Conceptual Work Research Articles

Intention to engage in ecotourism development: validation and extension of the Resident Empowerment through Tourism Scale (Version 2.1)

ABSTRACT This work, based on the conceptual work by Scheyvens and van der Watt (2021), amends the original Resident Empowerment through Tourism Scale (RETS) by including three new dimensions: economic empowerment, cultural empowerment, and environmental empowerment. In so doing, the modified scale is applied in a region of Ecuador not known for its ecotourism opportunities, to determine how residents’ (n = 500) perceived empowerment factors into their intent to engage in ecotourism endeavours through a modified theory of planned behaviour model. Psychometric properties of the 13-item modified RETS were strong. Six of the nine proposed hypotheses were supported via structural equation modelling using IBM Amos 28.0. The first-order model (of perceived empowerment) accounted for 33% of the variance in attitudes about engaging in ecotourism and 82% of the variance in behavioural intentions to engage in ecotourism. A second-order model increased variance explained in attitudes to 70% and in behavioural intentions to 89%.

The origins and work of the Scottish Law Commission, and the problem of the codification of Scottish private law

The subject covered in the paper is the origins, structure and workings of the Scottish Law Commission created, along with its English counterpart, under the Law Commissions Act of 1965. The author of the article outlines the course of conceptual and legislative work to constitute the new commission, the extent of its relationship with and dependence on public authorities, as well as the key differences between the legal position of the two commissions, symbolically highlighted by the English commission’s gaining a stronger mandate under the 2009 Law Commission Act. The final part of the paper is devoted to an attempt to assess the achievements of the Commission to date, the reasons for the failure of the premise of the grand codification endeavour, and the successes that the Commission claim in terms of reforming specific institutions and branches of law.

Building a hybrid and networked university through long-term lifelong learning agreements with the surrounding society

The current study focused on lifelong learning as a tool for higher education institutions to build relationships with surrounding society. As a theoretical point of departure, the study built on empowerment and human capital discourses of lifelong learning and the ivory tower, the factory, and the network as modes of higher education institutions' collaboration with the surrounding society. The study focused on a lifelong learning initiative to move a higher education institution towards a hybrid and networked mode. Particularly, the initiative focused on building long-term relationships with organisations in the surrounding society. Therefore, this paper aims to report results, in terms of a preliminary conceptual framework, from a higher education lifelong learning initiative. It answers the following research question: How can higher education institutions build hybrid and networked long-term relationships with the surrounding society through lifelong learning initiatives? The study was based on a design-based research method and described and analysed the conceptual development of a Swedish collaborative lifelong learning initiative between a higher education institution and an organisation. Data included in the analysis is taken from documents and field notes, including a long-term agreement, conceptual documents, and plans. The studied initiative included three phases. The first phase, preparatory work, embraced a course for the top management team of the organisation to strengthen their ability to plan, lead and organise professional and organisational development, followed by identifying the needs of the organisation. The second phase, implementation, included dialogue and analysis of the identified needs and development and implementation of suitable courses matching prioritised needs. The third phase, follow-up, included an evaluation of the different parts of the initiative, possible impacts, and a discussion of further needs of collaboration for both professional and organisational development. The conceptual development work included the design of a hybrid and networked framework based on the idea of collaboration partners subscribing to higher education courses under a long-term agreement called POD (collaboration for Professional and Organisational Development). Among others, these PODs include regular dialogues on the needs of the organisations and courses built on networked learning principles. Bring-your-own-data is a core principle to ensure a strong link between theory and practice. The early stage of the initiative included promising results, going in the direction of becoming a hybrid and networked higher education institution by signing its first POD.

Abstinence as Choice: Exploring Voluntary Abstinence from Alcohol Self-Administration Using the Resurgence-as-Choice Framework.

