Quality of work community and workers’ intention to retire

Purpose To study the workers’ perception of the quality of work community and its association with intention to retire early, separately among women and men working in Finnish postal service. Methods A questionnaire survey was sent to all Finnish postal services employees aged ≥ 50 years in 2016 and 44% (n = 2096) replied to the survey (mean age 56.3, 40% women). Employee’s intention to retire before statutory retirement was measured on a scale of 1–5 and dichotomized. The quality of work community was defined by four composite variables: equality at work, flexibility at work, supportive work environment and health or other reason and trichotomized by their tercile values. Odds ratio (ORs) and their 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for associations of quality of work community with intention to retire were calculated separately for men and women using log binomial regression models adjusted for potential confounders. Results About one-third of respondents intended to retire early with no significant gender difference in retirement intention. Low equality at work (women OR 2.77, 95% CI 1.60–4.81; men 2.84, 1.80–4.48) and low flexibility at work (women 3.30, 1.94–5.60; men 2.91, 1.88–4.50) was associated with higher likelihood of intention to retire. Among women intention to retire was found less likely due to low supportive work environment (0.52, 0.31–0.89) and among men due to intermediate health or other reason (0.65, 043–0.98). Conclusion The results highlight the importance of the quality of work community as well as the promotion of work-related health in order to encourage employees to remain at workforce for longer.

Modeling the Social Determinants of Official COVID-19 Reports in the Early Stages of the Pandemic

The goal of this paper is to examine the role of social factors in the formation of country reports related to COVID-19 in the early stages of the pandemic. To this end, a linked database of countries’ COVID-19 reports and five composite variables (which compress the information content of 162 preliminary selected socioeconomic indicators) is analyzed by using regression models with regional dummy interactions. The main findings not only reflect the importance of foreign travel restrictions and airport controls but also show that in Europe and Africa, more corrupt countries have reported significantly fewer cases and deaths than countries in other regions.

Prediction of immediate and late renal functioning post-parathyroidectomy for primary hyperparathyroidism : Amalgamation of Ensemble approach and Automated Machine Learning

Prognostication is pursued with risk modelling for acute kidney injury postoperatively in such patients who have undergone parathyroidectomy for primary hyperparathyroidism. Novel composite variables notably contributing to close-to-perfect predictive competence of the proposed suite of prognosticative models are also unveiled.

“Dodging the bullet”: are effectual managers better off in a crisis? A case of Ghanaian agricultural SMEs

Purpose This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of causation decision-making and effectual decision-making logic in challenging economic situations within agricultural small and medium-sized enterprises in Ghana. Design/methodology/approach The authors collect and derive composite variables from effectuation, causation, financial capital availability (FCA) and crisis performance data through a randomized system based on literature precedents. This study analyzes the data using descriptive analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and ordinary least squared regression through STATA 15. Findings The authors find that effectual managers are indeed better off during crisis conditions. Also, there is a significant moderation relationship between the effectuation, FCA and crisis performance. Originality/value From strategic management and entrepreneurial process standpoint, the effectuation theory thrives within uncertain business environments. This notwithstanding, literature has often focused on hypothetical, uncertain business environments. The authors present plausible evidence of effectual business behavior from a real crisis, from small agriculture firms’ perspectives and an emerging economy context.

Integrating Scientific Knowledge into Machine Learning using Interactive Decision Trees

Decision Trees (DT) is a machine learning method that has been widely used in the environmental sciences to automatically extract patterns from complex and high dimensional data. However, like any data-based method, is hindered by data limitations and potentially physically unrealistic results. We develop interactive DT (iDT) that put the human in the loop and integrate the power of experts’ scientific knowledge with the power of the algorithms to automatically learn patterns from large data. We created a toolbox that contains methods and visualization techniques that allow users to interact with the DT. Users can create new composite variables, manually change the variable and threshold to split, manually prune and group variables based on physical meaning. We demonstrate with three case studies that iDT help experts incorporate their knowledge in the DT models achieving higher interpretability and realism in a physical sense.

TEACHER EDUCATION STUDENTS' SELF-ASSESSMENT OF COMPETENCE FOR COOPERATION WITH PARENTS

To be a teacher in the times of today is a great challenge. In order to respond to the needs of modern society, lifelong learning and mastery of numerous competences are expected of the teacher in various fields of work, wherein cooperation with parents is one of the extremely important areas. The goal of the research was to gain insight into self-assessment of competence of students at the Faculty of Teachers Education for future cooperation with parents. The research was implemented during October, 2020, on the sample of 416 students in their first, third and fifth year at the Faculty of Teacher Education of the University of Zagreb (Croatia). It is a futurological research for whose needs a questionnaire was designed with 26 manifest variables on an ordinal, five-degree Likert-type scale. From the manifest set of variables of competence for future cooperation with parents, three composite variables were formed: general cooperation competence, competence for cooperation directed to teaching efficacy, and competence for cooperation directed to communication with parents. The results show that the total student self-assessment of competences for future cooperation with parents is relatively positive, and the existence of statistically significant differences in all three composite variables. Faculties educating future teachers should introduce obligatory courses which would sensitise and capacitate them for future cooperation with parents.

