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The United States is home to more than 60 million Americans with disabilities and more than 300,000 churches. Yet the relationships among these individuals and congregations is alternately described as encouraging or concerning—sometimes stellar, other times deeply disappointing. Although anecdotes have characterized much of these depictions, a growing body of research also focuses on this area. This research review addresses the current landscape of congregational participation and practices related to individuals with disabilities and their families. What is known about the participation of individuals with disabilities in relation to faith community life? What is known about the practices of local congregations in relation to individuals with disabilities? This paper highlights key findings, identifies gaps in the current literature, and concludes with recommendations for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose for this paper is to present a measured perspective on the empirical literature examining point and level (P&L) systems in residential care settings. We review the history of P&L and eight of the most common criticisms of its use in residential care settings. The relative merits of each of the criticisms are discussed. There is no empirical research support for the criticisms of P&L when well-implemented. There are, nonetheless, barriers to success that arise when P&L program are not well-executed. Effective P&L programs are characterized by developing positive relationships, maintain high ratios of positive to negative feedback, are individualized to each youth's needs, have appropriate tolerances, and systematically fade youth off P&L in preparation for returning to their families or independent living. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impact of health communication using smartphones and the outcome of healthier purchases when young Thai consumers shop for groceries. A conjoint experiment was arranged whereby participants (n = 214) purchased grocery using information conveyed via quick response (QR) codes. Results show that a healthy food label, and a good consumer rating on the food's health, evoked the consumers' tendencies towards interacting with a smartphone in the purchasing situation. In addition, likelihood of buying increased. Further simulations revealed that health communication conveyed via QR codes can be a good investment for brands to increase healthier purchases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides empirical evidence on students' achievements determinants in Sub-Saharan Africa based on a sample of 26602 students from the ten countries that participated in the PASEC 2014 assessment. By using a two-level hierarchical linear model, I find that learning inequalities are primarily explained by differences in schools' characteristics. Furthermore, the estimation findings corroborate this result by showing the relevance of resources at the school level and how it affects students' performances depending on school type and location. Additionally, my results showed gender disparities and peer effects related to socioeconomic status, which disproportionately influence children from disadvantaged backgrounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The way we measure values is foundational to their study. This paper explores the empirical findings and theoretical discussions in the literature concerning an essential quality for any measure of values, its validity. We discuss an important debate on validity within the literature concerning the ability of value measures to predict value-related behaviour. We interrogate a key assumption behind the value-behaviour link, namely that a participant's responses on a valid value measure will predict their behaviour. Ultimately, we make the case that a better understanding of the relationship between values and behaviour may be possible if we also consider social norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early School Leaving (ESL) as an important societal issue has been a matter of debate in policy making for 30 years. But the differences in students' experiences have often been neglected, leading to a one-size fits all policy and pedagogical approach. This paper explores educational experiences of dropouts in England, Denmark and Hungary, and compares the measures related to ESL. Empirical data were collected from observations; a total of 28 interviews with students in three different country contexts. My original contribution to knowledge is that this study focused on students' experiences in education and career trajectories with a comparative lens and was able to give a more distinct image of dropouts. The paper recommends that rigid education systems need to adopt more flexible methods and adaptive learning pathways to work with challenging youth. Transitions to secondary education should be supported by career practitioners to help students find suitable pathways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is important to note that Parada and Salmela-Aro addressed a more extended time period (i.e., 39 weeks), while Wong et al. illustrated the long-term identity phenomena unfolded within a few minutes of narratives. Three papers addressed short-term time scales (Kunnen, [6]; Sugimura et al., [11]; Vincent & Lannegrand, [12]). Among the other three papers, one focused on the relation between short- and medium-term (Meca et al., [9]) and one on the relation between short- and long-term time scales (Parada & Salmela-Aro, [10]; Wong et al., [13]). Four papers focused on both within- and between-person processes (Kunnen, [6]; Meca et al., [9]; Parada & Salmela-Aro, [10]; Vincent & Lannegrand, [12]). [Extracted from the article]

Spatial ability has long been considered an important attribute when identifying military aviators. This paper examines the Direction Orientation Task (DOT), which is currently used by the US military to assess spatial ability in aviation applicants. Several limitations of the test, such as a limited number of trials and the availability of practice trials online, make it subject to potential ceiling effects. The paper presents historical data of all Naval Aviator applicants over a six-year time period and revealed that 22% of applicants answered 90% or more of the questions correctly. Furthermore, test performance has significantly increased in the years since the test was first administered and there is evidence that DOT is no longer contributing incremental validity. A follow-up empirical study looked at DOT performance and strategy in a group of military student aviators and student air traffic controllers. The results of the empirical investigation reveal that the use of an analytic strategy was associated with higher performance on the DOT, whereas the use of a spatial strategy was not associated with performance. Taken