Contextual Prerequisites Research Articles

Examining the Building Blocks of Health Behavior Change in Rheumatology Rehabilitation: A Theory-Driven Qualitative Study.

To identify and describe behavior change techniques (BCTs) used in rehabilitation for patients with rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases (RMDs), according to their own perceptions. Further, to examine patients' descriptions of their capability, opportunity, motivation, and readiness for health behavior change. Patients were adults in need of specialized, multidisciplinary rehabilitation services due to inflammatory rheumatic disease, systemic connective tissue disease, or fibromyalgia / chronic widespread pain. Semi-structured interviews of 21 patients were analyzed with deductive qualitative content analysis applying three theoretical frameworks: the Behavior Change Technique Taxonomy, the transtheoretical model and stages of change, and the capability, opportunity, and motivation model of behavior. Forty-six BCTs aggregated within 14 BCT groups were identified used by either patients, healthcare professionals (HPs), or both. Goals and planning, feedback and monitoring, social support, shaping knowledge, repetition and substitution were most frequently used to facilitate behavior change. Twenty patients had reached the action stage and made specific lifestyle changes concerning more than half of their goals. Concerning other goals, 6 of these patients reported to be contemplating behavior change and 15 to be preparing for it. The rehabilitation process appeared to strengthen capability, opportunity, motivation, and the desired behaviors. Patient-reported barriers to behavior change were connected with restrictions in physical capability resulting from an unpredictable and fluctuating disease course, weakened motivation, and contextual factors, such as lack of access to healthcare support and training facilities, and high domestic care burden. The rehabilitation process seemed to strengthen individual and contextual prerequisites for behavior change and facilitate the use of required techniques and engagement in the desired behaviors. However, patients with RMDs may need prolonged support from HPs to integrate healthy lifestyle changes into everyday life. The findings can be used to optimize rehabilitation interventions and patients' persistent engagement in healthy behaviors.

“It will take time” – visual arts teachers’ professional freedom in policy enactment

The paper aims to add to what is known about how contextual prerequisites and governance systems affect art teachers’ professional freedom, a topic of global significance. Previous research shows that Visual Arts education has not been aligned with current syllabi. This discrepancy is partly explained by ‘a lag’ in the teachers’ subject conceptions given that visual arts teachers traditionally enjoy considerable professional freedom while designing their teaching. That is only one explanation; in contrast, this article, set in the Swedish educational context, enhances understanding of policy enactment in the visual art subject, with relevance for global educational policies. To understand how contextual conditions and patterns of governance determine the level of teacher autonomy, in-depth semi-structured interviews with ten art teachers in the Swedish 9-year compulsory school were conducted over 10 months in 2022, coinciding with the implementation of a new curriculum. In addition, staff from the National Agency for Education (NAfE) were interviewed, and NAfE materials were analyzed. Employing policy enactment theory, the analysis shows that contextual factors significantly influence the prerequisites of policy enactment. Further, the goals- and results-based management of schools challenges art teachers’ professional freedom as teachers adapt to the principles of governmentality. This, in turn, makes enacting new art policy challenging and time-consuming.

The Indian soybean revolution - Ascertaining the determinants and the tipping point

