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This paper reports on the manual AQUA‐UWO, an instrument for quality development in supported living services developed by a research group at the Centre for Planning and Evaluation of Social Services at the University of Siegen in Germany. The extension of supported living services in Germany is still marked by conceptual and financial uncertainty. Debates about the concept and quality of supported living are still not advanced. Against this background, AQUA‐UWO identifies key issues for supported living and formulates professional standards for work in, and management of, supported living. Service user rights for self‐advocacy and self‐determination form the basis of quality assurance and development of supported living services. The first part of the instrument covers conceptual foundations, quality comprehension and methodical procedures. The second part covers key issues, identifies working procedures and clarifies quality standards. The third part includes materials which can be used to support the process of quality development.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically test two opposing theoretical hypotheses from research literature: low quality of public education boosts support for public education; and low quality of public education weakens support for public education.

The authors use microdata from 27 post-communist countries over a period of five years. This study uses two outcome variables in order to capture the level of support for public education: the willingness to elevate investments in public education to an important policy priority; and the willingness to pay more taxes to improve public healthcare. A series of logistic regressions is used to find how the outcome variable is influenced by six dimensions of the quality of the public education system.

The main finding is that a lower quality of public education strengthens the willingness of citizens to make investments into public education by: making it a political priority for the government; and through a professed increased willingness to pay more taxes towards improving public education. These findings remain valid for both years of investigation and for both EU and non-EU samples. In contrast, the authors could not find support for the hypothesis that postulates that a lower quality of public education will reduce support for public education.

The main implication of these findings is that despite the increases in availability of private schooling opportunities, the citizens of post-communist countries have not abandoned their support for public education. Even if citizens of post-communist countries believe that public education is no longer of an appropriately high quality, they continue to support the provision of resources to it in order to improve on the current situation.

The current low quality of public education can be seen as providing an impetus for encouraging support for public education.

In terms of policy-making, the findings demonstrate the opportunity to shore up public support for further reforms in public- education in post-communist countries.

The current education policy research literature is silent about the direction of the effect of low quality public education on the willingness to provide support for public education. Against this background, this is the first study which empirically tested whether quality of public education affect willingness to support it. Covering a period of five years, the authors test the above-postulated hypotheses using a diverse sample of 27 post-communist countries.

This paper presents the findings based on a survey conducted to examine the status and extent of the use of computer‐based technology (CBT) to support “quality”, including such aspects as quality control, quality assurance and quality management, in Hong Kong. Five main categories of CBTs, namely decision support systems (DSSs), group support systems (GSSs), executive information systems (EISs), expert systems (ESs) and artificial neural networks (ANNs), in support of quality are surveyed. The survey findings indicate that CBT usage to support quality in Hong Kong is low, particularly ESs and ANNs. This is partly due to a lack of awareness regarding the potential of CBTs in supporting quality among their potential users, and partly because of a lack of availability of suitable software to support their use. This paper represents a first attempt to examine the real‐life use of CBTs in support of quality. Based on the research findings, we have identified several opportunities for further research and suggested a number of research directions for CBTs to support “quality”in practice.

Little research has focused on the quality and availability of interactive online support services retrieved through search engines. The purpose of this paper is twofold; first, to review and assess the availability and accessibility of interactive online support available to individuals in suicidal crisis. Second, to field test a new tool developed specifically to evaluate both the quality of online information and the quality of interactive support.

A collection of six terms relating to suicidal distress were generated and inputted across three major search engines (Google, Yahoo and Ask). Following initial exclusions, the remaining web sites were analysed using the SPAT (Site, Publisher, Audience and Timeliness) tool and recently developed COSAT (Crisis and Online Support Appraisal Tool) tool.

The quality of web sites retrieved was variable, with only 1.9 per cent deemed as high-quality interactive support resources. Google had the greatest precision of searching, but ease of access through search engines was generally limited. No significant difference was found in the quality of web sites located on pages 1 or 2 of search engine results. Overall, community and voluntary sector web sites averaged higher quality and interactive support rating's compared to publicly funded web sites.

The newly developed COSAT tool may provide a positive first step towards a standardised measure of online quality and interactive support, although further testing and validation is required with a larger sample size.

To the authors knowledge little research has focused on the quality and availability of interactive online support services retrieved through search engines.

Smart-work has been attracting more attention since the COVID-19 outbreak hit the world in 2020. Smart-working practices do not always run smoothly despite the necessary infrastructure being in place. Taking the quality-value-loyalty chain and information system continuance model as the basis, this study aims to identify how “smart-work support service” leads to employees’ continuance intention toward smart-work. In this study, the smart-work support service refers to the infrastructure making smart-work possible and services needed to support smart-work.

Using data collected from a survey of 406 employees working in Korea, this study verifies the components of smart-work support service quality and dimensions of perceived value through partial least squares analysis and then tests the proposed conceptual model using structural equation modeling.

The results verified that the quality of smart-work support service consists of eight attributes while dividing the perceived value of smart-work into three dimensions and further revealed that the service quality influences the intention to continue smart-working by way of perceived value and satisfaction.

This study sought to explore the relationship among service quality, perceived value and satisfaction by clearly conceptualizing and measuring them in the context of smart-work, thereby ultimately understanding the impact they have on the intention to continue smart-work.