together, the improved performance data over time and the data on strategy use suggest the test's ability to measure spatial ability may be diminishing, ultimately reducing its construct and incremental validity. This is problematic and should be addressed, since the DOT is the only measure of spatial ability used by the Navy to assess aviation applicants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses biometric borders in Europe, focusing on the Eurodac database and practises of fingerprinting people on the move in Greece as a politicised attempt to control and limit secondary movement as set out in the Dublin Regulation. The paper presents empirical research to explore one way in which migrants in Athens negotiate Eurodac; where alternative imaginaries informed ideas of 'big' and 'small' fingerprints, shaping interactions with the asylum service as well as secondary movement. I use Autonomy of Migration (AoM) theories to depict borders as places of ongoing conflict, subjectivity and transformation and introduce the work of Castoriadis' social imaginaries and the radical imagination to explore migrants' alternative imaginaries. I argue that these occur at points of friction, within the constraints of, and alongside, a dominant socio-technical imaginary driving the proliferation of biometric border controls. I believe this enables a deeper understanding of the autonomy with AoM theories. Here, autonomy is presented as instances of self-creation, spurred on through the radical imagination and shaping moments of uncontrollability, where the subjective dimension of migration informs both meanings of autonomy as well as alternative imaginaries. Ultimately, I argue that these practices seek to disrupt and challenge the dominance of biometrics as a signifier of control, identity and truth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines the findings of an empirical research study exploring how Early Years Educators (EYEs) support under-threes with their early reading development in England. The data were collected through a mixed methodological approach of an initial survey, five semi-structured interviews and four reflective Zines to explore the experiences of EYEs working with under-threes. The findings highlight that there are significant implications for babies and toddlers, linked to a distinct lack of agency and access to pictures, books and other early reading resources, instigated by the conventional daily routines provided in these early years settings. This paper argues for some fundamental 'reconsidering' of the value of early reading for under-threes, given that access, or indeed the lack of access is a key finding of this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we explore the k-class estimator in high-dimensional linear models with potential endogeneity issues which are very common in empirical economics studies. K-class estimator has the advantage of incorporating many popular estimators such as the OLS estimator, two stage least squares (2SLS) estimator, limited information maximum likelihood (LIML) estimator, etc., as k takes on different values. Our main innovations are: 1) In the newly proposed high-dimensional k-class estimator, we allow the value of k (hence the level of endogeneity) to be determined by the data. Therefore, our method is very useful in empirical studies where the researcher do not know the severity of endogeneity or the importance of variables in a very large pool of candidate covariates. 2) In this paper, the adaptive LASSO method is incorporated into the generalized k-class estimation for variable selection and coefficient estimation in both the structural and reduced form equations. We show that the adaptive LASSO type k-class estimator has oracle properties. In simulation studies, we show that our new estimator can choose the optimal k value as well as achieving the minimum MSE among a set of popular estimators in finite samples where the number of potential endogenous variable is large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although researchers have postulated different modes of governance, the degree of empirical support for different governance modes in ecosystem service literature remains unclear. Understanding the contexts under which governance modes have been researched and applied in practice could help decision-makers choose appropriate strategies to the provision of ecosystem services. We conducted a literature review to explore the development of empirical research on ecosystem services governance and to illustrate research frontiers and gaps in this research. We reviewed 157 empirical papers on the governance of ecosystem services published between 2006 and 2019. Our results show that the number of papers about the governance of ecosystem services has increased and that researchers have mainly used qualitative and mixed methods. No governance mode has dominated the research field. Rather, different governance modes have been studied in combination, possibly reflecting the fact that multiple and overlapping governance arrangements often affect the provision of ecosystem services. The geographical distribution of ecosystem services governance research is diverse, but misses perspectives from certain regions, such as Southeast Asia. This means that while decision-makers in well-studied areas like Western Europe can use a pool on studied arrangements, in other areas decision-makers may find limited literature to inform their decisions to maintain and strengthen ecosystem services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As shown by the recent increase in anti-Asian racism and violence worldwide, the label of "model minority" is flawed and fails to capture the breadth and depth of the experiences of Asian people. Our paper is the first to provide a scoping review of empirical research (ninety-seven studies) that examine the social, educational and health and wellbeing impacts of the model minority myth (MMM) for people of Asian descent in white-majority countries. Key findings indicate that the MMM is complex and contradictory and is present across multiple sectors. Therefore, the MMM needs to be understood holistically as a structural issue that has implications for reinforcing racial inequities. Future research should adopt multilevel frameworks and methods to further understand community and structural impacts of the MMM on people of Asian descent internationally and consider how the MMM contributes to a white racial grammar that normalizes racial stratification and racist structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an empirical study assessing the usability and utility of different interfaces for visualizing large sets of point features in mobile maps. We focus on interfaces that present only a subset of all features and provide interaction functionalities for browsing through all of the information. We compare an established zoom-and-pan