Search results

As the beliefs people hold exert more influence over their behaviour than any other single factor, the purpose of this paper is to elicit those held by service users about being cared for in acute mental health settings.

Data were collected by means of a semi‐structured, non‐standardised, 17‐item interview schedule from an opportunistic sample of 44 respondents (18 men and 26 women) following their admission over a nine‐month period.

Findings suggest that those admitted to acute care settings harbour very different beliefs about what to expect, what is being offered and how it will affect them. While some respondents saw admission as an event simply to be endured, others saw it as a means of gaining relief, accessing better care and treatment as well as providing respite for their families. Whereas previous knowledge and experience of acute care did influence their beliefs, this was largely due to how they interpreted experiences rather than the experiences themselves. The data also suggest that service users can be assisted to reframe their beliefs by means of genuine, consistent and empathic relationships, thus putting services users in a position to derive maximum benefit from being admitted.

Relatively little attention has been paid to the beliefs that service users have on entry to mental health services, in comparison to that paid to problem‐identification, care planning and intervention regimens. A starting point for any health care intervention, especially mental health care, should be the identification of the beliefs held by those about to embark on treatment programmes. This area deserves much more attention than it has been given hitherto.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent to which inpatient mental health services attend to the religious needs of service-users. Literature is presented to argue that whilst the importance of religion is highlighted in consumer accounts, research and policy; inpatient services continue to neglect religion and service-users consistently report insufficient attention to religious needs during hospitalisation.

This review adopts a narrative approach to the literature, drawing upon published journal articles, book chapters and policy documentation.

Literature into the topic area is reviewed and discussed within three themes. First, the extent to which religious needs are currently met is explored. Second, potential reasons for neglect of religion are considered. Finally, examples of religiously informed group programmes, individual psychotherapy and the use of traditional healers are detailed.

Findings of the review point towards the requirement for inpatient services to more adequately meet religious needs in terms of available facilities. The need for spiritual assessment and collaboration with hospital chaplains is also highlighted, along with the call for increased staff training.

It is expected that this review will be of interest to a range of stakeholders including professionals, policy makers and service users. It highlights the void in clinical attention to religious needs and offers practical suggestions for meeting this need.

The purpose of this study is to integrate network externality and service quality as antecedents to the synthesis of expectation–confirmation model (ECM) and perceived ease of use (PEOU) in explaining customers’ continuance intention of internet-based sharing economy service platforms.

Sample data for this study were collected from students enrolled in a comprehensive university in Taipei, Taiwan. A total of 600 questionnaires were distributed in various campus locations, and 510 usable questionnaires were analyzed in this study, with a usable response rate of 85.0%. Collected data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The primary findings are as follows. First, service enablers’ online service quality positively affected customers’ perceived usefulness (PU), confirmation and PEOU of internet-based sharing economy service platforms, which directly or indirectly explained customers’ satisfaction and continuance intention of the platforms. Next, service providers’ offline service quality positively influenced customers’ PU of internet-based sharing economy service platforms, which in turn caused customers’ satisfaction and continuance intention of the platforms. Finally, network externality from customers’ side and service providers’ side all positively affected customers’ PU of internet-based sharing economy service platforms, which in turn led to customers’ continuance intention of the platforms.

First, this study contributes to the identification of network externality and service quality that may reveal deep insights to the understanding of customers’ continuance intention of internet-based sharing economy service platforms greatly driven by their confirmation of expectations and satisfaction with the platforms. Next, the empirical evidence on capturing ECM and PEOU for completely explaining the antecedents of customers’ continuance intention of internet-based sharing economy service platforms is well documented. Hence, this study’s findings have significantly shed light on the possible formulation of a richer post-adoption model.

The purpose of this paper is to report on an action research programme in the UK to address this through the notion of religious literacy.

Drawing on original research and analysis in UK higher education settings, the article will argue that health and social care educators, policy makers and practitioners need to develop their religious literacy in order to engage fully and competently with the religion and belief identities of their service users in a religiously diverse and complex world.

