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The purpose of this paper is to examine two types of departmental interventions focused on creating healthier and more equitable academic departments as well as enhancing faculty members’ capacity for collective dialogue, goals and work. Both interventions were informed by the “dual-agenda” approach and focused on targeted academic units over a prolonged period.

This paper uses a variety of qualitative and quantitative data (including National Science Foundation (NSF) ADVANCE indicator data) to assess the potential of dual-agenda informed interventions in reducing gendered structures and gendered dynamics.

The authors outline essential components of a dual-agenda model for maximizing success in creating more gender equitable work organizations and discuss why the authors are more optimistic about the dual-agenda approaches than many past researchers have been in terms of the potential of the dual-agenda model for promoting more equal opportunities in work organizations.

Most previous dual-agenda projects referenced in the literature have been carried out in non-academic contexts. The projects examined here, however, were administered in the context of multiple academic departments at two medium-sized, public US universities. Although other NSF ADVANCE institutional transformation institutions have included extensive department-focused transformation efforts (e.g. Brown University, Purdue University and Syracuse University), the long-term benefits of these efforts are not yet fully understood; nor have systematic comparisons been made across institutions.

Supporting the advancement of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) in ways that help to ensure the health, prosperity, welfare and security of the nation has been central to the mission of the US National Science Foundation (NSF) since 1950, the year Congress created the agency. Preparing a highly qualified and diverse STEM workforce plays a central role in supporting this mission. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Over the past several decades, many positive steps have been taken throughout the US education system to help ensure a more diverse STEM workforce. Even so, women remain underrepresented among STEM faculty in higher education, especially at the upper ranks. Contributing to women’s underrepresentation are systemic obstacles to the recruitment, retention and promotion of women of different racial, ethnic, disability, sexual orientations and nationality statuses.

The NSF ADVANCE Program is designed to address these barriers. Success for ADVANCE is, therefore, best defined in terms of the changes made to the structures and climates of academic workplaces, rather than in numbers of women hired, retained or promoted in any one institution at a given point in time.

This introduction briefly examines the origins of ADVANCE, key transitions in the program over time, its reach nationally and internationally, and its future.

Research in gender and development (GAD) remains largely preoccupied with women's issues and ignores the gendered nature of masculine experience. While exposing this inconsistency in gender research, the present paper highlights the gendered nature of men, and sets an agenda for their inclusion in gender research and planning.

To engage with the issue, the paper resists an unproblematic understanding of men as a singular formation, and instead builds on cultural and historical approaches which locate masculinity within modes of production.

Instead of casting men in the problem mode and theorizing masculinity as an ahistorical universal, an attempt is made to delink men from patriarchy. For development to be truly transformative, men's issues should be addressed not just as instruments for women empowerment, but also as subjects in themselves.

The paper, at a very broad level, pleads for a need to re‐vision and “men” stream development that does not ignore women, but accommodates men as gendered subjects.

In this context, power may be seen as embedded in specific modes of production, and not inherent in patriarchy. The paper argues that development agenda should go beyond categorical thinking, include men in gender planning, and create conditions for social justice.

This paper aims to obtain the domain of the textual content generated by users of online social network (OSN) platforms. Understanding a users’ domain (s) of interest is a significant step towards addressing their domain-based trustworthiness through an accurate understanding of their content in their OSNs.

This study uses a Twitter mining approach for domain-based classification of users and their textual content. The proposed approach incorporates machine learning modules. The approach comprises two analysis phases: the time-aware semantic analysis of users’ historical content incorporating five commonly used machine learning classifiers. This framework classifies users into two main categories: politics-related and non-politics-related categories. In the second stage, the likelihood predictions obtained in the first phase will be used to predict the domain of future users’ tweets.

Experiments have been conducted to validate the mechanism proposed in the study framework, further supported by the excellent performance of the harnessed evaluation metrics. The experiments conducted verify the applicability of the framework to an effective domain-based classification for Twitter users and their content, as evident in the outstanding results of several performance evaluation metrics.

This study is limited to an on/off domain classification for content of OSNs. Hence, we have selected a politics domain because of Twitter’s popularity as an opulent source of political deliberations. Such data abundance facilitates data aggregation and improves the results of the data analysis. Furthermore, the currently implemented machine learning approaches assume that uncertainty and incompleteness do not affect the accuracy of the Twitter classification. In fact, data uncertainty and incompleteness may exist. In the future, the authors will formulate the data uncertainty and incompleteness into fuzzy numbers which can be used to address imprecise, uncertain and vague data.

This study proposes a practical framework comprising significant implications for a variety of business-related applications, such as the voice of customer/voice of market, recommendation systems, the discovery of domain-based influencers and opinion mining through tracking and simulation. In particular, the factual grasp of the domains of interest extracted at the user level or post level enhances the customer-to-business engagement. This contributes to an accurate analysis of customer reviews and opinions to improve brand loyalty, customer service, etc.

This paper fills a gap in the existing literature by presenting a consolidated framework for Twitter mining that aims to uncover the deficiency of the current state-of-the-art approaches to topic distillation and domain discovery. The overall approach is promising in the fortification of Twitter mining towards a better understanding of users’ domains of interest.

Quality improvement collaboratives (QICs) are a popular approach to improving healthcare services and patient outcomes. This paper evaluates a QIC implemented by a large, integrated healthcare organisation in Wales in the UK.

This evaluation study draws on two well-established evaluation frameworks: Kirkpatrick's approach to gather data on participant satisfaction and learning and Stake's approach to gather data and form judgements about the impact of the intervention. A mixed methods approach was taken which included documentary analysis, surveys, semi-structured interviews, and observation of the QIC programme.