Resurgence is an increase in the rate of a previously suppressed behavior that occurs when an alternative source of reinforcement is made worse in some way. The Resurgence as Choice model offers a quantitative approach to understanding resurgence that may provide important insights into the variables that affect this form of relapse in the natural environment. Bringing this model to bear on relapse following reinforcement-based interventions for alcohol and other substance use disorders, however, may not be straightforward. Laboratory work on which the Resurgence as Choice model is based has almost exclusively focused on resurgence following extinction of target behavior, but abstinence from alcohol during intervention is often voluntary: Patients may drink alcohol and forfeit therapeutic reinforcers at any time. In this article, we first will review recent data from our group that demonstrate a method for studying resurgence following voluntary abstinence from alcohol seeking in rats. In a previous experiment, we reduced rats' alcohol-maintained lever pressing to low levels without placing it on extinction by arranging nondrug differential reinforcement of other behavior. Further, when we suspended nondrug reinforcement, resurgence of lever pressing occurred. Next, we will explore methods for modeling these outcomes using the Resurgence-as-Choice framework. We conclude that the data under consideration may not be sufficient to discriminate between candidate models of resurgence following voluntary abstinence and point to areas for future empirical and theoretical development. This work may provide a stronger bridge between preclinical and conceptual work on resurgence and clinical treatments for alcohol use disorder.

Upscaling of ecosystem service and biodiversity indicators from field to farm to inform agri-environmental decision- and policy-making

Ecosystem services and biodiversity are frequently measured by field-scale indicators. Yet, many important agricultural and economic drivers as well as agri-environmental policies operate at larger sales, to which field-scale indicators first need to be upscaled. Therefore, this perspective is focussed on upscaling approaches from field to farm or to landscape scale. To understand how ecosystem services and biodiversity are affected by farm-scale drivers and to inform future decision- and policy-making while exploiting existing data sources, these need to be upscaled and analysed at farm scale. However, how this is done best for different types of indicators for ecosystems services and biodiversity received little attention so far.In this work, we propose and discuss different options for upscaling ecosystem service and biodiversity indicators from field to farm scale. We base our novel conceptual work on a large body of literature and demonstrate that before deciding on an upscaling approach, different aspects of the indicators and the purpose of the assessment need to be considered. Our propositions start at the point where field-scale data is available for aggregation at farm scale. Such an aggregation needs to consider the relationship between ecosystem service supply and the benefit provided, i.e., the supply-benefit relationship, which describes how a change in supply affects the resulting benefit for farmers and/or society. We argue that this relationship can also be conceptualized for biodiversity, with benefit being the value of a field or farm for biodiversity conservation.Because benefit does often not continuously increase with supply, but can exhibit breaking points defined by thresholds in supply, the shape of the supply-benefit relationship varies among different ecosystem services and biodiversity components. For example, for upscaling biodiversity indicators, a conservation value needs to consider that conservation benefit might non-linearly change with supply, i.e., habitat quality and quantity, and becomes marginal below certain thresholds. Only when such potential thresholds are considered, a suitable upscaling approach can be chosen from the approaches that we present in this work. While some indicators can be upscaled using a simple area-weighted total or average, for others, thresholds in supply are of great relevance for determining the best upscaling approach. We conclude that upscaling indicators to the farm scale holds untapped potential to inform agri-environmental assessments and future policies. By presenting and discussing suitable approaches for different types of indicators, we hope to facilitate upscaling as a tool to support agri-environmental decision-making in the future.

The Discourse of “National Art” in Colombia

Through the analysis of three different discourses on “national art” this paper argues that the latter has functioned as an underlying discourse and played a constant and significant role in defining much of artistic production in Colombia and the debates around it. Within this framework I examine the tension between modernity and modernization that comes into view, for example, in the controversy that took place during the last century between the modernist proposals of the Bachué group, which were anti-academic and expressionist, and the attempt at modernization promoted by figures like Marta Traba, with her “updating” campaign, and Eugenio Barney with his theory of transculturation. My hypothesis is that this tension reaches a synthesis in the plastic and conceptual work of Antonio Caro, which addressed the national public. The preceding movements find their synthesis and take a qualitative leap in Caro’s interpretation of the life and work of Manuel Quintín Lame.

