Belonging and the Charter of Transdisciplinarity in International STEM Research

COVID-19 and the digital divide in the UK

Background: There is currently no comprehensive tool that quantifiably measures validated factors of modern technology access in the US for digital inequity impact on esophageal cancer care (EC). Objective: To assess the influence of digital inequities on esophageal cancer disparities while accounting for traditional social determinants. Methods: 15,656 EC patients from 2013–2017 in SEER were assessed for significant regression trends in long-term follow-up, survival, prognosis, and treatment with increasing overall digital inequity, as measured by the Digital Inequity Index (DII). The DII was calculated based on 17 census tract-level variables derived from the American Community Survey and Federal Communications Commission. Variables were categorized as infrastructure access or sociodemographic, ranked, and then averaged into a composite score. Results: With increasing overall digital inequity, significant decreases in the length of long-term follow-up (p < 0.001) and survival (p < 0.001) for EC patients were observed. EC patients showed decreased odds of receiving indicated surgical resection (OR 0.97, 95% CI 0.95–99) with increasing digital inequity. They also showed increased odds of advanced preliminary staging (OR 1.02, 95% CI 1.00–1.05) and decreased odds of receiving indicated chemotherapy (OR 0.97;95% CI 0.95–99). Conclusions: Digital inequities meaningfully contribute to detrimental trends in EC patient care in the US, allowing discourse for targeted means of alleviating disparities while contextualizing national, sociodemographic trends of the impact of online access on informed care.

To assess associations of digital inequity with oropharyngeal cancer (OPC) prognostic and care outcomes in the United States while adjusting for traditional social determinants/drivers of health (SDoH). Retrospective cohort study. United States. In total, 70,604 patients from 2008 to 2017 were assessed for regression trends in long-term follow-up period, survival, prognosis, and treatment across increasing overall digital inequity, as measured by the Digital Inequity Index (DII). DII is based on 17 census-tract level variables derived from the American Community Survey and Federal Communications Commission. Variables were categorized as infrastructure-access (ie, digital-related variables) or sociodemographic (ie, education, income, and disability status) and weighted-averaged into a composite score. With increasing DII, decreases in length of follow-up (10.22%, 32.9-29.5 months; P < .001) and survival (8.93%, 19-17.3 months; P < .001) were observed. Affordability of internet access displayed the largest influence, followed by device access and internet-service availability. Compared to OPC patients with low digital inequity, high digital inequity was associated with increased odds of diagnosing more than one malignant tumor (odds ratio [OR] 1.01, 95% CI 1.01-1.03; P = .012) and advanced staging (OR 1.01, 95% CI 1.00-1.02; P = .034), while having decreased odds of receiving indicated chemotherapy (OR 0.98, 95% CI 0.97-0.99; P < .001), radiation therapy (OR 0.98, 95% CI 0.97-0.99; P < .001), or primary surgery (OR 0.98, 95% CI 0.97-0.99; P < .001). Digital inequities contribute to detrimental trends in OPC patient care and prognosis in the United States. These findings can inform strategic discourse targeted against the most pertinent disparities in the modern-day environment.

The rapid deployment of emergency remote teaching in the pandemic presents sweeping societal‐level information systems phenomena worthy of scholarly inquiry. This paper reports findings from teacher interviews conducted with K‐12 public school teachers, exploring how digital access and use gaps in communities reflect wider digital and social inequalities as schools fulfilled emergency remote teaching mandates, becoming swept up into e‐learning technology expansion trends propelled by mandates, and unfettered corporate edtech. Results show persistence of home and school level digital affordance gaps as hindrances to pandemic pedagogy. We build upon theory of the digital divide, and crisis and critical informatics literature considering how critical approaches to the study of socio‐technical systems research can inform these understandings, providing insights into how localized digital inequities contribute to broader digital inequality and social inequality, in the educative processes expected of public education in democratic societies. Our work gives voice to one highly pressured and conflicted stakeholder in these dynamics—K‐12 public school teachers—and demonstrates some of the ways in which digital inequity gaps may play a further magnifying role of societal division through expanding edtech deployment in K‐12 grades, if current edtech trends hold.

