Professors Present at International Society
Posted on Thursday, November 1, 2007
Dr. James Rhoads, Westminster associate professor of political science, and Dr. Shannon Smithey, Westminster assistant professor of political science, presented "Attitudes Toward Privacy and Security Five Years After 9/11" at the annual meeting of The International Society for the Scientific Study of Subjectivity held Oct. 4-6 at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Md.
Nearly 100 scholars attended the meeting. Presenters came from Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, South Korea, Norway, England, Canada, Brazil, Thailand, Taiwan, and the United States.
"The paper sought to explore more deeply attitudes concerning the long-standing tension between security and privacy, especially in this age of terrorism," Rhoads said. "Participants in the study ranked a set of statements drawn from conversation on the security-privacy debate. Data was then correlated and factor-analyzed, revealing three distinct viewpoints.
"One group saw this tension in partisan terms; the second group was resigned to the notion the government must be granted some additional police powers, although they were skeptical of the government; and the third group was quite willing to allow the government additional police powers and sacrifice civil liberties to counter the threat of terrorism.
"Q Methodology was utilized, permitting a fuller understanding of such attitudes, which would have been obscured by the use of more conventional survey research techniques," Rhoads added.
The presentation was part of a larger research project. Rhoads and Smithey are planning follow-up studies.
Rhoads was also appointed to the editorial board of The Journal of Human Subjectivity, an English-language journal sponsored by the Korean Society for the Scientific Study of Subjectivity.
Rhoads, who has been with Westminster since 1992, earned an undergraduate, master's, and Ph.D. from Kent State University.
Smithey has been with Westminster since 2003. She earned undergraduate degrees from Southern Methodist University and a master's and Ph.D. from Ohio State University.
Contact Rhoads at (724) 946-7255 or e-mail jrhoads@westminster.edu for additional information.
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