Characteristics Of Decision Research Articles

Characteristics of managerial decision-making in medical institutions in the trend in the professional activity of healthcare leaders

Introduction. Despite the relevance of the managerial decision-making problem including those in healthcare institutions, there are virtually no studies that analyze its trend. This research is an attempt to eliminate this gap. 
 The objective of this study is to evaluate the characteristics of managerial decision-making in healthcare institutions considering the trend in the professional activities of their managers. 
 Material and methods. An expert survey method included an analysis of the answers of thirty six healthcare managers to the questions of an anonymous questionnaire covering a 10-year period of managerial activity.
 Results. We determined the positive changes in the competence of healthcare managers, in particular their theoretical knowledge (the first three years of managerial activity), practical skills (four years), foresight of the course of events — forecasting (five years), gaining confidence (5.2 ± 0.6 years), and a 10-year trend in managerial decision-making in healthcare institutions that refers to their quality (up to the ninth year), formulation (from the second year to the end of the observation), implementation (from the second to the ninth), reasons for non-fulfillment (ninth and tenth years), the significance of innovative solutions (from the second to the sixth years), expediency implementation of optimization directions (from the fifth to the eighth years). 
 Limitations. Quantitative and qualitative characteristics of the sample statistical population surveyed are limited — the opinion of healthcare managers who met the requirements for experts was assessed.
 Conclusion. This research is the first evaluation of the characteristics of managerial decision-making in healthcare institutions in the trend in professional healthcare management activity; it is of great scientific and practical importance and opens up prospects for optimizing the process under consideration.

Examining the Influence of UK Public Clients’ Characteristics on Their Own Innovation-Decision towards the Modern Methods of Construction (MMC)

Construction has long been identified as an industry resistant to change and innovation, a reality that has prevailed to shape its overall reputation. The public sector includes an influential client type that dominates the major percentage of construction demand and is subject to public law. The Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) have been championed recently by the UK government and early adopters upon the emergence of data indicating their effectiveness in addressing key construction challenges. However, the uptake of MMC has been low among UK construction clients, particularly among public client organisations. Theories emerge across decades to inform researchers of variable clusters that can aid a broader understanding of decision-making and innovation adoption. One of the popular innovation theories suggests a relation between the characteristics of decision-makers and their own innovation decisions. This paper, therefore, aims to investigate the characteristics that are responsible for public clients’ low MMC uptake despite the associated relative advantages. Overall, 91 public client organisations have responded to this research’s survey, reflecting their organisation’s characteristics in line with the constructs adapted from the Diffusion of Innovation (DOI) theory. Results suggest that among the ten influences that are captured from a detailed review of the literature, confidence in MMC firms supersedes all other factors in critically influencing the organisation’s favourable decision towards using MMC. Evidence provided in this paper suggests that a communication issue is presenting itself in the public construction sector, which is evident by the lack of confidence that public clients have in MMC businesses. This is the first study to utilise quantitative means to examine construction clients’ characteristics and relate the same to the adoption of construction innovation. Future research is encouraged to acknowledge the most influencing characteristics and detail how such knowledge can be embraced by supply to develop business models that can orchestrate better confidence in the public sector.

Couples coping with advanced prostate cancer: an explorative study on decision-making preferences, self-efficacy and fear of progression.

To date, there is a lack of understanding of the treatment/disease-related health behaviors of patients with advanced prostate cancer (PCa) and their spouses. The purpose of this study was to explore the characteristics of treatment decision-making (DM) preferences, general self-efficacy (SE) and fear of progression (FoP) among couples coping with advanced PCa. In this explorative study, 96 patients with advanced PCa and their spouses answered the multiple choice version of the Control Preferences Scale (CPS, regarding DM), General Self-Efficacy Short Scale (ASKU, regarding SE), and short form of the Fear of Progression Questionnaire (FoP-Q-SF, regarding FoP). Corresponding questionnaires were employed for patients' spouses were evaluated, and correlations were subsequently drawn. More than half of the patients (61%) and spouses (62%) preferred active DM. Collaborative DM was preferred by 25% of patients and 32% of spouses, and 14% of patients and 5% of spouses preferred passive DM. FoP was significantly higher among spouses than among patients (p < 0.001). The difference in SE was not significant between patients and spouses (p = 0.064). FoP and SE negatively correlated among patients (r = - 0.42; p < 0.001) and among spouses (r = - 0.46; p < 0.001). DM preference did not correlate with SE and FoP. High FoP and low general SE are related among both patients with advanced PCa and their spouses. FoP seems to be higher among female spouses than among patients. Couples seem to be largely in agreement when it comes to playing an active role in treatment DM. www.germanctr.de , number DRKS 00013045.

