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Article
Publication date: 21 December 2015

Celia Beckett, Richard Cross, Jaqui Hewitt-Taylor and Pam McConnell

– The purpose of this paper is to describe the development process of building an assessment model to assess the emotional and behavioural needs of “looked after children”.

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to describe the development process of building an assessment model to assess the emotional and behavioural needs of “looked after children”.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper is a technical paper developing and evaluating a process for comprehensively assessing children ' s needs using a combination of three existing tools.

Findings

The paper identifies a model to assess “looked after” children and highlights some of the early benefits and challenges which have been encountered using this model.

Practical implications

This paper suggests a model and timeframe to ensure that detailed assessments of the mental health of “looked after” children are effectively carried out.

Social implications

There is a potential for an improvement in assessment of looked after children that will lead to the identification of appropriate interventions and services.

Originality/value

The paper is new in identifying a combination of assessment measures and a timeline to complete these.

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 4 May 2023

Conor O'Reilly and Gretta Mohan

Using longitudinal data, this study aims to provide a greater understanding as to how parenting factors, including the employment of various disciplinary techniques, during a…

2052

Abstract

Purpose

Using longitudinal data, this study aims to provide a greater understanding as to how parenting factors, including the employment of various disciplinary techniques, during a young person's early adolescence may contribute to excessive Internet use (EIU) in later adolescence.

Design/methodology/approach

Employing “Problem Behaviour” theory (PBT) as a guiding framework, this study uses data from the Growing Up in Ireland ’98 Cohort to investigate the effect of proximal and distal parental influences, measured when children were 13 years old, on symptoms of EIU in young adults at 17 or 18 years. Multiple regression models control for other child and family factors, and separate models for males and females examine sex differentials.

Findings

Estimation did not find a statistically significant association between internet-specific mediation practices in early adolescence and EIU in later adolescence. However, regularly playing games or sports together is a protective factor. Parent-adolescent conflict and spending time home alone are estimated as risk factors. How parents deal with misbehaviour is a strong predictor of EIU, with the direction of association dependent upon the type and frequency of discipline employed.

Practical implications

The findings are of practical significance in informing parents of modifiable aspects of their behaviour that can lead to EIU.

Originality/value

The study applies a longitudinal modelling framework and considers the effect on EIU of various parental disciplinary techniques, representing a novel contribution.

Details

Internet Research, vol. 33 no. 7
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1066-2243

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 June 1997

James L. Price

Addresses the standardization of the measurements and the labels for concepts commonly used in the study of work organizations. As a reference handbook and research tool, seeks to…

16023

Abstract

Addresses the standardization of the measurements and the labels for concepts commonly used in the study of work organizations. As a reference handbook and research tool, seeks to improve measurement in the study of work organizations and to facilitate the teaching of introductory courses in this subject. Focuses solely on work organizations, that is, social systems in which members work for money. Defines measurement and distinguishes four levels: nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio. Selects specific measures on the basis of quality, diversity, simplicity and availability and evaluates each measure for its validity and reliability. Employs a set of 38 concepts ‐ ranging from “absenteeism” to “turnover” as the handbook’s frame of reference. Concludes by reviewing organizational measurement over the past 30 years and recommending future measurement reseach.

Details

International Journal of Manpower, vol. 18 no. 4/5/6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0143-7720

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 May 1983

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of…

16287

Abstract

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

Details

Management Decision, vol. 21 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0025-1747

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 4 May 2022

Ali Al Owad, Mazharul Islam, Premaratne Samaranayake and Azharul Karim

The purpose of this study is to establish empirical relationships between patient flow problems, healthcare service quality and patient satisfaction with emergency department (ED…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to establish empirical relationships between patient flow problems, healthcare service quality and patient satisfaction with emergency department (ED) service factors from the patient perspective.

Design/methodology/approach

In the overall study, of which the current investigation is a part, a mixed-method research approach was to achieve the research objectives. The results reported in this paper are based on a comprehensive questionnaire survey where a well-designed and reliable questionnaire was used to survey ED patients. This study conducted partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) by using Smart PLS software.

Findings

Results show that the respondents mostly agreed with the proposed concept of quality in ED and patients were less satisfied with ED services in general and with the internal and external environments in ED in particular. It was found that relationships between nine identified scales of patient flow problems, healthcare service quality, and patient satisfaction are significant. The findings reveal that the relationship between patient flow problems and patient satisfaction is positively mediated through healthcare service quality, which shows the predictive capability of the model, indicating high predictive relevance.

Research limitations/implications

This research involves a relatively small sample from a single case study. The positive relationship between patient flow problems and patient satisfaction indicate practical significance of the model for guiding to improve overall patient satisfaction.

Originality/value

This research, through the involvement of both hospital staff and the patient, brings out a holistic approach in terms of operational excellence in a critical unit such as the ED. The empirically established relationships form the benchmarking and guide for developing guidelines for designing policies for service improvements of ED practices.

