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The article aims to address two questions: “What are the important extrinsic variables in consumer food studies?” and “Which are focused on the most?”

An extensive search of previous literature was conducted to find data on papers related to extrinsic variables in food studies. Both an electronics search through computerized library databases (Web of Science, Food Science and Technology Abstract), and reference lists from relevant research papers were used.

The article finds that acceptance and intention to purchase measures regarding foods are associated with consumption and purchase process and are used as an indirect way of obtaining data to understand consumer behavior. Although the importance of intrinsic variables such as color, aroma, flavor and texture in food acceptance and choice are very well recognized, several studies have shown that other variables also play an important role in food acceptance, preference, choice and intention to purchase. This article presents the more studied extrinsic variables using the conjoint analysis and repertory grid methods.

This article shows data only on repertory grid and conjoint analysis. There are other methodologies such as focus group, laddering interviews and questionnaires that can be used to investigate the role of extrinsic variables on consumer attitude.

Context variables are the most studied extrinsic variables. Production method, nutritional information, protected denomination of origin/certification and origin are some of these variables and are directly linked with consumer concerns about the product. The authors believe that the change in consumer behavior globally drives the search for motives that better explain choices.

The “Colleague Review of Teaching” programme (CRT) aimed to enhance reviewees’ confidence to teach. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Case studies using mixed-method, interview and questionnaire, repeated measures intervention were employed whereby academics in an Australian university science faculty volunteered to participate in a multi-faceted teaching review programme. Underpinned by confidence and self-determination theory, the CRT included peer coach training, reviewee choice, and a strengths-based approach to peer reviewing and coaching colleagues.

The reviewees declared an enhanced confidence to teach, teaching skills and unit design knowledge in an environment that was supportive of psychological needs. The peer coaches reported the CRT to be a positive experience that should continue. The strengths-based approach to peer observation of teaching and peer coaching facilitated department collegiality and was positively received by all participants who completed the programme.

The indifferent response to the CRT protocol completion reconfirms that peer review is a complex science and needs careful negotiation.

Review, peer coach and mentor training, review practice, choice protocols and the multi-faceted approach (pre-observation meeting, observations, written report and post-observation meeting) were positively received.

This paper provides rich insight into the experiences of a teaching review process.

Higher education is uncertain which sustainability-related education targets should be sought and monitored. Accepting that something needs to be measurable to be systematically improved, the authors explored how measures relate to potential targets. This paper aims to focus on dispositions to think critically (active open-minded thinking and fair-minded thinking in appraising reasoning) as measures and explored how they related to sustainability concern as an indicative educational target.

This research included the development and testing of research instruments (scales) that explored dispositions to critical thinking and sustainability concern. Authors researched these instruments within their own correspondence groups and tested them with university students and staff in Pakistan, the USA, Austria, India and New Zealand. The authors also asked a range of contextualising questions.

Respondents’ disposition to aspects of active, open-minded thinking and fair-minded thinking do predict their concern about facets of sustainability but their strength of religious belief was an important factor in these relationships and in their measurement.

This research demonstrates the complexity of monitoring dispositions to think critically and sustainability concern in educational systems, particularly in circumstances where the roles of religious beliefs are of interest; and suggests ways to address this complexity.

This research integrates and expands discourses on ESD and on critical thinking in diverse disciplines and cultures. It investigates measurement approaches and targets that could help higher education institutions to educate for sustainable development and to monitor their progress, in ways that are compatible with their culture and values.

This paper reports results of analyses made at an all-female Gulf Arab university measuring the nature and extent of biases in students' evaluation of faculty. Comparisons are made with research reporting the nature of similar relationships in North America. Two issues are investigated: 1) What variables (if any) bias faculty evaluation results at an all-female Arab university? 2) Are biasing variables different in nature or magnitude to those reported at North America universities? Using the population of 13,300 faculty evaluation records collected over two school years at Zayed University, correlations of faculty evaluation results to nine potentially biasing factors are made. Results show biases to faculty evaluation results do exist. However, biases are small, and strikingly similar in nature to those reported at North American universities.

The purpose of this paper is to synthesise current literature on the conceptualisation of rigour within qualitative studies and to identify factors which contribute to the enhancement of rigour for the practical implementation of qualitative research.

This paper presents an interpretivist stance in line with a qualitative approach to research. A systematic review method was adopted to provide a structured and rigorous selection of relevant literature. Data was analysed using a thematic synthesis method, as outlined by Thomas and Harden (2008).

The results of the thematic synthesis identified seven descriptive themes in the literature: conceptualising rigour, conceptualising truth and value in knowledge generation, participant trust and communication of truth, rigour in research design and implementation, subjectivity, reflexivity and researcher identity, reader confidence and transparency and strategies for enhancing rigour. These descriptive themes were further developed into three analytical themes: ethical co-construction, methodological alignment and multi-perspective interpretation.

This paper presents an interdisciplinary exploration of the concept of rigour in qualitative research. The themes identified are applicable across fields and provide an original application of thematic synthesis.

