Belief Structures Research Articles

An etiological examination of behavioral intentions to support shark and stingray conservancy: the effects of beliefs in elasmobranchs’ cognitive and affective capacities

Keystone species populations, including shark and ray taxonomic groups, are declining due to numerous threats. A better understanding of how individual belief structures inform pro-conservation behavioral intentions is therefore critical to foster support for their conservation and the greater biodiversity of world ecosystems. This study conducted a survey to establish the general public’s cognitive beliefs about the mental and affective capacities of two species groups (sharks and stingrays) known to cause injury to humans, and their effects on different behavioral intentions to support their conservation. Results revealed that a range of different behavioral intentions to support animal conservation are driven by a complex interplay of cognitive beliefs, and some effects were specific to a particular species group while others were not. Beliefs in animals’ cognitive awareness and their emotional abilities were predictive of individuals’ self-reported desire to learn more about the animals and their conservation. Beliefs in animals’ cognitive and emotional capacities were predictive of supporting conservation in terms of voting and donating to their conservation. Finally, beliefs in animals’ reasoning abilities were predictive of different behavioral expressions of tolerance, and support for their conservation via voting only. Despite the potential injurious capabilities of these species, these findings have important implications for educational and conservation programs to emphasize or modify specific beliefs in order to facilitate particular pro-conservation behaviors for maximum benefits to conservation efforts.

Teacher-reported instructional quality in the context of technology-enhanced teaching: The role of teachers’ digital competence-related beliefs in empowering learners

Teachers' competence-related beliefs are crucial in determining teachers' professional competence and instructional quality. However, in the context of technology-enhanced teaching, studies regarding competence-related beliefs, specifically competence dimensions and their relations to instructional quality, are limited. Against this backdrop, the purpose of the present study is twofold: The first is to test the factorial structure of a measure that assesses teachers' competence-related beliefs in the dimension of empowering learners with its subdimensions of differentiation and actively engaging learners based on the European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators (DigCompEdu). The second is to examine the relations between competence-related beliefs and teachers' reported use of digital technologies to enhance classroom management, cognitive activation, and supportive climate. Based on data from 145 teachers (73.1% female), both the factorial structure and the relations were analyzed using various approaches of structural equation modeling. The results supported the bifactor confirmatory factor analysis model with a general factor defined as empowering learners as well as two subdimensions representing differentiation and actively engaging learners. Teachers' competence-related beliefs regarding differentiation and empowering learners are positively related to the teacher-reported use of technologies to enhance instructional quality. Understanding the structure of teachers' competence-related beliefs about empowering learners and their relations to instructional quality in technology-enhanced teaching is relevant for teacher education to address learners’ diverse learning needs, as well as to promote active and creative engagement.

Damage effectiveness assessment of anti-ship torpedo based on evidential reasoning algorithm

The damage effectiveness assessment of anti-ship torpedo combines system science and weapon science, having important military research significance. In order to solve the difficulty of heterogeneous data aggregation, this paper constructs the anti-ship torpedo damage assessment criteria system and uses evidential reasoning method to assess the damage effectiveness. In order to solve the problem of incompleteness of criteria in damage effectiveness assessment process, the belief structure model is used to transform qualitative and quantitative information into a unified assessment structure, and then evidential reasoning is used to gradually aggregate the lower-level criteria of the assessment criteria system into upper-level criteria relevant to damage effectiveness. The result analysis shows that the process proposed in this paper can effectively assess the damage effectiveness of anti-ship torpedo, all criteria data are comparable, and the effect of each factor on the damage effectiveness is clearer.

Navigating the landscape of research paradigms: An overview and critique

The aim of this study is to investigate the different research paradigms, including conventional and alternative paradigms, and to critically examine their underlying assumptions and implications for research design, data collection, and analysis. The methodology involves a critical examination of different research paradigms and their underlying belief structure. The main findings of this study indicate that different research paradigms have different assumptions about the nature of reality, the role of the researcher, and the goals of the research. These assumptions have implications at the fundamental level. This review article contributes to the existing literature by providing a comprehensive overview of research paradigms and their implications for research design, data collection, and analysis, practically. The study also emphasizes the importance of choosing the most appropriate research paradigm that aligns with the research questions and goals, leading to more accurate and relevant findings that contribute to the advancement of knowledge in the scholarly fields.