interface against three recently proposed interfaces that do not require a change of map scale or section. Each of the novel interfaces implements one additional, specialized interaction functionality for presenting all information without the need to zoom or pan. As a first step towards user-centred design, we investigate how well the specialized interactions are adopted by users. Given a visual search task, we show that participants performed significantly fewer zooming and panning operations using the novel interfaces than when using the zoom-and-pan interface. Further, we observe advantages in terms of search accuracy and the extent of the visible map area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present paper, a general class of estimators has been proposed for estimating the population mean of the study variable using auxiliary variable when the population mean of the auxiliary variable is known in stratified random sampling. The bias and mean squared error of the proposed class of estimators are derived under stratified sampling to the first degree of approximation. Members of the proposed class of estimators are also obtained by giving suitable values to the constants used. Comparisons of the proposed strategy with the usual unbiased estimator and other estimators have been made. Empirical and simulation study is carried out to demonstrate the performance of the proposed estimator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the empirical likelihood method for a multivariate first-order random coefficient autoregressive (RCAR(1)) model. Based on the modified least square score equation, empirical likelihood method is used to test the randomness of coefficients and estimate the unknown parameters. First, the limiting distribution of the log empirical likelihood ratio statistic is established. Second, the maximum empirical likelihood estimator is derived and its asymptotic properties are established. Finally, the performances of the estimator are compared with the modified least square estimator via simulation. Furthermore, simulation result shows that the test has the correct size and very good power for all cases considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite extensive research having been carried out on nurse-physician collaboration, there remains a paucity of evidence on how collaboration interacts with organizational commitment and its effect on turnover intention. This study aims to determine the mediating role of nurse-physician collaboration on the effect of organizational commitment on turnover intention. We used a cross-sectional design based on voluntary paper surveys from the inpatient clinics of six public hospitals in the north of Turkey. Data including measures of nurse-physician collaboration, organizational commitment, and turnover intention were collected from a convenience sample of the nurses (n = 212) and physicians (n = 109). Pearson's correlation analysis was used to determine the relationships between variables, and the mediating effect was analyzed with PROCESS Macro "Model 4" for IBM SPSS. Statistical significance was specified at 95% confidence intervals and two-tailed P values of <0.05 for all tests. While most of the participants were nurses (66%), 34% were physicians. For both nurses and physicians, organizational commitment and nurse-physician collaboration negatively affected the turnover intention. However, the mediating role of nurse-physician collaboration was only significant for nurses (b = −0.025). The results demonstrate the importance of harmony, joint decision-making, and responsibility-sharing between nurses and physicians concerning dedication, engagement, and job satisfaction, especially for nurses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mothering and motherhood can be a very challenging experience in the 21st century, where cultural pressures, on the one hand, and health experts' regular parenting surveillance, on the other, continue to influence mothering decisions and practices. The socially constructed "good mother" discourses and associated pressures/influences can be amplified for vulnerable mothers who may feel marginalized from or judged by the broader society. This article presents findings from a study that involved interviews with ten young mothers and 12 staff working at a leading family welfare agency supporting young parents in Melbourne, Australia. The study examined how digital technology could promote a sense of agency for vulnerable mothers as well as barriers and enablers of accessing digital knowledge and online parenting support. In addition, the study explored how technology could assist community organizations' staff in helping their clients better. This paper argues that, overall, digital technologies can positively influence the experience of mothering and can empower vulnerable mothers by increasing their access to various sources of support. Furthermore, our findings suggest that technology can enhance community and family service providers' practice, opening possibilities for a more supportive relationship with clients by empowering them and increasing agency over their situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of Enterprise Architecture is suitable for managing the complexity of heterogeneous systems and technologies in Smart Cities. However, many cities and their urban governance processes still face the challenges of digitalizing public services. This paper aims to assess the applicability of TOGAF in a real-world Smart City following a case study method. A novel research agenda with ten major directions is provided as a result of the practical observations. This contributes to the current understanding of the application of Enterprise Architecture in Smart Cities, focusing on the identified issues in practice and the need for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction. South Africa has an enabling legislative and policy framework that promotes the protection of adolescents and young people's sexual and reproductive health and rights. Much of the literature in this field has identified discriminatory and hostile attitudes from healthcare workers as a major underlying factor to negative sexual and reproductive health outcomes for this age cohort. Not as well understood is the role of structural violence although this type of violence, through its structures of injustice and inequalities, is closely associated with stigma and discrimination. Data and sources. To contribute to closing this research gap, this paper draws on the findings of a larger qualitative study, specifically focus group discussions with young people aged 15–24 years. Results. The consequences of these attitudes within the structural violence framework are illuminated as are recommendations for enhancing access to sexual and reproductive health and services by adolescents and young people. Discussion and conclusion. Key