Cognition and hypocognition: Discursive and simulation-supported decision-making within complex systems

Homo sapiens is currently believed to have evolved in the African savannah several hundreds of thousands of years ago. Since then, human societies have become, through technological innovation and application, powerful influencers of the planet’s ecological, hydrological and meteorological systems – for good and ill. They have experimented with many different systems of governance, in order to manage their societies and the environments they inhabit – using computer simulations as a tool to help make decisions concerning highly complex systems, is only the most recent of these. In questioning whether, when and how computer simulations should play a role in determining decision-making in these systems of governance, it is also worth reflecting on whether, when and how humans, or groups of humans, have the capability to make such decisions without the aid of such technology. This paper looks at and compares the characteristics of natural language-based and simulation-based decision-making. We argue that computational tools for decision-making can and should be complementary to natural language discourse approaches, but that this requires that both systems are used with their limitations in mind. All tools and approaches – physical, social and mental – have dangers when used inappropriately, but it seems unlikely humankind can survive without them. The challenge is how to do so.

A deep reinforcement learning-based bidding strategy for participants in a peer-to-peer energy trading scenario

An efficient energy trading strategy is proven to have a vital role in reducing participants’ payment in the energy trading process of the power grid, which can greatly improve the operation efficiency of the power grid and the willingness of participants to take part in the energy trading. Nevertheless, with the increasing number of participants taking part in the energy trading, the stability and efficiency of the energy trading system are exposed to an extreme challenge. To address this issue, an actor-critic-based bidding strategy for energy trading participants is proposed in this paper. Specifically, we model the bidding strategy with sequential decision-making characteristics as a Markov decision process, which treats three elements, namely, total supply, total demand, and participants’ individual supply or demand, as the state and regards bidding price and volume as the action. In order to address the problem that the existing value-based reinforcement learning bidding strategy cannot be applied to the continuous action space environment, we propose an actor–critic architecture, which endows the actor the ability of learning the action execution and utilizes the critic to evaluate the long-term rewards conditioned by the current state–action pairs. Simulation results in energy trading scenarios with different numbers of participants indicate that the proposed method will obtain a higher cumulative reward than the traditional greedy method.

Emotional Regulation Self-Efficacy Influences Moral Decision Making: A Non-Cooperative Game Study of the New Generation of Employees.

Scholars generally believe that personality characteristics and psychological factors influence individual moral decision-making. However, few have ever discussed specific psychological factors and characteristics having such influences. Based on the self-efficacy theory and the social identity theory, this paper has proposed, from the perspective of social cognition, that emotional regulation self-efficacy influences the moral decision-making of the new generation of employees and that the mediating effect of interpersonal trust and the regulating effect of communication also play a role in the decision-making process. This study has designed a “red-blue experiment” based on the complete static information model in the non-cooperative game theory so as to conduct an experimental and qualitative analysis for the new generation of employees and to explore the characteristics of psychological process, self-efficacy, and moral decision-making of the experimental population. Through analysis of the 138 data sources collected from the experiment, the results showed that emotional self-efficacy had a significant positive effect on moral decision-making (p < 0.01), emotional self-efficacy had a significant positive effect on interpersonal trust (r = 0.560, p < 0.01), and interpersonal trust had a significant positive effect on moral decision-making (r = 0.290, p < 0.01). The mediating effect was 0.163. The interaction terms of emotional regulation self-efficacy and communication effect had a significant negative effect on interpersonal trust (r = −0.221, p < 0.01). All the hypotheses proposed in this study are supported by experimental data and reveal the psychological mechanism of moral decision-making in the new generation of employees. The study has further shown that the moral education of the new generation of employees needs to focus on improving emotional regulation self-efficacy and enhancing interpersonal trust, which provides theoretical support for the moral education methods and paths of the new generation of employees.

