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Academic researchers love multi‐category answer formats, especially five‐ and seven‐point formats. More than a decade ago Josef Mazanec concluded that these formats may not the best choice, and that simple binary‐answer options are preferable in some empirical survey contexts. The purpose of the present study is to investigate empirically Mazanec's hypothesis in the context of the measurement of evaluative beliefs relating to fast‐food restaurants.

The authors conducted an online experiment that asked respondents to assess evaluative beliefs relating to fast‐food brands using either a forced binary (n=100) or a seven‐point answer format (n=100). The authors also measured preferences for each of the fast‐food restaurants, user friendliness, and recorded the actual completion times for the survey.

The results indicate that the full binary answer format outperforms the popular seven‐point multi‐category format with respect to stability, concurrent validity, and speed of completion.

Given the demonstrated strengths of full binary measures, they should be used more by both practitioners and academics when measuring evaluative beliefs.

This study provides empirical evidence of the strong performance of the forced binary‐answer format for the measurement of evaluative beliefs, and thus challenges current measurement practice among academics and practitioners.

The paper's aim is to measure the effect of various brief summary formats on consumers' drug‐related knowledge, evaluations of ad information, ad believability, attitudes towards the ad and brand, perceived product risk and intention to use ad information in making healthcare decisions.

Using mall‐intercept surveys, 307 US women, age 18‐50 years, were randomly assigned to one of the six different versions of brief summary formats for a birth control medicine. The six brief summary formats included: no brief summary, traditional (continuous prose) brief summary, risk information window, bulleted list, nutrition facts panel, and question‐answer format. The participants completed a closed‐ended questionnaire after reviewing the print ad.

MANOVA indicated presence of a multivariate main effect. However, univariate ANOVAs, performed to evaluate the effect of individual formats, revealed that the eight outcome variables did not vary significantly across the six brief summary formats. Nevertheless, respondents exhibited more positive evaluation of the newer brief summary formats compared to the traditional brief summary format, albeit there was no statistically significant difference among the newer formats.

Consumers clearly prefer newer brief summary formats to the traditional brief summary format.

This research provides additional insights about risk communication in direct‐to‐consumer ads and may assist the FDA in the development of a standardized regulatory structure for the future. Providing brief summary in a clearer, understandable, and consumer‐friendly manner can help consumers in deciding whether the drug is appropriate for their condition.

Survey research has developed to become the default empirical approach to answering research questions in the field of hospitality (and many other fields of research within the social sciences). This paper aims to reflect on the use of survey research in hospitality and offers recommendations for improvement.

First, known dangers to validity associated with survey research are discussed. Next, a sample of studies recently published in leading hospitality journals is assessed in view of these known dangers. Finally, recommendations are offered for editors, reviewers, readers and authors to mitigate the risk of drawing invalid conclusions based on survey research.

Survey research is very common in hospitality research and is used to investigate a wide range of research questions and constructs under study. The nature of constructs studied, the answer scales used and the nature of the samples point to a substantial risk to the validity of conclusions drawn.

A number of risk mitigation measures are proposed that can help authors minimise the risks to validity arising from known dangers associated with survey research. These same risk mitigation measures can be used by editors and reviewers in the assessment of manuscripts and by readers to evaluate the validity of conclusions drawn in already published work.

The value of this study lies in reflecting from a distance on how the survey research is conducted in the social sciences in general and in hospitality research in specific. The paper reveals that some routine approaches particularly prone to undermining the validity of conclusions may have been adopted and offers a few suggestions how this risk can be mitigated.

Many learners with disabilities and special educational needs have difficulty reading or accessing traditional paper examinations at school. The most common method of accommodating these candidates, in Scotland, is the use of reader and scribe. This paper aims to define a specification for digital examination papers for candidates with disabilities, identify a suitable electronic format, and report on trials of these digital assessments.

The support needs of candidates with disabilities were investigated through interviews with teaching staff and students, analysis of the type of requests made for accommodations, and the reasons for the requests. Findings from this exercise, together with consideration of the requirements of the examination context, were used to construct a specification for digital examination papers. Pilot trials using digital papers were then undertaken.

Adobe portable document format (PDF) was judged to match the specification most closely. Successful pilot trials in 2005, 2006 and 2007 led to the introduction of digital papers by the Scottish Qualifications Authority in 2008.

There is some evidence that digital papers provide a more independent and less costly alternative to reader/scribes; this requires further research.

Between 2008 and 2011, the number of requests for digital papers increased fivefold, indicating that digital question papers in PDF offer a practical and cost effective method of accommodation in examinations.

This research is of interest to examination boards, assessment designers, educators and learners. It demonstrates that candidates with disabilities can successfully access assessments in digital format.

Governmental financial reporting is prepared for accountability and decision-making purposes and is directed to a wide range of users, including citizens. However, this may sound easier than it actually is as citizens without specific accounting knowledge may find it difficult to understand the financial information prepared by governments. The study analyzes citizens' perceptions toward infographics as well as their ability to improve accounting understandability by nonaccounting experts compared to the traditional financial statements.