The landmark Indian soy-revolution was re-visited and an analytical review undertaken for ascertaining its tipping point and the factors responsible for its occurrence and early continuation. A score of enabling determinants of this watershed occurrence was elucidated, assessed and aggregated. Several specific notes on current situation, wherever required, were provided. Soybean revolution was observed to have reached its tipping point in the later part of the year 1972. Export-orientation of soy-derivatives and earning huge profit therefrom appeared as a crucial prospective recourse that, in due course, could change the traditional Indian soybean into a commercial crop and a highly processed commodity. Consequently, Indian soymeal emerged as the characteristic hallmark of country's soy-based export. Later, a high rise in domestic use of soymeal was also experienced. Availability of rainy-season fallow-land was another vital contextual factor, with zero opportunity cost, that enabled the soybean spread in its initial and early period. The fallow land happened to be in a suitable niche with appropriate latitudinal bearings that imparted a short duration to the soybean crop, making it to feasibly fit in the available cropping system. Soybean occupied the fallow-land and it right away enhanced the cropping intensity and the unit area profitability from the land use. There was an overwhelming enthusiasm of farmers to adopt this innovation despite it being risky due to low soybean yields but profitable due to low input-cost and high procurement cost. R&D organisations providing strong and specific technical backstopping existed when soybean had a little crop-area. These contextual pre-requisites got favourably aligned with eventual market intervention by the government and parastatal agencies, and several farmer-friendly initiatives of the cooperative organisations and the industry. Soybean crop expansion, unlike that in South America, happened in a relatively environment-friendly manner. Most of the essential ingredients were indigenous. Committed industrialists, scientists and farmers with changed mind-set led to the establishment of a new global chain of business. Soybean earned substantial foreign exchange and its trickle down brought about inclusive socio-economic upliftment. A high moral support abated the efforts of calling soybean an unacceptable foreign crop. These determinants and resultant benefits helped usher in the Indian soybean revolution that continues to contribute significantly towards agricultural economy and well-being of the country.

The Indian soybean revolution - Ascertaining the determinants and the tipping point

The landmark Indian soy-revolution was re-visited and an analytical review undertaken for ascertaining its tipping point and the factors responsible for its occurrence and early continuation. A score of enabling determinants of this watershed occurrence was elucidated, assessed and aggregated. Several specific notes on current situation, wherever required, were provided. Soybean revolution was observed to have reached its tipping point in the later part of the year 1972. Export-orientation of soy-derivatives and earning huge profit therefrom appeared as a crucial prospective recourse that, in due course, could change the traditional Indian soybean into a commercial crop and a highly processed commodity. Consequently, Indian soymeal emerged as the characteristic hallmark of country's soy-based export. Later, a high rise in domestic use of soymeal was also experienced. Availability of rainy-season fallow-land was another vital contextual factor, with zero opportunity cost, that enabled the soybean spread in its initial and early period. The fallow land happened to be in a suitable niche with appropriate latitudinal bearings that imparted a short duration to the soybean crop, making it to feasibly fit in the available cropping system. Soybean occupied the fallow-land and it right away enhanced the cropping intensity and the unit area profitability from the land use. There was an overwhelming enthusiasm of farmers to adopt this innovation despite it being risky due to low soybean yields but profitable due to low input-cost and high procurement cost. R&D organisations providing strong and specific technical backstopping existed when soybean had a little crop-area. These contextual pre-requisites got favourably aligned with eventual market intervention by the government and parastatal agencies, and several farmer-friendly initiatives of the cooperative organisations and the industry. Soybean crop expansion, unlike that in South America, happened in a relatively environment-friendly manner. Most of the essential ingredients were indigenous. Committed industrialists, scientists and farmers with changed mind-set led to the establishment of a new global chain of business. Soybean earned substantial foreign exchange and its trickle down brought about inclusive socio-economic upliftment. A high moral support abated the efforts of calling soybean an unacceptable foreign crop. These determinants and resultant benefits helped usher in the Indian soybean revolution that continues to contribute significantly towards agricultural economy and well-being of the country.

The Indian soybean revolution - Ascertaining thedeterminants and the tipping point