Together the two frameworks provide a rounded interpretation of the extent to which the QIC intervention was fit-for-purpose. Broadly the evaluation of the QIC was positive with some areas of improvement identified.

This study is limited to a QIC conducted within one organisation. Further testing of the hybrid framework is needed that extends to different designs of QICs.

A hybrid framework is provided to assist those charged with designing and evaluating QICs.

Evaluation studies are limited on QICs and if present tend to adopt one framework. Given the complexities of undertaking quality improvement within healthcare, this study uniquely takes a hybrid approach.

In April we celebrate Pets Are Wonderful Month (PAW) to honor the companion animals that bring joy and love to their owners' lives. Humans have lived with animals as companions for thousands of years and during that time our knowledge about the animals we choose as pets has grown enormously. Recent research involving pet therapy indicates that not only do pets give us love and companionship, but they also are beneficial to our physical and mental health. Pets are used in nursing homes, prisons, and mental health institutions, with autistic children, and in many other capacities.

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether descriptions of functional coping strategies among entrepreneurs vary along temporal dimensions, from reactive or present oriented, to anticipatory or future oriented. Future-oriented coping is largely unexplored in stress and coping studies in the entrepreneurship literature, despite evidence that a future time perspective is advantageous for entrepreneurs.

This study adopts an exploratory, qualitative approach: interviews were conducted with 22 entrepreneurs and coping strategies were classified, via thematic analysis, according to function, then time orientation.

Results confirmed that entrepreneurs’ coping strategies can be classified according to conventional functional taxonomies of coping that emphasize form (affective, behavioral, cognitive) and direction (change, adapt, disengage), but additionally suggested that time orientation may be an important dimension for classifying coping strategies in the entrepreneurship context.

The findings inform the assessment of coping strategies in future research on stress, coping and strain among entrepreneurs. In particular, researchers should assess temporal dimensions of coping alongside the functional dimensions which have been emphasized in past research. Assessment of meaningful dimensions of coping is necessary to identify adaptive and maladaptive coping strategies in future research. Knowledge of adaptive coping strategies among entrepreneurs can inform coping skills interventions for stress resilience.

This study makes a unique contribution to the emergent body of literature on stress and coping among entrepreneurs by utilizing both functional and temporal coping taxonomies to identify relevant dimensions of coping for study in this context.

In this study, we question: how do the social costs of failure interact with gendered institutions to affect the early stage entrepreneurship activity? We address this question by employing the institutional theory and a unique dataset of 286,989 entrepreneurs across 35 countries.

To test our hypotheses, we use a multilevel modeling analysis that nests individual entrepreneurs within the countries. To capture individual and country-level variables, we constructed a unique dataset that combines data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), European Flash Barometer (EUFB), World Bank Development Indicator (WDI), World Bank Doing Business Report (WBDB) and World Economic Forum (WEF).

Our analysis confirms that higher levels of the country-level gender equality positively correlate with the early-stage entrepreneurship activity of women. Moreover, we find that this positive relationship is amplified in institutional environments with high social costs of failure, suggesting that societal intolerance for failure can exacerbate the negative effect of gender inequality on the participation of women in entrepreneurship.

Our research contributes to academic interest on the role of legitimacy in women entrepreneurship and is of particular interest to international business scholars, seeking a better understanding of multidimensional construction of institutional frameworks across countries. In this study, we set out to address an important research question: how do the social costs of failure interact with gendered institutions to affect entrepreneurship activity? Our study provides a comprehensive portrait of gendered institutions by including the framework conditions of education, healthcare and political power. We found that in societies with gender equality, the likelihood of individuals engaging in the early-stage entrepreneurship activity is higher and that the positive relationship is strengthened in national environments with high social costs of failure.

Our study findings underscore the need for government policies addressing global gender gaps in economic empowerment. In particular, policies assisting women in obtaining education in high-growth industries like information technology or providing funding to women-dominated industries may foster activity for women seeking to do business in such industries. Such policies connect the early-stage entrepreneurship activities with gender equality concerns and initiatives.

Regarding the social costs of failure construct, specifically, prior studies generally focus narrowly on the context of failed entrepreneurs. We cast a wider net on men and women entrepreneurs’ entry decisions (irrespective of prior experience with business failure) and provide new views on the effects of social costs of failure on entrepreneurial ecosystems. We also extend the research on the legitimacy of women as entrepreneurs with the gender equality construct.

Unlike previous studies, which often focus on the “3Ms” of market, money and management, our research adopts a more holistic perspective. We recognize that the opportunities and challenges faced by entrepreneurs are shaped not only by individual skills and resources but also by the broader macroenvironment. By incorporating the framework conditions of education, healthcare and political power, alongside the intricate interplay of social costs and norms, our study paints a comprehensive picture of the landscape of female entrepreneurship.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Term. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

The following classified, annotated list of titles is intended to provide reference librarians with a current checklist of new reference books, and is designed to supplement the RSR review column, “Recent Reference Books,” by Frances Neel Cheney. “Reference Books in Print” includes all additional books received prior to the inclusion deadline established for this issue. Appearance in this column does not preclude a later review in RSR. Publishers are urged to send a copy of all new reference books directly to RSR as soon as published, for immediate listing in “Reference Books in Print.” Reference books with imprints older than two years will not be included (with the exception of current reprints or older books newly acquired for distribution by another publisher). The column shall also occasionally include library science or other library related publications of other than a reference character.