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The widespread deployment of telehealth (TH) has been conducted in the absence of any clear understanding of how acceptable these devices are to patients. One potential limitation of the widespread deployment of TH is that patients may refuse. Moreover an understanding of the reasons for refusing to use TH devices will provide an understanding of the barriers.

This investigation from the Whole Systems Demonstrator (WSD) programme, a pragmatic cluster randomised controlled trial into the effectiveness of TH, examined reasons for patients in the intervention cohort of the trial refusing TH, and the potential barriers to its deployment.

Active rejection of the TH intervention was the most frequent reason for withdrawal. After examination of trial-related, health, socio-demographic, cognitive, emotional and behavioural factors, patients diagnosed with diabetes, as opposed to heart failure or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and patients’ beliefs about the acceptability of the intervention predicted whether or not they withdrew from the trial because of the intervention.

Beliefs that the TH intervention resulted in increased accessibility to care, satisfaction with equipment and fewer concerns about the privacy, safety and discomfort associated with using TH equipment predicted continued participation in the WSD trial. Findings suggest that potentially modifiable beliefs about TH predict those more likely to reject the intervention. These findings have important implications for understanding individual differences in the acceptance of TH and subsequent success in mainstreaming TH in healthcare services.

Prior accounting research views impression management predominantly though the lens of economics. Drawing on social psychology research, this paper seeks to provide a complementary perspective on corporate annual narrative reporting as characterised by conditions of “ex post accountability”. These give rise to impression management resulting from the managerial anticipation of the feedback effects of information and/or to managerial sense‐making by means of the retrospective framing of organisational outcomes.

A content analysis approach pioneered by psychology research is used, which is based on the psychological dimension of word use, to investigate the chairmen's statements of 93 UK listed companies.

Results suggest that firms do not use chairmen's statements to create an impression at variance with an overall reading of the annual report. It was found that negative organisational outcomes prompt managers to engage in retrospective sense‐making, rather than to present a public image of organisational performance inconsistent with the view internally held by management (self‐presentational dissimulation). Further, managers of large firms use chairmen's statements to portray an accurate (i.e. consistent with an overall reading of the annual report), albeit favourable, image of the firm and of organisational outcomes (i.e. impression management by means of enhancement).

The approach makes it possible to investigate three complementary scenarios of managerial corporate annual reporting behaviour: self‐presentational dissimulation, impression management by means of enhancement, and retrospective sense‐making.

Using data from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study, this study examines the structural relationships between negative school social relationships, school safety, educational expectation, and academic achievement of Latino immigrant students. Results from multilevel structural equation modeling show that discrimination, unhelpful school social relationships, and experiences of unsafe school environments influence Latino immigrant adolescents’ academic achievement indirectly and directly through their educational expectations. Specifically, this study explores how noncognitive and contextual factors embedded in different structural layers of school organization influence Latino immigrant adolescents’ academic achievement. It draws attention to the impact of negative school factors such as discriminatory and unsupportive school social relationships, and negative and unsafe school structures that undermine school life. Based on our findings, we argue that as Latino immigrant students internalize negative experiences from their school experiences during the critical period of adolescence, such accumulated negative internalization may reinforce negative self-perceptions and inaccurate stereotypes. Not only discrimination but also other negative school features such as the absence of academic supporters, nonacademically oriented friends, and unsafe learning environments inhibit them from navigating positive school opportunities and ultimately, successful school achievement. Implications for the social organization of U.S. public secondary schools with a focus on Latino immigrant adolescents’ academic achievement are discussed.

Information and communications technology (ICT) offers enormous opportunities for individuals, businesses and society. The application of ICT is equally important to economic and non-economic activities. Researchers have increasingly focused on the adoption and use of ICT by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as the economic development of a country is largely dependent on them. Following the success of ICT utilisation in SMEs in developed countries, many developing countries are looking to utilise the potential of the technology to develop SMEs. Past studies have shown that the contribution of ICT to the performance of SMEs is not clear and certain. Thus, it is crucial to determine the effectiveness of ICT in generating firm performance since this has implications for SMEs’ expenditure on the technology. This research examines the diffusion of ICT among SMEs with respect to the typical stages from innovation adoption to post-adoption, by analysing the actual usage of ICT and value creation. The mediating effects of integration and utilisation on SME performance are also studied. Grounded in the innovation diffusion literature, institutional theory and resource-based theory, this study has developed a comprehensive integrated research model focused on the research objectives. Following a positivist research paradigm, this study employs a mixed-method research approach. A preliminary conceptual framework is developed through an extensive literature review and is refined by results from an in-depth field study. During the field study, a total of 11 SME owners or decision-makers were interviewed. The recorded interviews were transcribed and analysed using NVivo 10 to refine the model to develop the research hypotheses. The final research model is composed of 30 first-order and five higher-order constructs which involve both reflective and formative measures. Partial least squares-based structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) is employed to test the theoretical model with a cross-sectional data set of 282 SMEs in Bangladesh. Survey data were collected using a structured questionnaire issued to SMEs selected by applying a stratified random sampling technique. The structural equation modelling utilises a two-step procedure of data analysis. Prior to estimating the structural model, the measurement model is examined for construct validity of the study variables (i.e. convergent and discriminant validity).

