Search results

This paper discusses a collaboration between sociologists and optometrists that involved, first, an investigation of communication and interaction in eye examinations and, second, a transformation of the findings into assessable impact. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how from the start of this project close cooperation between academics and practitioners has paved the way for the generation of academic contributions and impact on the teaching and training of optometrists. The authors also briefly discuss how their cooperation has continued since the original research and impact projects to address further issues of relevance to both academics and practicing optometrists.

This research project was developed to maximise the impact of the research by creating a cooperative relationship between social scientists and optometrists. As the research produced its first findings, the team began to create teaching and training material to help optometrists improve their communication skills. The research project was followed by an college of optometrists ESRC (College of Optometrists co-funded) funded Knowledge Exchange project (KEP) that involved members of the research team, the College of Optometrists (CoO) and practicing optometrists. Together, the authors discussed the research finding and how they could be turned into practical impact, such as educational material, of use for optometrists and those teaching and training optometrists.

The focus of our research has been on the opening of eye examination and on the production of a small number of tests conducted to assess patients’ vision. Future research will include a broader variety of tests and particularly explore the closing of eye examinations as here optometrists who are primarily concerned with clinical questions begin to hand over patients to the commercial arm of the practice. Findings from the extension of the collaboration of social scientists and academics will lead to the advancement of teaching and training material published in professional magazines and offered online to the members of the CoO.

The assessable impact developed from the research findings includes articles and assessments published in professional magazines, workshops delivered at optometry conferences, courses on communication in eye examinations taught at university and an online course for members of the CoO. These activities allow practicing optometrists to collect professional development points (CPD) required to continue practicing as optometrists. Based on the KEP, the authors continued to produce CPD material and together with the CoO developed a credit-bearing online course for the College’s members that within the first year had an enrolment of almost 600 optometrists nine months after its publication.

The research and impact case have been used to develop teaching and training material that practicing optometrists use to improve their communication and interaction with patients. Thus, the cooperation between social scientists and optometrists has been effective in contributing to the improvement of a critical health service. Moreover, the project has demonstrated how the close cooperation between social scientists and practitioners in the development and undertaking of a research project can be a powerful way to ensure the practical and social impact of research.

The originality of this paper is grounded in the close cooperation between social scientists and practicing optometrists already at inception of the research project. This cooperation underpins the generation of contributions to academic discourse in the social sciences, such as discussions on interaction in health services, and of practical and social implications. The authors have experienced the cooperation between social scientists and (practicing) optometrists not only as beneficial to the development of assessable impact but also as a project utterly enjoyable and rewarding to all members of the team.

The purpose of this paper is to report on empirical work conducted to open up algorithmic interpretability and transparency. In recent years, significant concerns have arisen regarding the increasing pervasiveness of algorithms and the impact of automated decision-making in our lives. Particularly problematic is the lack of transparency surrounding the development of these algorithmic systems and their use. It is often suggested that to make algorithms more fair, they should be made more transparent, but exactly how this can be achieved remains unclear.

An empirical study was conducted to begin unpacking issues around algorithmic interpretability and transparency. The study involved discussion-based experiments centred around a limited resource allocation scenario which required participants to select their most and least preferred algorithms in a particular context. In addition to collecting quantitative data about preferences, qualitative data captured participants’ expressed reasoning behind their selections.

Even when provided with the same information about the scenario, participants made different algorithm preference selections and rationalised their selections differently. The study results revealed diversity in participant responses but consistency in the emphasis they placed on normative concerns and the importance of context when accounting for their selections. The issues raised by participants as important to their selections resonate closely with values that have come to the fore in current debates over algorithm prevalence.

This work developed a novel empirical approach that demonstrates the value in pursuing algorithmic interpretability and transparency while also highlighting the complexities surrounding their accomplishment.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the influence of image on student satisfaction and loyalty.

In order to accomplish the objectives proposed, a model reflecting the influence of image on student satisfaction and loyalty is applied. The model is tested through use of structural equations and the final sample is of 2,687 students.

The model shows that image is the construct that most influences student satisfaction. The influence of image is also relevant on student loyalty.

In this paper, the constructs of image resulted in a reliability level of 0.846; future research is needed in order to find more reliable image measurement indicators.