among the latter is that young people's sexual and reproductive health needs and wellbeing should be pursued through a multisectoral approach that encompasses stigma reduction interventions involving the young people, families, and communities collaborating with healthcare workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovation is an important driving force in regional sustainable development, and innovation efficiency improvements can promote regional innovation. This study uses the Hansen threshold regression model to examine innovation efficiency's impact on the ecological footprint at different economic development levels in China's provinces from 2003 to 2013. It uses the super efficiency slacks-based model to measure innovation efficiency, with night light data from the operational line-scan system employed by the defense meteorological program representing the regional economic development level. The conclusions are as follows: (1) improvements in regional innovation efficiency have an inhibitory effect on the ecological footprint, and this effect gradually weakens with increasing levels of economic development. (2) The inhibitory effect is spatially heterogeneous: it is stronger in eastern China than in central and western China. (3) Scientific and technological human resources are inhibitory at first, later promoting the ecological footprint. Scientific and technological financial and informational resources, as well as the number of scientific papers, promote the ecological footprint, but the promoting effect of financial resources is relatively smaller. Meanwhile, the number of patent applications has an inhibitory effect on the ecological footprint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay introduces a special, open-access issue of this journal focused on the intersection of religion and relief & development. It describes the discussions—of terminology and tangibility, of perspective and practice—that shaped the research done for the "Evidence-Based Summit on Strategic Religious Engagement," a conference organized and hosted October 5–8, 2020 by the US Agency for International Development (USAID). This special issue consists of four research papers produced for the Summit, along with four response essays. While the available empirical evidence, expertise, and experience varies across myriad issues involving the nexus of religion and relief & development, these papers do document the tremendous growth of this field in the last 20 years, as well as the enormous opportunity to contribute. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In her groundbreaking text, Male Daughters, Female Husbands, Ifi Amadiume offers an ethnographic account which depicts, among others, gender in the making in Nnobi society in Nigeria. This paper, drawing from Amadiume's work, looks at three related specific moments of understanding gender and sex categories in a South African context. Through empirical research based on a qualitative study; a literary text; as well as visual arts, the paper tracks the notion of nongayindoda, a Nguni term for (gender) fluidity to offer new insights that go beyond Western gender binaries. Nongayindoda has been used to refer to masculine women or men-like women. In some contexts, it has been assumed to relate only to women who have chosen not to have relations with men. Some have considered the term derogatory and thus shied away from using it. In this paper, the term is turned upside and interrogated to reveal broader meanings. In the end, I argue that nongayindoda offers an opportunity to move beyond gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literacy skills are essential if students are to access knowledge and achieve academic success in middle school science. A key difficulty with interpreting literacy practices in any discipline is the problem of conceptualising what constitutes literacy. Our study contributes new understandings to the discipline of science where there are ongoing debates concerning the meaning of literacy and confusion regarding what constitutes essential literacies in the field. Our scoping review first identifies how literacy in middle school science is conceptualised in empirical studies published between 2006 and 2019 and, second, addresses a significant gap in understandings by identifying how dominant discourses inform practice. Specifically, our findings show the dominance of a narrow conception of literacy in the science classroom relating to skills-based pedagogic instruction. Based on our review, we conclude that the field of science requires a broadening of what constitutes literacy, and engagement with New Literacy Studies which focuses on literacy as a social practice closely interwoven with student identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the media industry, due to a constantly developing media landscape, demands rapid and regular innovation of empirical methods, methodological innovation become a more compelling problem in industry compared to academic journalism research. This paper exemplifies methodological innovation in industry journalism research by means of a case study: NeuroJour, an industry pilot research project focusing on brain processing of digital journalism. The NeuroJour project involved testing four different psychophysiological methods: Primarily EEG, and eye tracking supplemented by EDA and facial coding – all of which are viewed as promising, innovative approaches to studying the complex and dynamic ways in which audience effects occur. Based on NeuroJour, this paper offers insight into the opportunities and pitfalls of applying psychophysiological measures in industry research on digital journalism, but also into how methodological innovation in industry and academic journalism research can cross-fertilize. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Childhood poverty matters—not only because of the disturbingly high number of children affected, but also because of the deleterious impact on their human flourishing, both now and in the future. Effectively addressing child poverty requires clear identification of the nature and causes of the problem, as well as an understanding of how it is experienced. This paper aims to deepen understanding of child poverty, by drawing on key elements of a capability approach, rights-based approaches, and feminist standpoint theory, and empirical research. It is grounded in the findings of rights-based, participatory research with children aged between 7 and 15 years in Indonesia and in Australia, which cast new light on the dimensions of poverty that are most egregious from a child-driven standpoint. It presents a three-dimensional typology of material, opportunity, and relational poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After 30 years of active development, mechanistic models of the reproductive process nearly stopped attracting scholarly interest in the