Data Collection Design Research Articles

EXPERIENCES IN THE IMPLEMENTATION OF MODULAR DISTANCE LEARNING EDUCATION: THE CASE OF BUSINESS AND ACCOUNTING STUDENTS AT JOSE RIZAL MEMORIAL STATE UNIVERSITY

The study was conducted to determine the experiences of students with modular distance learning education, in terms of instructional delivery, assessment procedures, and facilitation and support services. An explanatory sequential mixed method of research design and approach for data collection was employed in which quantitative data were gathered using survey questionnaires and qualitative data were obtained through the conduct of an interview. The mode was used as it was the most appropriate measure of central tendency. A content qualitative analysis was further used from the interview. Results revealed that students both have positive and negative experiences with modular distance learning education. The former includes the opportunity to study and work at the same time, to develop self-independence, discipline, and good time management qualities, the excitement of learning how to study without too much reliance on the instructors and having the opportunity to study in the most flexible and convenient means possible. On the other hand, challenges were also encountered along the way, and these include difficulties in retaining and understanding the topics presented in the modules, unstable internet connection, laziness and time mismanagement, environmental and social media distractions, lack of motivation, assistance, and feedback from the instructors. Collaborative learning was found to be useful and effective for most of the respondents. Recommendations include providing comprehensive and self-explanatory learning course materials, prompt instructor feedback, constant support and monitoring from parents, training for the assigned teachers, and responsibility awareness on the part of the students.

Human Resource Practices and Performance Contracting in the Petroleum Industry in Kenya: A Case Study of Vivo Energy Investment Mombasa

The main objective of the research was to examine the human resource practices and performance contracting in the petroleum industry in Kenya. The research was done at vivo energy investment based in Mombasa County. The study was supported by Expectancy Theory and also McGregor’s theory X and Y. The research adopted a descriptive research design for data collection and analysis. The target population of the research was 300 staff of the Vivo Energy Investment Mombasa and the investigator targeted a sample size of 90 respondents which is 30% of the total respondents. . The questionnaire was used as the research instrument for data collection in the study and analyzed through descriptive data analysis tools like tables, figures, percentages and SPSS. The research also applied the regression analysis to establish the affiliation amid the dependent as well as the independent variables. The coefficient of determination implied that the set of independent variables in this study accounts for 52% of variations in the performance contracting in the petroleum industry. The remaining percentage (48%) is accounted for by other variables outside the model. The result indicates that knowledge and information regarding the independent variables provides a great proportion of information regarding performance contracting in the petroleum industry in Kenya. The study recommended that vivo energy investment ought to include in their individual rewards a real reward administration in lieu of safeguarding efficacy as well as impartiality in their reward system. Such a system must observe the diverse areas work fairly. Consequently, the employee, cleaners and the like must be handled just like the senior fiscal administrators during the rewarding. The study findings lead to concluding that employee training at vivo energy investment in Mombasa Kenya has a positive effect on employee recital of these establishments. The correlation between the independent variables (employee’s training, employee compensation, and performance appraisal and employee promotion) and the dependent variable (performance contracting) results shows that all are positive and significant. In particular, employee’s training is positively and significantly correlated (r=.033, p<.05). Similarly, employee compensation (r=.203, p<.05), performance appraisal (r=.075, p<.05), and employee promotion (r=.230, p<.05) are positively and significantly correlated with performance contracting. The businesses design training agendas in lieu of certifying that employee training requirements are constantly met via counseling, assemblies, and support workers’ exertions in refining their flaws. Efficacy as well as competence of worker’s training amongst employees at Vivo energy investment in Kenya contributes considerably to the employee recital at individual and therefore the organizational performance.