Details

Business Process Management Journal, vol. 28 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1463-7154

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 3 April 2018

Ilona De Rooij and Carolien Gravesteijn

The focus of scientific research on the parental well-being has been mainly placed on parents of pre-school children. However, recent findings indicated that parents of pre-school…

Abstract

Purpose

The focus of scientific research on the parental well-being has been mainly placed on parents of pre-school children. However, recent findings indicated that parents of pre-school children show lower levels of depression and higher levels of self-efficacy and self-esteem, compared to parents of older children. The purpose of this paper is to establish to what extent the parent-adolescent relationship, coping strategies and co-parent relationship, influences the parental well-being.

Design/methodology/approach

This study was conducted to establish to what extent the parent-adolescent relationship, coping strategies and co-parent relationship, influences the parental well-being of parents in a sample of 310 Dutch parents with children aged 12-18. Participants filled out questionnaires on the parental well-being and coping. Path analysis using a structural equation model (SEM) was performed.

Findings

The SEM revealed that active problem-focused coping strategies were predictive of higher levels of parenting-related well-being. The satisfaction of the relationship with the co-parent predicted both higher levels of parenting- and individual-related well-being. Lower levels of parenting-related well-being were significantly related to more problems in the parent-adolescent relationship, which, in turn, were related to decreased individual-related well-being.

Research limitations/implications

Future studies on the influence of coping strategies and the co-parent relationship satisfaction are recommended to create greater understanding of the underlying mechanisms and their positive effect on the parental well-being.

Practical implications

This study could lead to improvements in the support system for parents raising adolescents.

Originality/value

The present study shows that the parent-child relationship is an important predictive factor in parental well-being. This study also shows that the more highly parents scored on co-parent relationship satisfaction, the less they saw parenting as a burden and the more they felt they had the parenting skills to control the behavior of their child.

Details

Health Education, vol. 118 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0965-4283

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 21 June 2023

Parvin Reisinezhad and Mostafa Fakhrahmad

Questionnaire studies of knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) are effective research in the field of health, which have many shortcomings. The purpose of this research is to…

Abstract

Purpose

Questionnaire studies of knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) are effective research in the field of health, which have many shortcomings. The purpose of this research is to propose an automatic questionnaire-free method based on deep learning techniques to address the shortcomings of common methods. Next, the aim of this research is to use the proposed method with public comments on Twitter to get the gaps in KAP of people regarding COVID-19.

Design/methodology/approach

In this paper, two models are proposed to achieve the mentioned purposes, the first one for attitude and the other for people’s knowledge and practice. First, the authors collect some tweets from Twitter and label them. After that, the authors preprocess the collected textual data. Then, the text representation vector for each tweet is extracted using BERT-BiGRU or XLNet-GRU. Finally, for the knowledge and practice problem, a multi-label classifier with 16 classes representing health guidelines is proposed. Also, for the attitude problem, a multi-class classifier with three classes (positive, negative and neutral) is proposed.

Findings

Labeling quality has a direct relationship with the performance of the final model, the authors calculated the inter-rater reliability using the Krippendorf alpha coefficient, which shows the reliability of the assessment in both problems. In the problem of knowledge and practice, 87% and in the problem of people’s attitude, 95% agreement was reached. The high agreement obtained indicates the reliability of the dataset and warrants the assessment. The proposed models in both problems were evaluated with some metrics, which shows that both proposed models perform better than the common methods. Our analyses for KAP are more efficient than questionnaire methods. Our method has solved many shortcomings of questionnaires, the most important of which is increasing the speed of evaluation, increasing the studied population and receiving reliable opinions to get accurate results.

Research limitations/implications

Our research is based on social network datasets. This data cannot provide the possibility to discover the public information of users definitively. Addressing this limitation can have a lot of complexity and little certainty, so in this research, the authors presented our final analysis independent of the public information of users.

Practical implications

Combining recurrent neural networks with methods based on the attention mechanism improves the performance of the model and solves the need for large training data. Also, using these methods is effective in the process of improving the implementation of KAP research and eliminating its shortcomings. These results can be used in other text processing tasks and cause their improvement. The results of the analysis on the attitude, practice and knowledge of people regarding the health guidelines lead to the effective planning and implementation of health decisions and interventions and required training by health institutions. The results of this research show the effective relationship between attitude, practice and knowledge. People are better at following health guidelines than being aware of COVID-19. Despite many tensions during the epidemic, most people still discuss the issue with a positive attitude.

Originality/value

To the best of our knowledge, so far, no text processing-based method has been proposed to perform KAP research. Also, our method benefits from the most valuable data of today’s era (i.e. social networks), which is the expression of people’s experiences, facts and free opinions. Therefore, our final analysis provides more realistic results.

Details

Kybernetes, vol. 52 no. 7
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0368-492X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 23 February 2010

Jaloni Pansiri and Zelealem T. Temtime

This paper aims to examine perceived critical success factors (CSFs) affecting the performance of small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) and their relationship with firm…

2732

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to examine perceived critical success factors (CSFs) affecting the performance of small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) and their relationship with firm characteristics. The paper also seeks to investigate the interdependence relationship among the perceived CSFs themselves using correlation coefficients.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper is part of a wider study that was designed to investigate the perceived critical success/failure factors (PCSFs) affecting the development of SMEs. The study is based on a review of the literature, which provided a theoretical understanding of both CSFs and firm characteristics. This theoretical linkage was then tested using primary data that were collected through a two‐page questionnaire survey of 203 SMEs randomly selected from three cities in the Republic of Botswana. Principal component analysis (PCA) with Varimax rotation was used to reduce the data. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to test the relationship between firm characteristics and perceived impacts of selected CSFs, and correlations were used to assess the relationships between the CSFs.

