Internet Technology in Service of Personal Health Care Management: Patient Perspective

Internet technology has become an informational resource for most health care consumers. Online information, discussion, and support groups, in the form of message boards, listservs, and chat rooms are emerging as parts of virtual self-health-care network. This paper examines the extent to which participation in online health discussion groups was reported to be helpful in increasing medical knowledge and in enhancing the participatory patient role of health care consumers in interaction with health care service professionals. Data for this study was collected from 350 patients who participated in Internet discussion groups for cancer patients. The findings of the study indicated the important impact of Internet health discussion groups on health care management practices as perceived by health care consumers, including empowerment through knowledge and proactive participation in cancer care management. This research contributes to understanding the patient perspective and assesses the perceived importance of Internet groups by health care consumers.     

Attitudes Toward Women in Health Care Organizations: A Turkish Case Study

<b>Abstract</b></p>The aim of this article is to examine the health care employees’ attitudes toward women in health care organizations in Turkey. It was measured using a 25-item scale by Spence, Helmreich, and Stapp (<span class="ref-lnk"><a data-rid="CIT0046" data-refLink="_i14" href="#">1973</a><span class="ref-overlay scrollable-ref rs_skip"><span class="ref-close" tabindex="0"></span><span class="ref-icon"></span> <span class="hlFld-ContribAuthor">Spence, <span class="NLM_given-names">J. T.</span></span>, <span class="hlFld-ContribAuthor">Helmreich, <span class="NLM_given-names">R.</span></span>, & <span class="hlFld-ContribAuthor">Stapp, <span class="NLM_given-names">J</span></span>. (<span class="NLM_year">1973</span>). <span class="NLM_article-title">A short version of the Attitudes toward Women Scale (AWS)</span>. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, <i>2</i>(4), <span class="NLM_fpage">219</span>–<span class="NLM_lpage">220</span>. doi:<span class="NLM_pub-id">10.3758/BF03329252</span><span class="ref-links"><span class="xlinks-container"><a href="/servlet/linkout?suffix=CIT0046&dbid=16&doi=10.1080%2F01488376.2018.1555109&key=10.3758%2FBF03329252" target="_blank">[Crossref]</a></span> <span class="googleScholar-container">, <a class="google-scholar" href="http://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?hl=en&volume=2&publication_year=1973&pages=219-220&issue=4&author=J.+T.+Spence&author=R.+Helmreich&author=J+Stapp&title=A+short+version+of+the+Attitudes+toward+Women+Scale+%28AWS%29&doi=10.3758%2FBF03329252" target="_blank">[Google Scholar]</a></span></span></span></span>). The study was conducted on 541 employees: 279 males and 262 females. Structural equation model (SEM) was applied to analyze the relationship between gender, marital status, and income and attitudes toward woman. The result of this analysis showed that the relations between gender, marital status, and income and attitudes toward woman were statistically significant. All three hypotheses were statistically supported. This result indicated that employees’ marital status and (monthly) income significantly predicted their scores of attitudes toward woman in a positive direction. Besides, employees’ gender significantly predicted their scores of attitudes toward woman in an inverse direction. Future research can focus on investigating the effects of the attitudes toward women on other elements (e.g., performance, motivation, job satisfaction) or a wider sample to reach more generalized results.     

Culture: A key to management communication between the Asian-Pacific area and Europe

Western culture, and therefore Western management methods and thinking, has devalued other cultures, and it has been assumed that the high culture of dominant nations has taken over. But this is not so; cultures of everyday life are complex and not easily destroyed. They are also systems in motion, that can adapt easily.Tzöl Zae Chung explains the striking differences between Asian and European thinking and ways of managing and doing business. Misunderstandings can occur if two cultures meet without adequate prior preparation. But increasingly, Japanese management methods are revitalizing Asian values and attracting attention. The cultural factor in globalization — especially in the ‘triad’ of trade between the US, the Asian-Pacific region and Europe is becoming critically important.     