Enhancing fuzzy evidential reasoning approach using dynamic adjustment mechanism and new rule-based transformation for engineering emergency response evaluation

With the frequent occurrence of various emergency events in engineering field, engineering emergency response (EER) evaluation plays an increasingly significant role in handling such situations and provides great challenges to research since the uncertain information and the urgent response time. Aiming at achieving timely and effective emergency response, an enhanced evidential reasoning (ER) approach based on the dynamic adjustment mechanism and new rule-based transformation is proposed. First, the linguistic terms to represent various preference information provided by experts are encoded into the trapezoidal interval type-2 fuzzy sets (TrIT2FSs) with different granularities. Second, for ensuring the validity of the information, based on the definition of the expert decision risk preference coefficients, a dynamic adjustment mechanism is constructed to identify and adjust the preference information. Meanwhile, combined with social network, the experts’ weights can be calculated and revised several times to obtain group information. Then, a new rule-based transformation and related optimization models are proposed to convert the TrIT2FSs into interval belief structures. Furthermore, considering the importance of attributes, the relative weights and interval belief structures are combined. Finally, according to integrated interval belief structures obtained by the analytical ER algorithm, a new ranking approach with the optimism degree and decision tendency degree is constructed to rank the interval expected utility and score utility of each alternative. To further show the effectiveness, superiorities, and stability of the proposed method, a case study on the EER evaluation is preformed and some comparisons and discussions are provided.

Evaluation of Fuzzy Measures Using Dempster–Shafer Belief Structure: A Classifier Fusion Framework

This paper studies the high complexity of the calculation of fuzzy measures which can be used in fuzzy integrals to combine the decisions of different learning algorithms. To this end, this paper proposes an alternative low complexity method for the calculation of fuzzy measures that have been applied to Choquet integral for the fusion of deep learning models across different application domains for increasing the accuracy of the overall model. The paper shows that the Dempster-Shafer (DS) belief structure provides partial information about the fuzzy measures associated with a variable, and the paper devises a method to use this partial information for the calculation of fuzzy measures. An infinite number of fuzzy measures is associated with the DS belief structure. This paper proposes a theorem to calculate the general form of a specific set of fuzzy measures associated with the DS belief structure. This specific set of fuzzy measures can be expressed as a weighted summation of the basic assignment function of the DS belief structure. The main advantage of expressing the fuzzy measures in this format is that the monotonic condition which needs to be maintained during the calculation of the fuzzy measure can be avoided and only the basic assignment function needs to be evaluated. The calculation of the basic assignment function is formulated using a method inspired by the Monte Carlo approach used to calculate Value Functions in Markov Decision Process.

A New Evidential Reasoning Rule Considering Interval Uncertainty and Perturbation.

The evidential reasoning (ER) rule has been widely applied in the multiple attribute decision making (MADM), which makes the decision-making process transparent and credible by using a belief structure. To improve the ability of the ER rule in dealing with the interval uncertainty, a new interval ER (IER) rule is proposed in this article. The interval uncertainty is described as the interval grade in the new frame of discernment (FoD) to model the local ignorance. It is proved that the IER rule is a generalization of the ER rule. To study the influence of perturbation on the IER rule, the perturbation is first introduced to the belief structure, and the perturbation analysis (PA) is conducted for the IER rule. An optimization model is established to estimate the perturbation threshold, which can measure the effectiveness of the inference result under perturbation. Two numerical examples and a case study are carried out, respectively, to show the implementation process of the proposed IER rule and validate its effectiveness in different decision-making scenarios.

Quantifying vocabulary learning belief and strategy - A validation study of the Vietnamese version of Gu's (2018) vocabulary learning questionnaire

BackgroundThe field of language teaching and learning has long recognized the role of vocabulary knowledge in all aspects of language proficiency and indicated that vocabulary beliefs and learning strategies play a pivotal role in learners' vocabulary development. As a result, understanding learners’ beliefs and strategies in vocabulary learning is of paramount importance to language teachers. The Vocabulary Learning Questionnaire (VLQ) developed by Peter Gu in 2018 could be considered the most recent, validated instrument for the measurement of vocabulary learning beliefs and strategies. However, the VLQ contains too many items and is only available in English. The objectives of the study, therefore, are (1) to develop and validate a Vietnamese version of the VLQ which can exclude construct-irrelevant noises related to L2 comprehension, and (2) to reduce the number of items while retaining the key factors in the instruments. Methods722 Vietnamese university students took part in the study. Exploratory factor analyses (EFA) and confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) were examined with the free software Jamovi 2.3.13. Both Cronbach's alpha and McDonald's omega were employed to evaluate the factors' internal consistency. ResultsSeparate EFAs confirmed the two dimensions of vocabulary beliefs, explaining 62.6% of the total variance, and seven factors of vocabulary strategies, predicting 72.1% of the total variance. CFAs confirmed the hypothesized 9-dimensional structures of different vocabulary learning beliefs and strategies and offer cross-validation evidence for the Vietnamese VLQ. Reliability metrics demonstrated acceptable internal reliability for vocabulary belief and strategy sub-scales. ConclusionThe Vietnamese VLQ provides a validated measure of vocabulary beliefs and strategies. The 30-item version of the Vietnamese VLQ serves as a starting point for future research in the field of vocabulary learning and teaching in Vietnam.