The landmark Indian soy-revolution was re-visited and an analytical review undertaken for ascertaining its tipping point and the factors responsible for its occurrence and earlycontinuation. A score of enabling determinants of this watershed occurrence was elucidated, assessed and aggregated. Several specific notes on current situation, wherever required, were provided. Soybean revolution was observed to have reached its tipping point in the later part of the year 1972. Export-orientation ofsoy-derivatives and earning huge profit therefrom appeared as a crucial prospective recourse that, in due course, could change the traditional Indian soybean into a commercial crop and a highly processed commodity. Consequently, Indian soymeal emerged as the characteristic hallmark of country's soy-based export. Later, a high rise in domestic use of soymeal was also experienced. Availability of rainy-season fallow-land was another vital contextual factor, with zero opportunity cost, that enabled the soybean spread in its initial and early period. The fallow land happened to be in a suitable niche with appropriate latitudinal bearings that imparted a short duration to the soybean crop, making it to feasibly fit in the available cropping system. Soybean occupied the fallow-land and it right away enhanced the cropping intensity and the unit area profitability from the land use. There was an overwhelming enthusias moffarmersto adopt this innovation despite it being risky due to low soybean yields but profitable due to low input-cost and high procurement cost. R&D organisations providing strong and specific technical backstopping existed when soybean had a little crop-area. These contextual pre-requisites got favourably aligned with eventual market intervention by the government and parastatal agencies, and several farmer-friendly initiatives of the cooperative organisations and the industry. Soybean crop expansion, unlike that in South America, happened in a relatively environment-friendly manner. Most of the essential ingredients were indigenous. Committed industrialists, scientists and farmers with changed mind-set led to the establishment of a new global chain of business. Soybean earned substantial foreign exchange and its trickle down brought about inclusive socio-economic upliftment. A high moral support abated the efforts of calling soybean an unacceptable foreign crop. These determinants and resultant benefits helped usher in the Indian soybean revolution that continues to contribute significantly towards agricultural economy and well-being of the country.

It takes two to dance the VBHC tango: A multiple case study of the adoption of value-based strategies in Sweden and Brazil

Although Value-Based Health Care (VBHC) is widely debated and cited, there are few empirical studies focused on how its concepts are understood and applied in real-world contexts. This comparative case study of two prominent adopters in Brazil and Sweden, situated at either end of the spectrum in terms of contextual prerequisites, provides insights into the complex interactions involved in the adoption of value-based strategies. We found that the adoption of VBHC emphasized either health outcomes or costs – not both as suggested by the value equation. This may be linked to broader health system and societal contexts. Implementation can generate tensions with traditional business models, suggesting that providers should first analyze how these strategies align with their internal context. Adoption by a single provider organization is challenging, if not impossible. An effective VBHC transformation seems to require a systematic and systemic approach where all stakeholders need to clearly define the purpose and the scope of the transformation, and together steer their actions and decisions accordingly.

Leadership in low- and underperforming schools—two contrasting Scandinavian cases

ABSTRACT In this paper, we investigate how professional cultures and situated, material and external contexts relate to dynamic low- and underperforming schools in Scandinavia, particularly how the leadership is constructed through the leader, the followers and the situation. The first school studied was a low-performing school in Norway called ‘Toppen’, which has shown improved student outcomes. The other school, Seaside, is a Swedish school that is considered underperforming because student outcomes are lower than expected based on the contextual prerequisites. Our results show that Toppen can be described as a turnaround school and Seaside can be described as a cruising school. Analysis reveals that, at Toppen, the principal has been developing a culture that can be described in terms of community and motivation. At Seaside, on the other hand, the culture can be described in terms of individuality and conservatism. From this analysis, we can detect how different contexts impact two low- and underperforming schools and how they are affected by different prerequisites linked to the situated, material, external and professional contexts. However, the development of a collective professional culture with a shared sense of commitment seems to be an important tool to plan and communicate organizational improvement strategies.

Chemotherapy-Induced Metastasis: Molecular Mechanisms, Clinical Manifestations, Therapeutic Interventions.

