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This paper seeks to present findings from a study soliciting the perspectives of child and youth mental health clinicians practising in rural/remote settings in British Columbia, Canada. Satisfaction is assessed in four areas: lifestyle, practice, preparation for practice, and fit of organizational standards.

An online survey using a variety of closed and open‐ended questions was administered to clinicians practising in four distinct settings: small rural, large rural, small remote, and large remote. Closed questions were analyzed using SPSS 17.0 while open ended questions were analyzed using manual open and axial coding.

Findings indicate moderate to high levels of satisfaction in all areas. Satisfaction with rural lifestyle and professional practice was strongest for clinicians recruited from within the community. However, clinicians from small remote communities indicated much lower levels of satisfaction in all four areas.

The study underscores the importance of understanding the diversity of rural practice settings in mental health workforce development. In particular it highlights the need for greater attention to evidence based approaches to support mental health practitioners in small remote settings.

Rural students encounter challenges such as the achievement gap; racial inequality; little or no college counseling; higher rates of poverty; limited accessibility to college preparatory courses; and recruitment and retention of quality teachers. Moreover, Black males tend to experience the same issues; however, there is a dearth of literature around this population in rural areas. The authors describe the implications of the unique intersection of Black males in rural settings and discuss the unique challenges and opportunities presented. Specifically, academic achievement, college and career readiness, and access to employment and higher education for Black males are highlighted in this chapter. The authors provide recommendations on research and practice for educators to best serve Black males in rural settings.

The purpose of this study is to determine whether new rural ventures represent effective rural entrepreneurship or are just entrepreneurial ventures located in rural settings.

Data were collected from a direct questionnaire involving 408 new ventures headquartered in Portuguese business incubators and science parks, of which 142 are located in rural areas. To analyse data, the authors performed a preliminary and exploratory statistical analysis.

The authors demonstrate that only a small percentage of ventures operating in rural areas constitute examples of effective “rural entrepreneurship”, with the bulk of them being just enterprises located in rural settings. Rural new ventures tend to be small (in terms of employees and turnover), rely mainly on the internal market and lag behind other new ventures (located in both rural and urban municipalities) in terms of performance.

The study only includes new knowledge-intensive ventures, that is, those headquartered in business incubators and science parks. Therefore, it cannot be generalised to other new ventures located in rural settings.

The extant literature on entrepreneurship has neglected the empirical implications of mixing, confounding and/or merging the concepts of “rural entrepreneurship” and “entrepreneurship activities in rural areas”. In this study, the authors discuss and analyse the empirical boundaries of such concepts and uncover the magnitude of pure “rural entrepreneurship”.

Strong home-school partnerships consistently and substantially benefit children’s academic and social development. Home-school partnerships are considerably affected by the settings in which they take place (e.g., rural, urban, suburban), the characteristics of the partners (e.g., parents and teachers), and their relationships with one another (parent-teacher partnerships). In rural communities, supportive home-school partnerships promote young children’s success but have proven difficult to implement. African American families with young children residing in rural communities experience unique social and institutional challenges and benefits that are particularly salient for fostering home-school partnerships. Thus, the landscape of rural communities is an important and essential consideration for understanding the intersection between race and home-school partnerships. This chapter focuses on the promise of positive home-school partnerships for rural African American children, their families, and their schools. Home-school partnership as an essential component of children’s academic and social development is defined, and sample home-school partnership intervention programs are described. Finally, existing policy investments related to the facilitation of home-school partnerships are explored and policy recommendations that promote such partnerships are discussed.

The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of governmental support policies and socio-cultural influences on female entrepreneurship in rural Vietnam. As such, the study addresses an important literature gap concerning female entrepreneurship within rural communities in South East Asia.

Qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted with six female entrepreneurs and six female non-entrepreneurs in northern Vietnam to examine the influence of various environmental factors on female entrepreneurship in a rural setting.

The results suggest that government pro-entrepreneurship policies, together with private sector interventions, have had an impact on rural Vietnam. Yet females in rural and remote Vietnam are still constrained by societal prejudices, financial limitations, and limited entrepreneurship educational opportunities.

The paper's originality lies in its review of the circumstances confronting women in rural Vietnam and its findings concerning the impact of environmental factors on female entrepreneurship in this setting.

Consumer-Directed Health Plans (CDHPs) are proposed as an option to control healthcare costs. No research has addressed their applicability in rural settings. This study analyzes three years (2003–2005) of healthcare expenditure and utilization incurred by two employers and a national carrier providing data from a rural state, Kentucky. The study included two measures of expenditures (health care and prescription drugs) and three measures of utilization (physician visits, hospital admissions, and hospital inpatient days). In general, the CDHP successfully controlled the growth of medical costs. These findings suggest that CDHPs may be a viable alternative benefit structure for rural employers.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the use of retail customer service as a value added component and potential success strategy for rural tourism retailers. More specifically, service quality expectations and perceptions as a means for segmenting tourism markets are to be examined.

