scholarly journals Decision-making preferences and risk factors regarding early adolescent pregnancy in Ghana: stakeholders’ and adolescents’ perspectives from a vignette-based qualitative study

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Luchuo Engelbert Bain ◽  
Seda Muftugil-Yalcin ◽  
Mary Amoakoh-Coleman ◽  
Marjolein B. M. Zweekhorst ◽  
Renaud Becquet ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Adolescent Pregnancy ◽  
Pregnancy Outcome ◽  
Decision Maker ◽  
Early Adolescent ◽  
Final Decision ◽  
Community Partner ◽  
Financial Autonomy ◽  
The Past

Abstract Background Worldwide, over half of the adolescent pregnancies recorded are unintended. The decision to continue the pregnancy to term or to opt for an abortion is a constant dilemma that is directly or indirectly influenced by stakeholders and also by the wider social environment. This study aimed at understanding the perceived decision-making preferences and determinants of early adolescent pregnancy in the Jamestown area of Accra in Ghana. Methods A vignette-based qualitative study design was used. Eight focus group discussions were carried among various purposively selected groups of participants: parents, teachers, adolescent students who had not been pregnant before, and adolescents who had had at least one pregnancy in the past. The vignette was a hypothetical case of a 15-year-old high school student who had not experienced her menses for the past 6 weeks. The data were analyzed using a thematic analysis approach. Results Lack of parent-daughter communication, the taboo on discussing sex-related issues in households and weak financial autonomy were considered to be the main contributing factors to the high early adolescent pregnancy rates in the community. Partner readiness to assume responsibility for the girl and the baby was a key consideration in either continuing the pregnancy to term or opting for an abortion. The father was overwhelmingly considered to be the one to take the final decision regarding the pregnancy outcome. Irrespective of the fact that the respondents were very religious, opting for an abortion was considered acceptable under special circumstances, especially if the pregnant adolescent was doing well in school. Conclusion Inadequate and inappropriate communication practices around sexuality issues, as well as weak financial autonomy are the major predictors of early adolescent pregnancy in this community. The father is perceived to be the main decision maker regarding a young adolescent’s pregnancy outcome. Policy-makers should carefully evaluate the implications of this overwhelming perceived desire for the father to be the final decision-maker regarding adolescent pregnancy outcomes in this community.

scholarly journals FORMAL AND DAILY CARE DECISION-MAKING INVOLVEMENT IN AFRICAN-AMERICAN DEMENTIA DYADS

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S915-S915
Author(s):  
Kalisha Bonds ◽  
MinKyoung Song ◽  
Karen Lyons ◽  
Martha Driessnack
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
African American ◽  
Decision Maker ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Final Decision ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Daily Care ◽  
Care Decision

Abstract Decision-making involvement (e.g., verbal and/or nonverbal communication) of persons with dementia (PWD) has been associated with quality of life of PWDs and their caregivers, underscores personhood, and reduces ethical dilemmas for caregivers regarding the PWD’s care. Yet, no study has explored the decision-making involvement in formal and daily care of both members of African-American dementia dyads (i.e., African-American PWDs and their African-American caregivers), limiting our understanding of how these dyads navigate decision-making during the dementia trajectory. This study took a closer look through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with African-American dementia dyads as they reflected on their decision-making surrounding formal and daily care. A pilot study of five dyadic interviews, each averaging 45 minutes, was completed. We used a combination of quantitative content analysis, decision-making matrices and I-poems created from I-statements of the dyad regarding their decision-making involvement. Decision-making matrices (i.e., diagrams of the degree of sharing, the balance of power within the dyad, and the final decision maker in formal and daily care) were constructed across interviews. The pairing of traditional analyses with the novel use of I-poems traces participants’ sense of self, ensuring their voice is retained. There was agreement within all five dyads regarding the final decision maker(s) in formal and daily care. Between dyads, daily decision-making involvement was led by African American PWDs; whereas, formal care decision-making involvement of African American PWDs varied. Findings highlight the importance of a deeper understanding of formal and daily care decision-making involvement within and between African-American dementia dyads and potential clinical implications.

Doubly Extended Fuzzy TOPSIS Method for Group Decision Making

2019 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-50
Author(s):  
Dariusz Kacprzak
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Decision Maker ◽  
Group Decision Making ◽  
Group Decision ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Fuzzy Topsis ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Final Decision ◽  
Topsis Method ◽  
Decision Matrix

Multiple Criteria Decision Making methods, such as TOPSIS, have become very popular in recent years and are frequently applied to solve many real-life situations. However, the increasing complexity of the decision problems analysed makes it less feasible to consider all the relevant aspects of the problems by a single decision maker. As a result, many real-life problems are discussed by a group of decision makers. In such a group each decision maker can specialize in a different field and has his/her own unique characteristics, such as knowledge, skills, experience, personality, etc. This implies that each decision maker should have a different degree of influence on the final decision, i.e., the weights of decision makers should be different. The aim of this paper is to extend the fuzzy TOPSIS method to group decision making. The proposed approach uses TOPSIS twice. The first time it is used to determine the weights of decision makers which are then used to calculate the aggregated decision matrix for all the group decision matrices provided by the decision makers. Based on this aggregated matrix, the extended TOPSIS is used again, to rank the alternatives and to select the best one. A numerical example illustrates the proposed approach.