Chemotherapy offers long-term clinical benefits to many patients with advanced cancer. However, recent evidence has linked the cytotoxic effects of chemotherapy with the de novo elicitation of a prometastatic tumor microenvironment. This "modified" tumor microenvironment is triggered by a chemotherapy-driven cytokine storm or through direct effects of certain chemotherapeutics on stromal and/or immune cells, the most critical being tumor-associated macrophages. These chemotherapy-educated cells act as facilitators in tumor-host cell interactions promoting the establishment of distant metastasis. Certain clinical studies now offer substantial evidence that prometastatic changes are indeed identified in the tumor microenvironment of certain patient subpopulations, especially those that do not present with any pathologic response after neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Deciphering the exact contextual prerequisites for chemotherapy-driven metastasis will be paramount for designing novel mechanism-based treatments for circumventing chemotherapy-induced metastasis.

All that Glitters is not Gold: Six Steps Before Selecting and Prioritizing e-Health Services.

Since the market for e-health applications is constantly growing, it is getting an ever more complex endeavor to select and prioritize the right service offering given a particular situation. In examining the extant literature, it was revealed that little emphasis is actually placed on how to analyze contextual or environmental factors prior to the selection and prioritization of e-health services. With this paper, we therefore propose a formative framework consisting of six fundamental yet very pragmatic steps that may support decision makers in identifying the most important contextual pre-requisites that e-health services need to fulfill in order to be considered as effective for their environment to be implemented.

Helsinki Syndrome: The Parachronistic Renaissance of Finlandization in International Politics

The ongoing conflict in Ukraine has produced a number of commentaries that have tried to grasp the crisis through the comforting lens of historical analogies. One of the most perplexing of these has been the revival of Finlandization, or the idea of the “Finnish model” as a possible solution to the Ukraine crisis. In this article I interrogate these arguments, firstly, by historicising the original process of Finlandization during the Cold War. Secondly, I argue that the renaissance of Finlandization is based on parachronistic reasoning. In other words, the Finlandization analogy has been applied to modern-day Ukraine in such a way that the alien elements of the past context are, to paraphrase Quentin Skinner, “dissolved into an apparent but misleading familiarity” in the present re-appropriation of the idea and its contextual prerequisites. Indeed, the reappearance of Finlandization in the context of the Ukraine crisis reinforces the idea that the real drivers of international affairs can be reduced to the axioms derived from the transhistorical logic of international anarchy and the iron laws of great power politics. Thus, this article makes a novel contribution to the theoretical discussion on the role of analogies and myths in International Relations.

GUIDING THE DEVELOPMENT OF ENTERPRISE DESIGN APPROACHES

Enterprise engineering (EE) is an emerging discipline that aims to address several phenomena in the evolution of an enterprise. Previous research highlighted a particular phenomenon that requires more research — i.e., the inability of the enterprise as a complex socio-technical system to adapt swiftly to rapidly- changing environments. Although there are numerous theoretical design approaches (with their own methodologies, frameworks, and modelling languages), there is little empirical evidence about their effectiveness. Furthermore, research indicates that multiple enterprise design approaches are used concurrently in industry, with each approach focusing on a sub-set of stakeholder concerns. The proliferating design approaches do not necessarily explicate their conditional use in terms of contextual prerequisites and demarcated design scope; and this also impairs their evaluation. This article provides guidance for the construction of design approaches that will enable researchers to contribute to the systematic growth of the EE knowledge base.

Integrated Development Planning and Service Delivery in the Case of the Emfuleni Local Municipality in South Africa

Integrated Development Planning, as a new approach to local government, involves the entire municipality and its citizens in finding solutions to achieving good long-term development. The approach is developmental in nature. As such, integrated development planning presupposes extensive, inclusive, democratic participation of citizens. This article makes an exposition of a disjuncture between the integrated development processes and the participation of the citizens resulting in contested socio-economic and political terrains. Adopting a qualitative approach, and a sample of municipal officials, councillors, political parties and ordinary citizens, using unstructured face-to-face interviews, a focus group discussion and observation the study found out that under current conditions the level of engagement with the community is still not effective as communities are not involved during the various planning phases prior to the implementation of the plans; there is dissonance between targets set at lower and higher levels; mismatch between functions and allocated budgets; schism between growing needs and poor collection rates – all conspiring to encumber effective and efficient service delivery. The major contribution of this article is a model, the Municipal- Community Engagement for Effective Service Delivery, which states, inter alia, that for effective outcomes, align projects with community needs; strengthen the intergovernmental relations system; regularly provide feedback, communicate and interact with communities and establish a monitoring and evaluation unit as contextual prerequisites in the area under study. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n23p45