early 1980s. In the following decades, fertility research continued to thrive, relying on solid descriptive work and detailed analysis of micro-level data. The absence of systematic modelling efforts, however, has also made the field more fragmented, with empirical research, theory building, and forecasting advancing along largely disconnected channels. In this paper we outline some of the drivers of this process, from the popularization of user-friendly statistical software to the limitations of early family building models. We then describe a series of developments in computational modelling and statistical computing that can contribute to the emergence of a new generation of mechanistic models. Finally, we introduce a concrete example of this new kind of model, and show how they can be used to formulate and test theories coherently and make informed projections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Designating disability as an object of research was both the condition for the emergence of the field of disability theology and a paradoxical source of its continuing aporias. One such problematic conceptual dead end is the division in the academic field of religion and disability that has arisen between traditional theological discourse and social scientific approaches to investigating disability. By highlighting the inherent instability of disability definitions on which much social scientific research rests, this paper invites renewed engagement with history and tradition as conversation partners for disability theology. By proposing a critical hermeneutic of tradition, it aims to widen and integrate the range of methodological approaches available to theological investigators of disability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a class of hybrid type estimators is proposed in estimating the finite population variance using single auxiliary variable in simple random sampling. Expressions for the bias and the mean square error (MSE) are derived up to the first order of approximation. Theoretically comparisons are provided to show that the proposed estimators perform more efficiently than various existing estimators. Empirical study and simulation results are carried out to confirm numerically that the proposed estimators are more efficient than the usual unbiased sample variance estimator, ratio and linear regression estimators by Isaki, Singh et al., and Shabbir and Gupta estimators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite considerable research, empirical results on the relationship between partitioned country-of-origin (COO) and consumer behavior remain inconclusive and conflicting. This study aims to examine the (a) overall and disaggregate effects of selected COO sub-components (country-of-brand, country-of-design, country-of-manufacture/assembly, and country-of-parts) on product evaluation, brand evaluation, and purchase intentions; and (b) effect of selected study methodological and contextual characteristics on the focal relationship. The study employs a meta-analysis to synthesize prior literature regarding the partitioned COO—consumer behavior relationship of 82 independent samples in 64 empirical papers published in the last 30 years, including 25,827 observations and 1,239 effect sizes. Results reveal that partitioned COO has a significant, positive influence on consumer behavior; however, our subgroup analysis demonstrates that the impact on purchase intention is significantly larger than product evaluation and brand evaluation. Moreover, findings disclose that country-of-brand (COB) effect is the largest and interacts strongly with purchase intention than the effects and interactions of the other partitioned sub-components. Again, the moderator analysis shows that these effects depend on contextual and methodological factors (i.e., cues, culture, product stimulus level, product category, and study design). These findings advance COO research by clarifying the anecdotal mixed results, pointing out relevant managerial implications, and identifying potential avenues for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There have been repeated attempts to establish mathematics qualifications for lower attaining students aged 16 years and over on vocational pathways in England. In 2004, the Tomlinson Report proposed Functional Mathematics and this paper examines the trajectory of this qualification (later Functional Skills mathematics) through analysis of policy literatures over the last twenty years and empirical data from two studies in Further Education colleges. For a time, Functional Skills mathematics flourished and was becoming valued by many stakeholders but the privileging of GCSE Mathematics in recent policy has affected its status and uptake. It is important to understand this waxing and waning trajectory if future skills policy is to have better chances of long-term success. Key challenges include the unsuccessful integration of Functional Skills with the established mathematics curriculum, the difficulty of achieving qualification recognition across the vocational-academic divide and the negative unintended consequences of linked policy decisions. Raising the adult skills base is currently a policy priority in England and understanding these challenges to a skills-based qualification that is more aligned to the needs of vocational education than to schools is important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical research shows that adults' role in play with infant-toddlers is to provide children with play materials, observe from a distance, and control the surrounding dangers. An international trend to increase children's cognitive skills at a very early age has established a need to better understand toddler's conceptual learning and how this is supported by the joint play between toddlers and educators. This paper draws upon a cultural-historical perspective, and discusses the concept of play and pedagogical practices of a Conceptual PlayWorld approach to investigate how educators and toddlers generate a Conceptual PlayWorld that supports their conceptual learning and development. We argue that conceptual learning of children at a very young age should be promoted in our institutional practices as it might benefit future scientific learning at school. The educators' affective engagement is the key to developing a powerful collective play environment to strengthen children's conceptual thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the numerous benefits that customers can reap from internet banking, the existing literature indicates that its adoption remains limited. Therefore, this paper proposes and examines a conceptual framework that clarifies the salient factors that drive customers' intention to adopt internet banking. The proposed model was built on the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology. This was extended by incorporating