The paper presents the results of an exploratory analysis conducted with the participation of a group of citizens in three European countries through a questionnaire.

The results show that infographics improve accounting understandability by nonaccounting experts compared to the traditional financial statements. However, infographics alone are not enough to succeed in making nonaccounting literate citizens experts in fully understanding accounting information.

The novelty of the research consists in its ability to give voice to citizens' preferences regarding the way the financial information is presented, which has been largely neglected by previous studies. In parallel, it analyzes the effect of accounting knowledge on accounting understandability. Moreover, it is the first study that analyzes the use of infographics in public sector financial reporting.

This research was conducted to study benefits of a concept, known as lean manufacturing, which elicits organizations to do more with less effort, time, space, and equipment by eliminating waste. Because lean implementation involves finances, dedication, and cultural change in business, there is a need to assess a company's lean initiative.

A comprehensive lean assessment tool is designed targeted for use by manufacturing companies. Research of lean principles and practices was conducted through lean organizations, trade publications, manufacturing web sites, professional articles, textbooks, lean exhibitions, and non‐profit lean organizations.

This led to the development of a lean survey questionnaire delivered to 143 lean companies and lean consultants for authentic input. Based on the response, survey participation met a goal of 95 percent accuracy with 15 percent error. Completed surveys were compiled and analyzed for fundamental practices of lean organizations. Answers to the survey were assigned numerical values based on lean significance, and a lean assessment model was developed based on Excel. The lean assessment model was fine‐tuned and programmed to output a numerical and descriptive lean assessment grade. It was tested for soundness by inputting mock lean and traditional company answers into the model. Output results from the model correlated with the input.

Lean thinking philosophy and lean manufacturing methods and principles were exhaustively researched to make a successful lean organization. The research led to the development of a visual indicator, the Lean Thinking Management Wheel. This model to assess lean thinking manufacturing initiatives unique and has a great potential to use industry wide.

An area of information technology (IT) in organizations is required to manage resources efficiently. For this, IT certifications are adopted by companies and sought by professionals. However, these have many requirements and to identify which are paramount to the performance of their activities and/or are much more important to IT managers is not a trivial task. The purpose of this study is to identify how the processes of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) v3 and Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology (CobiT) 5 certifications are analyzed by IT managers. Regarding the knowledge of professionals about the processes, which are more important, less important or indifferent in the manager’s view.

A survey is carried out with IT managers using questions elaborated according to the Kano model in which the processes of the analyzed certifications are related to classify according to the proposed model.

Of the 64 analyzed processes, 20 CobiT processes and 13 ITIL processes were classified as must-be requirements. Another 17 CobiT processes and 9 ITIL processes were classified as one-dimensional and 5 ITIL processes are present in more than one relationship with CobiT processes and, depending on the relationship, they were classified as must-be or one-dimensional requirements.

It is concluded that this study contributes in the discussion of the importance of the ITIL and CobiT implementations and analyzes the relevance of ITIL and CobiT certification processes in the view of IT managers, providing useful information for the professionals in terms of prioritization of the processes expected by the managers.

The purpose of this paper is to critically review past recommendations to correct for cultural biases in empirical survey data sets, and propose a framework that enables the researcher to assess the robustness of empirical findings from culture‐specific response styles (CSRS).

The paper proposes to analyze a set of derived data sets, including the original data as well as data corrected for response styles using theoretically plausible correction methods for the empirical data at hand. The level of agreement of results across correction methods indicates the robustness of findings to possible contamination of data by cross‐cultural response styles.

The proposed method can be used to inform researchers and data analysts about the extent to which the validity of their conclusions is threatened by data contamination and provides guidance regarding the results that can safely be reported.

Response styles can distort survey findings. CSRS are particularly problematic for researchers using multicultural samples because the resulting data contamination can lead to inaccurate conclusions about the research question under study.

The proposed approach avoids the disadvantages of ignoring the problem and interpreting spurious results or choosing one single correction technique that potentially introduces new kinds of data contamination.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the importance of the factors that influence the success rate of remote arbitrary code execution attacks. In other words, attacks which use software vulnerabilities to execute the attacker's own code on targeted machines. Both attacks against servers and attacks against clients are studied.

The success rates of attacks are assessed for 24 scenarios: 16 scenarios for server‐side attacks and eight for client‐side attacks. The assessment is made through domain experts and is synthesized using Cooke's classical method, an established method for weighting experts' judgments. The variables included in the study were selected based on the literature, a pilot study, and interviews with domain experts.

Depending on the scenario in question, the expected success rate varies between 15 and 67 percent for server‐side attacks and between 43 and 67 percent for client‐side attacks. Based on these scenarios, the influence of different protective measures is identified.

The results of this study offer guidance to decision makers on how to best secure their assets against remote code execution attacks. These results also indicate the overall risk posed by this type of attack.

Attacks that use software vulnerabilities to execute code on targeted machines are common and pose a serious risk to most enterprises. However, there are no quantitative data on how difficult such attacks are to execute or on how effective security measures are against them. The paper provides such data using a structured technique to combine expert judgments.