If higher education institutions have to compete through image, the first step to take is to measure the university image held by its students. It is proven by this paper that the construct which most influences student satisfaction in higher education is the image construct, with a total effect of 0.86. Thus, if the institutional image rises or falls by a unit in terms of valorisation, satisfaction increases or diminishes by a proportion of 0.86 and loyalty by a proportion of 0.73.

Several studies have shown that, in general, corporate image is important to attract and retain customers. This paper depicts the specific influences of image specifically on student satisfaction and student loyalty and also the respective level of influence.

The present study aims to identify women microentrepreneurs’ motivations that may influence the legalisation of their businesses and their capacity to reconcile the demands of family and work in a developing country (i.e. Brazil).

Semi-structured interviews were used to gather data on women’s microentrepreneurial initiatives in three northern Brazil cities: Salvador da Bahia (Bahia), Fortaleza (Cear) and Belm (Par). Qualitative content analysis was used to analyse textual data from the 30 interviews. The content was standardised and subsequently analysed using NVivo and IBM’s Many Eyes data visualisation software.

The results suggest that these women opt for legalised individual entrepreneurship to access the benefits of formalising their businesses and to search for mechanisms that encourage a work–family balance. However, in the more rural city studied, women show greater resistance to, and more distrust of, the benefits of legalising their business, as opposed to women from the two more urban cities.

The results contribute to a better understanding of women’s motivations to legalise their microbusiness. In Brazil, the writing and passing of a law geared towards this type of entrepreneur (e.g. individual microentrepreneurs) has had a quite positive effect on the legalisation of businesses, in particular for women. However, this law has had a more positive effect in urban areas, which suggests that further dissemination is needed of the benefits of formalising microbusinesses in rural areas.

This study contributes to research that seeks to understand better entrepreneurial preferences (i.e. formal vs informal) and the role played by gender and legal, financial and family contexts.

WE wish for our readers a Good New Year. Whether it would be appropriate to wish readers a Happy New Year at this stage will depend upon many factors. Even before these words appear in type we may be involved in the more intense struggle for the very existence of our country which everyone seems to think must come sooner or later. The ultimate outcome of that we do not doubt, but while it continues we shall need all the strength, spiritual, mental and physical, that we possess. Nevertheless, it will be a good new year if we remain sensitive to all the needs and opportunities that surround us.

ACCORDING to a pamphlet just issued by Mr. Thomas Greenwood, the total amount expended by Mr. Andrew Carnegie on the provision of Public Library, school, and other educational buildings is about £14,000,000 sterling. Some of this enormous amount has been devoted to the endowment of scholarships in universities, but the major part of it has been given for the purpose of enabling towns to erect library buildings. About £1,300,000 have been given to Scotland for this purpose, and probably about £50,000 to England, though this latter sum is being augmented almost daily. Mr. Carnegie's action in this matter is without precedent in the history of the world, and his extraordinary generosity and enthusiasm in this particular field of educational work deserves the heartiest recognition and applause from every section of the public. His work, so far as British libraries are concerned, is largely supplemental to the niggardly and short‐sighted policy of Parliament, which allows municipal authorities to establish Public Libraries, and raise funds which are barely sufficient in many cases to pay the gas bill and provide a few of the current magazines. Hence it follows that, in many cases, our libraries are housed in all kinds of temporary premises, from disused warehouses to prisons, churches, and market‐halls, where their utility is impaired by the complete unsuitability of their environment. Thus, about 75 per cent. of the British municipal libraries are administered under conditions which are desperate when compared with those of the United States. But worse even than the matter of equipment is that of efficient administration. Extraordinarily good work is accomplished, and great use is made of the books, in library premises which are a disgrace to the community which owns them, and to the Parliament which sanctions such makeshifts in the name of education; but this is owing more to luck in obtaining capable officers than the action of any systematic attempt to train competent staffs and improve methods of administration. Mr. Carnegie has done such a great work in making good the failure of the Legislature to provide adequately or the material side of Public Libraries, that it is not too much to suggest a practical method of making his valuable gifts even more valuable and effective. At present many of the Carnegie libraries are object‐lessons in what to avoid in library administration. They are staffed by untrained men, whose methods are the laughing‐stock of the more competent American librarians, whose opinions Mr. Carnegie is bound to respect in view of his belief in everything American. They are classified in a manner which would prove ruinous in any business run for profit, and catalogued in such a painfully bald manner as to reduce the whole method of book‐selection to the level of a lottery. We could name libraries in Scotland, which have been lavishly helped by Mr. Carnegie, which are doing greatly inferior work to little municipal libraries elsewhere, which are not even decently housed. They have not adopted a single modern or scientific method of doing anything, and they have been officered in a manner which will prevent any possibility of improvement for years to come. Other instances could be given of libraries housed in fine buildings which are simply libels on the aims and objects of modern librarianship, but enough has been said in a general way to show that something more is required to make Public Libraries efficient than good homes, or even a penny rate. How this could in part be accomplished, it is the purpose of this article to try and show.

