Tolerance of Non-Smokers to Smokers

CONTENT

Introduction

1. Setting hypotheses

2. Definition of tolerance and tolerance index

3. Questions

4. The focus group and the way of the data collecting

5. Design of the questionnaire

6. Analyses of the collected data with SPSS
6.1 Testing the validity of the Tolerance Index
6.2 Testing hypothesis “Women are more tolerant than men”
6.3 Testing hypothesis “Older people are more tolerant than young ones”

7. Results and estimation

Conclusion

Literature

Introduction

The present assignment is an attempt to conduct an empirical social research about tolerance of non-smokers towards smokers. The research is done in the form of a survey of non-smokers and consists of the following steps:

1. setting hypotheses about tolerance of non-smokers towards smokers;
2. creating of a tolerance-index, that measures tolerance of non-smokers;
3. selecting the way of the data collecting as well as developing an appropriate design of the research according to the hypotheses;
4. data collecting;
5. analysis of the collected data by the program Statistical package for the social science (SPSS).

The aims of this work are:

- to measure, how tolerant non-smokers are towards smokers;
- to learn the process of the social research: the ways and possible problems of it;
- to prove hypotheses about tolerance taking into account their reliability as well as validity of the tolerance-index;
- to evaluate the results of the research and to give some proposals as to how the research can be improved and what must be avoided by next researches.

In the end of the assignment the results of the research will be presented as well as the conclusion about the whole work with the proposals regarding possible improvements.

1. Setting hypotheses

Considering tolerance of non-smokers towards smokers our team has worked out two hypotheses:

1. Women are more tolerant than men.
2. Older people are more tolerant than young ones.

2. Definition of tolerance and tolerance index

Considering asking about tolerance different people, our team knew that “tolerance” could have very different meanings for that people. “Tolerance” is an ambiguous term. Therefore, if people understand tolerance in different way, then they will give answers to what they mean is “tolerance” and not to what our team means is “tolerance” by the research, but. So, answers would be genuine, but faulty for the research purposes. Also, we could not ask people directly “Are you tolerant?”, because it could happen, that some people even would not understand, what tolerance means at all. Therefore, we needed to limit the meaning of tolerance.

Our team researched a lot of literature to clarify the meaning of the term “tolerance” given in official scientific sources. Some definitions of tolerance are as follows:

1. „Toleranz bedeutet Respekt, Akzeptanz und Anerkennung... unseres Menschseins in all ihrem Reichtum und ihrer Vielfalt... Toleranz ist vor allem eine aktive Einstellung, die sich stützt auf die Anerkennung der allgemeingültigen Menschenrechte und Grundfreiheiten anderer.“^[1] (German Commission for UNESCO)
2. Tolerance is an acceptance of different views:the acceptance of the differing views of other people, e.g. in religious or political matters, and fairness towards the people who hold these different views.^[2]
3. Tolerance is a fair, objective, and permissive attitude towards opinions and practices that differs from one's own.^[3]
4. Tolerance is a term used within debates in areas of social, cultural and religious context, to describe attitudes and practices that prohibit discrimination against those whose practices or group memberships may be disapproved of by those in the majority.^[4]

We found out, these were different definitions of “tolerance”, but some “key points” or features considering “tolerance” would be included in definitions reiterate. To describe tolerance we chose 4 following key points:

1. trouble
2. understanding
3. acceptance
4. non-discrimination

Trouble (“Last” in German) means that smoking is a burden, something not very pleasant and alien to a non-smoker. I.e., it is uncomfortable for a non-smoker to be near a smoker and to breathe the smoke in while the smoker is enjoying a cigarette. Some non-smokers feel themselves not pleasant just because they see people smoking.

Understanding is more complicated notion. It means, that even if smoking is a trouble for a non-smoker, she/ he understands, that other people (smokers) can feel the need to smoke.

By acceptance we mean that people realize that other people can think or behave themselves in other way than that of a particular individual, that they can have other wishes and needs or other style of life. And even if these needs and views are different to one’s own, it does not mean that people are bad or behave themselves wrong and badly. They are just different. Particularly, non-smokers realize that others can have the need to smoke because of different reasons. Therefore, they do not transfer their negative feelings towards smoking to a person (smoker). Thus, non-smokers accept the right of others to smoke even if they do not like smoking.

