Chapter 8 Towards Agency–Structure Integration: A Person-in-Environment (PIE) Framework for Modelling Individual-Level Information Behaviours and Outcomes

2011 ◽  
pp. 181-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sei-Ching Joanna Sin
Keyword(s):  
Individual Level ◽  
Level Information

scholarly journals Interpersonal Comparisons of the Good: Epistemic not Impossible

Utilitas ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 288-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
MATHEW COAKLEY
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Choice ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Interpersonal Comparisons ◽  
Individual Good ◽  
Level Information ◽  
Action Policy ◽  
Social Mind ◽  
The Individual

To evaluate the overall good/welfare of any action, policy or institutional choice we need some way of comparing the benefits and losses to those affected: we need to make interpersonal comparisons of the good/welfare. Yet sceptics have worried either: (1) that such comparisons are impossible as they involve an impossible introspection across individuals, getting ‘into their minds’; (2) that they are indeterminate as individual-level information is compatible with a range of welfare numbers; or (3) that they are metaphysically mysterious as they assume the existence either of a social mind or of absolute levels of welfare when no such things exist. This article argues that such scepticism can potentially be addressed if we view the problem of interpersonal comparisons as fundamentally an epistemic problem – that is, as a problem of forming justified beliefs about the overall good based on evidence of the individual good.

scholarly journals Elderspeak in Acute Hospitals? The Role of Context, Cognitive and Functional Impairment

2020 ◽  
pp. 016402752094909
Author(s):  
Eva-Luisa Schnabel ◽  
Hans-Werner Wahl ◽  
Christina Streib ◽  
Thomas Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Functional Impairment ◽  
Hospital Setting ◽  
Acute Hospital ◽  
Computer Assisted ◽  
Stereotype Activation ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Acute Hospitals ◽  
Level Information ◽  
Recorded Data

Older adults are often exposed to elderspeak, a specialized speech register linked with negative outcomes. However, previous research has mainly been conducted in nursing homes without considering multiple contextual conditions. Based on a novel contextually-driven framework, we examined elderspeak in an acute general versus geriatric German hospital setting. Individual-level information such as cognitive impairment (CI) and audio-recorded data from care interactions between 105 older patients ( M = 83.2 years; 49% with severe CI) and 34 registered nurses ( M = 38.9 years) were assessed. Psycholinguistic analyses were based on manual coding (κ = .85 to κ = .97) and computer-assisted procedures. First, diminutives (61%), collective pronouns (70%), and tag questions (97%) were detected. Second, patients’ functional impairment emerged as an important factor for elderspeak. Our study suggests that functional impairment may be a more salient trigger of stereotype activation than CI and that elderspeak deserves more attention in acute hospital settings.

scholarly journals Political Institutions and Street Protests in Latin America

2011 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 340-365 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabiana Machado ◽  
Carlos Scartascini ◽  
Mariano Tommasi
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Country Level ◽  
Level Information ◽  
Alternative Means ◽  
Latin American Countries

In this article, the authors argue that where institutions are strong, actors are more likely to participate in the political process through institutionalized arenas, while where they are weak, protests and other unconventional means of participation become more appealing. The authors explore this relationship empirically by combining country-level measures of institutional strength with individual-level information on protest participation in seventeen Latin American countries. The authors find evidence that weaker political institutions are associated with a higher propensity to use alternative means for expressing preferences, that is, to protest.

Information Processing, Motivation, and Group Creativity

2019 ◽  
pp. 85-102
Author(s):  
Bernard A. Nijstad ◽  
Myriam Bechtoldt ◽  
Hoon-Seok Choi
Keyword(s):  
Information Processing ◽  
Cognitive Stimulation ◽  
Collaborative Problem Solving ◽  
Group Level ◽  
Group Creativity ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Level Information ◽  
Motivated Information Processing ◽  
Processing Motivation ◽  
The Individual

According to an information processing perspective, group creativity results from the combination of individual resources into a (creative) group product. This involves information processing at the individual as well as the group level (by means of communication). This chapter first discusses how individual-level information processing is affected by group interaction in terms of both cognitive interference and cognitive stimulation. It then discusses (1) the evidence linking group-level information processing (i.e., communication, information sharing, collaborative problem solving) to group creativity and (2) the factors that stimulate or reduce group-level information processing. It is argued that many research findings can be explained by assuming that group creativity involves motivated information processing of members.

