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JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH

date. These students differ from the university humanities
students in the depth of their awareness of the issue, and thus in
the degree of positive attitude towards the offenders.

3 Purpose

Research on students’ attitudes to restorative justice and to
persons serving an alternative sentence.

The aim of the present research was to explore the humanities
and the technical sciences students’ attitudes to restorative
justice and alternative sentencing (the former of the Faculty of
Arts, University of Prešov; the latter of the Technical University
of Košice). In particular, we were interested in the following?
What are the attitudes of students, future professionals, to
restorative justice – a positive substitute for retributive justice?
What are the attitudes of students, future professionals, to
persons serving an alternative sentence who are more likely to
develop a positive change of behavior?

Partial research objectives:

1.The aim of the research was to find out whether the humanities
students are more knowledgeable about the effectiveness of
restorative justice than the technical sciences students.

2.The aim of the research was to find out whether the humanities
students do manifest a more positive attitude to persons serving
an alternative sentence than the technical sciences students.

3.The aim of the research was to find out whether the humanities
students would be more inclined to support persons serving an
alternative sentence than the technical sciences students if they
had decision-making power.

4.The aim of the research was to find out if the students who
know a person serving am alternative sentence do manifest a
more positive attitude to them than the students who do not
know one.

5.The aim of the research was to find out if more humanities
students do regard the institution of probation trustworthy than
the technical sciences students.

4

Research methodology

In the present research, we used an original questionnaire
exploring the students’ attitudes to restorative justice and
persons serving an alternative sentence. The questionnaire
consisted of 26 questions, three of which were closed questions
and 23 questions used scales capturing the depth of the
experienced reality. The objective of the questionnaire was to
confirm or to refute the hypotheses and to achieve the research
goal. Choosing individual alternatives within attitudes enabled
us to determine the current state of affairs as well as the intensity
of the attitude. By using pairwise comparison techniques based
on the number of options, it was possible to identify the degree
of the attitudes, thereby ascertaining the existence of attitudes
(Švec et al. 1998), and consequently utilizing the obtained result
in deliberately affecting the students of both humanities and
technical sciences.

When analyzing the data, a two-step sorting was used in the
SPSS 16.00 statistical program; the results were processed into
contingency tables. The two-stage sorting was used for a more
detailed statistical analysis of the data in order to validate the
research aims. When testing the hypotheses, the results were
processed in contingency or association tables, through which
the investigated corresponding variables were compared; one
variable always acted as an independent one – an explanatory
variable, and the other one as a dependent variable – the variable
to be explained. We investigated how the analyzed features were
represented in both variables. The selected significance level was
0.05. When validating our

hypotheses, we tested the bilateral

statistical hypotheses because the bilateral hypothesis accounted
for the fact that the investigated feature (in the dependent
variable) may be more noticeable or less noticeable in the

variable under comparison than in the reference variable
(independent variables). In order to adopt an alternative
hypothesis or not to refute the null hypothesis, we compared the

probability of calculated value Pearson χ – square at the set
significance level of 0.05. If the probability p > 0.05 was
calculated, we did not refute the null hypothesis, and,
subsequently, we adopted the statistical

hypothesis.

5 The research sample

The research sample was obtained by deliberate quota selection
and it included 80 university students. Out of those, 40 were
humanities students (social work students from the Faculty of
Arts, University of Prešov) and 40 were students of technical
sciences (students of the Technical University of Košice, the
external campus in Prešov). It was a deliberate selection because
we wanted to verify the differences in the attitudes based on the
students’ knowledge and training. The questionnaire was
personally administered to the students and the results were
processed anonymously.

Tab. 1: The characteristics of research sample – study program

Gender

Total of

University

Male

Female

Humanities quantity

45.00%

55.00%

100.00%

Technical studies

50.00%

100.00%

Total quantity

47.50%

52.50%

100.00%

Source: Compiled by the authors

The select cohort comprised eighty 2nd year Magister degree
respondents, out of which thirty-eight were males (47.50%) and
forty-two were females (52.50%) aged 22 – 40.

6 Results

In order to verify the first partial research aim, we used five

questions in which we observed the following values: Pearson χ
–

square = 4.94, p = 0.047; Pearson χ – square = 6.27, p = 0.023;

Pearso

n χ – square = 3.164, p = 0.126; Pearson χ – square =

33.88, p = 0.000 and Pearson χ – square = 39.3 p = 0.000. Thus,
it can be stated that the response values are significant with
regard to the study program in which the students are enrolled.
1. partial research aim stating that, due to their vocational
training, the humanities students are be more knowledgeable
about alternative sentencing than technical sciences students,
was confirmed.

In order to verify the second partial research aim, we used five
scaled questions for which we observed the following values:

Pearson χ – square = 12.3, p = 0.001; Pearson χ – square = 39.3,

p = 0.000; Pearson χ – square = 34.14, p = 0.000; Pearson χ –

square = 17.28, p = 0.000; Pearson χ – square = 23.7, p = 0.000

and Pearson χ – square = 4.6, p = 0.030.

2. partial research aim stating that, due to their vocational
training, the humanities students are be more knowledgeable
about probation and probation programs than technical sciences
students, was confirmed.

When verifying the third partial research aim, we observed the
fo

llowing values: Pearson χ – square = 7.4, p = 0.019. We found

that there is a difference in awareness between the humanities
students and technical sciences students. OR (Odds ratio) having
the value of 8.3, indicated that the probability of higher
awareness in the humanities students was 8.3 times higher than
in the technical sciences students. 3. partial research aim stating
that the humanities students, with regard to their training, are be
more knowledgeable about the correctional and educational
effect of alternative sentencing was thus confirmed.

Six questions were used in order to verify the fourth partial
research aim. The difference in students’ attitudes towards a

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