COVID-19 Vaccine-Related Information on the WeChat Public Platform: Topic Modeling and Content Analysis.

The COVID-19 vaccine is an effective tool in the fight against the COVID-19 outbreak. As the main channel of information dissemination in the context of the epidemic, social media influences public trust and acceptance of the vaccine. The rational application of health behavior theory is a guarantee of effective public health information dissemination. However, little is known about the application of health behavior theory in web-based COVID-19 vaccine messages, especially from Chinese social media posts. This study aimed to understand the main topics and communication characteristics of hot papers related to COVID-19 vaccine on the WeChat platform and assess the health behavior theory application with the aid of health belief model (HBM). A systematic search was conducted on the Chinese social media platform WeChat to identify COVID-19 vaccine-related papers. A coding scheme was established based on the HBM, and the sample was managed and coded using NVivo 12 (QSR International) to assess the application of health behavior theory. The main topics of the papers were extracted through the Latent Dirichlet Allocation algorithm. Finally, temporal analysis was used to explore trends in the evolution of themes and health belief structures in the papers. A total of 757 papers were analyzed. Almost all (671/757, 89%) of the papers did not have an original logo. By topic modeling, 5 topics were identified, which were vaccine development and effectiveness (267/757, 35%), disease infection and protection (197/757, 26%), vaccine safety and adverse reactions (52/757, 7%), vaccine access (136/757, 18%), and vaccination science popularization (105/757, 14%). All papers identified at least one structure in the extended HBM, but only 29 papers included all of the structures. Descriptions of solutions to obstacles (585/757, 77%) and benefit (468/757, 62%) were the most emphasized components in all samples. Relatively few elements of susceptibility (208/757, 27%) and the least were descriptions of severity (135/757, 18%). Heat map visualization revealed the change in health belief structure before and after vaccine entry into the market. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to assess the structural expression of health beliefs in information related to the COVID-19 vaccine on the WeChat public platform based on an HBM. The study also identified topics and communication characteristics before and after the market entry of vaccines. Our findings can inform customized education and communication strategies to promote vaccination not only in this pandemic but also in future pandemics.

Contents and Structures of Preservice Teachers' Beliefs about Technology in School - Before and After Remote Teaching due to COVID-19

Contents and Structures of Preservice Teachers' Beliefs about Technology in School - Before and After Remote Teaching due to COVID-19

INTENTION TO SAVE HAJJ AT INDONESIAN SHARIA BANK: A STUDY BASED ON THEORY OF PLANNED BEHAVIOR

This study aims to examine the intention to use hajj savings. The proposed model of 'Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB)' which is widely applied in consumer behavior studies. This theory consists of the behavioral, normative and controlling belief structures that shape consumer intentions. This study includes three independent variables, namely attitudes, subjective norms, perceptions of behavior control. Intention as the dependent variable and religiosity as a moderating variable. The type of research used is explanatory research with a survey approach. Data collection techniques through distributing questionnaires and Structural Equation Modeling and Partial Least Square (SEM-PLS) analysis. The test results show varied results, from the effect tested there are 2 relationships that have a significant effect, namely the attitude variable and subjective norms on the intention to use hajj savings. While the perception of control has no significant effect on intention and the variable religiosity as a moderator has no effect on attitude variables, subjective norms, and perceptions of behavior control.

Lessons Learned about Developing Faith and Public Health Partnerships to Address Health Disparities.

Partnerships between public health and faith-based organizations draw on the strengths of both sectors to achieve a shared interest in promoting health and reducing disparities. However, information about implementation of faith and public health partnerships-particularly those involving diverse racial-ethnic groups-is limited. This paper reports on findings from qualitative interviews conducted with 16 public health and congregational leaders around the country as part of the early phase of the development of a faith and public health partnership to address health disparities in Los Angeles, CA. We identified eight themes regarding the barriers and facilitators to building faith and public health partnerships and distilled these into 10 lessons for developing such approaches. These interviews identified that engaging religious organizations often requires building congregational capacity of the congregation to participate in health programs; and that trust is a critically important element of these relationships. Further, trust is closely related to how well each organization involved in the partnership understands their partners' belief structures, approaches to addressing health and well-being and capacities to contribute to the partnership. Tailoring congregational health programs to match the interests, needs and capacity of partners was identified as an important approach to ensuring that the partnership is successful. But, this is complicated by working across multiple faith traditions and the racial-ethnic backgrounds, thus requiring increased and diverse communication strategies on the part of the partnership leadership. These lessons provide important information for faith and public health leaders interested in developing partnered approaches to address health in diverse urban communities.