In the field of education, teachers must be technologically abreast especially in time of the COVID-19 Pandemic addressing the demand of the New Normal. To build confidence and capacity in digital teaching-learning, teachers must consider developing their skills in using digital technologies in education and they must also embed the use of digital devices in the teaching-learning practice. In this premise, this research article explains the digital inequality that the teachers are experiencing and its effect on their teaching profession and on establishing among themselves the digital trust and intuition. This study also aimed to answer, “What are the digital equalities do teachers encounter?” Th teachers’ decision for digital trust and intuition is affected by the digital inequalities they are experiencing. This study draws insights from a one-page survey questionnaire to 20 selected teachers of St. Aloysius Academy of Dasmariñas representing the faculty from the 3 departments such as preschool, grade school and high school. The results of this study indicate that teachers of St. Aloysius Academy of Dasmariñas are digitally inclined as manifested by their subscriptions to various digital devices and services. The impact of the digital technology to them in terms of social, economic, political and cultural affects their decision in digital trust and intuition. Overcoming issues on digital inequality among teachers will lead to digital trust and intuition. The school, from where the teachers are employed must address the digital inequality by ensuring that all teachers have equal chances in accessing the technology-based teaching devices and by providing them capacity building trainings which are imperative for the demand of the new normal. Teachers must embrace the digital technology in the community and in their workplace and imbibe the digital trust and intuition in education.

BackgroundIn the modern era, the use of technology can substantially impact care access. Despite the extent of its influence on several chronic medical conditions related to the heart, lungs, and others, the relationship between one’s access to digital resources and oncologic conditions has been seldom investigated in select pathologies among gastrointestinal and head-neck regions. However, studies on the influence of this “digital inequity” on other cancers pertaining to nasal and paranasal sinus cancer (NPSC) have yet to be performed. This remains in stark contrast to the extent of large data approaches assessing the impact of traditional social determinants/drivers of health (SDoH), such as factors related to one’s socioeconomic status, minoritized race or ethnicity, and housing-transportation status, on prognostic and treatment outcomes.ObjectiveThis study aims to use the Digital Inequity Index (DII), a novel, comprehensive tool that quantifies digital resource access on an area- or community-based level, to assess the relationship between inequities in digital accessibility with NPSC disparities in prognosis and care in the United States.MethodsPatients with NPSC from 2008 to 2017 in the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program were assessed for significant regression trends in the long-term follow-up period and treatment receipt across NPSCs with increasing overall digital inequity, as measured by DII. DII was based on 17 census-tract level variables derived from the summarized values overlapping that same time period from the US Census/American Community Survey and Federal Communications Commission Annual Broadband Report. Variables were categorized as infrastructure-access (ie, electronic device ownership, internet provider availability, and income-broadband subscription ratio) or sociodemographic (education, income, age, and disability), ranked, and then averaged into a composite score to encompass direct and indirect factors related to digital inequity.ResultsAcross 8012 adult patients with NPSC, males (n=5416, 67.6%) and White race (n=4293, 53.6%) were the most represented demographics. With increasing digital inequity, as measured by increasing total DII scores, significant decreases in the length of long-term follow-up were observed with nasopharyngeal (P<.01) and maxillary sinus cancers (P=.02), with decreases as high as 19% (35.2 to 28.5 months, nasopharynx). Electronic device and service availability inequities showcased higher-magnitude contributions to observed associated regression trends, while the income-broadband ratio contributed less. Significantly decreased odds of receiving indicated surgery (lowest odds ratio 0.87, 95% CI 0.80-0.95, maxillary) and radiation (lowest odds ratio 0.78, 95% CI 0.63-0.95, ethmoid) for several NPSCs were also observed.ConclusionsDigital inequities are associated with detrimental NPSC care and surveillance trends in the United States, even when accounting for traditional SDoH factors. These results prompt the need to include digital factors into the discussion of contextualizing SDoH-based analyses of cancer care disparities, as well as the specific factors from which prospective implementations and initiatives can invest limited public health resources to alleviate the most pertinent drivers of disparities.

Attention to rigour, from the identification of the problem to the dissemination of the findings, is essential in all qualitative research. In this paper, research carried out in Ghana in 1999 is used to highlight methodological issues in relation to rigour in international qualitative nursing research. The purpose of this paper is to review the literature in relation to rigour in qualitative research, highlight the methodological decisions enhancing rigour during this research project, and describe the criteria used to assess rigour during the research process. A participatory action research design was used to explore the cultural, social, economic, and political factors that influenced Ghanaian women's vulnerability to HIV infection. Collaboration with participants and partnerships with key professionals were integral to the design of the study. Participatory action research provided a flexible, socially, and culturally adaptable framework to guide this international research project. Prior to the initiation of international research it was essential to establish the relevance and feasibility of the proposed project. This international research project posed additional methodological challenges to the establishment of rigour. Patience, flexibility and sensitivity were required of the researcher to overcome these challenges. Collaboration with participants and with culture-specific 'experts' may be key to culturally competent scholarship, particularly in unfamiliar settings.