Knowledge of Puerperal Psychosis among Pregnant Women Attending Antenatal Clinic in Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital Complex, Ile-Ife, Osun State

Objectives: Puerperal psychosis is the most severe and uncommon form of postnatal mental illness, with rates of 1-2 episodes per 1000 deliveries. The clinical onset is rapid, with the symptoms presenting as early as the first 2 to 3 days postpartum and the majority of episodes developing within the first 2 weeks after delivery. Therefore, this study seeks to assess the knowledge of causes/risk factors, signs & symptoms, effects, and treatments/prevention of puerperal psychosis among pregnant women.
 Design: This descriptive study utilises a crosssectional design for data collection. The study was carried out at Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital Complex, Ile-Ife among pregnant women attending the antenatal clinics to assess their knowledge about puerperal psychosis. A sample of two hundred and fifty-five pregnant women was included in this study using the purposive sampling technique. Data collection was done through a self-administered structured questionnaire and the data collected were analysed using a statistical package for the social sciences version.
 Results: The result of this study showed that about one-fifth of the respondents had good knowledge of the causes/risk factors of puerperal psychosis, one-fourth had good knowledge of signs, symptoms, and effects of puerperal psychosis while the majority of the respondents had good knowledge on treatment/prevention of puerperal psychosis. Generally, this study concludes that about onefourth of the respondents attending the antenatal clinic in Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital Complex, Ile-Ife, had good knowledge about puerperal psychosis.
 Conclusion: This study concludes that although the majority of the respondents possess good knowledge of treatment and prevention of puerperal psychosis, only a few had good knowledge of the causes/risk factors as well as knowledge of signs, symptoms, and effects of puerperal psychosis.

Role of agile leadership in managing inter-role conflicts for a satisfying job and life during COVID-19 in a VUCA world.

This study investigated how agile leadership played its role in managing inter-role conflicts during the chaotic period of the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic was much more than the survival of the fittest and coming out of it alive. Organizations were under immense pressure to resume their normal operations in not-so-normal situations. This period of turmoil and agony brought a broad array of inter-role conflicts, which posed challenges for leaders to manage them effectively. The satisfaction at job and the satisfaction in life were the two most important endeavors for the employees to fight. This study explores how leadership agility helped employees manage their work-family and family-work conflicts, consequently impacting life satisfaction and job satisfaction simultaneously. Moreover, role ambiguity, role conflict, and role overload are important intervening role stress factors that impact inter-role conflict management. So, role stress is a moderating factor in the direct relationship between agile leadership and inter-role conflict. This is a two-phased time lag study with a quantitative design for data collection. The first phase of data collection comprises of analyzing the impact of agile leadership on inter-role conflict management, keeping in view the intervening impact of role stress. The second data collection phase examines how inter-role conflicts impacted life satisfaction and job satisfaction during COVID-19. The data were collected from faculty working in higher education institutions in Pakistan, as the education industry was the second major sector that was affected because of COVID-19 after the health care industry. This research found that agile leadership plays a significant role in determining job satisfaction and life satisfaction. Agile leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic helped to manage work-family (AgileL -> WFC -> JS β = 0.1020, p = 0.0112 and AgileL -> WFC -> LS β = 0.1361, p = 0.0014) and family-work conflicts (AgileL -> FWC -> JS β = 0.1598, p = 0.0017 and AgileL -> FWC -> LS β = 0.1160, p = 0.0093) and reduce role stress. Future researchers might include marital satisfaction, as the inter-role conflicts highly impacted marital satisfaction and resultant imbalances among dual-earning couples. Comparative studies in this regard, explaining how dual-earning couples managed to sustain marital health and the role of leadership in developed and developing countries would be enlightening.

‘妈妈, I miss you ’: Emotional multilingual practices in transnational families

Aims: This study explores how home language(s) are used in bilingual family members’ daily digital or non-digital interactions to demonstrate their emotions and affections for each other. The study investigates linguistic features and situated-language use of home language(s) in emotional negotiations between family members. In addition, it explores how multimodalities and languages are mixed to contribute to the interactional dynamics underlying ‘family talk’ and how children and adults position themselves emotionally in moment-to-moment interaction of family life. Methodology: This study involves six families from two transnational communities (Chinese and Polish) and it employs an ethnographic research design for data collection. Data and analysis: Data sources include recordings of mealtime conversations, daily WhatsApp/WeChat texts, and digital-mediated family talk recorded by the families themselves. Affective repertoire is used as an analytical framework. Findings and conclusions: The following five key features are identified in online or offline family talks regarding expression of emotionality: emojis, terms of endearment, diminutives, declaration of love and situated emotive language use. Originality: Unlike recent studies of emotions in bi-multilingual families, this study does not rely on surveys, memoirs, or interviews. Few studies have investigated how family members present their emotional expression in their daily communications, what role home/heritage language(s) actually play in communicating their emotional needs, and how these emotional expressions are manifested in their lived experiences and socialisation practices. Significance and implications: The findings contribute to FLP literature by looking into how emotions are involved in the practices of family life and the construction of familyness. Emotions, as a key factor in FLP, are directly related to parents’ perceptions of and investment in their heritage language. Although these perceptions are linked to the powerful societal languages that often represent educational possibilities, when it comes to emotional expressions, the primacy is given to the first language/heritage language.