Historical Imagination and the Unspoken Assumptions of Our Age

This article discusses changing conceptions of how the study of history should best inform present challenges. It contrasts the ‘historical sensibility’ embodied by Michael Howard with the teleological ‘historicism’ decried by Karl Popper. It explores what Howard termed the historical ‘imagination’ – the recreation of the belief structures which made historical events and developments possible – and his argument of how the study of history, including the history of foreign countries, might cultivate cultural empathy. It also examines James Joll’s concept of ‘unspoken assumptions’ and considers how it and Howard’s ideas might illuminate our understanding of our own age.

The Relationship between Structure of Discourse and Structure of Ideology A Socio-Cognitive Perspective

Whereas theoretical and political thought on the existence of ideologies has a long history, fewer focus has been given to their exact nature, socio-cognitive frameworks, discursive replication, and ideological discourse. This article investigates the relation between the structure of discourse and structure of ideology from the socio-cognitive perspective, adopting van Dijk’s (2006, 2008, and 2009) 'sociocognitive' approach. Moreover, ideologies are Ideologies pertain to the concepts and convictions of a group of individuals and the mental character and the psychological studies of ideologies are rare, the aim is to reveal how such cognitive phenomena are interconnected with discourse structures, verbal engagement, communication events and contexts, as well as society structures like dominance and social inequity. In order to understand the structures of discourse and to examine the nature and functions of ideologies in society, the structure of beliefs should be involved in the same way because they interact and subsequently are mutually related into systems. Ideologies' mental characteristics, including their nature as concepts or beliefs their relationship with views and knowledge, and their position as socially shared interpretations, will be discussed. Discourse structures and social structures are of distinct kinds, and the only way to connect them is through language users' mental representations of themselves as individuals and social members

Struktur dan Fungsi Sosial Kepercayaan Rakyat Ungkapan Larangan Tentang Masa Hamil, Melahirkan, dan Menyusui Masyarakat Kanagarian Ujung Gading Kecamatan Lembah Melintang Kabupaten Pasaman Barat

This studi aims of this research is to explain the social structure and function of the people's belief in the expression of prohibitions regarding pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding for the people of Lombok Jorong Irian Kenagarian Ujung Gading Hamlet, Lembah Melintang District, West Pasaman Regency. the type of research used is literary research with descriptive methods. The research data were obtained from interviews with several informants. Data collection was carried out through the stages of recording interviews, recording the necessary data, and transcription into written form. while data analysis was carried out with the data inventory stage, data analysis stage, discussion stage as well as conclusions and reporting. The findings of this study are: (1) the structure of the people's belief in the expression of prohibitions regarding pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding The people of Lombok Jorong Irian Kenagarian Ujung Gading Hamlet, Lembah Melintang District, West Pasaman Regency are divided into two parts, namely the structure of two parts and thethree-part structure.(2) The social function of the people's belief in expressing prohibitions regarding pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding of the Dusun Lombok Jorong Irian Kenagarian Ujung Gading District, Lembah Melintang District, West Pasaman Regency, is divided into four, namely strengthening beliefs, imaginary projection systems, educating,and forbid.

Understanding the influence of irrational beliefs and body image inflexibility on exercise dependence and psychological well-being: A latent profile analysis approach

ABSTRACT Irrational beliefs are a risk factor for mental ill-health and exercise dependence. In addition to this, researchers have also proposed that body image inflexibility can determine mental health and behavioural outcomes. However, research is yet to explore whether and to what extent irrational beliefs and body image inflexibility align to influence mental health and exercise dependence. We examined the latent profile structure of irrational beliefs and body image inflexibility, and how these latent profiles relate to mental health and exercise dependence in exercise active adults. Results indicate a two class profile, whereby class 1 is characterized by high irrational beliefs and body image inflexibility, and class 2 is characterized by low irrational beliefs and body image inflexibility. Those in class 1 reported significantly greater depression, anxiety, stress, and exercise dependence than those in class 2 (p ≤ .02). The findings are discussed in relation to the implications for practitioners in the mental health of exercise participants.