Data were collected using a case study methodology in an established rural tourism community. Local customers, tourist customers, and retailers participated in the study. A canvassing approach was employed for administering a hand‐delivered, self‐report survey that examined parallel sets of service quality expectations and perceptions among the three groups, along with service satisfaction outcomes (i.e. retailer loyalty and purchase intentions). Descriptive analysis, factor analysis, t‐tests, and regression analysis were conducted.

Local and tourist customers' prior expectations for retail service quality were similar; however, local and tourist customers' post‐experience service quality perceptions differed significantly. A modified version of the SERVQUAL scale represented two service quality perception constructs important to local customers and retailers and one service quality perception construct for tourist customers.

Generalizability of findings may be limited as the in‐depth study was conducted within a single rural tourism community in Iowa.

The study sheds light on service quality perception dimensions that are salient to local customers, tourist customers, and retailers. Results aid in the development of customer relationship management strategies for both local and tourist customers and enhanced competitive options for rural tourism retailers.

Findings provide baseline information regarding customer relationship management strategies aimed at establishing rural tourism retailer sustainability by simultaneously meeting service expectations and enhancing service perceptions for local and tourist customers.

Identifying and measuring personality traits assists to understanding professional career choices, however, what impact personality traits have on nursing student rural career choice remains absent. The purpose of this paper is to identify personality traits among nursing students that may be predictive of pursuing a rural career.

A cross-sectional design was used to examine the importance Bachelor of Nursing students place on undertaking rural careers. All nursing students (n=1,982) studying a three-year bachelor’s degree were invited to complete a questionnaire examining personality traits and rural practice intentions.

Students who saw themselves working rurally after graduation had higher levels of conscientiousness than those who wanted metropolitan careers. Students with higher levels of agreeableness or open-mindedness were more likely to consider rural practice when individual community factors were carefully considered. Finally, students with higher levels of neuroticism were less likely to consider rural practice as a future career pathway.

The cohort had high numbers of student from rural and regional settings, which may limit the ability to generalise the findings. In addition, student respondents of the survey may not be representative of the whole student cohort given the low response rate.

Key personality traits are identifying factors that contribute to nursing student decision making regarding rural practice. Students who displayed higher levels of agreeableness and conscientiousness and open-mindedness have traits that are most likely to impact the consideration of rural practice across their nursing career, which gives additional insight into targeted recruitment strategies.

Globally, the number of women entrepreneurs lags behind the number of men. Understanding how women entrepreneurs can be developed and fostered remains an open avenue of inquiry. One particular area of consideration is the role of other women in supporting and sustaining women’s entrepreneurship. Using social identity theory for our framing, we utilize in-person interviews with various women entrepreneurs across a range of global settings (urban Hong Kong, Singapore, United Kingdom, and rural India) to focus on understanding the roles of other women as they relate to entrepreneurship. Across settings, we found that women entrepreneurs identified four key roles that other women played in developing their ventures. Furthermore, certain roles, such as having a female role model, were critical in rural settings over urban settings. We thus consider the implications of having other women for women’s entrepreneurship broadly.

Private supplementary tutoring, common in many countries, has mixed (both positive and negative) dimensions that impact student learning. Private supplementary tutoring runs parallel to mainstream schooling and provides lessons before or after school hours in exchange for additional fees. The purpose of this paper is to focus on how private supplementary tutoring benefits students’ learning in secondary education. It also identifies the drawbacks of tutoring, and shows variations in and between urban and rural locations.

The paper employed a mixed methods approach using a survey and individual interview collected from two different research settings: urban and rural. Grades 8 and 10 were purposefully chosen for data collection. A sample of 802 participants, including 401 students and their 401 parents (either mothers or fathers), participated in the survey, in addition to 48 interviewees comprising students, parents and teachers.

At times, pupils’ educational perspectives are influenced by the conflicting (positive/negative) standpoints of tutoring issues. The paper finds mixed impacts of private tutoring with a focus on disparities of implications between urban and rural locations. It identifies positive aspects such as learning attainment, exam preparation, relationship growth and lesson practice, as well as negative perspectives, such as an examination-centered aim and hamper of mainstream school learning.

The study contributes to the awareness of private supplementary tutoring that benefits students’ learning while also bringing disadvantages. It shows implications of fee-charging tutoring which may relate to students’ family socio-economic situations. The paper addresses private tutoring in general (including English and all other subjects) in most cases, and, more specifically, private tutoring in English as a subject in some cases.