The Effects of Tinnitus in Probabilistic Learning Tasks: Protocol for an Ecological Momentary Assessment Study.

Chronic tinnitus is an increasing worldwide health concern, causing a significant burden to the health care system each year. The COVID-19 pandemic has seen a further increase in reported cases. For people with tinnitus, symptoms are exacerbated because of social isolation and the elevated levels of anxiety and depression caused by quarantines and lockdowns. Although it has been reported that patients with tinnitus can experience changes in cognitive capabilities, changes in adaptive learning via decision-making tasks for people with tinnitus have not yet been investigated. In this study, we aim to assess state- and trait-related impairments in adaptive learning ability on probabilistic learning tasks among people with tinnitus. Given that performance in such tasks can be quantified through computational modeling methods using a small set of neural-informed model parameters, such approaches are promising in terms of the assessment of tinnitus severity. We will first examine baseline differences in the characterization of decision-making under uncertainty between healthy individuals and people with tinnitus in terms of differences in the parameters of computational models in a cross-sectional experiment. We will also investigate whether these computational markers, which capture characteristics of decision-making, can be used to understand the cognitive impact of tinnitus symptom fluctuations through a longitudinal experimental design. We have developed a mobile app, AthenaCX, to deliver e-consent and baseline tinnitus and psychological assessments as well as regular ecological momentary assessments (EMAs) of perceived tinnitus loudness and a web-based aversive version of a probabilistic decision-making task, which can be triggered based on the participants' responses to the EMA surveys. Computational models will be developed to fit participants' choice data in the task, and cognitive parameters will be estimated to characterize participants' current ability to adapt learning to the change of the simulated environment at each session when the task is triggered. Linear regression analysis will be conducted to evaluate the impacts of baseline tinnitus severity on adapting decision-making performance. Repeated measures linear regression analysis will be used to examine model-derived parameters of decision-making in measuring real-time perceived tinnitus loudness fluctuations. Ethics approval was received in December 2020 from Dublin City University (DCUREC/2021/070). The implementation of the experiments, including both the surveys and the web-based decision-making task, has been prepared. Recruitment flyers have been shared with audiologists, and a video instruction has been created to illustrate to the participants how to participate in the experiment. We expect to finish data collection over 12 months and complete data analysis 6 months after this. The results are expected to be published in December 2023. We believe that EMA with context-aware triggering can facilitate a deeper understanding of the effects of tinnitus symptom severity upon decision-making processes as measured outside of the laboratory. PRR1-10.2196/36583.

Cost-oriented optimization of the location and capacity of charging stations for the electric Robotaxi fleet

Large-scale adoption of Robotaxi requires a comprehensive charging infrastructure as a guarantee, but the problems of insufficient capacity, low utilization, and unreasonable deployment of electric vehicle charging stations (EVCSs) are still common. In this context, this study proposed a multi-stage optimization strategy consisting of fleet sizing, charging demand simulation, model construction and solution to achieve the location and capacity optimization of EVCSs for the electric Robotaxi fleet. In stage one, a vehicle shareable network model based on graph theory was developed to determine the minimum Robotaxi fleet size required to adequately meet user travel demand, which was solved using the Hopcroft-Karp algorithm. In stage two, the specific spatio-temporal distribution of fleet charging demand was obtained by Monte Carlo simulation, considering the decision-making characteristics of Robotaxi operation and charging process. In stage three, a charging station location and capacity optimization model was established with the objective of minimizing the comprehensive costs, and an improved particle swarm optimization algorithm applying genetic operators to improve the population diversity was proposed. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed model and algorithm was analyzed and discussed based on a case study using the real passenger order and geographic data from the city of Chengdu, China.