Belief-Based Preference Structure and Elicitation in the Graph Model for Conflict Resolution

A belief-based preference structure along with its associated elicitation approach is incorporated into the graph model for conflict resolution (GMCR) to model and analyze the multistakeholder strategic conflicts involving ambiguous evidences, incomplete information, and nonlinear causal relationships. More specifically, the relative preference is first redefined using a belief structure capable of capturing uncertainties of various types such as vagueness and/or ignorance in subjective judgments regarding the complex real-world conflicts. Next, a flexible and realistic methodology based on evidential reasoning is put forward to elicit the belief preference information over feasible states within the GMCR model. Then, 16 stability definitions (solution concepts) are extended to accommodate diverse uncertainties in preferences and facilitate the informed conflict analysis. The application and interpretation of the foregoing preference structure and associated stability definitions are demonstrated with an illustrative example.

A New Decision-Making Framework for Site Selection of Electric Vehicle Charging Station With Heterogeneous Information and Multigranular Linguistic Terms

As a key technology to perform sustainable development in transportation, electric vehicles have been largely welcomed due to their advantages in energy savings and low carbon emission. The main step in promoting these vehicles is the selection of the appropriate electric vehicle charging station (EVCS) site. EVCS site selection is a laborious task because it involves a series of conflicting quantitative and qualitative criteria from several dimensions. The quantitative criteria are usually expressed by numerical data, while qualitative criteria are commonly represented by linguistic terms. Furthermore, the linguistic terms generated by different decision makers are usually defined on multigranular linguistic term sets. In this article, we present a new decision-making framework to select sustainable EVCS sites within the context of heterogeneous information and multigranular linguistic terms. First, three information transformation mechanisms are defined to unify the heterogeneous information and multigranular linguistic terms into interval-valued belief structures. Afterward, shadowed sets theory is utilized to reflect the personalized individual semantics of linguistic terms. Then, with the aid of the evidential reasoning (ER) algorithm, a new information fusion method is proposed to generate the interval-valued expected utilities of alternatives. Subsequently, an improved minimax regret approach is developed to compare and rank the interval-valued expected utilities. The proposed decision-making framework is then implemented to solve a case study for EVCS site selection. Further analysis and comparisons with other methods are also conducted to show the applicability and feasibility of the current proposal.

The Perception of EFL University Students in Tolerance of Ambiguity

Ambiguity tolerance (AT), is defined as "the degree to which you are cognitively willing to tolerate ideas and propositions that run counter to your belief system or structure of knowledge.” Ambiguity tolerance is one of the most important learning styles that focus on the learners’ learning more than the methodology. The study aims to investigate the EFL students’ perception of ambiguity tolerance. The study is a quantitative descriptive one. The sample of 53 students was selected randomly from the fourth stage at the department of English Language, College of Education for Women/ University of Baghdad. They responded to the Second Language Tolerance of Ambiguity Scale (SLTAS) modified by Erten and Topkaya (2009). The study tool's validity is ascertained by giving the scale to the number of experts to decide its suitability to measure the study aims, while the reliability has been ascertained by using the alpha-Cronbach formula. After finding out the waiting means and percentages of the scale items, the results showed that the degree of tolerance of ambiguity is moderated for all the scale items. This result indicates that the EFL students’ willing to tolerate moderately the ambiguity of the foreign language structure and knowledge that run counter to their native language structure and knowledge. Accordingly, several recommendations and suggestions are set forward.

A New Health Analysis Method for Lithium-Ion Batteries Based on the Evidential Reasoning Rule Considering Perturbation

Lithium-ion batteries are widely used in energy storage, small electronic devices and other fields due to their advantages of high energy density and long life cycles, as well as causing less damage to the environment than alternatives. For safety, it is essential to propose reasonable methods to assess batteries’ health statuses. Therefore, a health assessment model based on the evidential reasoning (ER) rule is proposed in this article. Firstly, the voltage rise time and the current fall time are taken as observation indicators, which contain information about the health status of lithium-ion batteries. Secondly, the information of various indicators is integrated into a belief structure, and the indicator reliability and indicator weights are adequately considered in the assessment model. Thirdly, there are some perturbations that will affect the operating status of batteries and cause the batteries’ reliability to fluctuate, so we use perturbation analysis to determine the adaptability of batteries to perturbations. We set two bounded parameters, the perturbation coefficient and the maximum perturbation error, to assess the reliability of lithium-ion batteries when experiencing perturbations. Finally, on the basis of the whole-life open data set of lithium-ion batteries from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Prognostics Center of Excellence, the validity of the health assessment model and perturbation analysis is demonstrated.