Preparing ... for what? Developing multi-dimensional measures of community wildfire preparedness for researchers, practitioners and households

2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (6) ◽  
pp. 887 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick D. Dunlop ◽  
Ilona M. McNeill ◽  
Jessica L. Boylan ◽  
David L. Morrison ◽  
Timothy C. Skinner

In an effort to reduce wildfire risk to community members, researchers and practitioners have sought to identify the factors that are most effective in motivating community members to engage in preparatory behaviours. Quantitative research in this area has been hampered, however, by a lack of consistency in, and validation of household wildfire preparedness assessments. Consequences have included a difficulty in comparing results across quantitative studies, a poor collective understanding of how existing preparedness assessments were developed and an inability to ascertain how specific preparedness actions are tied to householders’ responses to wildfire. We propose to resolve these issues by (1) presenting a definition of wildfire preparedness for adoption as the standard in quantitative studies, (2) developing a typology of wildfire preparedness that distinguishes between household wildfire goals (i.e. safe evacuation, effective active defence and improving the fire resistance of a property in the absence of an active defender), (3) constructing two new standardised measures of preparedness and (4) undertaking a community survey to investigate the validity of the measures. The development of the new measures will facilitate the standardisation of future research into wildfire preparedness, while differentiating between types of preparedness, and is expected to yield practical benefits.

1997 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
pp. 339-369 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Cheng Gorman ◽  
Lawrence Balter

The recent growth of culturally sensitive parent education programs necessitates an evaluative look at their effectiveness. This article critically reviews the quantitative literature on culturally sensitive parent education programs, discussing issues of research methodology and program efficacy in producing change among ethnic-minority parents and their children. Culturally sensitive programs for African American and Hispanic families are described in detail Quantitative studies of culturally sensitive programs are critiqued against existing literature on the effectiveness of traditional parent education programs. Main conclusions include the prevalence of flaws in research methodology, which may contribute to the finding of somewhat lower efficacy of these programs in comparison to standard programs. Although efficacy studies of programs for Native American and Asian American parents could not be found, efforts to serve these populations are also described. Recommendations for future research are proposed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (18) ◽  
pp. 10388
Author(s):  
Ana María Serrano-Bedia ◽  
Marta Pérez-Pérez

Despite the increasing and recent interest in researching knowledge ambidexterity, there has been no attempt from scholarly research to map and structure extant research on this topic. The aim of this study is to fill this gap, thereby contributing to previous literature by increasing our understanding of the research on knowledge ambidexterity. This paper employs a systematic literature review analysis on a sample of 20 academic papers extracted from the Web of Science database in June 2021. After illustrating the size, growth trajectory, geographic distribution, and key publishing journals in the sample, the paper analyses the intellectual structure and main foci of the research domain. The results show that this topic emerged in the late 2000s with a boom in research in the last 5 years and a clear predominance of quantitative studies. Moreover, content analysis reveals that both a clear definition of knowledge ambidexterity and its main components, knowledge exploration and exploitation, and a valid and reliable scale for measuring this concept are still lacking. The review has also revealed that the research domain on knowledge ambidexterity can be grouped into three different research lines, each of which relates to a different level of analysis—teams, intraorganisational processes within individual firms, and interorganisational collaborations—and concludes by identifying potential areas for future research on this topic that may help to advance in the consolidation of this particularly vibrant field.


Author(s):  
Muhammad Yousaf ◽  
Petr Bris

A systematic literature review (SLR) from 1991 to 2019 is carried out about EFQM (European Foundation for Quality Management) excellence model in this paper. The aim of the paper is to present state of the art in quantitative research on the EFQM excellence model that will guide future research lines in this field. The articles were searched with the help of six strings and these six strings were executed in three popular databases i.e. Scopus, Web of Science, and Science Direct. Around 584 peer-reviewed articles examined, which are directly linked with the subject of quantitative research on the EFQM excellence model. About 108 papers were chosen finally, then the purpose, data collection, conclusion, contributions, and type of quantitative of the selected papers are discussed and analyzed briefly in this study. Thus, this study identifies the focus areas of the researchers and knowledge gaps in empirical quantitative literature on the EFQM excellence model. This article also presents the lines of future research.