Turbulent dynamics in a Xviith century population

<b></b></p> A reconstruction of the population of the Pays de Caux (1589–1700) yields the time series of a fertility behavior indicator, the overall Coale index <i>If.</i> In spite of the noisy appearance of its evolution, the trajectory of <i>If</i> looks ordered, as if it were confined alternatively to two given zones, looping in each of them for a while, then suddenly jumping from the low one to the higher one, or slowly whirling down from the high to the low one.</p> An attempt is made to explain this general temporal structure by using a simulation model based on the autoregulation model (the so‐called European Marriage Pattern), putting into play a choice of the spouse function, a fertility function, modalities of marriage and remarriage, under the environmental forcing of the reconstructed mortality conditions.</p> The correspondence between reconstruction and simulation turns out to be quite good, not only for the population size or the Coale index, but also for the marriage series, quite independently of the reconstructioa</p> A second simulation with simulated mortality conditions shows a bifurcation point: as the mean frequency of crisis increases, the state of the system leaves the lower level and concentrates more and more in the higher level.</p> Thus, not only does the autoregulator model appear validated by empirical data, but its bi‐modal structure is revealed, depicting the dynamic response of a traditional community both to the environment and to the endogeneous demographic process.     

Thank you!

The study focuses on the question of how HRD personnel employed in a large multinational company perceive learning at work. We are interested in how HR development staff describe learning at the individual, collective and organizational levels. The participants were Finnish and Chinese human resource professionals (n?=?17) who used an asynchronous web-based tool to study adult education. The empirical data consist of all the texts sent to a web-based discussion forum. The findings showed that the HRD practitioners' views of learning covered quite evenly all three levels of organizational learning. The practitioners paid special attention to practical learning taking place in connection with everyday work activities, to communication and collaborative learning and to the development of a learning organization. This reflects the multifaceted nature of learning at work and the necessity of using HRD to integrate individual- and organizational-level needs in order to enhance organizational learning. The participants frequently reported that they found this a demanding task that required a clear 'understanding of humans, people in the organizations and their learning'. If organizational learning is to meet its current challenges it should take note of messages like these from HRD practitioners, which emphasise the diversity of learning experiences. Promoting a shared understanding and especially awareness and recognition of the fundamental issues associated with learning at work is a possible first step.     

Frame Correction Modelling with Applications to the German Register‐Assisted Census 2011

Frame corrections have been studied in census applications for a long time. One very promising method is <i>dual system estimation</i>, which is based on capture–recapture models. These methods have been applied recently in the USA, England, Israel and Switzerland. In order to gain information on subgroups of the population, structure preserving estimators can be applied [i.e. structure preserving estimation (SPREE) and generalized SPREE]. The present paper extends the SPREE approach with an alternative distance function, the chi‐square. The new method has shown improved estimates in our application with very small domains. A comparative study based on a large‐scale Monte Carlo simulation elaborates on advantages and disadvantages of the estimators in the context of the German register‐assisted Census 2011.     

Nested patterns in urban butterfly species assemblages: respective roles of plot management,park layout and landscape features

Increasing numbers of cities are currently developing sustainable policies aimed at promoting urban biodiversity and ecological dynamics through the planning of green networks and the implementation of more sustainable management practices. These human activities can strongly influence environmental factors on which the organization of ecological communities at different scales depends. Thus, it is of fundamental importance to understand the relative impact of local management, green space design and landscape features on the distribution and the abundance of species in urban areas. On the basis of 2 years of butterfly surveys in urban public parks within an extensive Mediterranean metropolitan area, Marseille (South-East France), the aim of this paper is to provide a better understanding of the effect of these three environmental scales (plot, park, landscape) on the composition and organization of species assemblages. Using variation partitioning and nestedness analysis on ecological data aggregated at plot-level and park-level respectively, we demonstrate the preponderant effect of landscape scale features on urban butterfly assemblages. Our results also highlight an important co-variation of plot management, park layout and urban landscape features, in their interaction with the community structure of urban butterflies. Although there is no significant species-area relationship, significantly nested patterns arise in species composition. Selective colonization appears as a driving force constraining the constitution of species assemblages within the city. However, a prospective study on adjacent more natural areas suggests that biotic limitations, interspecific competition and habitat filtering may play an important role if a larger portion of the urbanization gradient is explored, which remains to be investigated.     

Labour Market Participation of French Women over the Life Cycle, 1935–1990

Employment histories with multiple spells and time varyingcovariates help identify determinants of labour markettransitions of women in France between 1935 and 1990. Higher educatedwomen were more likely to become inactive, but returned to work also moreeasily, especially when they added work experience. Being married,whether mother or not, induced a rearrangement of time betweenstaying at home and labour, in rendering exit from employment morelikely and return from inactivity to employment less likely. Exits from employment were lessfrequent for mothers of larger families, while return toemployment decreased with the total number of children, in spite of thegrowing financial needs of larger families. Transitions betweenemployment and inactivity increased with favourable economicconditions. However, involuntary exits from employment were moreprobable during economic downturns.