A Fermatean fuzzy Fine–Kinney for occupational risk evaluation using extensible MARCOS with prospect theory

The extant Fine–Kinney frameworks are insufficient to tackle the risk evaluation problem with Fermatean fuzzy information, in which the prioritization degrees and psychological characteristics of decision-makers are considered. Hence, this study develops a hybrid Fine–Kinney-based occupational risk evaluation framework with an extended Fermatean fuzzy MARCOS method (measurement of alternatives and ranking to Compromise solution). Such a MARCOS method improves conventional MARCOS by integrating Fermatean fuzzy prioritized weighted average operator and prospect theory. This improved method has the capability to handle the occupational risk analysis problem with Fermatean fuzzy data in the risk ranking procedure considering the prioritization degrees and bounded rational behavior of decision-makers. In addition, the Fermatean fuzzy numbers-based risk rating scales are established to transform the linguistic risk scores from decision-makers, it allows for handling uncertain risk rating information from decision-makers more effectively. Further, the improved MARCOS method is incorporated into the occupational risk ranking procedure, as it considers the decision-maker’s prioritization relationships among decision-makers and their reference point effect in occupational risk priority calculation. After that, an occupational risk analysis case for construction operations is selected to test the applicability and validity of the proposed framework. The result indicates that the occupational risk OR6 (Back injury) is the most serious risk with the lowest utility function value (-0.324), and OR7 (Tendinitis) is the least severe risk with the highest utility function value (0.682). Finally, sensitivity exploration and comparative study are implemented to further test the advantages of the developed framework.

Heuristics from bounded meta-learned inference.

Numerous researchers have put forward heuristics as models of human decision-making. However, where such heuristics come from is still a topic of ongoing debate. In this work, we propose a novel computational model that advances our understanding of heuristic decision-making by explaining how different heuristics are discovered and how they are selected. This model-called bounded meta-learned inference (BMI)-is based on the idea that people make environment-specific inferences about which strategies to use while being efficient in terms of how they use computational resources. We show that our approach discovers two previously suggested types of heuristics-one reason decision-making and equal weighting-in specific environments. Furthermore, the model provides clear and precise predictions about when each heuristic should be applied: Knowing the correct ranking of attributes leads to one reason decision-making, knowing the directions of the attributes leads to equal weighting, and not knowing about either leads to strategies that use weighted combinations of multiple attributes. In three empirical paired comparison studies with continuous features, we verify predictions of our theory and show that it captures several characteristics of human decision-making not explained by alternative theories. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Care Order Decisions—in the Domain of Social Work or the Courts? Social Workers’ Frontline Views

AbstractThis article examines social workers’ views on care order decisions in Finnish child welfare where the decision-making procedure takes place in either the social work or court domain depending on the parties’ consent or objection to the care order proposal. Exploring this parallel decision-making system provides insights into the less studied characteristics of non-adversarial decision-making compared with those of adversarial decision-making. Based on the interviews of twenty-nine social workers, the findings present a binary view of social workers: the court domain is mainly seen as being an arena for the legal safety for families whereas the social work domain is a psychosocial, fluent and smooth arena for making care order decisions important to family members. The study points out potential misuse of the social work domain. Additional safeguards are suggested to complement the existing legal, professional and ethical safeguards as well as the re-evaluation of the role and nature of consent as a divider of the decision-making procedures.

Pragmatic optimism, crisis leadership, and contingency theory: A view from the C-suite

In the last three decades, the theory of strategic conflict management has been developed so that it is a strong framework for considering the factors that influence an organization’s response to crises and identifying the importance for dynamic and flexible approaches to crisis decision-making and communication. While leadership is considered one of the critical internal contingency factors but individual characteristics of key decision-makers, like the CEO, are also one of the most understudied ones. At the same time, the concept of optimism has long been explored as a factor influencing performance and positive outcomes in many arenas, but with scant evidence in the application to senior-level leadership or crisis contexts. In fact, in the crisis literature where optimism and pessimism is addressed, it largely argues that crisis leaders should adopt a pessimistic mindset. For this study senior-leaders in multinational companies responsible for managing employees in an average of 70 countries each and with extensive crisis leadership experience reflect on their own experiences during crises. Findings indicate that optimism is a critical trait in successful crisis leadership connecting to positive outcomes for the teams and organizations. These data also provide critical insights that develop a stronger understanding of contingency planning in crisis management because we have identified a trait that amongst an elite group of managers with extensive crisis experience was consistently attributed to their own success as crisis leaders.