How Governance Paradigms and Other Drivers Affect Public Managers’ Use of Innovation Practices. A PLS-SEM Analysis and Model

Using the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology for Innovations in the Public Sector (UTAUT-IPS) model, this study examined the influences on using a specific innovation practice on public managers. We based our analysis on an end-of-2019 sample of 227 Spanish public managers, aiming to answer the question “Are public innovation and project managers driven only by a governance paradigm, influencing their intention and usage of an innovation practice?” Using the Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) algorithm, we singled out the effects of the governance paradigm, performance expectancy, and motivation, among seven other behavioral composite variables. The PLS-Prediction-Oriented Segmentation routine was used to segment our sample into three distinct groups of innovation managers: i) those driven by nearly all influences; ii) those driven by results and the governance paradigm; and iii) those driven by governance and habits. The three groups highlight the different practical approaches to public innovation and co-creation initiatives, which clearly reflect the complex process of deciding which tool (or tools) should be used to implement these. Our UTAUT-IPS model helps visualize this complex decision-making process.

Practical strategies for handling breakdown of multiple imputation procedures

Multiple imputation is a recommended method for handling incomplete data problems. One of the barriers to its successful use is the breakdown of the multiple imputation procedure, often due to numerical problems with the algorithms used within the imputation process. These problems frequently occur when imputation models contain large numbers of variables, especially with the popular approach of multivariate imputation by chained equations. This paper describes common causes of failure of the imputation procedure including perfect prediction and collinearity, focusing on issues when using Stata software. We outline a number of strategies for addressing these issues, including imputation of composite variables instead of individual components, introducing prior information and changing the form of the imputation model. These strategies are illustrated using a case study based on data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children.

Developing Reliable Measures

This chapter presents a general approach to assessing the reliability of measurement of survey questions—those in common use in many surveys. The approach, which relies on a robust set of longitudinal design requirements, applies the quasi-Markov simplex model to multi-wave data in the evaluation of measurement errors for survey questions. Under particular assumptions, this model produces a set of estimates that conform to the psychometric definition of measurement reliability, defined as the ratio of true variance to observed variance. These models attribute some of the over-time inconsistency in measurements to unreliability and some to true change. This strategy rejects traditional notions of reliability that rely on internal consistency estimates for composite variables, as well as the simple test–retest approach to estimating reliability. Rather, the emphasis is on the separation of unreliability from true change in observations made over time. The importance of meeting several design requirements for using these over-time statistical models is also emphasized. These include the use of large-scale panel studies representative of known populations, with a minimum of three waves of measurement, separated by lengthy re-interview intervals, and limited to exactly replicated questions over the multiple waves. Results are presented from several three-wave panel studies that have employed this design, which provide evidence for the utility of the approach in the evaluation of the quality of survey measurement with respect to question content, context, and form.

The Attack in Volleyball from the Perspective of Social Network Analysis: Refining Match Analysis through Interconnectivity and Composite of Variables

This study aimed to develop an instrument for analysing the attack in high-level volleyball considering the refined variables adjacent to the attack action, the interconnection between direct and indirect actions, the impact of the previous action, and the formation of composite variables. The game complexes were approached as interacting subsystems. The primary goal was to understand the influence of game actions adjacent to the attack. Three matches of a National Women’s 1st Division 2018/2019 (nine sets, 415 plays) were analysed, considering all game complexes (except attack coverage due to reduced occurrence). An Eigenvector Centrality network with 420 nodes and 7367 edges was created. The networks showed that ideal setting conditions, and strong attacks by the outside and opposite hitters without having received a perfect ball, were central in side-out. In transition, we highlight ideal setting conditions, preferences of the outside hitter, quick attacks in Z4, and high balls in Z2. This study is distinct because it considers different aspects related to the systemic review of the game by using composite variables and the actions prior to the attack. Of these results, we highlight that players attacked with slower tempos for the double action of receive-attack, and these were either preferably directed to the parallel or explored the block. Moreover, for the double defence-attack actions, attackers sought the soft spike in Z2, Z4, and Z8; and when two consecutive individual errors occurred, the players did not err but instead continued to attack to force the opponent’s error.