Quantitative evidence for the benefits of Moving the Goalposts, a Sport for Development project in rural Kenya

Sport for Development has many reported benefits, but quantitative evidence of the impact of these interventions in Low Income Countries remains sparse. A new monitoring and evaluation toolkit was used in a cross-sectional survey at Moving the Goalposts (MTG), a football project aiming to empower young Kenyan women. We wished to determine empirically whether increased membership duration brought increased benefits. MTG selected and translated toolkit items consistent with the organisation's strategic aims. We collected 333 completed questionnaires at 15 sites. Psychometric validation revealed some reliable scales; remaining items were scored separately. Scores were sensitive to differences between members defined by sociodemographic and site characteristics. Bivariate and multiple regression analyses showed that increased membership duration brought increasing benefits across several domains (perceived lifeskills; social life; insights about HIV/AIDS; outcomes related to female empowerment). Improved leadership skills were mainly age-related. Members attending more established sites experienced greater benefits, but members at more and less accessible sites benefitted similarly. Positive thoughts and feelings were related not to membership duration, but to how long a site had been operating. This indicates the importance of creating a positive culture over time. This cross-sectional study provides quantitative evidence for the benefits of Sport for Development initiatives.     

Improving wheelchair prescription: an analysis of user needs and existing tools

Wheelchair users experience many situations that affect the stability and associated performance of their wheelchair. Stability is affected by user characteristics and abilities, environmental features and conditions, and wheelchair modification and accessories. Wheelchair prescribers need effective tools and methods to provide quantitative evaluation and prediction of the behavior of the user-wheelchair system in a variety of static and dynamic situations. Such information is very important to guide efficient management of associated risks and adjust chairs accordingly. This project involves a user-centered approach for design and evaluation of a load cell based wheelchair stability assessment system (Wheel-SAS). Here, the current methods for assessing stability are described, and their shortcomings explained. The user-centered design approach being applied to the development of the associated Wheel-SAS hardware and software is described. Future work including semi-structured interviews and an online survey with wheelchair prescribers and associated healthcare professionals for deriving user requirements and a design specification for a load cell system for measuring dynamic wheelchair stability are detailed.     

Post occupancy evaluation of primary schools in Saudi Arabia

The physical school environment has been shown to be important in helping children fulfill their academic potential and in providing appropriate working conditions for staff. However, few tools have been developed that enable multi stakeholder consultation which takes into account the opinions of young students. In Saudi Arabia there has been widespread investment in schools, but few guidelines have been provided to assist design or continuous evaluation. A Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) method was developed and used to evaluate three international primary schools in Saudi Arabia. The methods identified weaknesses in the three schools and differences in responses from the three groups consulted (children, teachers and parents). Conclusions drawn from the study are that greater efforts need to be made to draw together research about how school facilities can support teaching and learning, increase effectiveness and levels of satisfaction. POE, when used in conjunction with checklists could be used as a means of driving up standards of educational facilities.     

Validation of the WeDQoL-Goals-Thailand Measure: Culture-Specific Individualised Quality of Life

The aim of this study was to validate an individualised measure of quality of life (WeDQoL-Goals-Thailand). Three hundred and sixty-nine Thai people completed the WeDQoL by interview. Respondents rated (0–2) the perceived necessity for wellbeing of 51 goals (goal necessity), then rated (0–3) their satisfaction with the same goals (goal satisfaction). Weighted goal attainment (possible range 0–6) was computed (necessity x satisfaction). Psychometric validation used frequency distributions, Principal Components Analysis (PCA), and Cronbach’s alpha. Analysis of variance, t-tests, Kruskal–Wallis, Mann–Whitney U, Spearman’s correlation and multiple regression explored socio-demographic, geographic and economic differences. Respondents were aged 15–89 (mean 45.7, SD 18.0); 169 men, 200 women. For weighted goal attainment scores, PCA found a 44-item scale (α = 0.91) and three subscales (community/social/health, α = 0.90; house and home, α = 0.80; nuclear family, α = 0.81). Thai Individualised Goal Attainment (TIGA) scale and the three subscales were computed as the mean of contributing weighted goal attainment scores, after excluding goals considered ‘not necessary’ to each individual. Unweighted and individualised scores differed significantly with socio-demographic, geographic and economic indicators. In multiple regression, both Thai Unweighted Goal Satisfaction (TUGS) and TIGA scale scores were predicted by being married, living in the South and in a non-urban location. TIGA scores were also predicted by being over 25 years old. WeDQoL-Goals-Thailand has excellent psychometric properties. Individualised scores reflect each person’s perspective on wellbeing and are sensitive to subgroup differences. However, unweighted satisfaction scores give a broadly similar picture and involve less complex computation.     