2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. e8-e16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angelica Tiotiu

Background: Severe asthma is a heterogeneous disease that consists of various phenotypes driven by different pathways. Associated with significant morbidity, an important negative impact on the quality of life of patients, and increased health care costs, severe asthma represents a challenge for the clinician. With the introduction of various antibodies that target type 2 inflammation (T2) pathways, severe asthma therapy is gradually moving to a personalized medicine approach. Objective: The purpose of this review was to emphasize the important role of personalized medicine in adult severe asthma management. Methods: An extensive research was conducted in medical literature data bases by applying terms such as “severe asthma” associated with “structured approach,” “comorbidities,” “biomarkers,” “phenotypes/endotypes,” and “biologic therapies.” Results: The management of severe asthma starts with a structured approach to confirm the diagnosis, assess the adherence to medications and identify confounding factors and comorbidities. The definition of phenotypes or endotypes (phenotypes defined by mechanisms and identified through biomarkers) is an important step toward the use of personalized medicine in asthma. Severe allergic and nonallergic eosinophilic asthma are two defined T2 phenotypes for which there are efficacious targeted biologic therapies currently available. Non-T2 phenotype remains to be characterized, and less efficient target therapy exists. Conclusion: Despite important progress in applying personalized medicine to severe asthma, especially in T2 inflammatory phenotypes, future research is needed to find valid biomarkers predictive for the response to available biologic therapies to develop more effective therapies in non-T2 phenotype.


Author(s):  
Landiswa Seteni ◽  
Pierre Joubert ◽  
Manilall Dhurup

Over the past decade, South African organisations have had to cope with an ever-increasing rate of local and global changes. There have been considerable and ongoing socio-political changes, resulting from new government regulations. Most organisations have experienced some type of downturn, whether due to external business factors or poor internal performance. A typical response to organisational decline is retrenchment. Our study sought to explore employees’ perceptions of the effects of retrenchment on job stress and organisational commitment in a mining company. The study was located within a quantitative research paradigm. Four research hypotheses were posited and data was collected in one region from a sample of 400 surface mining employees, including management, administrators, engineers and artisans. The results showed that the effects of retrenchment did not have a negative impact on job stress (time stress and anxiety). This may be due to the fact that the mining company in question had a planning and consultation process in place for the employees prior to the retrenchment process. The results also showed that job stress (time stress and anxiety) was negatively associated with organisational commitment. To conclude this article we discuss the implications of our findings, outline the limitations of our study and make recommendations for future research.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 112
Author(s):  
Sura Altheeb ◽  
Kholoud Sudqi Al-Louzi

The current research investigates the impact of internal corporate social responsibility on job satisfaction in Jordanian pharmaceutical companies. Quantitative research design and regression analysis were applied on a total of 302 valid returns that were obtained in a questionnaire based survey from 14 pharmaceutical companies among employees, supervisors and managers. The results showed that internal corporate social responsibility was significantly related to job satisfaction and three of its dimensions, namely working conditions, work life balance and empowerment contributed significantly to job satisfaction, whereas employment stability and skills development had no contribution. This study implies that Jordanian pharmaceutical companies have to try their best to promote and facilitate internal corporate social responsibility among their employees in an effort to improve their job satisfaction, which will eventually yield positive results for the company as a whole. In light of these results, the research presented many recommendations for future research; the most important ones were the application of this study in other sectors, cultures, and countries, and using of multi method for collecting data.