International research is common practice in many fields of science and a variety of international projects from the most diverse fields of research can be found through the major academic search engines. However, expanding the search in the direction of metaperspectival reflection on international participatory research might be unsuccessful, as there is scarce literature on the topic. This article is based on experiences with children in the international participatory research project called “Learning Together, Living Diversity”, which was carried out using the photovoice method to involve the children in the process as co-researchers. As international research differs considerably from national research, many challenges may be encountered, especially in field research and mainly in regards to getting in touch and interacting with the foreign country, its people and culture. The aim of this paper is to put into writing the reflexive processing of the cross-border research experience of the two cooperation partners Guillermina Chabrillon (Argentina) and Corinne Butschi (Switzerland), who planned and organised the field work in two Argentinian kindergartens together. The challenges which they faced and the role of both language and cultural background will be described in a practical way. It will be shown that reliable and good cooperation partnerships become even more important when the logistics of international research projects is not only complicated by distance, but also by language and cultural barriers. Examples of the major challenges and the role of culture and other contextual factors in project planning and logistics when crossing linguistic and cross-cultural boundaries will be included, with the purpose of contributing to stimulating further research and a greater number of successful international cooperation partnerships.

IntroductionThe growth of international collaborative development and research programmes owes much to a greater focus on transcultural research, funding in this regard, and the concern of universities to extend their international visibility (Rigby & Edler, 2005). It has also raised significant challenges and concerns regarding the conceptualisation and dissemination of international educational research, its sustainability, and the development of collaborative partnerships that transcend international borders. Furthermore, as those of us who have been closely involved in the development of international educational research and development projects have learned, developing sustainable international partnerships has been difficult, and has often been fraught with issues. These issues are not only related to processes of funding, knowledge production, and who the ultimate beneficiaries of the research will be, but also to partnership relationships as well as transcultural communication and intercultural learning.In this article, I focus on revisiting my field notes and personal reflections from a reflexive diary (ethnographic account), that I kept during an international project in education in Palestine that came to an end in 2014, in order to explore aspects that could possibly have influenced the development of sustainable international partnerships in education that brought about change. The purpose is to analyse my own reflections during the project and after it came to an end and, by connecting the personal to the cultural in this way, possibly contribute to further development of knowledge in this field.The project in Palestine cannot be characterised as a research project as such, but rather as an externally funded knowledge exchange project in education, with a strong emphasis on evaluation research in order to monitor progress and evaluate the impact of the project. As this project came to a close, it generated new projects and influenced the development of revised policies on teacher education. The dynamic relationship between international collaborative projects in higher education and the nature, scale, sustainability, and quality of our collaboration in bringing about educational change in this project has also become clearer. I, therefore, increasingly realised that the role that quality of collaboration played within this project, including the willingness of individuals and collective team groups to transcend international sociocultural boundaries, cannot be underestimated. The challenging path that this partnership followed enabled the greater international project team, as well as the Palestinian project team, to accomplish much more than we would have been able to achieve as individual researchers or as consultants at individual universities. Furthermore, my personal belief in the integral connection between the quality of human relationships in complex international educational research settings and the validity of processes in projects aimed at bringing about social change was confirmed.Brief Description of the International Project in EducationThe main objective of this knowledge exchange project was to improve the quality and relevance of the teaching practice component of teacher education programmes for primary school-aged pupils in Grades 1-4 in Palestine (West Bank and Gaza). In pursuance of this objective, the World Bank funded a Teacher Education Improvement Project (TEIP) in 2010, for which an international cross-faculty, cross-university team successfully bid to act as international consultants. Notification of the contract was received in March 2011, and the project came to a close in 2014. Strategic planning to achieve the overall goal of this project within a period of about 36 months was informed by a coherent body of knowledge derived from international research and practice in teacher education, whole-school improvement, and continuing professional development. …