Mass Customization in the Automotive Industry: Comparing Interdealer Trading and Reconfiguration Flexibilities in Order Fulfillment

Mass customization has been viewed as desirable but difficult to achieve in the volume automotive sector. Here we consider flexibility in automotive order fulfillment systems to enhance the ability to satisfy customers with their desired vehicle variants within acceptable delivery lead times. Two types of flexibility are compared in a Virtual‐Build‐to‐Order system—reconfiguration in the planning pipeline and interdealer trading. A representative simulation model is used to investigate the impact of the two types of flexibility across a wide spectrum of product variety levels. The impacts on major stakeholders in the system—the producer, dealers, and customers—are considered. The study shows that both types of flexibilities can bring significant benefits in terms of reductions in lead time and inventory holding. The level of product variety strongly influences the observed effects—an important finding in the mass customization context. Upstream reconfiguration flexibility brings greater benefits than downstream trading flexibility. Reconfiguration tends to dominate trading as a fulfillment mechanism when both are in operation. The findings have implications for the design and management of automotive order fulfillment systems in improving their ability to offer mass customization. The study has relevance for companies in other sectors with high levels of variety that seek to combine efficiency, speed, and flexibility in order fulfillment.     

VoiceYourView: anytime, anyplace, anywhere user participation

Citizens are increasingly called upon to comment on issues that directly concern them. However, such consultations may be tokenistic [1] as they occur with limited respondents, or may be at a time, or in a format which is inconvenient to the user. To encourage wider participation, the VoiceYourView project (vYv) has developed a system allowing people to make comments in a manner, time and place convenient to them. A real world trial of the prototype system was conducted at Coventry University campus to explore issues related to the system's usability and usage, as a means of enabling campus users to comment on their environment. Members of the university population were invited to comment on the university estate using one of five technologies (e-mail, online form, iPhone app, SMS message, or electronic kiosk). Although the immediate application area in this case was the design of public spaces, the approach can be transferred to other domains and thus provide a new way of gathering user information. Submitted comments were automatically analysed in terms of theme, sentiment, location and actionability and displayed online in a 2D visualisation. It is argued that that online data collection (crowd sourcing and skimming social networks) may provide a rich source of information for future ergonomists.     

New insights, new challenges; person centred transport design

This paper uses the Hexagon Spindle model of ergonomics to provide a framework for the development of person centred approaches to vehicle and transport design. The benefits of taking this approach, and the factors that might be included under a more inclusive definition of automotive and Transport ergonomics are explained.     

THE ECONOMICS OF EXOGAMOUS MARRIAGE IN SMALL‐SCALE SOCIETIES

Marriage is a core institution in almost every human society, including small‐scale societies based on foraging or subsistence agriculture. A crucial dimension of the marriage systems in such societies involves endogamy and exogamy, that is, the choice of a marriage partner from within one's own community or from an outside community. We develop a model in which the exogamy rate is higher when good local matches are scarce due to small community sizes, and when productivity differs across communities due to environmental shocks. These theoretical predictions are supported by econometric analysis of data from the standard cross‐cultural sample. (JEL D13, J11, N30, Z13)