The relationship between religion and belief on the one hand and health and social care practice has been scarcely addressed, despite the important work of Furness and Gilligan in the UK and Canada in the USA. Their work appears as exceptional within a wider context of professions which have been forged in a predominantly secular milieu, despite having their roots in Christian social services in the USA, Canada and the UK. New research in the sociology of religion shows that religion and belief themselves vary in form, number and mix around the world, and that the religious landscape itself has changed enormously in the period during which secular social work has been changing significantly in recent years. It has been observed that in the UK secular assumptions reached a peak of confidence in the 1960s, when social work was most rapidly consolidating as a public profession (Dinham 2015). The inheritance has been generations of health and social care practitioners and educators who are ill-equipped to address the religion and belief identities which they encounter. In recent years this has become a pressing issue as societies across the West come to terms with the persistent – and in some ways growing – presence of religion or belief, against the expectations of secularism. In total, 84 per cent of the global population declares a religious affiliation (Pew, 2012); globalisation and migration put us all in to daily encounter with religious plurality as citizens, neighbours, service users and professionals; and internationally, mixed economies of welfare increasingly involve faith groups in service provision, including in social work and welfare settings across Europe and North America. Yet the twentieth century – the secular century – leaves behind a lamentable quality of conversation about religion and belief. Public professionals find themselves precarious on the subject, and largely unable to engage systematically and informedly with religion and belief as they encounter them.

Religion and belief have been bracketed off in education in departments of Theology and Religious Studies. Social work education has largely neglected them, and professional standards, benchmarks, values and toolkits, have tended to use proxies for religion and belief, such as “spirituality”, which are often ill-defined and vague. In a context of the reemergence of public faith, and a widespread acknowledgement that religion and belief did not go away after all, health and social care face the pressing challenge of engaging skilfully. This article draws on an action research programme in the UK to address this through the notion of religious literacy. Reflecting on original research and analysis in UK higher education settings, the article will argue that health and social care educators, policy makers and practitioners need to develop their religious literacy in order to engage fully and competently with the religion and belief identities of their service users in a religiously diverse and complex world.

Evidence-based psychological therapies are available for severe and enduring mental health problems, but resources and access to these are limited within England. Practitioners in community mental health teams (CMHTs) can act as gatekeepers for access to psychological therapies for those in secondary care, but little is known about how they make referral decisions. This paper aims to understand how CMHT practitioners make decisions about who to refer or not, to secondary care psychological therapy services (PTS).

A total of 11 CMHT practitioners were interviewed to understand the decision making processes underpinning their referrals or otherwise, to a PTS within NHS England. The data were analysed qualitatively using thematic analysis.

Thematic analysis resulted in 11 sub-themes under three main themes of the self, the organisation and wider structure and the service user. Results indicated that some participants were referred automatically for psychological therapy if a service user asked or if there was external pressure to refer, while others’ decisions were informed by contextual information such as the service user’s ability to engage or change, risk status and limited organisational resources.

This study explores the decision making of multi-disciplinary professionals referring to PTS. The findings have important implications for understanding some of the factors that can influence patient access to psychological treatment in secondary care.

The purpose of this paper is to understand users' acceptance of service robots by integrating perceived enjoyment of service robots and users' need to belong in a technology acceptance model (TAM) framework. Service robots are currently being used in homes and firms to provide various services.

The authors conducted a web‐based survey from 904 users in South Korea to test a research model and employed structural equation modelling as the analysis method.

This study found that perceived enjoyment and the need to belong played an important role in the perceived ease of use and usefulness of service robots. Furthermore, it was discovered that the research supported relationships proposed by the original TAM with regard to users' attitudes and intentions to use service robots. Therefore, this study provides a framework to understand users' acceptance of service robots.

This paper is of value to researchers designing and improving service robots for use in our society.

The purpose of this paper is to improve the understanding of cloud service users’ privacy concerns, which are anticipated to considerably hinder cloud service market growth. The researchers have explored privacy concerns from dimensions that were identified as relevant in the cloud context.

Content analysis was used to identify privacy problems that were most often raised in previous cloud research. Multidimensional developmental theory (MDT) was used to build a conceptual model of cloud privacy concerns. Literature review was made to identify the privacy-related constructs used to measure privacy concerns in previous cloud research.

The paper provides systematization of recent cloud privacy research, proposal of a conceptual model of cloud privacy concerns, identification of measuring instruments that were used to measure privacy concerns in previous cloud research and identification of categories of problems that need to be addressed in future cloud research.

