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The disparities of COVID-19 vaccination rates between the rural and urban areas have become apparent during this pandemic. There is a need to understand the root causes of vaccine hesitancy demonstrated by the rural population to increase coverage and to contain the disease spread throughout the United States. This study aimed to explore other factors influencing vaccine hesitancy among rural dwellers besides the geography-related barriers such as poor health care access and individuals having no or suboptimal insurance coverage.

By reviewing existing data and literature about vaccination, health literacy, and behaviors, and prevailing ideologies, we discuss the potential causes of vaccine hesitancy in rural areas that could create barriers for successful public health efforts related to vaccine coverage and provide suggestions to ameliorate the situation.

Geography-related barriers, health literacy, and preconceived notions are key determinants of adopting healthy behaviors and complying with public health authorities' recommendations among rural individuals during a public-health crisis. We argue that ideology, which is much deeper than preconception or misconception on vaccination, should be incorporated as a key factor to redefine the term “vulnerable populations” in public health research.

The limitation of our study is that we have not found an effective way to encourage the populations who hold conservative religious and political ideologies to join the efforts for public health. Even though geography-related barriers may strongly impact the rural dwellers in achieving optimal health, the various forms of ideologies they have toward certain health behaviors cannot be discounted to understand and address vaccine-related disparities in rural areas. There is a need to redefine the term “vulnerable population” particularly as it relates to rural areas in the United States. During large-scale public health disasters, scholars and public health authorities should consider the ideologies of individuals, in addition to other factors such as race/ethnicity, area of residence (rural vs. urban), and socioeconomic factors influencing the existing vulnerabilities and health disparities.

It is common to identify democracy with a form of organization of national states and to study democratization primarily at the national level. But in the early twenty-first century, questions are being raised about a variety of geographic scales, from transnational and global processes to sites much smaller than national states. We describe here a program of research into the relationship of local struggles for democracy and national processes in Spain over an extended period of time. Apart from its well-known democratic transition beginning in the mid-1970s Spain has not garnered much attention from students of democratization and within Spain rural Andalusia has not seemed in the forefront of democratization at any time. We are assembling data on local social movements and local political life for two contrasting small Andalusian towns and their surrounding countryside. Preliminary results suggest that these apparently unlikely places have been sites of significant movements for democracy and that there is much to learn about the history of democracy generally from the study of such sites. We describe here the kinds of data we have been assembling and present a few preliminary results.

On the occasion of the publication of the 20th volume of the Advances in Gender Research series, this chapter reviews the series goals and previous volumes and introduces the themes and chapters of the current one.

The chapter shows both continuity and change in approaches to theories, research methods, pedagogy, and praxis in gender studies.

Newer approaches, gender-centered, intersectional and global, offer a critique of older ways of gathering and understanding data, ways that respond to and are impacted by social change.

The chapter and the volume are intended to encourage further advances in gender research.

Purpose – One-third of the world's population is infected with tuberculosis (TB) and there are two million TB-related deaths worldwide every year. Along the U.S.-Mexico border, migration patterns, and reduced access to health care contribute to high rates of TB. Delayed diagnosis of TB, the focus of this chapter, increases the likelihood that a patient will progress to more advanced stages of the disease and heightens the risk of TB transmission to others as patients are contagious for longer periods of time.

Approach – Despite the seriousness of these consequences, few sociological studies have examined delayed diagnosis of TB and why people affected by TB symptoms delay care. Because of this, we take a health narratives approach to understanding the experiences of 15 TB patients of Mexican descent in a high-risk border community (e.g., El Paso, Texas) in order to discover why delayed diagnoses happen and how they impact patients.

Findings – Fourteen of the fifteen patients experienced delayed diagnosis. Analysis of these fourteen narratives revealed two broad themes: (1) provider lack of awareness, including repeated misdiagnosis and TB test errors, and (2) patient disadvantage, including fear of U.S. immigration authorities and few economic resources for care.

