United States and the Soviet Union in Nordic School Textbooks During the Cold War : Reflections on a Comparative Study of Relative Bias / Janne Holmén.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Holmén, Janne, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cold War in textbooks.

Cold War.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

London : SAGE Publications Ltd, 2025.

Summary:

This case study is based on my doctoral dissertation Political textbooks: The depiction of the United States and the Soviet Union in Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish schoolbooks during the Cold War. It was a comparative research project that analyzed textbooks from three countries and three school subjects (history, geography, and civics) during a period from the 1930s until the 2000s. The case study provides insights as to how to structure large comparative qualitative studies by analyzing relative bias. The main principle of relative bias is that although two persons with different views on an issue-for example, NATO membership-cannot agree on which of two descriptions of the issue is the most accurate, they can still agree on which of the descriptions has more positive or more negative bias when compared to each other. The method was combined with a form of presentation where the treatment of different themes in the three countries was compared in tables and a qualitative diagram. A full-scale study of relative bias is most suitable for longer research projects such as a PhD dissertation. However, a scaled-down version, which can be considered a qualitative equivalent of the difference-in-difference method used in quantitative research, can be applied in shorter essays and articles.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

1-03-621497-4

9781036214975

OCLC:

1523170169