A modified action framework to develop and evaluate academic-policy engagement interventions

BackgroundThere has been a proliferation of frameworks with a common goal of bridging the gap between evidence, policy, and practice, but few aim to specifically guide evaluations of academic-policy engagement. We present the modification of an action framework for the purpose of selecting, developing and evaluating interventions for academic-policy engagement.MethodsWe build on the conceptual work of an existing framework known as SPIRIT (Supporting Policy In Health with Research: an Intervention Trial), developed for the evaluation of strategies intended to increase the use of research in health policy. Our aim was to modify SPIRIT, (i) to be applicable beyond health policy contexts, for example encompassing social, environmental, and economic policy impacts and (ii) to address broader dynamics of academic-policy engagement. We used an iterative approach through literature reviews and consultation with multiple stakeholders from Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and policy professionals working at different levels of government and across geographical contexts in England, alongside our evaluation activities in the Capabilities in Academic Policy Engagement (CAPE) programme.ResultsOur modifications expand upon Redman et al.’s original framework, for example adding a domain of ‘Impacts and Sustainability’ to capture continued activities required in the achievement of desirable outcomes. The modified framework fulfils the criteria for a useful action framework, having a clear purpose, being informed by existing understandings, being capable of guiding targeted interventions, and providing a structure to build further knowledge.ConclusionThe modified SPIRIT framework is designed to be meaningful and accessible for people working across varied contexts in the evidence-policy ecosystem. It has potential applications in how academic-policy engagement interventions might be developed, evaluated, facilitated and improved, to ultimately support the use of evidence in decision-making.

World languages for Black Linguistic Reparations

AbstractThis conceptual work highlights the history of Black erasure throughout the existence of world languages (WLs) as a field of study in the United States. It outlines the unique challenges faced by African descended learners who have and continue to pursue WL study in US classrooms. These include but are not limited to reduced local funding and programmatic expectations due to the remnants of anti‐Black educational policies, monolingual and imperial language ideologies prevalent in texts and pedagogical approaches, and generations of segregation in and outside of schools. Finally, this work proposes WLs serve as a site of Black Linguistic Reparations through, (1) the redistribution of resources in the field, (2) the repair of enacted WL teaching to meet the calls of ACTFL's standards for preparing students for communication in a pluralistic society, and (3) a recreation of the “world” as narrated through a global, rather than a white Western lens.

Dimensional approaches to studying, assessing, and treating traumatic stress: Introduction to the Special Section.

Dimensional models of psychopathology are gaining empirical support and are, thus, increasingly common in research and clinical practice. This is true for traumatic stress studies, although the movement toward dimensional conceptualizations of traumatic stress may be somewhat slower, perhaps due at least in part to how trauma is diagnosed. The purpose of this special section is to collect and showcase cutting-edge basic, applied, and conceptual work on dimensional models of traumatic stress. Its goal is to highlight the utility of such models and to facilitate greater connection between traumatic stress studies and the broader dimensional movement in psychopathology.

The New Sociology of Morality: Cognitive and Analytical Perspectives

This article presents analysis of the prospects for the development of the new sociology of morality in the context of ongoing efforts to institutionalize this area of research. In order to assess and generally classify the theoretical and empirical research that has been conducted as part of this project so far, as well as to determine the possible and potentially promising directions for its further evolution, the author identifies two complementary perspectives — cognitive and analytical sociology of morality. This distinction is proposed based on opposing views held by the authors of this research tradition concerning the extent to which the sociology of morality should incorporate the models of explanation and methods of studying morality from the (much more popular and influential) field of cognitive psychology. The article contains a brief general overview of several conceptual and empirical works that serve as examples of each of the two identified perspectives, and also explicates the differences between them based on three dimensions — theoretical, methodological, and axiological. In addition, the article discusses the key features and potential problems for the future development of cognitive and analytical perspectives in sociology of morality, while also identifying a few potential ways to overcome them. Thus, this work contributes to the ongoing development of the program to research the new sociology of morality by demonstrating crucial features and pointing out the key problems of the two identified perspectives, as well as revealing their potential in terms of deepening both sociological and interdisciplinary knowledge about the nature of human moral capacity.