The estimates show cognitive evaluation as an important antecedent for expectation which is shaped primarily by the entrepreneurs’ beliefs (perception) and also influenced by the owners’ innovativeness and culture. Culture further influences expectation. The study finds that facilitating condition, environmental pressure and country readiness are important antecedents of expectation and ICT use. The results also reveal that integration and the degree of ICT utilisation significantly affect SMEs’ performance. Surprisingly, the findings do not reveal any significant impact of ICT usage on performance which apparently suggests the possibility of the ICT productivity paradox. However, the analysis finally proves the non-existence of the paradox by demonstrating the mediating role of ICT integration and degree of utilisation explain the influence of information technology (IT) usage on firm performance which is consistent with the resource-based theory. The results suggest that the use of ICT can enhance SMEs’ performance if the technology is integrated and properly utilised. SME owners or managers, interested stakeholders and policy makers may follow the study’s outcomes and focus on ICT integration and degree of utilisation with a view to attaining superior organisational performance.

This study urges concerned business enterprises and government to look at the environmental and cultural factors with a view to achieving ICT usage success in terms of enhanced firm performance. In particular, improving organisational practices and procedures by eliminating the traditional power distance inside organisations and implementing necessary rules and regulations are important actions for managing environmental and cultural uncertainties. The application of a Bengali user interface may help to ensure the productivity of ICT use by SMEs in Bangladesh. Establishing a favourable national technology infrastructure and legal environment may contribute positively to improving the overall situation. This study also suggests some changes and modifications in the country’s existing policies and strategies. The government and policy makers should undertake mass promotional programs to disseminate information about the various uses of computers and their contribution in developing better organisational performance. Organising specialised training programs for SME capacity building may succeed in attaining the motivation for SMEs to use ICT. Ensuring easy access to the technology by providing loans, grants and subsidies is important. Various stakeholders, partners and related organisations should come forward to support government policies and priorities in order to ensure the productive use of ICT among SMEs which finally will help to foster Bangladesh’s economic development.

Drawn on social psychology theory of impression management (IM), the purpose of this paper is to assess the way Portuguese managers build their narratives in chairman’s statement (CS) to manage stakeholders’ perceptions on corporate image, in a period of time of scarce resources.

The paper’s theoretical framework draws on elements of social psychology theory of IM developed by Leary and Kowalski (1990). Through the use of the two-component model of IM (impression motivation and impression construction) the 45 CSs of Portuguese non-finance companies were content analysed to understand how managers build their voluntary communication strategies.

Results indicate that organisational outcome does not influence the adoption of IM strategies. But public visibility and consumer proximity are crucial factors in explaining them. Larger companies with high consumer proximity present themselves in a favourable way, but consistent with an overall reading of the annual report. These companies show a higher level of verbosity, consistent to the argument of retrospective rationality.

The present study goes beyond Merkl-Davies et al. (2011) work and obtains insightful knowledge on the influence of goal relevance of impression in three different perspectives: company’s public visibility, company’s dependency from debtholders, and consumer proximity. Moreover, the analysis uses a period of scarce resources and a European Latin country, with no tradition in publishing CSs, but that recently has changed its financial reporting practices from an institutional code-law logic to an institutional common-law logic. A research setting like this has not been studied hitherto.

Social psychological perspectives on educational stratification offer explanations that bridge the macro and micro social worlds. However, while ethnoracial disparities in academic achievement are evident during the earliest grade levels, most social psychological research in this area has examined high school or college student samples and has used a black–white binary to operationalize race.

We use longitudinal structural equation models to examine links between academic self-efficacy beliefs and school performance among a national sample of diverse third- through eighth-grade students in the United States.

Contrary to hypotheses derived from the student identity literature, we find no evidence that elementary and middle school students from different ethnoracial backgrounds vary in the degree to which they selectively discount evaluative feedback in their academic self-efficacy construction, nor in the extent to which they demonstrate disrupted links between academic self-efficacy and subsequent academic performance.

The study examines the extent to which race-linked social psychological processes may be driving academic achievement inequalities during the primary schooling years.

Every society has unique factors that contribute to the selection of marriage partner among young adults. These factors have been found to equally determine marital satisfaction and marital stability. This study focuses on married couples in Nigeria and factors that determined how they transcended from their dating period to marriage.

A total of 19 married couples participated in this study, which involved the use of focus group discussions to elicit data from them. Snowball sampling technique was used to obtain respondents who had similar characteristics.

The respondents were aged between 38 and 50 years, had courted for at least 7 years before marriage, and marriage was not less than 10 years. Data was analyzed using content analysis. Themes bordered on factors determining choice of partner, how they met, length of their dating, and courtship periods. Physical attractiveness, as a determining factor, was clearly evident among participants. Participants agreed that communication was vital to marriage stability.

The study brought to light that in spite of strong traditional values, Nigerians displayed romantic characteristics similar to Western societies such as the United States and the United Kingdom. The study was limited because of the method adopted for selecting participants. Also, some variables such as ethnic background and educational background were not included in the study. The study recommends future studies which may be longitudinal, involving couples’ personality traits, families of origin, and so on, in order to yield more salient issues.