scholarly journals Influence Analysis in Consensus Search — A Multi Criteria Group Decision Making Approach in Environmental Management

2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (04) ◽  
pp. 791-813 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Ivan Romero-Gelvez ◽  
Monica Garcia-Melon
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Decision Maker ◽  
Group Decision Making ◽  
Group Decision ◽  
Similarity Measures ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Final Decision ◽  
Analytic Hierarchy ◽  
Decision Making Model ◽  
Environmental Decision

The environmental decision problems often are divisive, even in a technical realm, decision makers with strong personalities influence outcomes. The purpose of this study is to define and quantify the factors that affect the conservation objectives of a national natural park located in Colombia, South America adding the judgments of six decision makers with different knowledge (every decision maker is also a stakeholder representative). This paper uses a hybrid multiple criteria group decision-making model (MCDM), combining the social network analysis (SNA), analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and similarity measures to solve the consensus and anchoring problem among environmental decision makers. The SNA technique is used to build an influential network relation map among decision makers and to obtain their weights for applying a weighted AHP. Then, the final decision matrices for every decision maker are compared between them in order to identify the consensus level of the problem.

Dose–response models: how might we think about linearity and nonlinearity?

2009 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
PF Ricci
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Decision Maker ◽  
Dose Response ◽  
Final Decision ◽  
Causal Process ◽  
Response Models ◽  
Private Goods ◽  
The Public ◽  
Legal Advice ◽  
Public Decision

We add to the issues raised by Dr David Ropeik’s article Risk Communication and Non-Linearity (forthcoming, BELLE Newsletter, 2008) regarding the thinking about the acceptance of linear and nonlinear (hormetic) dose–response models. We summarize some of the perceptual aspects discussed by Ropeik (2008) and comment on decision-making by the single decision-maker. It seems that the heuristics discussed by Ropeik (2008) are related to those private decision-makers who may not benefit from extensive technical, scientific, and legal advice sufficiently to make well-informed decisions and, perhaps more importantly, may not have the funds for that advice. Dose–response models are intangible, abstract quantities: unlike private goods and services, they are not priced by the market. We suggest a duality between the private and the public decision-maker that in the end may loose its crispness, because it can occur in the same person. Nonetheless, this duality is evident at the analysis phase of decision-making, relative to the decision phase, and thus, provides a convenient way to address the issues addressed by Ropeik (2008). In particular, for at least legal and common sense reasons, the public decision-maker must follow a scientific-analytical causal process – as represented by models of dose–response – to select and justify her choice of one over the other. Whether the final decision as to which model is to be used in regulatory law is a matter that goes beyond the analytical aspects of the choice and is governed by political and other aspects of governance.

scholarly journals PERILAKU INFORMASI DAN PREFERENSI UNIVERSITAS PADA GENERASI MILENIAL

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 276-287
Author(s):  
Afred Suci ◽  
Satria Tri Nanda
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Decision Maker ◽  
Information Search ◽  
Significant Relationship ◽  
Private Universities ◽  
Search Behavior ◽  
Final Decision ◽  
Millennial Students ◽  
Information Search Behavior

Digital era has shifted the role and information search behavior of selecting university. This study aims to map the role of influencer and decision maker and so as to analyze millennial student’s information search behavior for private universities. Respondent consists of 200 new students in seven private universities located in Riau Province, Indonesia. Data analyzed by using descriptive and chi-square for non-parametric statistic. Study reveals that millennial students autonomously become either prime influencer or decision maker in selecting campus destination. The main information source for millennial students are digital platforms and their peer community. There is no significant relationship between student's background and role of influencer. Meanwhile, student’s area of origin and their working status have a significant relationship with the role of final decision making. On the contrary, parents’ domicile, previous high school, and choice of study department have no significant relationship with the role of final decision making. The most important information for private university applicants are the availability and completeness of campus facilities, detail of tuition fee, and information of scholarship opportunities.  

scholarly journals Learning Active Fusion of Multiple Experts' Decisions: An Attention-Based Approach

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 558-591 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maryam S. Mirian ◽  
Majid Nili Ahmadabadi ◽  
Babak N. Araabi ◽  
Roland R. Siegwart
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Decision Maker ◽  
Learning System ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Borda Count ◽  
Final Decision ◽  
Special Cases ◽  
Local Decision ◽  
Multiple Experts ◽  
Local Decision Makers