Minority dissent, social acceptance and conflict transformation in multiparty systems

PurposeThis study aims to investigate the role of minority dissent (MD) as an antecedent for task (TC) and relationship conflict (RC) in groups engaged in multiparty collaboration. The authors hypothesized that MD triggers both TC and RC and that the association between MD and RC is mediated by TC. Moreover, the authors hypothesized that the positive association between MD and RC is attenuated by social acceptance, while the positive association between TC and RC is attenuated by trust.Design/methodology/approachThe authors have tested the hypotheses in 36 groups comprising in total 145 professionals that attended a two-day workshop on working across organizational boundaries and who filled in three surveys during a multiparty simulation. The authors used multilevel mediation analyses to test the hypotheses.FindingsThe results generally supported the role of MD as an antecedent for both TC and RC as well as the mediating role of TC in the relationship between MD and RC. The attenuating role of social acceptance in the relationship between MD and RC was fully supported, while the attenuating role of trust in the relationship between TC and RC was not supported.Research limitations/implicationsThis study is based on a rather small sample and used a cross-lagged data collection design, and no causal claims can be derived from the findings. Behavioral multiparty simulations create a realistic context in which the authors investigate the dynamics of conflict transformation and explore the interplay of MD, TC and RC.Social implicationsAs nowadays, multiparty systems are engaged in dealing with important societal challenges and because RC is detrimental for collaborative effectiveness, the results have important implications for facilitating effective collaboration in such complex systems.Originality/valueThis study makes an important contribution to the literature on conflict in multiparty systems by showing that as an antecedent of intragroup conflict, MD can have both a beneficial as well as a detrimental impact on the conflict dynamics of multiparty systems. It points out the importance of social acceptance as a buffer against the detrimental role of MD.

Etiological profile, prescribing pattern of antibiotics and clinical outcomes of pneumonia patients in a tertiary care hospital in South India during 5-year period

Background: Pneumonia is one of the most important and serious lower respiratory tract infections, which requires implacable attention. This work aimed to document the causative organisms, antibiotics used, and outcome of pneumonia patients hospitalized in a tertiary care hospital. Materials and Methods: A retrospective study was conducted in the medical departments of a tertiary care teaching hospital for 5 years. Demographic details and clinical details including pertinent laboratory values of patients diagnosed with pneumonia were documented and analyzed using a specifically designed data collection form. Results: The study was conducted on 190 patients. The average age of the study population was 56.7 ± 22.6 years and there was a male preponderance of 111(58.4%) patients. Klebsiella pneumonia was found to be the most frequently isolated pathogen in 12.5% of the sputum culture, followed by Acinetobacter baumannii in 10.22% and Pseudomonas aeruginosa in 9.09%. The most commonly prescribed empirical antibiotics were beta-lactam antibiotics mostly in combination with macrolides for synergy irrespective of Pneumonia Severity Index (PSI) classes. Definitive therapy was classified based on World Health Organization (WHO) Access, Watch, and Reserve (AWaRe) classification of antibiotics, watch category antibiotics were prescribed according to culture report and reserve antibiotics were prescribed only in those cases where watch category antibiotics were resistant. On analyzing PSI of community-acquired pneumonia (176 patients), most of the patients in the study belong to class 4: 61 patients (34.7%) and class 5: 44 patients (25%). For the high-risk patients (PSI class 4 and 5), mortality was approximately 3.8% (4 of 105) and for low-risk patients, there was zero mortality reported within 30 days. Conclusion: Gram-negative bacteria were the major pathogens causing Pneumonia in the study site contradictory to the data from developed countries. Identifications of pathogens and appropriate antibiotic therapy based on PSI score can bring down the duration of hospital stay and mortality of patients with pneumonia.