Involving citizens in regulation: A comparative qualitative study of four experimentalist cases of participatory regulation in Dutch health care

AbstractThe literature on responsive regulation argues that citizens should be involved in regulatory practices to avoid capture between regulator and regulatee. It also argues that including citizens can add an important perspective to regulatory practices. However, we know little about how citizens' perspectives are brought into regulatory practices. This paper draws on existing qualitative research to compare and analyze four cases of experimental participatory regulation in Dutch health care, focusing on the theoretical assumptions that citizen involvement (a) prevents capture, and (b) stimulates the inclusion of new perspectives. Our results show that involving citizens in regulation can increase transparency and trust in regulatory practices and familiarizes regulators with other perspectives. It is, however, up to the regulator to work on deriving benefits from that involvement—not only the practical work of organizing participatory regulation, but also the conceptual work of reflecting on their own assumptions and standards. We do find evidence for weak forms of capture and argue for the need to extend capture to involve multiple actors. We reflect on these results for theory development and regulatory practice.

Programming the next generation of prenatal programming of stress research: A review and suggestions for the future of the field.

In this article, I highlight core ideas, empirical findings, and advances in the study of how stress during pregnancy may prenatally program child neurodevelopmental, psychopathological, and health outcomes, emphasizing reviews, metanalyses, and recent contributions of conceptual and empirical work. The article offers a perspective on the history of this area of science, the underrecognized contributions of influential scholars from diverse fields of study, what we know from the evidence to date, the persistent challenges in sorting through what is left to learn, and suggestions for future research. I include sections focused on promoting resilience, pregnancy interventions that demonstrate positive effects across two generations, and the translational implications of the accruing data for practice and policy, highlighting opportunities for integrating across a range of fields and sectors. In the concluding sections, I discuss lessons learned from conducting this work and provide a closing summary of progress and future directions. The goal of this writing was to provide a viewpoint on some ways that emerging intergenerational transmission scholars might responsibly contribute to the future of the field of developmental psychopathology.

Laying the foundations for implementing Magnet principles in hospitals in Europe: A qualitative analysis

BackgroundMagnet hospitals, a concept developed in the U.S., have been associated with improved nurse recruitment and retention, and better patient outcomes. Magnet principles may be useful to address workforce challenges in European hospitals, but they have not been implemented or evaluated on a large scale in the European hospital context. ObjectiveThis study aims to explore the initial phase of implementing Magnet principles in 11 acute care hospitals in six European countries. The specific objectives of the study were to investigate the type of work that characterises the early phase of implementation and how implementation leaders engage with their context. MethodsA multinational qualitative study was conducted, with data from 23 semi-structured, one-to-one interviews with implementation leaders in 11 acute care hospitals in six European countries. Thematic analyses guided the analysis of data. FindingsThree themes of core work processes during the early phase of implementing Magnet principles in European hospitals were identified. The first theme, ‘Creating space for Magnet’, describes how work was directed towards creating both political and organisational space for the project. The second theme, ‘Framing to fit: understanding and interpreting Magnet principles’, describes the translational work to understand what the Magnet model entails and how it relates to the local hospital context. Finally, the third theme, ‘Calibrating speed and dose’, describes the strategic work of considering internal and external factors to adjust the process of implementation. ConclusionsThe first phase of implementation was characterised by conceptual and relational work; translating the Magnet concepts, considering the fit into existing structures and practices and making space for Magnet in the local context. Understanding the local context played an important role in shaping and guiding the navigation of professional and organisational tensions. Hospitals employed diverse strategies to either emphasise or downplay the role of nurses and nursing to facilitate progress in the implementation.

