukraine’s negative evaluations pertained largely to the APPRAISAL categories of SECURITY, IMPACT and QUALITY, denoting an emphasis on the negative situation Ukraine finds itself in. The country is described as, among other things, war-torn and blown to bits. Negative evaluations of Russia, on the other hand, stemmed predominantly from the VALUATION, PROPRIETY and IMPACT categories, emphasising the unethical behaviour of (representatives of) Russia, its negative role in the conflict, and its negative impact on other social actors. Overall, the findings suggest that throughout the British news, Ukraine is represented as a victim and object of others’ actions and Russia as an unethical aggressor.

During the last decades the wooden multi-story building construction in Europe has been taking steps forward. In 1990s Finland was still even with Sweden in wooden multi-story building construction but in 2010s Sweden’s wooden multi-story buildings have overtaken much bigger market share out of the whole market of multi-story building construction, where Finland have not succeeded. The wooden multi-story building construction has had some political pressure lately in Finland and even some of binding laws have been modified in its favor. In earlier studies have been found that municipal planners have a role in a process of constructing a wooden multi-story building. It has also been found that municipal planners have personal power to affect building in general. The purpose of this study was to find out the factors that create boundaries to wooden multi-story building construction markets and study municipal planners’ networks between these factors. It was also an aim of this study to survey the municipal planners’ attitudes towards wooden multi-story building construction and study the consistencies between the attitudes and networks. All the above mentioned were supposed to be viewed from a geographical angle as well. This paper is supposed to be an explorative and descriptive study because of the lack of earlier studies in the specific field of multi-story building construction. The theoretical framework used in this study was based on an egocentric network analysis to be used in exploring the connections of municipal planners to the other factors that create market boundaries. The attitudes and the background factors were surveyed with a questionnaire sent by email. The interpretation of the sample in this qualitative study was done by using a statistical approach. According to the results the municipal planners have connections to the other factors that create boundaries to the market of wooden multi-story building construction and both sides of a connection do keep the connection up. The amount of connections that the municipal planners have vary so, that the planners that work outside of the metropolitan area in Finland have more connections than the planners working inside the metropolitan area. The attitudes towards wooden multi-story building construction vary geographically so that planners working in the metropolitan area have more positive attitudes than the planners who work in other parts of Finland. Over all the attitudes were very positive. The results also state that between the attitudes and the amount of connections to the other factors that create boundaries to the market of wooden multi-story building construction does not have any consistent connecting causes. The amount of connections seem to rise hand in hand by age and years of work experience among the municipal planners.

The literature review focused on the history, present and future challenges of the Finnish school meal. According to earlier studies most of the students eat the school lunch, however only one third of them eat all components that are part of the meal. The aim of this work was to investigate background- and contextual factors affecting acceptance of school meals. A total of 147 students from two schools in Helsinki participated in the study. They were third graders (n=43; 20 girls, 23 boys), sixth graders (n=54, 28 girls, 26 boys), and eight or nine graders (n=31; 17 girls, 14 boys). The participants evaluated 13 school meals and 26 main dishes (13 basic dishes and 13 vegetarian dishes). The main dishes differed due to different dish types and main ingredients. The participants evaluated the meals and the dining situation on questionnaires, in a class room, after the lunch break. A photo of the meal of the day was projected on a screen to remind them of the experience. The respondents checked the immediate emotion when seeing the meal, liking of the meal and its components, the appropriateness of saltiness, spiciness and temperature of the main dish and the dining situation. Demographic data, attitude to school meals in general, food neophobia score, and ratings as response to food names of 30 school meals were collected separately. Liking of the meals and meal components were affected by the age and food neophobia score of the participant. The third graders scored higher for most main dishes and meal components than the sixth graders. Participants with a lower food neophobia score liked the meals better than participants with high scores. 35 % of the overall acceptance of school meals was explained by attitude towards school meals in general, the temperature of the main dish, the participants hunger state before lunch, the saltiness of the main dish, food neophobia and the temperature of the drink in a stepwise regression model. Hunger state was the most explanative factor for the third graders, while the sixth graders acceptance to school meals was mainly explained by the attitude towards school meals in general. The results of this study indicate that the attitude towards school meals get more negative with age. Hence, identifying the factors underlying this attitude change is important in order for the school meal to be accepted and eaten also by older students.

Some research on the attitudes among comprehensive school pupils have been made in the context of different school subjects. In this study, I wanted to examine the attitudes among comprehensive school pupils toward mother tongue and literature. Consideration of subject name definition and teaching content in the research were also considered due to versatility of the subject. I was also interested in what methods were used in the studies and what were their effects on the results. This study was conducted as a literature review, which first summarized the findings of the research and presented their main points. Moreover, a separate discussion of study results and description for name and content parts were presented. The materials used in this study were searched from Helka Finna service databases and from Google Scholar search en-gine. In addition, two articles were searched from Google search engine. Studies showed that the attitudes among comprehensive school pupils are either neutral or slightly negative towards mother tongue and literature. However, some studies also showed slightly positive attitudes towards the subject. Many studies had taken gender differences into account. Attitudes were measured either qualitatively or quantitatively, nonetheless the results were rather similar regardless of the used methods. However, a more versatile picture of attitudes was obtained by qualitative research. In studies that considered teaching content, grammar was generally considered to be the most unpopular part of the subject. However, the importance or usefulness of both the grammar and the whole subject was recognized. Pupils believe that the content of mother tongue and literature is needed, for example, in working life. Teaching contents were considered in half of the research. The subject was referred to as either mother tongue or mother tongue and literature. The used name was not related to the time when the subject content changed to include both mother tongue and literature.

Based on previous research conducted in North America and Europe, young people have a negative attitude towards the police and law enforcement by showing scepticism and expression of doubt towards its legitimacy (Brown & Benedict, 2002; Brunson, 2007). This study looks into young people’s (between the ages of 14 to 17 years) attitude towards the police in Finland and the role of migration background. The literature analysis was done by using theories from a social psychological and criminological approach. The data collection was conducted in Finland using quantitative methods by using the International Self-report Delinquency Study (ISRD-3) (Kivivuori, Salmi, Aaltonen & Jouhki, 2014). The results of the regression analysis show that there is no significant association between migrant status and attitudes towards the police. However, there seems to be strong associations between police contact, self-control and delinquency.