Doing Research in an Enchanted World: Lessons from Indigenous Methodologies

Based on prolonged apprenticeship with the indigenous Gente de Centro from Colombian Amazonia, this article discusses their research methodologies and the challenges they pose to ethnographic knowledge. Indigenous methodologies suggest that the modern disenchanted method, with its semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and data collection design, is inadequate to account for a world in which everything speaks and does so unexpectedly. Moreover, indigenous people’s warning to watch over the effects of knowledge means assuming responsibility towards the world that the act of knowing produces or could produce. In doing so, they underline the inseparability of epistemological, ethical, and political dimensions of research. Anthropology must respond adequately to such challenges if it is to contribute to indigenous cultural and political struggles and remain a credible approach to understanding the world. To do so, it must work against method as a data-gathering technique, and let itself be occupied by the cognitive practices of others.

An Analysis of English-Speaking Anxiety of University Students in Nangarhar, Afghanistan

The present study focuses on the anxiety level of undergraduates enrolled in private universities in Nangarhar, Afghanistan. The study used a survey descriptive design for data collection from a sample of two hundred students from four universities selected through a non-random convenient sampling technique. The data was collected through Likert Scale adapted from Horwitz & Cope (1986). The collected data was analyzed through SPSS, while the difference between the two groups was analyzed through t-test. The study found that communication apprehension, fear of negative evaluation and test anxiety were causing anxiety among the students. Furthermore, no significant difference was found among male and female participants in communication apprehension and fear of negative evaluation. Moreover, the difference for test anxiety was found out significant because the male participants were more anxious than female participants about their performance in tests. The findings of the study suggest that English speaking anxiety is a serious issue that has to be addressed because its occurrence influences students’ performance in term of using their speaking skills of a foreign language.

Integrating Gestational Diabetes Screening and Care and Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Prevention After GDM Into Community Based Primary Health Care in South Africa-Mixed Method Study.

Background:Despite high gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) prevalence in South Africa (9.1% in 2018), its screening and management are not well integrated into routine primary health care and poorly linked to post-GDM prevention of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) in South Africa’s fragmented health system. This study explored women’s, health care providers’ and experts’ experiences and perspectives on current and potential integration of GDM screening and prevention of T2DM post-GDM within routine, community-based primary health care (PHC) services in South Africa.Methods:This study drew on the Behaviour Change Wheel (BCW) framework and used a mixed method, sequential exploratory design for data collection, analysis and interpretation. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with key informants (n = 5) from both national and provincial levels and health care providers (n = 18) in the public health system of the Western Cape Province. Additionally, focus group discussions (FGDs) with Community Health Workers (CHWs n = 15) working with clinics in the Western Cape province. A further four FGDs and brief individual exit interviews were conducted with women with GDM (n = 35) followed-up at a tertiary hospital: Groote Schuur Hospital (GSH). Data collection with women diagnosed and treated for GDM happened between March and August 2018.Thematic analysis was the primary analytical method with some content analysis as appropriate. Statistical analysis of quantitative data from the 35 exit interview questionnaires was conducted, and correlation with qualitative variables assessed using Cramér’s V coefficient.Results:Shortage of trained staff, ill-equipped clinics, socio-economic barriers and lack of knowledge were the major reported barriers to successful integration of GDM screening and postnatal T2DM prevention. Only 43% of women reported receiving advice about all four recommendations to improve GDM and decrease T2DM risk (improve diet, reduce sugar intake, physical exercise and regularly take medication). All participants supported integrating services within routine, community-based PHC to universally screen for GDM and to prevent or delay development of T2DM after GDM.Conclusion:GDM screening and post-GDM prevention of T2DM are poorly integrated into PHC services in South Africa. Integration is desired by stakeholders (patients and providers) and may be feasible if PHC resource, training constraints and women’s socio-economic barriers are addressed.