trust, word of mouth, perceived enjoyment, and users' internet experience. A total of 490 valid responses collected via the intercept approach from bank customers in Ghana were analyzed employing structural equation modeling. The analysis demonstrates that performance expectancy, trust, perceived enjoyment, word of mouth, and users' internet experience significantly influence behavioral intention to adopt internet banking. However, the study finds no support for effort expectancy and social influence. The study concludes with several useful implications for theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing trend for massification in higher education delivery has contributed to challenges in student engagement and experience. This has been further compounded by the global pandemic, with the sector experiencing reduced financial, staffing and resourcing budgets. The authors identified the delivery of meaningful feedback at scale as a critical emerging challenge. Although models of feedback exist within education, there are few discipline-agnostic frameworks for providing feedback that accounts for first-year education in the context of massification. With a focus on feedback within large-scale teaching and the first-year experience, and drawing on the authors' lived experiences, the paper proposes a conceptual non-disciplinary framework to scaffold the delivery of timely feedback in three stages. The proposed 'strategic framework for feedback at scale' promotes deeper first-year undergraduate students' learning and engagement across multiple teaching contexts through the feed-forward assessment design of automated ongoing feedback, peer-led staged feedback and teacher-led staged feedback. Examples of activities are discussed as well as steps for implementation applicable to tailoring to any discipline setting. Limitations and areas for future research are then discussed, calling for empirical research into the practice and effectiveness of the conceptual framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feedback is justified when it has a positive influence on students' subsequent performance. Opportunities for student action need therefore to be consciously designed if feedback is to influence learning. In this paper, we discuss how ipsative design of feedback processes, i.e. involving comparison of a student's current performance with a previous similar task, can promote action from feedback. This design-based research was conducted with English for Academic Purposes students. A formative e-portfolio was implemented to facilitate students' access to their past work and feedback comments. Its aim was to explore how students exploit the ipsative design of feedback to build on both their own and teacher's actions. Analysis of student artefacts and interviews indicated that ipsative design prompts student comparison processes. Students were motivated to revisit their goals, make comparisons with previous work, and review peers' work. The effects of the design included motivation to engage with feedback beyond the immediate task and the revisiting of past work and action to improve it. Implications for teachers and curriculum designers are discussed including the need to create conditions for student action from feedback by including interconnected tasks and explicit comparison activities in the courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given a random sample of size n from a p dimensional random vector, we are interested in testing whether the p components of the random vector are mutually independent. This is the so-called complete independence test. In the multivariate normal case, it is equivalent to testing whether the correlation matrix is an identity matrix. In this paper, we propose a one-sided empirical likelihood method for the complete independence test based on squared sample correlation coefficients. The limiting distribution for our one-sided empirical likelihood test statistic is proved to be Z 2 I (Z > 0) when both n and p tend to infinity, where Z is a standard normal random variable. In order to improve the power of the empirical likelihood test statistic, we also introduce a rescaled empirical likelihood test statistic. We carry out an extensive simulation study to compare the performance of the rescaled empirical likelihood method and two other statistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Signs of Safety is a strengths-based approach to work with children and families where there are concerns about abuse or neglect. Signs of Safety is widely used in the UK and internationally, and there is a growing range of empirical research exploring its use within statutory children's social work. However, there is little research exploring how, and to what effect, Signs of Safety is being used by other childcare professionals. This paper reports on an independent evaluation of the use of Signs of Safety by an early help agency in the South West of England. At time of evaluation, the agency was commissioned by the local authority to support children and families with multiple and complex needs who did not meet the threshold for statutory children's social care involvement. The study was multiple methods with two strands. To better understand the work that the agency did, data were collected from case files, to develop a profile of families engaging with the agency. Interviews were undertaken with five practitioners about their experiences of using Signs of Safety. Saliency analysis was used to explore the qualitative data. Overall practitioners felt that Signs of Safety was accessible, supported clear communication with children and families and aided critical reflection. However, existing tensions—relating to statutory threshold decisions and multi-agency relationships—were reflected and magnified via the Signs of Safety tools. The implications of these findings are discussed, providing original insights about an issue highly relevant to national and international audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political parties are widely recognised as indispensable actors in democratic systems. One way to illustrate the actions and role of political parties is to explicate various party functions that may be carried out in a political system. The aim of this paper is to explore the relationships between the organisation of party education and five specific party functions in Sweden. The empirical material consists of interviews with party officials from all eight parties that were represented in the national parliament during 2018–2022 as well as a mapping of educational content, structure, and activities from various parties. This material has been analysed in relation to five concrete party functions and a theoretical approach that highlights interactions and relationships occurring on different levels in apolitical system. The results demonstrate that there are different relationships between