Public Transport in Rural Roads: Measures to Increase Its Modal Share in Iran

The supply and demand management of rural public transport has gained an important place in Iran, given its decreasing trend over the last decade. Accordingly, an effective approach is to analyze stakeholders’ opinions in this field to identify the effective local solutions for increasing the share of this transport method. The used methodology was to design a mixed questionnaire, a part of which included fuzzy pairwise comparison, while, in its first layer, the variables were classified using rotary analysis. In the other two sections of the questionnaire, the respondents were asked to express their opinions regarding the questions in the form of qualitative and words cloud. According to the inquiries made from the users in 20 selected terminals of Iran providing services to more than 85% of rural passengers, the indicators were weighted and divided into two groups based on the rotary analysis. The weighted results obtained from the users’ opinions revealed that the safety, dynamics of incentive policies, and traffic system performance in the rural transport had the highest effects on the micro- and macro-level indicators. In the second section, based on the qualitative questions, a multivariate linear estimation model of the number of rural passengers was constructed. Moreover, in the third section, the users’ suggested keywords focused on policy-making, travel time optimization, quality of services, and safety. Both the second and third sections had an acceptable agreement with the pairwise comparisons. Given the vast area of Iran and the distance between the population centers in the country, the obtained solutions to increase the share of public rural road transport included reducing the desirability of travel with private cars in short rural distances through interaction with industrial towns around metropolises, along with providing such areas with special services to attract passengers to rural transport with occupational goals.

Relationship Between Academic Library Workers’ Outlooks on Life, Personality, and Goal-Setting Behavior and Achievement

A Review of: Lo, L.S. & Anderson, A.M. (2020). Personal goal setting behavior and professional outlooks of academic library employees. Journal of New Librarianship, 5, 204-236. https://doi.org/10.33011/newlibs/9/21 Abstract Objective – To identify a correlation between academic library employees who set New Year’s resolutions and goal-setting behavior in professional contexts, and to explore practices, personal attitudes, and outlooks that influence goal-setting and goal-achievement Design – Non-experimental multiple choice questionnaire Setting – Online Subjects – 308 adult participants (over 21 years old) who work in academic library settings including staff, librarians, and administration Methods – The authors designed an online, non-experimental multiple choice questionnaire through Qualtrics. The authors distributed study invitations to multiple professional library listservs, though it is unclear which listservs were included and what geographic location was covered. The survey was available for roughly a month from February 1-26, 2016. The survey screened participant demographics to omit those under 21 years of age and all identifying information was removed in order to protect participant privacy. All participation was voluntary and participants who were interested in contributing to a follow-up research study were asked to share their contact emails. Main Results – Most participants (n=182, 59%) set no New Year's resolutions in 2015 and half (n=155, 50%) set no resolutions in 2016. When asked to explain, 23% noted that they hadn't considered setting resolutions in 2016, 9% did not prioritize setting goals, and 5% felt that they could not achieve their goals. Additionally, over 50% articulated other reasons including not prioritizing goal-setting for New Year’s, noting that setting goals around the academic year was timelier, and that some participants already had enough goals to achieve. In 2016, half of participants (n=153, 50%) set New Year’s resolutions. By far the most common resolution was physical fitness and healthy eating (n=64, 42%). About 19% set occupational goals including skill building, and 15% set emotional goals including cultivating optimism and mindfulness. When asked about goal-setting practices, 36% of the 2016 resolution setters described writing or typing out their goals, 59% shared their goals with others, and nearly 90% enacted changes in their daily routines in order to achieve their goals. 26 participants used all of the goal setting practices above. This group prioritized their top goals and felt confident about reaching those goals. Four participants did not practice goal-setting techniques, and also felt less confident about achieving their goals. 49% of 2016 resolution setters had somewhat optimistic outlooks, and 24% had very optimistic life outlooks. Of those with pessimistic life outlooks, nearly all believed it would be difficult to accomplish goals. Respondents who claimed to be very ambitious were likely to set occupational goals as their top goal. 81% of those in dean and director positions reported being very ambitious and 85% also reported being optimistic. All deans and directors felt confident about accomplishing their goals. For middle managers, 75% felt ambitious and 72% felt optimistic. Professional librarians were 66% ambitious and 72% optimistic. Conclusions – This study's findings align closely with United States national averages about the percentage of Americans who set New Year’s resolutions and achieve their goals. Data suggests some relationship between academic library workers’ outlooks on life and confidence in achieving their goals, as well as a correlation between goal setting strategies and achieving goals. The authors express optimism that 20% of participants who set New Year's resolutions chose to list occupational goals as their top goals, especially considering that resolution-setting comprises an incredibly broad array of options. The authors suggest that data can be used by academic library administrators to increase worker job performance, improve worker wellness, establish mentorship programs, and train workers to set attainable goals.