This paper has identified the categories of privacy problems and dimensions that have not yet been measured in the cloud context, to the best of the authors’ knowledge. Their simultaneous examination could clarify the effects of different dimensions on the privacy concerns of cloud users. The conceptual model of cloud privacy concerns will allow cloud service providers to focus on key cloud problems affecting users’ privacy concerns and use the most appropriate privacy protection communication and preservation approaches.

The notion of mental health service user involvement in curriculum design and delivery has become commonplace over recent years. However, concern has been expressed that the rhetoric has not matched the reality. In particular, service user involvement has tended towards either tokenism or over‐sensitivity to the point of near inertia. By contrast, this paper describes a project that took a pragmatic approach and was designed to make involvement in curriculum planning, design and delivery meaningful and worthwhile for service users, students and educators alike. The paper has two principal objectives. In the first instance, it outlines the strategy for involvement that was used to inform curriculum design and delivery at the University of Abertay Dundee. This was grounded in the academic literature. Second, it provides an evaluation of this strategy based on practical experience and identifies some of the difficulties that must be overcome to work in a collaborative manner. In so doing, it examines some of the common concerns of educational staff, service users and students in relation to service user involvement. In conclusion, we provide recommendations for educators seeking to involve mental health service users in a meaningful manner in both the design of training programmes for mental health workers, and in their delivery.

This study aims to explore how cultural beliefs and traditions are integral to understanding indigenous mental health conditions (MHCs) and traditional healing (TH). However, Nigerian cultural beliefs about MHCs and TH are under-researched.

This study adopted a qualitative design using critical realist and social constructionist perspectives to explore Nigerian mental health-care practitioners (MHCPs) and lay participants’ (LPs) views regarding MHCs and TH. Purposive and snowball sampling techniques were used to select 53 participants (MHCPs = 26; LPs = 27; male = 32; female = 21) in four Nigerian cities (Ado-Ekiti, Enugu, Jos and Zaria). Data were collected using semi-structured interviews and analysed through thematic analyses.

The data sets revealed three overarching themes, namely, existing cultural beliefs about MHCs as spiritual curse; description of TH as the first treatment modality for MHCs; and perceived stigma associated with MHCs and help-seeking behaviours.

A study on Nigerian cultural beliefs and TH contributes meaningfully to mental health systems. Future research and policy initiatives could explore ways of optimising TH practices and community awareness programmes to increase access to mental health care in Nigeria.

Smart city services (SCS) in contrast with other technology-based services, demand significant interaction and collaboration between the users and the service providers. This study examines the SCS delivery-channel characteristics and the users' personal (behavioral and demographic) characteristics that influence their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the services, as well as their intention to adopt (i.e. continue using) the SCS-delivery channels.

A quantitative study using a structured questionnaire was conducted for this paper. The data-collection method was administered by emailing the survey to a list of 2,350 city/urban residents who are members of the two largest universities in the greater Dubai metropolis. A total of 600 completed responses (26 percent) were received back, while 580 useable responses (25 percent) were analyzed for this paper.

Our initial findings suggest that contrary to popular belief, it is not only SCS channel factors that influence user satisfaction and continuance intention. SCS users' personal characteristics (such as their user innovativeness and control-seeking behavior) are also pivotal in determining their satisfaction and intention to continue or not continue using the SCS-delivery channels.

The paper argues that both SCS channel factors and SCS users' personal characteristics jointly influence the users' experience of the services and therefore jointly determine their satisfaction with the service as well as their SCS usage continuance intention. The result of our research gives important insights into users' behaviors toward the emerging SCS channels in general, and it will be of great value to architects and designers of Smart City technologies around the world.

The paper argues that both SCS channel factors and SCS users' personal (behavioral and demographic) characteristics jointly influence the users' trials of the services, and therefore jointly determine their satisfaction with the service as well as their SCS usage continuance intention. The result of our research gives important insights into users' behavioral intentions toward the emerging SCS channels in general; and it will be of great value to architects and designers of Smart City technologies around the world.

This paper is one of the first few studies focused on investigating the antecedents of SCS usage behaviors in the Middle Eastern region.