Findings

The study identifies ten sets of perceived CSFs affecting the performance of SMEs; statistically significant relationships between the perceived impact of selected CSFs and firm‐specific variables, indicating that the perceived impact of CSFs vary from firm to firm depending on their size, age, industry, and management profile; and statistically significant relationships among the selected CSFs themselves.

Research limitations/implications

The study relies exclusively on a questionnaire as the data collection instrument, and many respondents were unwilling to participate in the survey. Therefore, it took the authors eight months to collect 203 questionnaires. This forced the authors to make some important changes from the original research proposal.

Practical implications

SME managers and advisors should not deal with CSFs individually, but should adopt an integrated and innovative approach to deal with them collectively. This approach should consider SMEs' uniqueness, given that these CSFs are perceived differently depending on firm characteristics. The paper forwards some research and policy implications for designing SME support and promotional interventions.

Originality/value

The paper uses well‐established and researched CSFs in the SME literature. To this end, the paper's originality and value lie in the investigation of these factors in Botswana. However, the findings are applicable to most SMEs, since they continue to suffer from the same problems worldwide.

Details

Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, vol. 17 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1462-6004

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 5 August 2014

Fergus Gracey, Suzanna Watson, Meghan McHugh, Andrew Swan, Ayla Humphrey and Anna Adlam

Clinically significant childhood acquired brain injury (ABI) is associated with increased risk of emotional and behavioural dysfunction and peer relationship problems. The purpose…

Abstract

Purpose

Clinically significant childhood acquired brain injury (ABI) is associated with increased risk of emotional and behavioural dysfunction and peer relationship problems. The purpose of this paper is to determine how emotional and peer related problems for children with ABI compare with those of children referred to mental health services, and to identify clinical predictors of peer relationship problems in a heterogeneous sample typical of a specialist community rehabilitation setting.

Design/methodology/approach

Participants were 51 children with clinically significant ABI (32 traumatic brain injury; 29 male) referred for outpatient neuropsychological rehabilitation. Emotional, behavioural and social outcomes were measured using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), and executive functioning was measured with the Behaviour Rating Inventory of Executive Functions. Correlational analyses were used to explore variables associated with peer relationships. A subgroup (n=27) of children with ABI were compared to an age and sex matched mental health group to determine differences on SDQ subscales.

Findings

The SDQ profiles of children with clinically significant ABI did not significantly differ from matched children referred to mental health services. Time since injury, peer relationship problems, metacognitive, and behavioural problems correlated with age at injury. These variables and SDQ emotional problems correlated with peer relationship problems. Linear multiple regression analysis indicated that only metacognitive skills remained a significant predictor of peer relationship problems, and metacognitive skills were found to significantly mediate between age at injury and peer relationship problems.

Research limitations/implications

The study confirms the significant effect of childhood ABI on relationships with peers and mental health, those injured at a younger age faring worst. Within the methodological constraints of this study, the results tentatively suggest that age of injury influences later peer relationships via the mediating role of poor metacognitive skills within a heterogeneous clinical sample.

Originality/value

This is the first study to examine the roles of emotional, behavioural and executive variables on the effect of age at injury on peer relationship problems in a sample with a wide range of ages and ages of injury.

Details

Social Care and Neurodisability, vol. 5 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2042-0919

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 21 March 2022

Rong Zhang and Yu-Teng Chang

The purpose of this research is to explore the critical success factors of mobile animation games, by exploring the game itself, information systems, game motivation and…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this research is to explore the critical success factors of mobile animation games, by exploring the game itself, information systems, game motivation and promotional activities, as well as conducting research and analysis on mobile animation game players.

Design/methodology/approach

This research used the Analysis Hierarchy Process (AHP) method and the consistent fuzzy preference relationship for data analysis. In this study, collect 1,286 valid questionnaires through online questionnaire surveys. And comparing the two games “Legend Showdown” and “Tower of Gods and Demons”, players believe that the more successful mobile animation game is “Legend Showdown”.

Findings

Through experimental design, and the consistent fuzzy preference relationship for data analysis. The results found that the critical factors considered by the player in relation to the mobile animation game were firstly the information system, followed by promotional activities, game motivation and finally the game itself.

Research limitations/implications

Because this research does not involve the concept of fuzzy theory at all, it is easy to produce subjective, uncertain and ambiguity issues when comparing pairwise. We recommended that follow-up researchers can use fuzzy semantic preference relations to solve this problem.

Originality/value

This study proposed a new approach that takes the critical factors for the mobile animation game. According to the research results, the critical success factor of mobile animation games is the information system, as it could provide a reference direction for game manufacturers when designing or formulating marketing strategies in the future.

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