scholarly journals Membership in and Presence of Voluntary Organisations during the Swedish Fertility Transition, 1880-1949

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 3-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Junkka
Keyword(s):  
Structural Changes ◽  
Demographic Data ◽  
Fertility Transition ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Mixed Effect ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Level Information ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Voluntary Organisations

This article investigates the association between, participation in, and exposure to voluntary organisations and marital fertility during the European fertility transition from 1880 to 1949. This is achieved using individual-level longitudinal demographic data from northern Sweden linked with individual-level information on voluntary organisation membership and contextual level information on organisation activity. How living near an organisation influenced fertility is measured using mixed effect Cox regressions. The association to participation for both men and women is tested by matching members to a control group through propensity score matching before estimating differences in risks of another birth using Cox regressions. The results show that being exposed to an organisation was related to lower fertility. Joining a union or a temperance organisation showed even stronger negative associations, but only for male members, while female members showed no significant difference in fertility. The results suggest that reproductive decisions were not simple responses by the individual couple to structural changes but were also shaped within the social networks of which they were a part.

scholarly journals Factors Determining the Membership of Farmer’s in Producer Organization (PO) a Study in the Assam State of India

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Prabir Datta ◽  
Jagathjhuti Datta ◽  
Sanjib Shil
Keyword(s):  
Family Income ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Sampling Technique ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Annual Family Income ◽  
Organizational Participation ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Level Information ◽  
The Government ◽  
Multistage Sampling

Aim of this study to document the factors that influence farmer’s participation in producer organizations. To address these issues, the Government of Assam decided to mobilize farmers in the form of Producer organization (PO). Producer organization meant for effective management of agriculture in a specific crop field. The history of Producer Organizations indicates that after performing successfully for a period of time it almost defunct. For sustainability of Producer Organizations, factors influencing its membership pattern need to be studied. Therefore, this study was conducted in Jorhat District of Assam to address this issue. Total 240 respondents were selected (120 members and 120 non-members of Producer Organizations) by using multistage sampling technique. The instrument for data collection was questionnaire that consists of two sections. Section one contained Individual level information i.e. Age, Education, Gender, Caste, Organizational participation, Extent of public extension contact. Section two had Family level/ house hold information i.e. Primary source of income, Size of the family, annual family income, Size of operational land holding. The t test indicated that there were significant difference between age, operational land holding, the extent of government extension contact, the primary source of income and annual family income of members’ and non-members’ means in these characteristics, both the groups were heterogeneous. From forward stepwise regression analysis, it was found that extension contact, operational land holding, annual family income and caste influences the membership pattern of Producer Organization. These variables together explained 67.50 per cent (Adjusted R2 =0.675) of the variance of effective factors on farmer’s membership pattern toward producer organizations. The study recommended that extension machinery should give emphasise on these factors and manipulate these factors for enrolling more farmers.

scholarly journals Regional Characteristics of the Second Wave of SARS-CoV-2 Infections and COVID-19 Deaths in Germany

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (20) ◽  
pp. 10663
Author(s):  
Gabriele Doblhammer ◽  
Daniel Kreft ◽  
Constantin Reinke
Keyword(s):  
Low Socioeconomic Status ◽  
Gradient Boosting ◽  
County Level ◽  
Learning Approaches ◽  
Nursing Home Population ◽  
Death Rates ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Regional Characteristics ◽  
Level Information ◽  
Second Wave

(1) Background: In the absence of individual level information, the aim of this study was to identify the regional key features explaining SARS-CoV-2 infections and COVID-19 deaths during the upswing of the second wave in Germany. (2) Methods: We used COVID-19 diagnoses and deaths from 1 October to 15 December 2020, on the county-level, differentiating five two-week time periods. For each period, we calculated the age-standardized COVID-19 incidence and death rates on the county level. We trained gradient boosting models to predict the incidence and death rates by 155 indicators and identified the top 20 associations using Shap values. (3) Results: Counties with low socioeconomic status (SES) had higher infection and death rates, as had those with high international migration, a high proportion of foreigners, and a large nursing home population. The importance of these characteristics changed over time. During the period of intense exponential increase in infections, the proportion of the population that voted for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in the last federal election was among the top characteristics correlated with high incidence and death rates. (4) Machine learning approaches can reveal regional characteristics that are associated with high rates of infection and mortality.