party education and party functions which may generate implications that are important both for the agency of a party but also to the broader political landscape. It is also possible to discern one specific function related to the provision of party education, namely an affirmation function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite its historic prominence in group work, there is little empirical research to support our understanding of the professional use of self in group work. This paper reports the results of a SPARC endorsed study, which focused on group workers' experience and struggle with their professional uses of self in groups in responding to diversity. Using focus groups, a semi-structured interview format, and Straussian grounded theory data analysis, two key themes emerged – grappling with professional uses of self and disengagement from professional uses of self. When grappling with professional uses of self, group workers employed intentional self-disclosure, opened space, and supported norms for the expression of diversity, humility, genuineness, and reflexivity. Disengagement occurred in response to fear and often resulted in an overemphasis on group tasks. Our results suggest that the effective professional use of self in the here and now of group dynamics creates a sense of safety for both the group workers and the group members when responding to diversity. The implications of this study highlight the need for a method that supports critical self-reflection in real-time in group and builds capacity for responsibly responding to diversity in groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite an international focus on gender inequality in the cultural and creative industries in recent years, there remains a lacuna of empirical data on the gendered dimension of work in opera. This paper establishes a baseline for understanding gender inequality in opera through a case study of The Royal Opera, Covent Garden. Drawing on a longitudinal analysis of the company's production credits from 2005/6–2019/20, we analyse the gender profile of credited stage directors across production type, repertoire, and creative teams. We find that women practitioners experience gender-based disadvantage in the creative roles central to opera production with negatively compounding effects on their visibility and prestige in the sector. Based on these findings, we assess The Royal Opera's pledge to achieve 50:50 gender balance for all creatives on new productions by 2022 and evaluate its ability to produce meaningful progress toward gender equity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how student performance across the full set of multiple modular assessments of individual standards, which we refer to as mini-assessments, from a large scale, operational program of interim assessment can be summarized using Bayesian networks. We follow a completely data-driven approach in which no constraints are imposed to best reflect the empirical relationships between these assessments, and a learning trajectory approach in which constraints are imposed to mirror the stages of a mathematic learning trajectory to provide insight into student learning. Under both approaches, we aim to draw a holistic picture of performance across all of the mini-assessments that provides additional information for students, educators, and administrators. In particular, the graphical structure of the network and the conditional probabilities of mastery provide information above and beyond an overall score on a single mini-assessment. Uses and implications of our work are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large amounts of capital are currently being invested in genomics companies across the "bench to clinic pipeline" – companies which are now shaping the future of biomedicine globally. Understanding the perspectives of people who work in such companies can contribute to shaping this industry in service of just and equitable futures of medicine. Using in-depth interviews as the primary method, this paper analyzes perspectives on ethical and social issues in private sector genomics expressed by members of the commercial genomics industry in the US. Interviewees described a wide range of issues as pressing ethical concerns in commercial genomics. Key themes included concerns about diversity in genetic datasets, data governance and control, and pricing and profits in the industry. However, concern about diversity of datasets was not accompanied by expressions of concern about diversity in the industry workforce. Most interviewees described concerns in the industry that are rather removed from their own work. But along with this "ethical distancing," moral concerns appeared to be the basis for competition amongst companies – to attract both employees and customers. Research in business ethics suggests that expanding moral analysis of one's own work helps improve day to day decision-making in the interest of justice. Opening space for people to examine ethics in their own subsector may provide a means for the private sector genomics industry to become a leader in ethics in the biosciences and a model for equity in our current moment of late capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lecture recording is an increasingly common practice in UK universities, whereby audio, video, and multimedia content from lecture theatres can be captured and distributed online. Despite a large body of recent lecture capture literature, much of the empirical research adopts positivist paradigms, which overlooks the complex and unpredictable nature of teaching and learning. Addressing this knowledge gap, this exploratory case study adopts sociomaterial approaches, specifically perspectives from the domain of actor-network theory (ANT), to view learning technologies as complex assemblages involving heterogeneous human and non-human entities or actors. This paper explores the entanglements involved in enacting online pedagogy and learning across spatiotemporal dimensions using trace ethnography and visualisation mapping. Examining the student-led study practices revealed that multitasking and fluid task switching, between contrasting networks and spaces, was a significant activity during the playback of lecture recordings. Exploring an innocuous and ubiquitous practice, such as video pausing, affords nuanced perspectives into the sociomaterial entanglements involved in enacting study practices. Moreover, adopting multimodal sensitivities reveals how often overlooked modes, such as iconography, can become actors within an assemblage. This may offer new insights into how modes help produce or stabilise configurations and advance efforts in attending to the non-human within actor-networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution to the symposium focuses on those facets of Martin Bulmer's work that sought to analyse the role of race and