The purpose of this paper is to build on the foundational theories of personality and motivation to explore the role of competitiveness and of ethnicity in relation to student academic performance. Survey data from 328 students across four sites (Australia, Denmark, Hong Kong and Korea) provided self-rated responses to items measuring personality, motivation, competitiveness and ethnicity.

Stepwise multiple regression was used to identify the variables that predicated student academic performance, including testing for interaction effect of ethnicity. Both student self-reported data and independently assessed performance measures were used to avoid common method variance.

This study affirmed that both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are significantly associated with academic performance. The personality traits of conscientiousness, agreeableness, extraversion and neuroticism are significantly associated with a student’s competitiveness. The interaction of competitiveness and ethnicity is significantly and positively associated with performance.

The variable of student competitiveness requires further research to better understand its role in academic performance. Researching ethnicity at the micro level allows the acknowledgement and investigation of “intra-national diversity” (Tung, 2008; Tung and Baumann, 2009).

This study is original in its approach in that it combines the concepts of motivation, personality, competitiveness and ethnicity in relation to student academic performance. While previous studies have explored these concepts individually and often at the macro level, a crucial contribution of this study is that competitiveness and ethnicity (as opposed to national culture) are examined at a micro level. The authors demonstrate the combined importance of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation (carrot and stick) in driving performance and introduce the new motivation, competitiveness and performance model which recognises that competitiveness, as a driver of performance, is moderated by the learners’ ethnicity.

This paper is the first of two linked articles that explores a shared learning approach to developing a module on collaborative working for graduate primary care mental health workers (PCMHWs). The article describes how the policy context shaped the training agenda and how the requirements of the roles and responsibilities in respect of collaborative practice were mapped against the Ten Essential Capabilities of the mental health workforce. The process of constructive alignment (Biggs, 1999) that involves matching teaching and assessment methods to intended learning objectives was used alongside evidence from the research literature on systems working and interprofessional education to inform the design of the modular curriculum in more detail.The second paper will provide an in‐depth evaluation of the module as it was delivered using a framework derived from the academic literature (See Bailey & Littlechild, 2001 and Barr et al, 1999a; 1999b). Included in the evaluation will be a discussion of how the context of workforce change in primary care mental health influenced the training inputs together with a reflection on the training methodologies employed to promote collaborative practice. Different levels of evaluating the training will be discussed including the impact of the module on practice outcomes such as attitudes of the workers and changes in their practice. The lessons learned from the evaluation will be discussed in relation to the models of best practice emerging from the IPE literature and the challenges of implementing a new workforce strategy in primary care mental health.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the effects of the Iranian Hospital Accreditation Program (IHAP) on hospital processes from the viewpoint of the staff charged with establishing the program.

This qualitative study is based on the data collected in semi-structured interviews conducted in 2016, which involved eight questions. Interviews were held with 70 staff members at 14 hospitals. Managerial staff were purposively interviewed based on their familiarity and involvement with the program. The hospitals were divided into five groups, comprising public, private, charity, military and social service hospitals. A thematic analysis was carried out using the collected data.

Three themes emerged from the data, which together comprise a process management cycle: the establishment, implementation, and control phases of the program. For each phase, various positive trends, as well as hurdles for establishing the program, declared which were framed two sub-themes as positive effects and challenges.

The findings contribute to the body of evidence used by policy-makers and hospital managers to improve the change management processes related to the Iranian IHAP. Although positive changes in the process management cycles at Iranian hospitals were noted, successful implementation of the program demands a thorough assessment of the hospitals’ technical and financial needs (taking into account disparities between hospitals), and there is an urgent requirement for a plan to meet these needs.

In the higher education sector, the evaluation of learning and teaching projects is assuming a role as a quality and accountability indicator. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how learning and teaching project evaluation is approached and critiques alignment between evaluation theory and practice.

The emergent realism paradigm provides the theoretical framework with a pragmatic approach to mixed-methods data collection. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the transcripts of interviews with 15 project leaders.

Four key themes on project evaluation emerged: how evaluation is conceptualized, particularly the overlap, even conflation, between evaluation and research; capability building within the sector; resourcing in terms of time and money; and the role of an action-oriented approach to evaluation. The authors conclude that misalignment exists between evaluation theory and the practice of project evaluation and that this relationship can be further inhibited by a project leader’s perception of evaluation.

A series of strategies for developing capacity across the higher education sector for project evaluation are presented. These include the development and provision of: a time allocation for evaluation in future and ongoing project plans with procedures to revisit the project and assess impact; models of how to incorporate evaluation into the research cycle; constructive feedback on evaluation reports from the university funding body; and networking opportunities to disseminate learnings from project evaluations.

This study focusses on the under-researched area of evaluation of learning and teaching projects in higher education, providing research-based evidence for strategies to develop sector capacity.

This conceptual piece presents a framework to aid libraries in gaining a more thorough and holistic understanding of their users and services. Through a presentation of the history of library evaluation, a multidimensional matrix of measures is developed that demonstrates the relationship between the topics and perspectives of measurement. These measurements are then combined through evaluation criteria, and then different participants in the library system view those criteria for decision making. By implementing this framework for holistic measurement and cumulative evaluation, library evaluators can gain a more holistic knowledge of the library system and library administrators can be better informed for their decision‐making processes.