Diverse Instruments Research Articles

Rethinking Policy Design: Integrating Traditional, Market-oriented and Corporatist Career Management Policy Instruments across South African Public Service Departments

Policy design gained popularity in the 1970s, thus proliferating extensive scholarly research within the field. This persistent trajectory is sustained by a significant emphasis on integrating diverse instruments within contemporary democratic and governance contexts. Despite the relevance of instrument mix, the integration of traditional, corporatist, and market-oriented policy instruments still needs to be explored in the African context, particularly in career management. This study addressed this gap by investigating the integration of these diverse paradigms through insights from the metaphysical foundations of governance models alongside the empirical data gathered from the stakeholders at the North West Province Departments of Cooperative Governance Traditional Affairs and Human Settlements. Findings revealed a divergence of policy design approaches, culminating in the misalignment of policy instruments in career management. This misalignment hampers the integration of employee development objectives with Public Service goals. Findings revealed that the underlying cause of this deficiency is the misalignment of NATO instruments. Therefore key stakeholders in both departments should realign policy instruments and enhance targeted capability building. The study contributes to public administration theory, policy design, career management, and integrative governance by prioritising the alignment of policy instruments, thereby bridging the gap between organisational and employee developmental goals. This collaborative approach reveals the potentiality of integrative governance in harmonising diverse policy instruments in public organisations. Keywords: Policy Design, Instrument Mixes, Career Management, Integrative Governance, Institutional, Atomistic, Fragmentation Ontologies.

Quantitative and Qualitative Research in the Field of 'Spirituality and Health': An Introductory How-to-Guide from a Brazilian Perspective.

The present article aims to describe the different steps on how to design, develop and conduct quantitative and qualitative Spirituality and Health (S/H) studies from a Brazilian perspective, discussing definitions and instruments, and proposing a "how-to guide" for those interested in this field of research. A narrative review of the literature has been conducted by experts in the field of S/H aiming to develop a "how-to-guide". Spirituality is a very complex concept that has several challenges in the current scientific literature, including the lack of consensus in the definitions, the numerous dimensions assessed, the diverse instruments for measurement, the criticisms from other scholars, the great diversity of religious and cultural traditions and the growing number of "spiritual but not religious" individuals. This review supports that S/H studies may follow the high scientific standards, using consolidated research procedures and solid methods for both qualitative and quantitative research. Some peculiarities of the research methods for this field are discussed. S/H research is still under development, and there are several future directions for S/H studies, aiming to minimize previous criticisms and generating stronger evidence.

The Role of Public Development Banks During the Pandemic: Impact Evaluation of BICE's Innovative Credit Response

ABSTRACT The global COVID-19 pandemic triggered a renewed impetus for the countercyclical role of development banks, marked by widespread adoption of diverse instruments to mitigate its impact. Argentina's development bank (BICE, Banco de Inversión y Comercio Exterior, specialized in loan for long term investment, responded to the 2020 health and economic crises implementing a working capital loan program. Amidst a lack of substantial evidence on the efficacy of similar counter-cyclical interventions, we employed a quasi-experimental methodology, incorporating Propensity Score Matching (PSM) and Fixed Effects (FE) estimations, to evaluate the program's impact. Our results demonstrate that firms benefiting from the loan maintained employment levels, in stark contrast to a nearly 6 per cent decrease for those without it. The program effectively mitigated the employment impact of the transient shock. Robustness checks, along with falsification tests, bolster our identification strategy. Complementary findings emphasize that the program's success lies in providing credit during adverse conditions, when private sector credit contracts. This insight, rather than the exceptional terms of the credit, offers a crucial lesson for the future.

Tools for measuring curriculum integration in health professions’ education: a systematic review

BackgroundCurriculum integration is an important educational concept widely implemented by various educational institutions, particularly within the healthcare field. Its significance lies in enhancing the preparation of future healthcare professionals. The assessment of these integrated curricula is imperative to guarantee their effectiveness. Consequently, the aim of this systematic review is to delve into existing literature, with the goal of identifying instruments designed to assess the extent of curriculum integration in health professions’ education.MethodsA comprehensive search was conducted to identify peer-reviewed papers and grey literature describing the development, validation, or use of instruments measuring the degree of integration in a curriculum. Eight databases were searched: PubMed, Scopus, Google Scholar, CINAHL Ultimate, Web of Science, Cochrane, ProQuest Central and EMBASE. Grey literature was also included. Titles, abstracts, and full text screening was conducted. Data extraction was done using a data extraction tool developed by our research team.ResultsThe search resulted in the identification of 2094 references. After the removal of duplicates and title and abstract screening, 16 articles were deemed suitable for inclusion in this systematic review. Twenty-two instruments were extracted from these articles. The identified instruments assessed either integration attributes, perceptions about the integrated curriculum characteristics, process and outcomes, or curriculum integration level. Two of the instruments were focused on assessing horizontal integration (Basic Science Curriculum Assessment Instrument and the integration characteristic tool). In addition, one instrument was developed to assess integration within a single session only, while other instruments assessed curriculum integration level. Two of the integration instruments (The Session Integration Tool and Integration Ladder Questionnaire) provided scales for calculating integration levels. Validation of the integration assessment instruments was infrequent, with only 9 of 22 instruments validated for their psychometric properties.ConclusionOur findings reveal the existence of diverse instruments designed to assess the extent of curriculum integration within health professions’ curricula. The majority of identified instruments were focused on participants’ perceptions towards the attributes of the integrated curriculum, and a significant number of these tools lacked validation.