Household Groups' Land Use Decisions Investigation Based on Perspective of Livelihood Heterogeneity in Sichuan Province, China.

Land use decision-making is a vital livelihood strategy associated with the rational collocation of livelihood asset endowments by rural households. Based on the perspective of livelihood heterogeneity, this paper collected the data from 540 farm households in 27 villages in three Sichuan Province counties to identify the land use decision-making characteristics of the household groups. A land use decision-making framework (LUDF) based on the sustainable livelihood framework (SLF) was established and dynamic and dual indicators were developed to divide the sample into six household groups. The household livelihood capital, livelihood strategies, and livelihood diversity were then analyzed at the regional and household group level, and the land use decisions of these household groups were explored, from which the following was found. (1) Overall livelihood capital in the study area was low, and except for human assets, there were few other assets, with households in the survey areas being more inclined to engage in non-farming livelihood activities; however, households in Nanjiang and Qionglai had greater livelihood activities choices than Luxian. (2) The LL-type household was the chief household group; the household group distribution in Qionglai was well-proportioned but uneven in Nanjiang and Luxian; and the HL-type, ML-type, and LL-type household livelihood strategy choices were polarized. (3) Most households were involved in land self-cultivation, followed by land transfer-in, land transfer-out, and land abandonment households. Specifically, there were more households that cultivated fragmented landholdings than specialized households with large-scale landholdings, the land transfer rate was relatively low, the transfer-in land area was far greater than the transfer-out land areas, and a small number of households that had abandoned their land were still involved in agricultural production. (4) There were obvious discordant human–land relationships and inefficient land uses in the study area. Based on these findings, relevant policy recommendations are given to improve farm household livelihood capital, optimize livelihood strategies, and assist in land use decision-making.

Chain Reaction of Behavioral Bias and Risky Investment Decision in Indonesian Nascent Investors

Early investors possess unique sets of decision-making characteristics. They are more open to experience and eager to face risks. However, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the discussions of nascent investors upon making the investment decision and its eroding biases were still elusive. The vital role of emotion as a bias in decision making was also inadequately addressed. This study enhanced behavioral finance knowledge by examining emotion’s role in regulating the illusion of control, overconfidence, and investors’ decision making. In total, 456 initial investors in Indonesia participated in online questionnaires, forming the data for covariance-based structural model analysis. This study found that emotion significantly increased the illusion of control, but not overconfidence or decision making, contrary to the bulk of previous studies. The illusion of control exhibited a substantial significant effect of as much as 86.4% toward overconfidence, followed by a considerable increase in decision making. The results of our study also pointed to the unique chain effects of biases affecting the decision-making process of nascent investors in the emerging market. This finding implied they possessed a unique bias mechanism in constructing their decision.

Behavior decision of top management team and enterprise green technology innovation

The behavioral decision-making characteristics of top management team (TMT) are the most direct factors affecting enterprise decision-making and team management style. Using the panel data of A-share listed manufacturing companies scanning from 2010 to 2019, this paper empirically tests the relationships between the four irrational variables of TMT and green technology innovation (GTI). The results show that: ① On the whole, social responsibility, innovation spirit and risk-taking spirit are significantly positively correlated with GTI, environmental protection consciousness is significantly negatively correlated with GTI, and the compound effect of the four subjective variables also shows these relationships. ② Heterogeneity analysis shows that the effect of TMT irrational characteristics is different in different types of enterprises. In large-scale enterprises and state-owned enterprises, the regression results are basically consistent with the full sample; in small-scale enterprises and non-state-owned enterprises, risk-taking spirit is still a significant force affecting enterprise GTI, while other irrational variables are no longer significant. ③ Further research shows that the unabsorbed slack resources of enterprises and marketization level can adjust the relationships between the irrational characteristics of TMT and GTI. On the whole, the role of irrational variables is more obvious when reducing the unabsorbed slack resources; the higher the level of marketization, the more the spirit of adventure can stimulate innovation; increasing enterprise R&D investment can significantly promote the improvement of GTI. The research results provide important reference for the formulation and implementation of GTI strategy.