The main purpose of this study is to link work‐family conflict, quality of work and non‐work lives, quality of life and social support (supervisor and spouse supports). Specifically, it seeks to address three different roles of social support that have theoretical and empirical support and the mediating roles of quality of work life and quality of non‐work life.

The SEM‐based approach has been used to study supervisor and spouse supports as moderators between work‐family conflict and quality of life; independent variables of work‐family conflict; independent variables of quality of life. The study has been carried out in Malaysia.

The main findings are: work‐family conflict has relationship with quality of life; quality of work life and non‐work life are “partial” mediators between work‐family conflict and quality of life; and, among the various roles of social support, its role as an independent variable of quality of life gives the best results.

The research is based on a cross‐sectional study conducted in Malaysia and addresses only the spouse and supervisor supports as components of social support.

The research has developed a comprehensive model linking work‐family conflict, quality of work and non‐work lives, and quality of life and has studied the role of social support.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationships between coordination mechanisms (CMs) and quality requirements used to support transactions in the Brazilian pork chain.

Based on the transaction cost economics theory, the paper focuses on the alignment between CMs and quality requirements. The results were obtained by means of interviews (n=41) with public and private actors, including the main companies and other stakeholders in the Brazilian pork sector. The research addresses regulations, requirements of customers and supporting CMs used in different transaction contexts.

In the Brazilian pork sector, five transaction contexts can be distinguished: spot market, mini integration, singular cooperative, central cooperative and investor-owned firm. The chain actors apply different CMs to support a set of quality requirements which presents little diversity. The main quality requirements are driven by baseline public regulations. Besides, there are, in particular international, customers with more specific requirements. To support transactions, chain actors use different contracts in terms of resource allocation and price incentives.

Literature assumes alignment between governance structures (GSs) and quality standards. This paper further investigates this assumption by analyzing the relationships between CMs (underlying GSs) and quality requirements (underlying quality standards). The research findings show that similar quality requirements may well be supported by different CMs. It further gives indications on why different CMs are used to support a homogeneous set of requirements.

The purpose of this paper is to examine best practices in supporting tutors in academic quality within private training enterprises (PTEs) in New Zealand and to make practical recommendations for people working in the tertiary education sector.

A hypothesis is proposed, which is then tested using a case study examining what support from the quality assurance section of a PTE’s tutors perceive to be important. The hypothesis is that additional feedback is required for tutors. The results are compared with those on the literature on quality assurance to see if there is consistency in themes.

The primary themes that emerged from interview and survey data were that tutors with more than three years of experience feel they would benefit from more regular, clear and constructive feedback and that these tutors need support during any programme-related changes.

This research highlights that the quality of feedback is crucial in education and a worthwhile area of further investigation. Limitations include the size of the sample of interviewees and that the study was based on only one organization in New Zealand. Future research is also suggested, which could include data from other tertiary educational institutions.

The paper concludes with a practical overview of “dos” and two “don’ts” identified from the case study. The objective is to share recommendations in a practical and useable way with other practitioners.

This account of an inquiry into internal quality assurance processes and outcomes offers transferable learnings to tutors, academic quality assurance teams, employers and other stakeholders across the education sector.

The conclusion drawn from this is case study is that educational organisations should ensure that anyone tasked with providing feedback to tutors is first coached themselves; otherwise, the feedback can be unhelpful.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the dynamics of online health care communities and the impact of two-way online social support on customers’ well-being and patients’ quality of life, at different social exclusion levels.

An online survey in China’s Anti-Hepatitis B Online Community includes 326 respondents. A combined hierarchical regression analysis and structural equation model test the hypotheses.

Both receiving and giving online social support, as reciprocal altruism behaviors, enhance patients’ well-being. Receiving online social support influences psychological well-being most; giving has the largest impact on existential domains. Social exclusion boosts the benefits of giving online social support but attenuates the benefits of receiving it.

This research focusses on the effects of online social support among socially excluded patients. Extensions could rely on objective instead of subjective measures and alternative methodologies to test the underlying processes. Additional insights could derive from a bidirectional perspective.

Medical treatment institutions should leverage customer resources; health care providers should prioritize patients who feel socially excluded as effective online support providers. Health care community administrators can use several means to convince patients to contribute to communities.

Social support in online health care communities is a collaborative service that uses customers as service resources. This study explains the collaborative service and how customers feel about their bidirectional roles. It also extends reciprocal altruism research to a health information technology realm by systematically exploring how giving, vs receiving, online social support affects customers’ well-being.

This research investigates whether and how the quality of vertical communication implemented by airline industry management can reduce perceived job insecurity of flight attendants during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

The sample of this research covers 322 flight attendants from five domestic airlines based in Thailand. An online questionnaire survey was used for data collection, and a partial least squares structural equation model was used for data analysis.

The results support the negative association between the quality of vertical communication and perceived job insecurity; moreover, this association is partially mediated by perceived role ambiguity. When considering the moderating effect of perceived organizational support on the direct linkage between the quality of vertical communication and perceived job insecurity, the quality of vertical communication only has a negative association with perceived job insecurity among employees who exhibit high levels of perceived organizational support. For those who exhibit low levels of perceived organizational support, the quality of vertical communication does not have a negative association with perceived job insecurity.

This study advances prior communication research by showing that in order for communication to effectively lessen the perceived job insecurity of employees, it needs to be backed by high-quality organizational support.