2007, Ndubuisi N Nwokolo, IARS researcher

Peace building is both a process and an end product, as such is entirely difficult to restrict its relations with the past in relation to the present and the future. In every situation in which there have been wrongdoing and offences, lots of forgiveness and healings are need to move the peace process forward. This then brings us to the major question, how do we deal with the past, considering that the present and future will questions ...

ROTA & LVSC, Feb 2007

This research project extended the themes in J. Reid Meloy’s book, The Psychology of Stalking: Clinical and Forensic Perspectives, by discerning the extent to which different forms of social conditioning influence perspectives of stalking behaviour. The first hypothesis was that women would display more fear of stalking behaviours than men because sometimes women are acculturated to be intimidated by men. The second hypothesis was that ethnicity would skew views of stalking behaviour. The third and final hypothesis was that subjects from rural areas would be more astonished by and less combative towards stalking behaviour than those from urban areas. Additionally, the effect of the stalking vignettes’ order (randomly versus chronologically ordered based on the severity of stalking behaviour) on subjects’ responses and the effects of personal experience with stalking were also measured. Other hypotheses, deemed less critical than the aforementioned, have been excluded from this report. Approximately 98 international students at the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium) completed the surveys as part of an in-class assignment. Survey administrators entered the resulting data into a SPSS program and tabulated either Chi-Square or T-test comparisons or correlations. Preliminary results indicate that the only independent variable with a consistently significant effect at the .05 level (using a two-tailed, chi-square test) on perception of stalking behaviour is ethnicity. Ethnicity altered perceptions of stalking behaviour across all vignettes. All other aforesaid factors seemed to have little to moderate effects on perceptions of stalking behaviour. Subjects’ ethnicities’ exceptional effect on perceptions of stalking behaviour might be attributed to the difference between high and low maintenance cultures, culturally accepted modes of aggression, cultural assumptions regarding romantic pursuit and cultural perceptions of amusement.