Averting the next credibility crisis in psychological science: Within-person methods for personalized diagnostics and intervention.

Personalizing assessments, predictions, and treatments of individuals is currently a defining trend in psychological research and applied fields, including personalized learning, personalized medicine, and personalized advertisement. For instance, the recent pandemic has reminded parents and educators of how challenging yet crucial it is to get the right learning task to the right student at the right time. Increasingly, psychologists and social scientists are realizing that the between- person methods that we have long relied upon to describe, predict, and treat individuals may fail to live up to these tasks (e.g., Molenaar, 2004). Consequently, there is a risk of a credibility loss, possibly similar to the one seen during the replicability crisis (Ioannides, 2005), because we have only started to understand how many of the conclusions that we tend to draw based on between-person methods are based on a misunderstanding of what these methods can tell us and what they cannot. An imminent methodological revolution will likely lead to a change of even well-established psychological theories (Barbot et al., 2020). Fortunately, methodological solutions for personalized descriptions and predictions, such as many within-person analyses, are available and undergo rapid development, although they are not yet embraced in all areas of psychology, and some come with their own limitations. This article first discusses the extent of the theory-method gap, consisting of theories about within-person patterns being studied with between-person methods in psychology, and the potential loss of trust that might follow from this theory-method gap. Second, this article addresses advantages and limitations of available within- person methods. Third, this article discusses how within-person methods may help improving the individual descriptions and predictions that are needed in many applied fields that aim for tailored individual solutions, including personalized learning and personalized medicine.

DIGITIZATION AND EDUCATIONAL PROCESS ... A CONCEPTUAL APPROACH

The research aimed to reveal the role of the digitization literature, and the theories that explain it, in associating digitization and educational process, by adopting the qualitative approach, and grounded theory method. The research findings show that the aspects of approach between digitization and the educational process include five elements: teacher and learner, curriculum, educational tools, learning environment, and educational strategies. The most prominent recommendation is that officials should understand the importance of planning in the use of digitization technology, with the involvement active stakeholders in the field of education. Experts and researchers should be interested in conducting more researches about digitization and educational process.

Self-Participation Experiences among Well-Adapted Hemodialysis Patients

A successful self-participation experience empowers patients to adapt to living with hemodialysis. However, few studies regarding the subjective experiences of such patient participation have been conducted. This study’s purpose was to describe hemodialysis patients’ perspectives on integrating hemodialysis into a new life regarding self-participation experience. A qualitative study using the grounded theory method was applied. Thirty-two well-adaptive hemodialysis Taiwanese patients attended in-depth interviews. “Integrating hemodialysis into a new life journey” was identified as the core category guiding the entire self-participation experience of hemodialysis patients. The three antecedent themes were “Sense of worthlessness”, “Life is still worth living”, and “Friendly and joyful atmosphere of the hemodialysis room”. Once the patients went through the three antecedent themes, they gradually began making efforts to participate more fully in their hemodialysis. Within this participation experience, the hemodialysis patients exhibited these four interactive themes: “Overcoming one’s predicament”, “Integrating self-care skills into my life”, “Resuming previous roles and tasks”, and “Adapting to independent living”. Finally, most adaptive patients master the hemodialysis life. Encouraging patients to discover that their life is worth living and providing a friendly and joyful atmosphere in hemodialysis units are the keys to facilitating patients’ self-participation more fully.

A Proposed Model for Dental Services Management in Iran

Background: Oral health is an integral part of general health and one of the necessities of a good life. Having a healthy mouth and teeth requires individual care, the development and implementation of community-based intervention programs, and professional care. The purpose of this study was to design a model for the management of dental services in Iran. Methods: This was an applied research in terms of purpose, descriptive in terms of implementation method, and a survey research in terms of descriptive typology. The statistical population included dental experts. To conduct the study among policy makers, planners, managers, university professors and the staff of the dental services, dental experts were chosen using purposive non-probability sampling for in-depth interviews based on grounded theory method to collect indicators of dental services management for providing a suitable selection model. To reach theoretical saturation, the text of the interviews was analyzed, phrase by phrase and sentence by sentence, through constant comparative analysis. For analysis, the grounded theory method was used, and the collected data were coded in 3 steps. In order to assess the validity of the research regarding interviews, the participants' feedback and the opinions of colleagues were used. To ensure the reliability of the interviews, 2 methods of test-retest and double coding were used. In this study, Delphi method was used in designing the model. Results: According to the obtained model, 29 factors were effective in managing dental services. The obtained indicators were included in the Delphi survey. During the Delphi stages, consensus was reached on 29 indicators which were classified into 5 dimensions (components) including planning, organizing, mobilizing of resources and facilities, guiding, monitoring and controlling. Conclusion: The results of the study showed that a 5-component model is suitable for the management of dental services in Iran, and health planners and policy makers can use it to improve the delivery of dental services.

Game Theory and Dealing with Water Conflict

In the last century, water conflicts have increased in many parts of the world for reasons such as a strong desire for rapid development and poor governance. The impact of these conflicts on various sectors of society such as economic, political and legal subsystems has led researchers to focus on providing solutions and practical methods to deal with water conflicts. Game theory is one of the most common methods used by researchers to manage water conflicts and water allocation in shared and transboundary river basins. Despite the special place of game theory in reductionist sciences, the application of this theory to dealing with conflicts in complex water systems faces challenges. Whereas, the critique of the effectiveness of the game theory method in water conflict management has been neglected. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to investigate and analyze the capacity to apply the game theory to deal with water conflicts. In order to achieve this purpose, while using library resources, the basics of game theory and the capacity to apply it in the management of water conflicts are analyzed. The results reveal that following the theory of rational choice and rationalism in the game theory method has led to ignore many dimensions and factors affecting the water conflict formation and the way to deal with complex water conflicts. Keywords: Water Conflicts, Game Theory, Peacebuilding, Shared and Transboundary River Basins

Robustness of Hopfield Neural Networks Described by Differential Algebraic Systems of Index-1 under the Conditions of Deviation Argument and Stochastic Disturbance

Robustness refers to the ability of a system to maintain its original state under a continuous disturbance conditions. The deviation argument (DA) and stochastic disturbances (SDs) are enough to disrupt a system and keep it off course. Therefore, it is of great significance to explore the interval length of the deviation function and the intensity of noise to make a system remain exponentially stable. In this paper, the robust stability of Hopfield neural network (VPHNN) models based on differential algebraic systems (DAS) is studied for the first time. By using integral inequalities, expectation inequalities, and the basic control theory method, the upper bound of the interval of the deviation function and the noise intensity are found, and the system is guaranteed to remain exponentially stable under these disturbances. It is shown that as long as the deviation and disturbance of a system are within a certain range, there will be no unstable consequences. Finally, several simulation examples are used to verify the effectiveness of the approach and are described below.