In this letter, we propose a learning system, active decision fusion learning (ADFL), for active fusion of decisions. Each decision maker, referred to as a local decision maker, provides its suggestion in the form of a probability distribution over all possible decisions. The goal of the system is to learn the active sequential selection of the local decision makers in order to consult with and thus learn the final decision based on the consultations. These two learning tasks are formulated as learning a single sequential decision-making problem in the form of a Markov decision process (MDP), and a continuous reinforcement learning method is employed to solve it. The states of this MDP are decisions of the attended local decision makers, and the actions are either attending to a local decision maker or declaring final decisions. The learning system is punished for each consultation and wrong final decision and rewarded for correct final decisions. This results in minimizing the consultation and decision-making costs through learning a sequential consultation policy where the most informative local decision makers are consulted and the least informative, misleading, and redundant ones are left unattended. An important property of this policy is that it acts locally. This means that the system handles any nonuniformity in the local decision maker's expertise over the state space. This property has been exploited in the design of local experts. ADFL is tested on a set of classification tasks, where it outperforms two well-known classification methods, Adaboost and bagging, as well as three benchmark fusion algorithms: OWA, Borda count, and majority voting. In addition, the effect of local experts design strategy on the performance of ADFL is studied, and some guidelines for the design of local experts are provided. Moreover, evaluating ADFL in some special cases proves that it is able to derive the maximum benefit from the informative local decision makers and to minimize attending to redundant ones.

Early adolescent pregnancy: A comparative study of pregnancy outcome in young adolescents and mature women

1984 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 167-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theresa O. Scholl ◽  
Edmund Decker ◽  
Robert J. Karp ◽  
Geoffrey Greene ◽  
Marie De Sales
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Adolescent Pregnancy ◽  
Pregnancy Outcome ◽  
Early Adolescent ◽  
Young Adolescents ◽  
Mature Women

How multidisciplinary are multidisciplinary case reviews in cancer care? Feasibility analysis of a theory-driven team decision-making fidelity framework

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tayana Soukup ◽  
Ged Murtagh ◽  
Ben W Lamb ◽  
James Green ◽  
Nick Sevdalis
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Cancer Care ◽  
Recent Decade ◽  
Individual Case ◽  
Multidisciplinary Teams ◽  
Final Decision ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Implementation Framework ◽  
Feasibility Evaluation ◽  
The Uk

Background Multidisciplinary teams (MDTs) are a standard cancer care policy in many countries worldwide. Despite an increase in research in a recent decade on MDTs and their care planning meetings, the implementation of MDT-driven decision-making (fidelity) remains unstudied. We report a feasibility evaluation of a novel method for assessing cancer MDT decision-making fidelity. We used an observational protocol to assess (1) the degree to which MDTs adhere to the stages of group decision-making as per the ‘Orientation-Discussion-Decision-Implementation’ framework, and (2) the degree of multidisciplinarity underpinning individual case reviews in the meetings. MethodsThis is a prospective observational study. Breast, colorectal and gynaecological cancer MDTs in the Greater London and Derbyshire (United Kingdom) areas were video recorded over 12-weekly meetings encompassing 822 case reviews. Data were coded and analysed using frequency counts.Results Eight interaction formats during case reviews were identified. case reviews were not always multi-disciplinary: only 8% of overall reviews involved all five clinical disciplines present, and 38% included four of five. The majority of case reviews (i.e. 54%) took place between two (25%) or three (29%) disciplines only. Surgeons (83%) and oncologists (8%) most consistently engaged in all stages of decision-making. While all patients put forward for MDT review were actually reviewed, a small percentage of them (4%) either bypassed the orientation (case presentation) and went straight into discussing the patient, or they did not articulate the final decision to the entire team (8%). Conclusions Assessing fidelity of MDT decision-making at the point of their weekly meetings is feasible. We found that despite being a set policy, case reviews are not entirely MDT-driven. We discuss implications in relation to the current eco-political climate, and the quality and safety of care. Our findings are in line with the current national initiatives in the UK on streamlining MDT meetings, and could help decide how to re-organise them to be most efficient.

Truth Matters: Cognitive Integrity as an Intervention for Self-Deception

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugenia Isabel Gorlin ◽  
Michael W. Otto
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Problem Solving ◽  
Autonomous Agents ◽  
Therapeutic Interventions ◽  
Empirical Validation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Adaptive Problem

To live well in the present, we take direction from the past. Yet, individuals may engage in a variety of behaviors that distort their past and current circumstances, reducing the likelihood of adaptive problem solving and decision making. In this article, we attend to self-deception as one such class of behaviors. Drawing upon research showing both the maladaptive consequences and self-perpetuating nature of self-deception, we propose that self-deception is an understudied risk and maintaining factor for psychopathology, and we introduce a “cognitive-integrity”-based approach that may hold promise for increasing the reach and effectiveness of our existing therapeutic interventions. Pending empirical validation of this theoretically-informed approach, we posit that patients may become more informed and autonomous agents in their own therapeutic growth by becoming more honest with themselves.

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