Review Article: Health impact assessment developments in Sweden

The contextual prerequisites in a country are crucial to the implementation and effectiveness of health impact assessment (HIA). This article aims to show how the Swedish government has been working to create supportive contextual prerequisites for HIA. These prerequisites are described based on the following factors: stewardship, including public health policy, party politics and legal preconditions; organization, including resources and funding; and delivery, which is dependent on the public health culture. The aim has also been to draw conclusions about facilitators of and obstacles to HIA implementation. The article is based on a review of relevant literature. Since 2000, the Swedish government has taken a number of initiatives to increase the application of public health and HIA. National agencies and all of Sweden's county administrative boards have received government assignments with the National Institute of Public Health in a supportive role. Some facilitators of HIA implementation are: utilizing existing impact assessment knowledge; connecting HIA with the concept of a sustainable social development; and awareness of the time needed to adopt complex information. Obstacles detected are: the lack of a mandatory law for HIA; a lack of funding; and an occasional lack of public health skills. The final conclusion is that the public health policy adopted by the Swedish Riksdag, with its overarching aim of equality in health and its 11 domains of objectives, has had a crucial effect as a framework for HIA in Sweden.

What have we learned about stakeholder involvement in program evaluation?

This paper synthesizes the existing literature on stakeholder involvement in program evaluation, drawing a basic distinction between deep involvement of a few versus less active involvement of a broad range of stakeholders. The paper then comments on the case studies described in this special issue and integrates them with previously published evidence to offer a summary of key factors in the often complex task of ensuring stakeholder involvement. These key factors provide some explanation for the successes and failures documented. They center around process characteristics, evaluator skills, stakeholder predispositions, and contextual prerequisites.

Why children and adults sometimes (but not always) compute implicatures

Noveck (2001) argued that children even as old as 11 do not reliably endorse a scalar interpretation of weak scalar terms (some, might, or) (cf. Braine & Rumain, 1981; Smith, 1980). More recent studies suggest, however, that children's apparent failures may depend on the experimental demands (Papafragou & Musolino, 2003). Although previous studies involved children of different ages as well as different tasks, and are thus not directly comparable, nevertheless a common finding is that children do not seem to derive scalar implicatures to the same extent as adults do. The present article describes a series of experiments that were conducted with Italian speaking subjects (children and adults), focusing mainly on the scalar term some. Our goal was to carefully examine the specific conditions that allow the computation of implicatures by children. In so doing, we demonstrate that children as young as 7 (the youngest age of the children who participated in the Noveck study) are able to compute implicatures in experimental conditions that properly satisfy certain contextual prerequisites for deriving such implicatures. We also present further results that have general consequences for the research methodology employed in this area of study. Our research indicates that certain tasks mask children's understanding of scalar terms, not only including the task used by Noveck, but also tasks that employ certain explicit instructions, such as the training task used by Papafragou & Musolino (2003). Our findings indicate further that, although explicit training apparently improves children's ability to draw implicatures, children nevertheless fail to achieve adult levels of performance for most scalar terms even in such tasks, and that the effects of instruction do not last beyond the training session itself for most children. Another relevant finding of the present study is that some of the manipulations of the experimental context have an effect on all subjects, whereas others produce effects on just a subset of children. Individual differences of this kind may have been concealed in previous research because performance by individual subjects was not reported. Our general conclusions are that even young children (7-year olds) have the prerequisites for deriving scalar implicatures, although these abilities are revealed only when the conversational background is natural.