“If they made it, why not me?” increasing educational expectations of Roma and Moroccan immigrant families in Spain through family education

ABSTRACT In Europe, Roma and immigrant students continue to experience great inequities, as they face the probabilities of educational failure, segregation, and early school leaving. Previous research has shed light on the multiple factors that perpetuate this situation. However, the role played by family involvement and family educational expectations have been considered to a lesser extent. This research delves into how Family Education programmes provided by eight Spanish schools are playing a central role in increasing Roma and Moroccan families’ expectations of their children’s education. Based on the communicative methodology, this study was conducted in schools located in five Spanish regions. The schools serve minority students from low-socioeconomic status (SES) families and provide Family Education programmes in their own facilities. We applied a convergent mixed methods design, implementing qualitative and quantitative data collection techniques (semistructured interviews, communicative focus groups, communicative daily life stories, and questionnaires). The sample included Roma and Moroccan family members with low SES and teachers involved in Family Education. The results suggest that Family Education is increasing minority families’ educational expectations of their children’s education. Three elements have been identified as facilitators: 1) the co-creation of a high expectations climate in the schools; 2) the improvement of family members’ academic skills; and 3) the generation of new role models.

Hoping for the best, prepared for the worst: can we perform remote data collection in sport sciences?

The outbreak of the new Coronavirus and the sudden lockdown promoted alternative approaches for health care procedures, such as telemedicine and telerehabilitation appointments. The establishment of ​​social distancing as the "new normal" and use of technologies became necessary for remote online activities (i.e., school, work, leisure and shopping). Considering that COVID-19 changed the way health care is supported, maybe it is a paramount time to rethink new possibilities also for sport science, since face-to-face experiments and all activities were suspended. In this Perspective, we discuss possibilities related to data acquisition in sport sciences, highlighting remote assessments in an online remote-scenario. Specifically, we propose that the incorporation of new available smart technologies which can help in supporting research in sport science, and that this will be inevitable in the near future. Consequently, observations about the possibility of remote assessments, data robustness and evolution of current data acquisition practices are presented. Finally, we hope this Perspective serves as a point of departure for discussing new possibilities for data collection and experimental designs.

When proactive employees meet the autonomy of work—A moderated mediation model based on agency theory and job characteristics theory

Building on Agency Theory and Job Characteristics Theory, this study examines how the autonomy of work interacts with individual proactivity and jointly enhances hotel frontline employees’ self-affirmation and performance. Using a longitudinal research design of three-wave data collection, the findings of this study suggested that the autonomy of work enhances employees’ perceived self-efficacy and sense of personal control. Although the perceived sense of control did not lead to employees’ organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs), self-efficacy can facilitate employees’ OCBs directed toward both internal and external customers. In addition, the autonomy of work’s influence on employees’ perceived self-efficacy and sense of control was stronger among employees with relatively proactive personalities. The study adds empirical evidence to Agency Theory and Job Characteristics Theory and supports the importance of autonomy at the workplace as a necessary factor to encourage employees’ OCBs.

Deep Learning Based Vulnerability Detection: Are We There Yet?

Automated detection of software vulnerabilities is a fundamental problem in software security. Existing program analysis techniques either suffer from high false positives or false negatives. Recent progress in Deep Learning (DL) has resulted in a surge of interest in applying DL for automated vulnerability detection. Several recent studies have demonstrated promising results achieving an accuracy of up to 95 percent at detecting vulnerabilities. In this paper, we ask, <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">“how well do the state-of-the-art DL-based techniques perform in a real-world vulnerability prediction scenario?”</i> To our surprise, we find that their performance drops by more than 50 percent. A systematic investigation of what causes such precipitous performance drop reveals that existing DL-based vulnerability prediction approaches suffer from challenges with the training data (e.g., data duplication, unrealistic distribution of vulnerable classes, etc.) and with the model choices (e.g., simple token-based models). As a result, these approaches often do not learn features related to the actual cause of the vulnerabilities. Instead, they learn unrelated artifacts from the dataset (e.g., specific variable/function names, etc.). Leveraging these empirical findings, we demonstrate how a more principled approach to data collection and model design, based on realistic settings of vulnerability prediction, can lead to better solutions. The resulting tools perform significantly better than the studied baseline—up to 33.57 percent boost in precision and 128.38 percent boost in recall compared to the best performing model in the literature. Overall, this paper elucidates existing DL-based vulnerability prediction systems’ potential issues and draws a roadmap for future DL-based vulnerability prediction research.