ethnicity in the development of sociological research. It highlights, in particular, his continuing interest through much of his scholarship with the work of the Chicago School and of key figures within it in the development of both conceptual and empirical research agendas in this field. This interest was intimately linked to his long-standing curiosity about the origins of sociological research and the links between sociology and social and public policy. The paper also explores Bulmer's engagement with questions about race and ethnicity. It also highlights his contribution to the development of the journal Ethnic and Racial Studies as a key forum for the publication of empirical and theoretical research on race and ethnic issues, linking the contributions of diverse national scholarly traditions together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extended belief of gay people being more creative and showing higher interest toward arts lacks robust empirical support. The pioneer study on this issue highlighted that LGB´s arts participation was mostly explained by demographic factors such as level of studies, residence and family situation, which suggests that differences due to sexual orientation tend to fade. In this paper, we put forward the hypothesis that sexual orientation influences motivations to participate, which emphasizes their role and heterogeneity. To do so, we conducted a survey on participants at an alternative performing arts festival collecting information on socio-demographics, including sexual orientation, motivations and other variables. Results show that being LGB increases the likelihood of attendance for emotional, social or political motives, and emphasize the heterogeneity that sexual orientation plays on cultural audiences. Particularly, we find evidence of gender differences in attendance goals within LGB performing arts consumers, supporting gender nonconformity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper contributes to Internet-distributed television research by illustrating the results of a qualitative empirical study carried out in October 2019: by originally combining the tools of social research and ethnosemiotics, the study investigated how a panel of sixty Italian Netflix viewers perceived the platform's recommender system and its impact on their autonomy of taste and choice. The ethnosemiotic analysis confirmed, through direct observation of user practices, the generally favourable perception of the 'Netflix experience' as an adequate balance between personalised recommendations and freedom of choice. At the same time, it also highlighted its problematic features, showing that synchronised and collective experiences remain important values in 'streaming culture' and that subscribers adopt a variety of tactics to circumvent the recommender system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the lived experiences of people living with HIV in South Africa through the use of body mapping as a visual research method, by focusing on the physical and symbolic use of the body within the broader context of anthropology and medical anthropology. The study consists of an empirical analysis of the body maps themselves and the accompanied narratives of seven participants, six female and one male participant living with HIV in South Africa. Drawing upon theories and literature on theorising the body in medical anthropology and visual research, this study explores the significance of this practice as a visual research method in understanding the nuanced lived experiences of people living with HIV by highlighting the individuality of the body and emotions; embodied experiences: a bio-cultural approach; and the body politic: social injustice. The results of this study illustrate that body mapping is a unique visual research method, that explores the body as the vehicle in which we exist within the world, while containing a vast amount of layered interpretive and cultural meanings, which are key to understanding the lived experience of people from marginalised groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a novel empirical prior for Bayesian wavelet in the nonparametric regression model. The prior centres the wavelet coefficient at the individual sample observation, and we make a modification on the empirical prior by introducing a fractional power. The optimal rates of the posterior contraction and posterior mean estimator are established by the fractional likelihood method over Besov spaces. Comparison with some methods in the literature indicates that the modified empirical method is superior in terms of the mean squared error. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most important research themes in outbound tourism is the selection behavior of tourism destinations for international tourists, as it is a complex decision-making process influenced by factors such as institutions, culture, and economics. Moreover, the institutional factors affecting the selection of tourism destinations have not attracted significant attention. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first to study how the differences in social environments between countries affect the choices of outbound tourism, drawing conclusions on the characteristics and ways how the economic, cultural, and institutional differences affect the selection process of tourism destinations. This empirical research further demonstrates that the difference in institutional distance can negatively influence the choices of Chinese outbound tourists. Regulative distance has a negative impact, normative distance has not been verified, while cultural distance has a negative influence on Chinese citizens' choices of outbound tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The appointment of student governors to the governing board is mandatory in further education (FE) colleges across the UK. There is, however, confusion and lack of clarity over the role of the student governor, and little empirical research, especially involving direct observation, has been undertaken which sheds light on this. This paper examines how the role of the student governor is understood by governing boards and how it is enacted in practice. Over one calendar year, we observed and video/audio-recorded governing board meetings in eight FE colleges across the UK, two in each UK country (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales). In addition, we interviewed key actors and spoke to student governors. Our findings reveal a lack of understanding about the role of the student governor which creates a tension between student governors acting in an advisory capacity as part of the governing body, and student governors representing learner voice. We conclude with recommendations for boards aimed at facilitating meaningful engagement of the student governor in governing processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]