Delivering patient-centered healthcare is now seen as one of the basic requirements of good quality care. In this research, the impact of the perceived quality of three experiential dimensions (Physical Environment, Empowerment and Dignity and Patient–Doctor Relationship) on patient's Experiential Satisfaction is assessed.

259 structured interviews were performed with patients in private and public hospitals across Italy. The research methodology is based in testing mediation and moderation effects of the selected variables.

The study shows that: perceived quality of Physical Environment has a positive impact on patient's Experiential Satisfaction; perceived quality of Empowerment and Dignity and perceived quality of Patient–Doctor Relationship mediate this relationship reinforcing the role of Physical Environment on Experiential Satisfaction; educational level is a moderator in the relationship between perceived quality of Patient–Doctor Relationship and overall Satisfaction: more educated patients pay more attention to relational items. Subjective Health Frailty is a moderator in all the tested relationships with Experiential Satisfaction: patients who perceive their health as frail are more reactive to the quality of the above-mentioned variables.

Physical Environment items are enablers of both Empowerment and Dignity and Patient–Doctor Relationship and these variables must be addressed all together in order to improve the value proposition provided to patients. Designing a hospital, beyond technical requirements that modern medicine demands and functional relationships between different medical departments, means dealing with issues like the anxiety of the patient, the stressful working environment for the hospital staff and the need to build a sustainable and healing building.

Many start-ups do not survive the first few years of business. Previous studies suggest that networks play a role in start-ups' success, but this positive effect has limits. The purpose of this paper is to answer the call for a better understanding of the dark side of networks and the variables that condition variables' effect on the likelihood of start-ups' survival.

A longitudinal research design includes 139 start-ups (102 from Germany and 37 from Portugal) and a total of 252 participants. A generalized linear mixed model (GLMM)was applied to estimate all the coefficients, to test the mediation (H1), the moderation (H2) and the moderated mediation (H3) while considering the economic situation of the start-up (sales growth), start-ups' networking behavior, creativity orientation and ultimately the likelihood of survival.

Based on an empirical study from two different countries, the results show that effective networking is contingent on the start-up's economic situation and creative potential. Specifically, the results point to situations in which early sales growth may lead to external networking, which, in contexts of low creativity-oriented start-ups, can compromise the start-ups' success.

Based on the findings, the authors compare scenarios in which networking increases the chances for start-up survival with situations where networking can have adverse effects. This study highlights the importance of considering specific start-up parameters, such as start-ups' economic situation and level of creativity orientation, in the business venturing literature.

This paper aims to examine the factors that influence rural women’s participation in Village Savings and Loans Association (VSLA) and the savings contribution in the Kassena-Nankana West District of Ghana. The study also analysed the impact of VSLA participation on off-farm income and on poverty.

In total, 120 rural women were selected for this study. The probit and heteroskedasticity linear regression models were used to examine the factors that influence VSLA participation and the savings made by members, respectively. The propensity score matching technique, coupled with Rosenbaum Sensitivity analysis, were used to analyse the impact of VSLA on off-farm income and poverty.

Demographic and livelihood factors such as human, natural, financial, physical and social capitals have different influences on the participation and the savings contribution in the VSLA. Moreover, VSLA has a significant impact on off-farm income; however, it did not affect poverty.

Despite the numerous studies on VSLA, there is little evidence of literature of its impact on off-farm income of rural women in West Africa, specifically, Ghana. Thus, this paper expands the frontiers of the existing literature on VSLA impact assessment and the factors that influence the savings made by women in the association.