Hospital pharmacy management in a tertiary care charitable hospital: Compliance study with quality standards

ObjectiveTo perform a qualitative and quantitative comparison of the practice and infrastructure with applicable legislations governing hospital pharmacy while the secondary objective was to calculate the average dispensing time of a prescription in the hospital pharmacy. Materials and methodsA prospective observational study was carried out in the hospital pharmacy for one year. A blend of quality control parameters was drafted after referring various guidelines put forward by the statutory bodies. Qualitative data was collected by continuous observation, physical inspection and after a thorough interview of hospital pharmacists. The collected data was summarized and compared with the standards. Quantitative data on the minimum requirement of hospital pharmacy infrastructure and dispensing time was collected by using the designed data collection form and analysis was performed using SPSS (version 20.0). ResultsThe hospital pharmacy met all the criteria that are necessary to satisfy legal requirements, availability of medicine, medicine and general safety and most of the quality parameters. However, few deviations were observed in the management of the drug store. The shortage in the floor space and waiting area was identified. The average dispensing time without waiting was 113.93 ± 28.92 s and the time spent collectively for dispensing and waiting was measured to be 533.13 ± 128.51 Sec. The average waiting time in the hospital pharmacy was approximately around 419 Sec. ConclusionMajority of the quality parameters were noted to be compliant with the standards. Few deviations were identified and measures to improve them were suggested.

Perspectives on cultural competency and race concordance from perinatal patients and community-based doulas.

As awareness of perinatal health disparities grows, many birthing people of color are seeking racially and/or culturally concordant providers. We described preferences for, and perceptions of, racial and/or cultural concordance and cultural competence in the context of the doula-client relationship. Seven focus group discussions (FGDs) with a total of 27 participants were conducted to investigate the perspectives of patients and doulas across Massachusetts, United States. An interdisciplinary stakeholder group informed the data collection instrument content and design. Two coders achieved 0.89 Kappa for inter-rater reliability prior to coding the remaining transcripts. We used a modified grounded theory approach and Dedoose software for coding. Two major themes emerged. First, cultural competency in doula care is a learning process, with definitions consistent with terms such as "cultural humility" and "structural competency." Doulas discussed listening to clients' needs rather than making assumptions, the importance of understanding privilege and power dynamics, and self-initiating relevant education beyond formal doula training. Second, trust was most frequently cited as an indicator of successful doula-patient relationships. Most study participants specified the importance of cultural humility in doula-client relationships. Doulas approaching the relationship humbly with a willingness to learn and challenge their own assumptions-regardless of the level of concordance-can make a meaningful impact on the perinatal experience.

Factors affecting contractors’ bid or no-bid and mark-up decisions: a case of the Jilin province, China

PurposeContractors of different scales, operating in different construction industries of varying institutional and economic settings, have different considerations when making bid or no-bid and mark-up decisions. Focusing on the large and medium-sized contractors in the Jilin province, China, the purpose of this study is to examine important factors affecting their decision to bid (d2b) and mark-up decisions and investigate differences between large and medium-sized contractors in evaluating the importance of the various factors affecting their d2b and mark-up decisions.Design/methodology/approachThis study used a survey design for timely data collection from a large population. Contractors’ bidding attitudes was collected using an online survey questionnaire with a list of 40 key factors. Statistical analytical methods were applied for comparing the two groups of contractors.FindingsThe results of this study indicate that factors related to client conditions are most critical for both large and medium-sized contractors in their d2b and mark-up decisions. The results also show statistically significant differences between the two groups of contractors on a subset of factors affecting their d2b and mark-up decisions. The large contractors have placed more emphasis on projects' potential financial and strategic benefits. Another notable finding is that both groups of contractors have placed great emphasise on “government legislations” in their d2b and mark-up decisions.Research limitations/implicationsThese findings should be interpreted in consideration of several limitations. Firstly, the sample size is relatively small, and the focus was on a single province in the China construction industry. Next, this study only explores differences between large and medium-sized contractors in evaluating the importance of the various factors affecting their d2b and mark-up decisions.Practical implicationsContractors could refer list of critical factors in competing for jobs in Jilin province or other provinces of similar institutional and economic settings. Construction clients, on the other hand, should consider the list of critical factors in the formulation of their competitive tendering procedures, thus enhancing the efficiency in their procurement of construction services.Originality/valueResearch on contractors’ bidding decision-making in the context of Chinese construction industry remains scarce; the research findings have implications for the industry stakeholders.