Online Hosts’ Storytelling Strategies: A Narrative Analysis of Mindfulness-Themed Airbnb Online Experiences

Although virtual tours and online tourism experiences have been developed with technological advancement and COVID-19 lockdowns, knowledge gaps exist to systematically conceptualize online tourism experiences and clarify online hosts’ storytelling strategies. Drawing upon theatrical theory, this study aims to conceptualize the online tourism experience and online hosts’ storytelling strategies. Our research setting is mindfulness-themed online experiences via Airbnb Online Experiences. A total of 186 online hosts were analyzed with narrative analysis. This study proposed three frameworks: (1) a performer-stage-audience model for online tourism experiences, (2) a longitudinal perspective on hosts’ storytelling strategies on the stage, and (3) a systematic view of online hosts’ storytelling strategies. The conceptual work offers important insights for the academy and relevant industries.

Impact of Emotional and Social Factors from a Strategic Perspective on the Performance of Teaching Fraternity

This research delves into the intricate dynamics of emotional and social factors, examined through a strategic lens, to understand their profound impact on the teaching fraternity's performance. The study employs a robust methodology, including ANOVA analyses, gender-based variations, and assessments of homogeneity of variances, with a sample size of 390 respondents in Bengaluru, India. Key findings reveal the significant impact of social support and professional development opportunities on work engagement, while gender-based differences highlight the need for tailored interventions. The conceptual framework positions work engagement, burnout, and crucial employment assets strategically, offering a holistic perspective on the multifaceted dimensions shaping teachers’ performance. The study's suggestions emphasize strengthening social support initiatives and prioritizing professional development to enhance overall job satisfaction. In today's dynamic educational scenario, this research provides actionable insights for institutions seeking to optimize the teaching experience and foster a positive work environment for educators.

The "abortion imaginary": Shared perceptions and personal representations among everyday Americans.

Drawing upon 217 in-depth interviews and the concept of the "social imaginary," we introduce the "abortion imaginary"-a set of shared understandings regarding abortion and abortion patients. We identify four interrelated facets of the U.S. abortion imaginary pertaining to who gets an abortion and why: maternal inevitability, economic decision-making, relationship precarity, and emotional fragility. We then show how shared perceptions of abortion patients diverge into polarized opinions, revealing how those who know someone who has had an abortion differ from those who do not. Centering personal "exemplars," we integrate conceptual work on social imaginaries with contact theory to illuminate how divergent opinions coexist with shared cultural understandings.

Health-care organization characteristics in cancer care delivery: an integrated conceptual framework with content validation.

Context can influence cancer-related outcomes. For example, health-care organization characteristics, including ownership, leadership, and culture, can affect care access, communication, and patient outcomes. Health-care organization characteristics and other contextual factors can also influence whether and how clinical discoveries reduce cancer incidence, morbidity, and mortality. Importantly, policy, market, and technology changes are transforming health-care organization design, culture, and operations across the cancer continuum. Consequently, research is essential to examine when, for whom, and how organizational characteristics influence person-level, organization-level, and population-level cancer outcomes. Understanding organizational characteristics-the structures, processes, and other features of entities involved in health care delivery-and their dynamics is an important yet understudied area of care delivery research across the cancer continuum. Research incorporating organizational characteristics is critical to address health inequities, test care delivery models, adapt interventions, and strengthen implementation. The field lacks conceptual grounding, however, to help researchers identify germane organizational characteristics. We propose a framework identifying organizational characteristics relevant for cancer care delivery research based on conceptual work in health services, organizational behavior, and management science and refined using a systematic review and key informant input. The proposed framework is a tool for organizing existing research and enhancing future cancer care delivery research. Following a 2012 Journal of the National Cancer Institute monograph, this work complements National Cancer Institute efforts to stimulate research addressing the relationship between cancer outcomes and contextual factors at the patient, provider, team, delivery organization, community, and health policy levels.