‘Having money is not the essential thing . . . but . . . it gets everything moving’: Young Colombians Navigating Towards Uncertain Futures?

In this article, I extend the discussion of aspirations as a conceptual tool by exploring how young Colombians plan to pursue them and by seeking to understand their aspirations as a way of navigating towards what they see as a good life. Drawing upon insights from fieldwork, I use Vigh’s concept of social navigation to emphasise the importance of the social environment, and the available opportunity structures and resources, which shape young people’s aspirations and their ideas of a good life but which, more importantly, influence their navigational strategies to pursue them. I argue that Colombian young people from poor backgrounds do have aspirations and that these go beyond educational and occupational goals. Their aspirations provide information about their desire for a more stable future in an uncertain world but do not necessarily match the opportunities available to them. The young Cartagenians featuring in this study, therefore, struggle to overcome contextual and structural constraints in their social navigation, which is aimed at achieving a good life. I conclude that the young people featured in this study live amid uncertainty about their future and follow a form of doxa in formulating their aspirations. However, while the combination of economic constraints and doxic aspirations that are usually unachievable create barriers to their imagined futures, the young people socially navigate according to the opportunities that emerge and become available to them, to achieve a form of what they perceive as a good life, whereby educational and occupational goals became a means to an end.

Personal goal setting behavior and professional outlooks of academic library employees

Studies indicate correlations between personal goal-setting behaviors, performance and attitude in professional roles. An online study was developed and conducted in 2016 with academic library employees to better understand the goal-setting behavior of library employees in a particular context, via setting New Year’s resolutions, which is defined as "a decision to do something or to behave in a certain manner". Results show that nearly half (49.6 percent) of all respondents set New Year’s resolutions in 2016. Goals related to health and fitness topped the list of goals that were set, followed by occupational goals. Of those who felt unclear about their purpose in life, 57 percent felt they were somewhat to very likely able to accomplish their top goals. Comparatively, 82 percent of those who had a clear sense of purpose in life felt the same.

Strategic Regulation of Empathy

Empathy is an integral part of socio-emotional well-being, yet recent research has highlighted some of its downsides. Here we examine literature that establishes when, how much, and what aspects of empathy promote specific outcomes. After reviewing a theoretical framework which characterizes empathy as a suite of separable components, we examine evidence showing how dissociations of these components affect important socio-emotional outcomes and describe emerging evidence suggesting that these components can be independently and deliberately modulated. Finally, we advocate for a new approach to a multi-component view of empathy which accounts for the interrelations among components. This perspective advances scientific conceptualization of empathy and offers suggestions for tailoring empathy to help people realize their social, emotional, and occupational goals.

Abstract TMP44: Ethnic Differences in Informal Caregiving After Stroke: The Brain Attack Surveillance in Corpus Christi (BASIC) Project