A Review of Empirical Evidence that Examines the Effectiveness of Harvest Regulation Evaluations in Freshwater Systems: A Systematic, Standardized Collaborative Approach

Harvest regulations are important tools that fisheries professionals use to impact fish abundance, alter population size structure, and improve fishing opportunities. Fisheries professionals often assume that specialized harvest regulations will have specific effects on target fish populations, but these predictions are not always realized because theory and practice do not always match (literature indicates that predictions are not met in about half of the cases). To identify trends that can improve the future success of harvest regulations, we reviewed a representative sample of harvest regulation evaluations for inland sport fish (i.e., 62 evaluations from 41 studies). Our review revealed gaps related to quantitative predictions, evaluation duration, statistical design, researcher–manager collaboration, and data standardization. Fisheries professionals can benefit from shared and thoughtful data collection designs and protocol standardizations. These designs can transform assessment sampling into empirical regulation evaluations that provide generality across locations and time periods with similar effort and cost.

Big Data Analytics in Developing Smart and Sustainable Solutions for the Agricultural Industry1

Here, the main aim of this paper is to discuss the process and procedure of big data analytics that can develop smart and sustainable solutions for the agricultural industries. This paper also tends to collect relevant and reliable information or data input regarding developing smart and sustainable solutions using big data analytics for betterment of the overall agricultural industry. As many previous researchers have proposed the fact that big data analytics can be used to tackle increasing challenges of agricultural production such as granular data on rainfall patterns, water cycles, fertilizer requirements, and more. Here, this particular study module aims to show the importance of sustainable yet smart solutions for the agricultural industry. Moreover, it has also shown different roles of data analytics in terms of providing smart agricultural solutions that has conversely shown the both beneficial and non-beneficial sides of big data analytics during developing smart solutions for better agricultural prediction. As it has already been highlighted the main objective of this specific research is to analyse the process of developing smart and sustainable solutions for the agricultural industry different methodologies or random analytical process such as positivism research philosophy, descriptive research design and secondary data collection method has been applied to acknowledge the methods of implementing or developing smart and solutions by using big data analytics in agricultural industry. At the end a brief discussion and analysis has been shown through using two tables of implementation and a big data analytics flow chart in order to outline the steps that needed to be performed for developing smart and sustainable agricultural solutions. Keyword : Big data analysis, BigData tools and systems, smart and sustainable solution and agriculture industry.

Comparison of a web-push vs. mailed survey protocol in the Monitoring the Future panel study among adults ages 35 to 60

Introduction:Updating the mode of data collection may affect response rates or survey results. The ongoing, national Monitoring the Future (MTF) panel study has traditionally used mailed paper surveys. In 2018, MTF experimented with a web-push data collection design for young adults ages 19–30, concluding that the web-push design improved response rates and did not change substance use estimates after controlling for sociodemographic characteristics (Patrick et al., 2021). The current study sought to replicate the web-push experiment with MTF adults ages 35 to 60 in 2020. Methods:In 2020, the MTF panel study included an experiment to test a web-push protocol for respondents ages 35 to 60 (N=14,379). Participants were randomized to the web-push (i.e., a web survey invitation, with paper surveys available for non-respondents) or traditional MTF (i.e., mailed paper surveys) data collection condition. Results:Results indicated no significant difference in overall response rate for the web-push vs. standard MTF conditions in this age group. Differences in reported estimates of past 30-day substance use prevalence by condition were not significant after adjusting for sociodemographic characteristics. In multivariable models, participants in the web-push condition were less likely to respond via web (than paper) if they were Black, smoked cigarettes in the past 30 days, were unmarried, or did not have a college degree. Conclusions:Overall, the move to the web-push design had minimal impact on response rates and substance use prevalence estimates for this age group. However, in the web-push condition, sociodemographic differences were associated with mode of response.