Non-discrimination means the highest niveau of tolerance. Sometimes, when people even accept smoking and know that others have the need and the right to smoke, they can be still egoistic and would not allow smoking thinking only about own good. They can say: “I understand you and accept you”, but they are only saying this, but do an opposite. Non-discrimination means to be active tolerant, to respect and to support the rights of smokers.

Therefore, in respect of tolerance, we decided that features as above can not have the same importance to answer if one is tolerant or not. I.e. if a non-smoker do not feel unpleasant when people next to him/ her are smoking, it does not mean, that this person is tolerant. He or she can be still active against smokers (i.e. because smokers are a bad sample for others). Other example is that a non-smoker can be “passive tolerant”: he/ she can accept smoking somewhere, but in reality a smoker next to her/ him will be discriminated. Because of this we decided to weight features of tolerance. Relaying on the importance of measured features for tolerance we followed estimation scale:

1. trouble Value: 1 point (the least importance for tolerance);
2. understanding Value: 2 points (double important than “trouble”);
3. acceptance Value: 3 points (very important);
4. non-discrimination Value: 4 points (the most important because it means “active” tolerance).

In our research, all questions are measured by Likert scale. This scale is used to obtain the quantitative answers to closed questions and has a ranking from 1 to 5. The points have the following meaning according to positively formulated questions:

1 – strongly agree (the most tolerant answer);
2 – agree (more tolerant answer);
3 – neutral (neutral answer);
4 – disagree (less tolerant answer);
5 – strongly disagree (the least tolerant answer).

However, the scale will be turned over by negatively formulated questions:

1 – strongly agree (the least tolerant answer);
2 – agree (less tolerant answer);
3 – neutral (neutral answer);
4 – disagree (more tolerant answer);
5 – strongly disagree (the most tolerant answer).

We used the Likert scale to measure each answer, (i.e. discrimination versus non-discrimination), and the estimated scale of described features of tolerance to measure the importance of each question. To measure complete results we created a “Tolerance Index” containing the points from both scales:

Tolerance Index = Question_1: the points according to the Liker Scale (from 1 to 5 points) multiplied by weight according to the scale of importance of measured feature for tolerance (from 1 to 4 points) + …+ Question_n: the points according to the Liker Scale (from 1 to 5 points) multiplied by weight according to the scale of importance of measured feature for tolerance (from 1 to 4 points) = number of total points.

Furthermore, in our research we have 8 questions concerned with tolerance which are divided into 4 groups per 2 questions. That means that 2 questions check the same level of tolerance (trouble versus not a trouble, acceptance versus non-acceptance, etc.). Finally the Index can be written as follows:

illustration not visible in this excerpt

There: X is a particular question (one of eight);

1-5 is the points according to the Likert scale;

*1...*4 is the weight of each feature, described by question.

3. Questions

The questionnaire consists of 10 questions. Two first questions clarify an age and a gender, because our hypotheses deal with these points.

The next 8 questions are about tolerance. The questions are created in the form of several life situations to give the respondent a feeling of reality and consequently to generate more genuine answers then answers to abstract questions. The questions are structured around the features of tolerance and are restrictively closed. They will be explained further:

Question 3: It is OK when my friend, a Smoker, is not allowed to enter a Café for non-smokers.

The aim of this question is to identify the level of discrimination. The question has a weight of 4. It is a negatively formulated question. A person, who answers “totally disagree”, shows a high level of tolerance because he or she declares the right for everybody to smoke at any place. The maximal possible sum of points will be given for maximal tolerance: 4*(6-1) = 20 points. Minimum tolerance by: 4*(6-5) = 4 points. The points are given in brackets here and further by converting negative questions into positive ones.

[...]

^[1] http://www.unesco.de/447.html (25.06.07)

^[2] http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_/tolerance.html (25.06.07)

^[3] http://www.resourcesforattorneys.com/issues/index.php?entry=entry070430-153046 (25.06.07)

^[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolerance (25.06.07)