Contextual prerequisites for the application of ILS principles to the building services industry

PurposeThis paper proposes assessing the context within which integrated logistic support (ILS) can be implemented for whole life performance of building services systems.Design/methodology/approachThe use of ILS within a through‐life business model (TLBM) is a better framework to achieve a well‐designed, constructed and managed product. However, for ILS to be implemented in a TLBM for building services systems, the practices, tools and techniques need certain contextual prerequisites tailored to suit the construction industry. These contextual prerequisites are discussed.FindingsThe case studies conducted reinforced the contextual importance of prime contracting, partnering and team collaboration for the application of ILS techniques. The lack of data was a major hindrance to the full realisation of ILS techniques within the case studies.Originality/valueThe paper concludes with the recognition of the value of these contextual prerequisites for the use of ILS techniques within the building industry.

From Implicature to Construction: Emergence of a Benefactive Construction in Oceanic

It has long been observed that in many languages around the world possessive relations and benefactive relations are expressed by the same morphemes. There are examples of functional extension in both directions, with possessive constructions developing from benefactive ones, and vice versa. But there are also claims in the literature about the unidirectionality of this process, predicting that the development from possessive to benefactive constructions should not occur. This paper presents a detailed case study of the development of specialized benefactive expressions in Oceanic languages, where they commonly derive from expressions of attributive possession. The development starts with a possessive construction carrying a pragmatically implicated benefactive reading that gradually becomes grammaticalized and manifested in the morphosyntax of the language. This process may finally result in a benefactive construction that is syntactically and/or morphologically distinct from the expression of possession from which it originates. Syntactically, the process sets off from an object NP consisting of a noun and its modifier. In the process of grammatical change, this modifier is reanalyzed as a separate constituent, syntactically and semantically independent of the object noun. Based on data from Oceanic languages, three stages in the extension from possession to benefaction are identified. Also discussed are the contextual prerequisites for the benefactive implicature to arise in the first place.

The Effect of Pupil Cognitive Style and Position of Prose Passage Title on Recall

A replication of Bransford and Johnson's (1972) experiment on contextual prerequisites was carried out with the additional inclusion of cognitive styles as independent variables. A total of 77 10‐ and 11‐year‐old subjects (year 6, primary school) were asked to read a short prose passage on the topic of washing clothes. Half of the subjects were told the title of the passage before reading it and half after. All subjects attempted to free recall the passage. They had also completed the Cognitive Styles Analysis (CSA) (Riding, 1991), thus providing their position on the two fundamental cognitive style dimensions: Wholist‐Analytic and Verbal‐Imagery. It was found that the Wholist‐Analytic cognitive style and title‐passage order interacted in their effect on recall (p < 0.05). Whilst Wholists performed best when the title was presented before reading the passage, the order made no difference for other individuals. This suggested that this cognitive style reflects the way individuals organise information.

Preference Voting in Italy

Intraparty preference voting is a potentially important possibility for voters in many proportional representation systems, especially the Italian system. Three hypotheses—that preference voting is an indicator of traditionalism or the voto di scambio, sophistication or the voto d'opinione, and mobilization or the voto d'appartenenza—are considered using survey data and logistic regression models. All three hypotheses are supported by the data. Although the support for the individual-level traditionalism account is weakest, the data suggest that traditional political culture may contribute to the contextual prerequisites for sophistication or mobilization to lead to preference voting. Overall, it is suggested that the three explanations are complementary rather than contradictory, and that contextual effects must be considered in a full account of preference voting.

Contextual prerequisites for understanding: Some investigations of comprehension and recall

The present paper presents a series of studies showing that relevant contextual knowledge is a prerequisite for comprehending prose passages. Four studies are reported, each demonstrating increased comprehension ratings and recall scores when Ss were supplied with appropriate information before they heard test passages. Supplying Ss with the same information subsequent to the passages produced much lower comprehension ratings and recall scores. Various explanations of the results are considered, and the role of topics in activating cognitive contexts is discussed.