Author(s):  
Rogers Matama ◽  
Kezia H. Mkwizu

The purpose of this study was to explore the antecedents of family conflict in Uganda. A qualitative approach was used in this study. A sample size of 139 participants provided data which was subjected to content analysis. Results revealed that the core themes associated with family conflict are finances and priority of resources. Further findings show that differences in tastes and interests, selfishness and lack of communication played a key role as causes of family conflicts. The implication of this study is that finances and priority of resources are antecedents of family conflict in the context of Uganda. Therefore, the antecedents of family conflict that emerged from this study can be understood, defined and analyzed through the lens of social identity theory. Future research may include conducting quantitative studies with a particular demographic using the themes that have emerged from this study.


Author(s):  
Dawn M. Szymanski ◽  
Kirsten A. Gonzalez

Many lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) persons are able to persevere and flourish despite pervasive social stigma and minority stress based on their sexual orientation and gender identity. This chapter reviews the research on LGBTQ resilience that can occur at individual, interpersonal/family, community, and contextual/structural levels. The authors describe qualitative research that has examined pathways to resilience and positive LGBTQ identity. The authors also review quantitative research on LGBTQ resilience via mediator, moderator, and moderated mediation models. Variables are described that have been found to explain or buffer the links between external and internalized minority stressors and mental health outcomes. The authors review the small but growing body of research that has begun to examine the efficacy of therapeutic interventions aimed at promoting LGBTQ resilience. Limitations are discussed and directions for future research are suggested.


Author(s):  
Fred Luthans ◽  
Carolyn M. Youssef

Over the years, both management practitioners and academics have generally assumed that positive workplaces lead to desired outcomes. Unlike psychology, considerable attention has also been devoted to the study of positive topics such as job satisfaction and organizational commitment. However, to place a scientifically based focus on the role that positivity may play in the development and performance of human resources, and largely stimulated by the positive psychology initiative, positive organizational behavior (POB) and psychological capital (PsyCap) have recently been introduced into the management literature. This chapter first provides an overview of both the historical and contemporary positive approaches to the workplace. Then, more specific attention is given to the meaning and domain of POB and PsyCap. Our definition of POB includes positive psychological capacities or resources that can be validly measured, developed, and have performance impact. The constructs that have been determined so far to best meet these criteria are efficacy, hope, optimism, and resiliency. When combined, they have been demonstrated to form the core construct of what we term psychological capital (PsyCap). A measure of PsyCap is being validated and this chapter references the increasing number of studies indicating that PsyCap can be developed and have performance impact. The chapter concludes with important future research directions that can help better understand and build positive workplaces to meet current and looming challenges.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Malin Indremo ◽  
Richard White ◽  
Thomas Frisell ◽  
Sven Cnattingius ◽  
Alkistis Skalkidou ◽  
...  

AbstractThe aim of this study was to examine the validity of the Gender Dysphoria (GD) diagnoses in the Swedish National Patient Register (NPR), to discuss different register-based definitions of GD and to investigate incidence trends. We collected data on all individuals with registered GD diagnoses between 2001 and 2016 as well as data on the coverage in the NPR. We regarded gender confirming medical intervention (GCMI) as one proxy for a clinically valid diagnosis and calculated the positive predictive value (PPV) for receiving GCMI for increasing number of registered GD diagnoses. We assessed crude and coverage-adjusted time trends of GD during 2004–2015 with a Poisson regression, using assigned sex and age as interaction terms. The PPV for receiving GCMI was 68% for ≥ 1 and 79% for ≥ 4 GD-diagnoses. The incidence of GD was on average 35% higher with the definition of ≥ 1 compared to the definition of ≥ 4 diagnoses. The incidence of GD, defined as ≥ 4 diagnoses increased significantly during the study period and mostly in the age categories 10–17 and 18–30 years, even after adjusting for register coverage. We concluded that the validity of a single ICD code denoting clinical GD in the Swedish NPR can be questioned. For future research, we propose to carefully weight the advantages and disadvantages of different register-based definitions according to the individual study’s needs, the time periods involved and the age-groups under study.


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