scholarly journals Life history traits and reproductive performance of the caridean shrimp Lysmata boggessi, a heavily traded invertebrate in the marine aquarium industry

PeerJ ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. e8231
Author(s):  
Michael D. Dickson ◽  
Donald C. Behringer ◽  
J. Antonio Baeza
Keyword(s):  
Population Dynamics ◽  
Life Histories ◽  
Sex Change ◽  
Reproductive Activity ◽  
Phase Ratio ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Commercial Harvest ◽  
Peppermint Shrimp ◽  
Level Information ◽  
Data Gap

The most intense commercial harvest of marine aquarium species in North America occurs in the coastal waters surrounding Florida, yet very often little information exists on the life histories, population dynamics, or reproductive characteristics of these organisms. The peppermint shrimp Lysmata boggessi is one such species and is heavily targeted along the west coast of Florida. It is known primarily among aquarists for its ability to control pest anemones and in the scientific community for its unique sexual system, protandric simultaneous hermaphroditism. However, no study has addressed fishery interactions or long-term population dynamics for L. boggessi. We used monthly fisheries-dependent sampling, with a trained observer present, for a full year to assess seasonality in sex phase ratio (males to males + hermaphrodites), size at sex change, fecundity, embryo volume and reproductive output of an exploited L. boggessi population. L. boggessi exhibited distinct seasonality in size distribution, sex phase ratio, size at sex phase change and reproductive activity. The peak reproductive season was in spring, when the population was dominated by small but fecund hermaphrodites. Reproduction decreased during fall and winter and sex phase ratios favored male phase shrimp that exhibited delayed sex change. This population and individual level information is the first of its kind for L. boggessi and fills a much needed data gap for the informed management of this fishery.

scholarly journals Prospective Time Periodic Geographical Covid-19 Surveillance in Ethiopia Using a Space-time Scan Statistics: Detecting and Evaluating Emerging Clusters

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nuredin Nassir Azmach ◽  
Tesfay Gebremariam Tesfahannes ◽  
Samiya Abrar Abdulsemed ◽  
Temam Abrar Hamza
Keyword(s):  
Addis Ababa ◽  
Space Time ◽  
City Government ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Scan Statistics ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Level Information ◽  
Public Health Officials ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Time Scan

Abstract Background: On December 31, 2019, multiple pneumonia cases, subsequently identified as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), was reported for the first time in Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei province in China. At that time, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission had report 27 cases, of which seven are severely ill, and the remaining cases are stable and controllable. Since, then, the spread of COVID-19 has already taken on pandemic proportions, affecting over 100 countries in a matter of weeks. As of September 07, 2020, there had been more than 27 million confirmed cases and 889,000 total deaths, with an average mortality of about 3.3%, globally. In Ethiopia, 58,672 confirmed cases and 918 deaths and this number are likely to increase exponentially. It is critical to detect clusters of COVID-19 to better allocate resources and improve decision-making as the pandemics continue to grow.Methods: We have collected the individual-level information on patients with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 on daily bases from the official reports of the Ethiopian Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH), regional, and city government of Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa health bureaus. Using the daily case data, we conducted a prospective space-time analysis with SaTScan version 9.6. We detect statistically significant space-time clusters of COVID-19 at the woreda and sub-city level in Ethiopia between March 13th-June 6th, 2020, and March 13th-June 24th, 2020.Results: The prospective space-time scan statistic detected “alive” and emerging clusters that are present at the end of our study periods; notably, nine more clusters were detected when adding the updated case data.Conclusions: These results can notify public health officials and decision-makers about where to improve the allocation of resources, testing areas; also, where to implement necessary isolation measures and travel bans. As more confirmed cases become available, the statistic can be rerun to support timely surveillance of COVID-19, demonstrated here. In Ethiopia, our research is the first geographic study that utilizes space-time statistics to monitor COVID-19.

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