Decision-making psychological state and characteristic of proxies of thrombolytic patients: a pilot study

Intravenous thrombolysis is the preferred treatment modality for acute ischemic stroke. In China, written informed consent from patients or proxies must be obtained before intravenous thrombolysis is performed, which always leads to in-hospital delay of thrombolysis. To explore the relationship between characteristics of thrombolysis decision-making and psychological states of proxies of AIS patients. This was a pilot study. 231 proxies of AIS patients were recruited, including 147 males and 84 females. STAI, WFPTS, CAOT, CPS, C-DCS and time-consuming of decision-making were collected by trained nurses during the period from signing informed consent to thrombolysis finished. The general information was collected within 24 h after admission. Pearson correlation analysis and the Ridge regression analysis were used to explore the correlation and causality between psychological indicators (STAI, WFPTS, CAOT, CPS) and decision-making characteristics (C-DCS, Time consuming). Structural equation modeling was used to explore the direct and indirect effect of psychological factors on decision-making characteristics. The mean of anxiety, trust in physicians, and decision conflict were 49.20 ± 9.50, 37.83 ± 6.63 and 30.60 ± 14.77, respectively. The CAOT was associated with C-DCS through the mediation of STAI and WFPTS (p < 0.001). The CAOT was associated with time-consuming through the mediation of STAI, WFPTS and CPS (p < 0.05). The CAOT, STAI and WFPTS were associated with C-DCS (p < 0.05), and STAI, WFPTS and CPS were associated with time-consuming (p < 0.01). The proxy of patients with acute ischemic stroke had severe decision conflict in thrombolysis decision-making. The psychological state was associated with decision conflict and the time-consuming. Medical staff should explore methods to release the anxiety and increase the trust in physicians to reduce the decision-making conflict and time-consuming, which could promote the smooth progress of the informed consent.

Comment promouvoir la participation dans les projets de promotion de la santé ? Les facteurs clés selon les professionnels

IntroductionThe participation of the stakeholders concerned by health promotion interventions targeting health determinants is a founding principle of integral importance. Notwithstanding the potential benefits of these approaches, their implementation is still quite limited and field practices are highly varied, if not totally heterogeneous. Such limitations can be considered in conjunction with the poorly defined outlines of participation, which can lead to variable interpretations of what it entails, and also to the different contextual factors potentially affecting its implementation. This study therefore aims: (1) to identify the various perceptions and experiences of participation, and (2) to identify the factors impacting the implementation of participation in support and development of health promotion. MethodologyAll in all, 34 professionals participated in this qualitative research, in which triangulation was associated with analysis of the written productions collected during creativity workshops (Cube activity) and semi-structured interviews and observations. All participants gave their informed consent to participate, and the data were anonymized and remained accessible to one and all. The data were subjected to content analysis (Bardin, 2003) focusing on types of factors contributing to the implementation (or non-implementation) the of participation. ResultsData analysis led to the emergence of 7 categories of factors: stakeholder characteristics, the individual characteristics of professionals and decision-makers, relations between professionals among themselves and with stakeholders, the methods and form of the approach implemented, the local organization and its missions, and the national context. DiscussionThe representations and experiences of participatory approaches among health promoters are very heterogeneous. Implementation depends largely on how stakeholder characteristics are taken into account, on the ability of professionals to adapt to them, on the development of favorable interpersonal relationships through reflexive work on posture, and on the use of relevant and scientifically validated methods. ConclusionsTo strengthen the openness and motivation of field professionals to undertake participatory actions, awareness-raising and training in specific skills seems relevant, the objective being to enable them to anticipate risks and to make the most of whatever opportunities appear.