Background and Aims: We studied informal (non-paid) caregiving after stroke in a population-based study to determine if differences occurred between Mexican Americans (MAs) and non-Hispanic whites (NHWs). MAs are a less affluent population than NHWs. Family members who provide caregiving may need to interrupt educational and occupational goals to provide this care, which may perpetuate socioeconomic disparities between minority and majority populations. Methods: Between October, 2014 and December, 2016, stroke subjects in Texas, USA, were interviewed 90 days after stroke to determine if family or friends provided informal, unpaid caregiving, and for which activities of daily living (ADLs) they required help. Chi-square tests were used to assess the association of ethnicity and whom provided the caregiving, as well as ethnicity and the ADLs for which they required help. Ethnic differences between MAs and NHWs in receiving informal caregiving were determined using logistic regression. The odds ratio (OR, 95% CI) is reported with NHW as the referent group. Results: 473 subjects answered the caregiving questions. There were no significant differences among the two ethnic groups with respect to age, sex, NIHSS score, marital status, or insurance. MAs were more likely to require help compared with NHWs for walking (p=0.0008), bathing (p=0.0004), hygiene (p=0.0018), eating (p=0.0059), dressing (p<0.0001), moving (p=0.0015) and toileting (p=0.0007). Among all subjects, 144 (30%) received informal caregiving (35% of 300 MAs versus 22% of 173 NHWs). There were no significant ethnic differences among which family member provided the caregiving. MAs were more likely to have informal caregiving OR=1.87 (95% CI 1.11-3.13) adjusted for age, sex, NIHSS, education, insurance and marital status. Conclusions: In this population-based study, MAs required more help than NHWs for assistance with ADLs, and MAs were more likely to receive this help through informal, unpaid caregiving than NHWs. Efforts to help minority and low-resource populations provide stroke care are needed.

Balancing family, aspirations, and higher education: the gendered experiences of second-generation Arab American college women1

This chapter examines the subjective gendered experiences of second generation Arab American young women. Based on 22 in-depth interviews, we examine how these women think about their educational and occupational goals, how they experience college, and the ways in which they blend gendered “Arab” and “American” cultural expectations. This study finds that Arab American young women weave together a variety of approaches toward blending what we call collective-family and individualist gendered cultural ideals. These approaches exist on a continuum. At one end is the collective-family approach, which emphasizes cultural ideals based on family needs and desires, including early marriage and childbearing. At the other end of the continuum are young women who embrace individualist approaches, emphasizing their individual desires and aspirations. In contrast, single, young, Arab American women typically occupied a middle point on the continuum, as they combined the collective-family and individualist approaches.

Prospective Memory and Cognitive Aging

Tasks that involve remembering to carry out future intentions (such as remembering to attend an appointment), and the cognitive processes that enable the completion of such tasks (such as planning), are referred to as prospective memory (PM). PM is important for promoting quality of life across many domains. For instance, failures in remembering to meet social commitments are linked to social isolation, whereas failures in remembering to fulfill occupational goals are linked to poorer vocational outcomes. Declines in PM functioning are of particular concern for older adults because of the strong links between PM and functional capacity. The relationship between age and PM appears to be complex, dependent on many factors. While some aspects of PM appear to hold up relatively well in late adulthood, others appear to show consistent age-related decline. Variability in age differences appears to partially reflect the fact that there are diverse types of PM tasks, which impose demands on a range of cognitive processes that are differentially affected by aging. Specifically, the level and type of environmental support associated with different PM task types appears to be a meaningful determinant of age-related effects. Given the worldwide changing age demographics, the interest in age-related effects on PM will likely intensify, and a primary focus will be how to optimize and maintain PM capacity for this population. This is already reflected in the increasing research on interventions focused on enhancing PM capacity in late adulthood, and points to important future directions in this area of study.

Kinds of individuals defined by patterns of variables

This paper argues that investigators should consider replacing the popular practice of comparing individuals varying in gender, social class, and/or ethnicity on one or more continuous measures with a search for kinds of individuals defined by patterns of properties that include not only their values on outcome measures but also their gender, social class, and ethnicity. Investigators who believe that a particular predictor contributes to an outcome independent of the gender, class, or ethnicity of the participants often implement statistical procedures that promise to remove the contributions of the above categories. These analyses lead to misleading conclusions when the controlled category is correlated with the dependent measures. The final sections summarize the properties of genders, classes, and ethnic groups that make distinctive contributions to many psychological outcomes. The paper ends by noting that a society's ethical beliefs constitute a defensible basis for ignoring the biological properties associated with these categories in order to allow members of these groups access to whatever educational or occupational goals they desire.