Solvent-free parallel artificial liquid membrane extraction for drugs of abuse in plasma samples using LC-MS/MS

BackgroundParallel artificial liquid membrane extraction (PALME) is a 96-well plate setup variant of liquid-phase microextraction. Basic or acidic analytes are extracted in neutral form from the sample, through a supported liquid membrane (SLM), and into aqueous acceptor. PALME is already considered a green extraction technique, but in the current conceptual work, we sought to make it even greener by replacing the use of organic solvents with essential oils (EO). PALME was combined with LC-MS/MS for analysis of plasma samples and multiple drugs of abuse with toxicological relevance (amphetamines, phenethylamines, synthetic cathinones, designer benzodiazepines, ayahuasca alkaloids, lysergic acid diethylamide, and ketamine). ResultsFourteen EO were compared to organic solvents frequently used in PALME. The EO termed smart & sassy yielded the best analyte recovery for all drugs studied and was thus selected as SLM. Then, factorial screening and Box-Behnken were employed to optimize the technique. The extraction time, concentration of base, sample volume, and percentage of trioctylamine significantly impacted analyte recovery. The optimum values were defined as 120 min, 10 mmol/L of NaOH, 150 μL, and 0%, respectively. Once optimized, validation parameters were 1–100 ng mL-1 as linear range, accuracy ±16.4%, precision >83%, 1 ng mL-1 as limit of quantitation, 0.1–0.75 ng mL-1 as limit of detection, matrix effect <20%, and recovery 20–106%. Additionally, EO purchased from different production batches were tested and achieved acceptable reproducibility. Data were in compliance with requirements set by internationally accepted validation guidelines and the applicability of the technique was proven using authentic samples. SignificanceIn this study, the use of an EO provided a solvent-free sample preparation technique suited to extract different classes of drugs of abuse from plasma samples, dismissing the use of hazardous organic solvents. The method also provided excellent sample clean-up, thus being a simple and efficient tool for toxicological applications that is in agreement with the principles of sustainable chemistry.

Safety and contagion in acute psychiatric wards: How the milieu is implicated in the occurrence of clustered safety incidents

In psychiatry, clustered safety incidents are often attributed to behavioural contagion. Drawing on Kindermann and Skinner’s conceptual work in our analysis of staff accounts, we explored whether clustered safety incidents could be attributable to contagion and the role played by staff and the psychiatric milieu (as a physical, cultural, and therapeutic space). Our analysis suggests that whether the clustered incidents identified by staff are attributable to contagion depends on how broadly the “incident” is defined, with clear implications for the over or under identification of contagion. We also identified the role of staff and the milieu in what was often perceived as contagion. We argue that the pursuit of safety by creating a predictable milieu may paradoxically contribute to this clustering of safety incidents and staff’s perception of them as contagious via the mechanisms of risk amplification, involuntary convergence (increased exposure to safety incidents), and depletion of the milieu’s therapeutic potential.

Ferdinand Christian Baur on Religion: A Historicist Approach in an Idealist Context

In this article, I consider F.C. Baur’s conception of religion. This has rarely been done because Baur is generally regarded as a historical theologian rather than a theorist of religion. Yet I argue that, if we observe Baur’s own historical work, we discover there a remarkably original conceptual work on the notion of religion. For Baur, I argue, religion was a key concept, in that it aided him in his attempt to bring together theological, historical, and philosophical work. Yet the concept of religion had to be of a particular kind in order to suit his agenda. Therefore, the identification of Baur’s concept of religion will also help ascertain the coherence of his intellectual activity. In the article, I focus on two of Baur’s works, his first monograph, Symbolik und Mythologie (1824/5) and his magisterial Die christliche Gnosis (1835). I show that fundamental ideas across these two books should be seen as Baur’s own (rather than merely borrowed from Schleiermacher and Hegel), and that there is more continuity between them than readers have often found. In a final section, I discuss briefly an essay Baur devoted to the Begriff der Religionsphilosophie (1837).