IntroductionTechnology and internet access have become increasingly integrated into healthcare as the primary platform for health‐related information and provider‐patient communication. Disparities in access to digital resources exist in the United States and have been shown to impact health outcomes in various head and neck malignancies. Our objective is to evaluate the associations of digital inequity on health outcomes in patients with salivary gland cancer (SGC).MethodsThe Digital Inequity Index (DII) was developed using 17 census‐tract level variables obtained from the American Community Survey and Federal Communications Commission. Variables were categorized as digital infrastructure or sociodemographic (e.g., non‐digital) and scored based on relative rankings across all US counties. Scores were assigned to patients from the Surveillance‐Epidemiology‐End Results (SEER) database diagnosed with SGC between 2013 and 2017 based on county‐of‐residence. Regressions were performed between DII score and outcomes of surveillance time, survival time, tumor stage at time of diagnosis, and treatment modality.ResultsAmong 9306 SGC‐patients, increased digital inequity was associated with advanced‐staging at presentation (OR: 1.04, 95% CI: 1.01–1.07, p = 0.033), increased odds of chemotherapy receipt (OR: 1.05, CI: 1.01–1.10, p = 0.010), and decreased odds of surgical intervention (OR: 0.94, 95% CI: 0.91–0.98, p = 0.003) after accounting for traditional sociodemographic factors. Increased digital inequity was also associated with decreased surveillance time and survival periods.ConclusionsDigital inequity significantly and independently associates with negative health and treatment outcomes in SGC patients, highlighting the importance of directed efforts to address these seldom‐investigated drivers of health disparities.

The impact of digital inequities on laryngeal cancer disparities in the US

Digital inequality in the Appalachian Ohio: Understanding how demographics, internet access, and skills can shape vital information use (VIU)

Modern-day internet access and technology usage substantially impacts aspects of surgical care but remain ill-defined for their associations with gastrointestinal-cancer (GIC) outcomes. We sought to develop the Digital Inequity Index (DII), a novel, a self-adapted tool to quantify access to digital resources, to assess the impact of "digital inequity" on GIC care and prognosis. Adult (20+) patients with gastrointestinal malignancies between 2013 and 2017 were identified from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program database. DII was calculated based on 17 census-tract level variables derived from the American Community Survey and Federal Communications Commission. Variables were categorized as infrastructure-access (i.e., electronic device ownership, broadband type, internet provider availability, income-broadband subscription ratio) or sociodemographic (i.e., education, income, disability status), ranked relative across all US counties, and then averaged into a composite score. The association between DII and surgery receipt, staging, surveillance period, and survival time were assessed with multiple logistic and linear regressions. Among 287 228 patients, increasing DII was associated with increased odds of late-stage disease (highest odds ratio [OR]: 1.08, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.05-1.10 for hepatic) and decreased odds of receiving surgery (lowest OR: 0.94, 95%CI: 0.93-0.96 for hepatic). Higher DII was associated with shorter postoperative surveillance length (largest decrease -20.4% for hepatic) and overall survival length (largest decrease -16.0% for pancreatic). Sociodemographic and infrastructure-access factors contributed equivalently to surveillance time disparities, while infrastructure-access factors contributed more to survival disparities across GICtypes. As technology dependence has increased, inequities in digital access should be targeted as a contributor to surgical oncologic disparities.

Objective To explore ways to promote international research cooperation, enhance research innovation and international impact of Peking University Health Science Center (PKUHSC), we analyzed the international (regional) cooperation and exchange program of National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC). Methods Taking the major international (regional) joint research projects as an example, we analyzed the current situation of international research collaboration of PKUHSC and proposed possible suggestions. Results PKUHSC is active in international research cooperation and gained advantage in undertaking major international (regional) joint research projects. To further enhance our international competitiveness, the international research cooperation projects need to be further optimized. Conclusions It is necessary to further explore the international cooperation mode of project-talent-base , and enhance international level of scientific and technological innovation. Key words: International cooperation; Scientific research; Project; Medicine

The study aims to analyze key issues and research trends in international research on the digital inequality of immigrants. Based on a total of 401 articles on digital inequality of immigrants published in Web of Science registered journals between 2000 and February 2023, the authors identified key research topics. The analysis reveals an increasing number of articles on immigrants’ digital inequality, starting with two articles in 2006, and showing a sharp increase since 2020. Research areas on the digital inequality of immigrants are led by various academic fields, including social science, medicine, and multidisciplinary studies. Five topics were identified through topic modeling and word network analysis: ‘immigrants’ digital inequality in health’, ‘COVID-19 and immigrants’ digital inequality’, ‘Immigrants’ digital inequality in education’, ‘Immigrants’ inequality in the digital age’, and ‘Digital inequality of migrant workers’. It was shown that topics of ‘immigrants’ digital inequality in health’ and ‘Immigrants’ inequality in the digital age’ have been attracting significant attention.