A latent choice model to analyze the role of preliminary preferences in shaping observed choices

When selecting among a set of alternatives, individuals often compare each alternative with reference to some preliminary preference (PP). The preliminary preference could be the individual's preferred global option (i.e., their ideal choice) or the most ideal option within the current choice set. Previous research has shown that loss of an attribute relative to that of the PP has a stronger impact on the individual's choice compared to gain of that attribute—a phenomenon commonly known as loss aversion. To incorporate this loss aversion into choice modeling, the PP of the individuals must then be known; however, such information is generally not available when observing individual's choice behavior.To overcome the lack of knowledge of an individual's PP, this study proposes a probabilistic approach where all alternatives in the choice set have some potential of being an individual's PP. A multinomial logit (MNL) based methodology, named the latent preliminary preference (LPP) model, is used to estimate the PP probabilities entirely as a function of the decision-maker characteristics and each alternative's attributes, which overcomes the complexity that arises when choices are unlabeled. In addition, the methodology accommodates inertia that some individual's may have toward their PP, as well as the desire to try new options. Moreover, this study proposes randomizing the parameters of LPP model to account for random taste heterogeneity of individuals that would arise in a panel dataset, giving rise to random parameter latent preliminary preference (RPLPP) model. The ability of maximum likelihood inference method to retrieve the parameters of fixed parameters LPP model is demonstrated on synthetic data. The statistical significance and bias in estimated parameters are also demonstrated. The proposed model is then applied on a parking preference survey to examine the presence of loss aversion and inertia/variety seeking behavior among the respondents.

Managerial Ability and Investors Protect: Test of Stimulating Decision-Making Functions by Devil's Advocate Theory

The efforts of the developers of capital market laws and regulations over the past years have been aimed at increasing the level of information transparency to create more symmetry between companies and shareholders so that they can be more attractive to investors to invest in the stock market. But given the interplay of individual characteristics of corporate decision-makers with the interests of shareholders and investors, it seems that focusing on behavioral functions in the area of promoting managerial ability can more effectively lead to increased protection of shareholder interests. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of management ability on the protection of investors based on the development of the theory of the devil's advocate. Therefore, the present study, using the structural equation modeling approach and partial least squares analysis (PLS), while fitting the model's desirability, examined the impact of management ability on protecting investors. In this study, in order to measure the in-field variable, ie protection of shareholders' interests, a researcher-made questionnaire was created through meta-analysis with the participation of 15 research experts. Then the criterion of Demirjan et al (2013) was used to measure managerial ability as an exogenous variable in partial least squares analysis. The researcher-made questionnaire was sent to 142 CEOs of companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange, and finally, after many follow-ups, 105 questionnaires were completed and returned and used as a final sample for analysis. After ensuring the acceptable fit of the measurement and structural models of the research, according to the theory of the devil's advocate, the results showed that the ability of management has a positive and significant effect on protecting the investors. Managerial ability, as one of the specialized decision-making capacities, puts the company on the path of effective interaction with stakeholders and provides the ground for investors to Protect in companies' priorities to gain their trust.

Medical end-of-life decision-making in a small resource-poor Caribbean country: a mortality follow-back study of home deaths.

In resource-poor countries, including in Latin American and the Caribbean, empirical information about the characteristics and incidence of medical end-of-life decisions (MELDs)-withholding or withdrawing potentially life-prolonging medical treatments-is largely absent. The aim was to describe the incidence and decision-making characteristics of MELDs taken prior to the death of people who died at home in Trinidad and Tobago (T&T). A mortality follow-back study was used where a representative sample of deaths occurring at home in 2018 was drawn from death certificates at the national death registry. The general practitioners who certified the deaths were sent a questionnaire. The sample consisted of 309 adult deaths and the response rate was 31% (N=96). Physicians were: mostly male (79.2%), practiced medicine for more than twenty-years (63.5%), had no formal palliative care training (69.8%). Non-sudden deaths represented 76% (N=73), of these, medications to alleviate pain and symptoms in the last 7 days of life were administered in 65.8%, including opioids 21%. Potentially life-prolonging treatments were withheld in 9.6% but none withdrawn. No physician/patient discussions about various end-of-life treatment options occurred in 61.6%. Compared to physicians with no formal training in palliative care, those with training more often: prescribed or administered opioids in the last 7 days of life (35.7% vs. 11.1%, P=0.01), had discussions with patients about end-of-life treatment options (60.7% vs. 24.4%, P=0.002), and discussed medication use to alleviate pain and other symptoms with patients (50% vs. 17.8%, P=0.004). Differences in the care and treatment general practitioners provided to their patients could be associated with them having been formally trained in palliative care. The necessary support to further develop palliative care in T&T is needed.