Implications – Findings from this study suggest that prompt diagnosis of TB could be achieved if providers were more cognizant of TB and its symptoms and public health policies increased access to health care regardless of immigration status or socioeconomic status.

This paper aims to explore the requirements of organizational knowledge management initiatives using requirements engineering techniques, identifying the optimal techniques configuration and serving as a management tool for knowledge engineers.

The method is selection attributes. Knowledge management enablers are characterized and mapped with the coverage capabilities of requirements engineering techniques, using the attributes of the elicited object and a box-plot analysis. The information is gathered from 280 references, 32 companies and 16 experts in requirements engineering.

Requirements of organizational knowledge management initiatives are got optimally by combining interviews, use cases, scenarios, laddering and focus group techniques. The requirements of structure and processes are more complex to identify, while culture requirements are the best covered.

Knowledge management enablers are analyzed according to the current studies and comprehension of engineering techniques.

Knowledge engineers need to consider the coverage capabilities of engineering techniques to design an optimal requirement identification and meet the objectives of organizational knowledge acquisition initiatives. Requirement engineers can improve the requirements identification by a staged selection process.

The requirements of knowledge management initiatives that impact the community can be identified and traced to ensure the knowledge objectives. Requirements related to culture and people, like shared values, beliefs, and behaviors, are also considered.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study about formal requirement identification of knowledge management initiatives in the organizational context, providing the optimal configuration. A novel staged process is proposed for requirements engineering techniques selection, analyzing the enablers at component level and identifying the attributes associated with the elicited object.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the survival of university spin-offs (USOs) in Spain. First, the survival rates of USOs are compared with those of a group of similar firms. Second, the firm-specific characteristics of surviving USOs are compared with those of failed USOs.

The study is based on two subsamples consisting of 469 USOs and 469 non-USOs. A matching procedure is used for identifying a valid control group that allows for an outcome comparison between USOs and non-USOs. A longitudinal data set (2000-2010) is constructed, combining data regarding firm-specific characteristics and patent activity. The survival rates of both USOs and non-USOs are described first, and then, the firm-specific characteristics of the surviving USOs are discussed and compared with those of the failed USOs.

The authors find that the survival rates of the USOs are slightly lower than those of the non-USOs. In addition, the failed USOs have a longer average life span than the failed non-USOs. Finally, the data show that the surviving USOs are more likely to have venture capital investors, exports and patents than the failed USOs.

This study carries out an explanatory analysis of the survival of Spanish USOs. As the results showed no significant differences between the characteristics of the surviving USOs and those that failed, except for subtle differences in the profiles of the two groups, it is necessary to analyse the underlying causes of this situation.

In many countries, large amounts of public funds have been invested in the creation of USOs. This policy only makes sense if these firms increase the business value and create jobs. The support of USOs with a low expectation of survival or economic viability opens a debate on the amount of public funds invested in these firms. In the current context, funding obtained by these companies could be considered to drain resources from those projects that really deserve to be targeted.

The creation of USOs has become a mainstay of universities’ entrepreneurship strategies. Analysing USOs’ survival is therefore crucial for understanding the contribution of entrepreneurial universities to society. Survival is not another measure of this performance, but it is a pre-condition for university-based entrepreneurship to have an effect on society.

The purpose of this article was to identify factors impacting burnout, resilience and quality of life in rural career firefighters. In addition, sources of stress and the impact of generational differences were explored.

An exploratory cross-sectional survey was conducted at a rural career fire department.

The findings of the project indicate that the firefighters had high levels of compassion satisfaction (CS) and relatively low levels of secondary traumatic stress and burnout; displayed moderate to high psychological resilience and the majority felt moderate to high organizational support, but there was a noticeable minority who did not feel supported by the department. Findings indicate that organizational support is significantly related to both burnout and resilience. The majority of the men (88.3%) reported moderate to high risk for alcohol-related problems and over three-quarters (78.6%) reported binge drinking behavior in the past year. Qualitative findings highlight generational differences and chain of command challenges as primary stressors.

This is a unique study in that it focuses on a rural career department. What was found were issues similar to those facing urban career fire departments.