Delivering decision making support to people with cognitive disability — What has been learned from pilot programs in Australia from 2010 to 2015

The UNCRPD has generated debate about supported decision making as a way to better enable people with cognitive disability to participate in decision making. In Australia, between 2010–2015, a series of projects have piloted various models of delivering decision making support. A critical review was conducted on the program documents and evaluations of these pilot projects. The pilots were small scale, conducted by both statutory and non‐statutory bodies, and adopted similar designs centred on supporting a decision maker/supporter dyad. Primarily, participants were people with mild intellectual disability. Themes included: positive outcomes; uncertain boundaries of decision support; difficulty securing supporters; positive value of program staff and support to supporters; limited experience and low expectations; and varying value of written resources. The lack of depth and rigour of evaluations mean firm conclusions cannot be reached about program logics, costs or outcomes of the pilots. The pilots demonstrate feasibility of providing support for decision making rather than resolving issues involved in delivering support. They suggest that some form of authority may facilitate the role of decision supporters, help to engage others in a person's life, and integrate decision making support across all life domains.     

Neighbourhood Life,Social Capital and Perceptions of Safety in the Western Suburbs of Adelaide

In this paper we report on a South Australian study of perceptions of safety and aspects of neighbourhood life including social capital which involved the analysis of 2400 self‐completed questionnaires. A path analysis found that perceptions of safety were directly associated with gender, age, perceptions of neighbourhood pollution and neighbourhood trust, and indirectly associated with age, neighbourhood pollution and neighbourhood connections. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of the findings for public policy.     

Drivers of internationalization success: a conjoint choice experiment on German SME managers

Internationalization is a common growth strategy for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). However, SMEs face several challenges within the internationalization process. As SMEs are characterized by limited resources, managers are constantly involved in a decision-making process concerning the allocation of the SMEs’ resources. Therefore, internationalization can be understood as a complex, multidimensional decision process. Based on a set of 2244 internationalization decisions made by German SME managers, the present study examines how eight strategic and structural factors drive the perceived international success of SMEs. When applying conjoint choice analysis, the results suggest that especially equity financing in the internationalization process, an appropriate market selection as well as proactive motives, and a long-term scope can drive SMEs’ international success. Moreover, it becomes evident that strategic factors are more relevant for successful internationalization than structural factors.     

The Role of Affect in Attitude Formation toward New Technologies: The Case of Stratospheric Aerosol Injection

This article analyzes determinants of technology acceptance and their interdependence. It highlights the role of affect in attitude formation toward new technologies and examines how it mediates the influence of stable psychological variables on the technology's acceptability. Based on theory and previous empirical evidence, we develop an analytical framework of attitude formation. We test this framework using survey data on attitudes toward stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), a technology that could be used to counteract global warming. We show that affect is more important than risk and benefit perception in forming judgment about SAI. Negative and positive affect directly alter the perception of risks and benefits of SAI and its acceptability. Furthermore, affect is an important mediator between stable psychological variables—such as trust in governmental institutions, values, and attitudes—and acceptability. A person's affective response is thus guided by her general attitudes and values.     

Share,like, twitter,and connect: Ecological momentary assessment to examine the relationship between non-work social media use at work and work engagement

Non-work social media use at work has seen a dramatic increase in the last decade and is commonly deemed counterproductive work behaviour. However, we examined whether it may also serve as a micro-break and improve work engagement. We used ecological momentary assessment across 1 working day with up to 10 hourly measurements in 334 white-collar workers to measure non-work social media use and work engagement, resulting in 2235 hourly measurements. Multilevel modelling demonstrated that non-work social media use was associated with lower levels of work engagement between persons. Within persons, non-work social media use was also associated with lower concurrent work engagement. However, non-work social media use was related to higher levels of work engagement 1 hour later. While more extensive non-work social media use at work was generally associated with lower work engagement, our advanced study design revealed that the longer employees used social media for non-work purposes during 1 working hour, the more work engaged they were in the subsequent working hour, suggesting that employees turn to social media when energy levels are low and/or when they (temporarily) lose interest in their work. This behaviour may serve as a break, which in turn increases work engagement later during the day.     

Service quality in the legal profession: a review

Research into the management of professional service quality, other than in health care, has been very limited, despite being particularly problematical. This paper focuses on the interactive, highly customized and labour-intensive service offered by solicitors to their commercial and corporate clients. The intangible nature of legal services, the natures of the professionals themselves and the firms within which they operate, and the perceptions of risk brought to the service by the client create additional difficulties in managing the service and measuring client perceptions of it. Yet solicitors must understand the requirements of the group of clients they seek to serve in order to design their service to match those needs. Clients have to assume the technical competence of their solicitor. Moreover, they seek confidence when buying legal services. Our research, therefore, sought to gain an understanding of the process used by commercial and corporate clients when evaluating legal service, and of the factors that are key drivers in the creation of confidence.     

A Bootstrap Mechanism for Response Masking in Remote Analysis Systems

National Statistical Agencies and other data custodian agencies hold a wealth of data regarding individuals and organizations, collected from censuses, surveys and administrative sources. In many cases, these data are made available to external researchers, for the investigation of questions of social and economic importance. To enhance access to this information, several national statistical agencies are developing remote analysis systems (RAS) designed to accept queries from a researcher, run them on data held in a secure environment, and then return the results. RAS prevent a researcher from accessing the underlying data, and most rely on manual checking to ensure the responses have acceptably low disclosure risk. However, the need for scalability and consistency will increasingly require automated methods. We propose a RAS output confidentialization procedure based on statistical bootstrapping that automates disclosure control while achieving a provably good balance between disclosure risk and usefulness of the responses. The bootstrap masking mechanism is easy to implement for most statistical queries, yet the characteristics of the bootstrap distribution assure us that it is also effective in providing both useful responses and low disclosure risk. Interestingly, our proposed bootstrap masking mechanism represents an ideal application of Efron's bootstrap—one that takes advantage of all the theoretical properties of the bootstrap, without ever having to construct the bootstrap distribution.