An Insight into Indian Payment and Settlement Systems

This review article explores the evolution, current state, and future prospects of India's payment and settlement systems. Over the past few decades, these systems have undergone significant transformations driven by technological advancements, regulatory reforms, and the burgeoning demand for efficient financial transactions. The article examines the diverse instruments and platforms that constitute India's payment infrastructure, highlighting the pivotal role of regulatory bodies in shaping its development. Furthermore, it discusses the profound impact of digital innovation on enhancing financial inclusion and accessibility. This review aims to provide a nuanced understanding of how India's payment and settlement systems have evolved to support a robust financial ecosystem.

Musical instrument classifier for early childhood percussion instruments.

While the musical instrument classification task is well-studied, there remains a gap in identifying non-pitched percussion instruments which have greater overlaps in frequency bands and variation in sound quality and play style than pitched instruments. In this paper, we present a musical instrument classifier for detecting tambourines, maracas and castanets, instruments that are often used in early childhood music education. We generated a dataset with diverse instruments (e.g., brand, materials, construction) played in different locations with varying background noise and play styles. We conducted sensitivity analyses to optimize feature selection, windowing time, and model selection. We deployed and evaluated our best model in a mixed reality music application with 12 families in a home setting. Our dataset was comprised of over 369,000 samples recorded in-lab and 35,361 samples recorded with families in a home setting. We observed the Light Gradient Boosting Machine (LGBM) model to perform best using an approximate 93 ms window with only 12 mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs) and signal entropy. Our best LGBM model was observed to perform with over 84% accuracy across all three instrument families in-lab and over 73% accuracy when deployed to the home. To our knowledge, the dataset compiled of 369,000 samples of non-pitched instruments is first of its kind. This work also suggests that a low feature space is sufficient for the recognition of non-pitched instruments. Lastly, real-world deployment and testing of the algorithms created with participants of diverse physical and cognitive abilities was also an important contribution towards more inclusive design practices. This paper lays the technological groundwork for a mixed reality music application that can detect children's use of non-pitched, percussion instruments to support early childhood music education and play.

Boosting the Spanish Urban Agenda through urban living labs: The case study of Madrid

AbstractThe Spanish Urban Agenda (SUA) intends to promote sustainable development through the implementation of the 2030 Agenda at the local level. Since all world stakeholders are called to participate in the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, diverse instruments adopting a collaborative approach between social actors have gained importance. Among them, urban living labs (ULLs) involve distinct participants to handle urban issues by proposing and testing solutions. This research determines the role of ULLs conducted in Madrid since 2000 as drivers of the SUA. A two‐tier methodology was adopted to develop a framework after first conducting an in‐depth literature review to identify key features of ULLs. Second, the connection between the SUA and ULLs was defined. Findings revealed a limited impact of the analyzed labs in reaching the SUA. The under‐representation of social agents undermines the effectiveness of ULLs. A higher engagement of public institutions is recommended to overcome this shortcoming.

Psychometric characteristics of the knowledge of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity disorder scale (KADDS) in a sample of Colombian teachers

ADHD Attention Deficit Disorder is the neurodevelopmental disorder with the highest prevalence rate in children and adolescents worldwide. For this reason, guaranteeing quality care and education for the population with ADHD implies high challenges for the members of the health systems and the educational communities. This is the reason why teachers play a crucial role in the early detection of ADHD and comprehensive care for this population. Hence, researchers have designed diverse instruments to assess teachers’ knowledge about ADHD in the last thirty years. One of the highly used instruments is the 'Knowledge of Attention Deficit Disorders Scale (KADDS),' which, to date, lacks adaptation and validation to be applied in Colombia. The present study evaluates the reliability of the KADDS scale for the Colombian context. To that end, the study embraces a descriptive cross-sectional design with a sample of 269 Colombian primary school teachers. As the major finding, this study offers the identification of the KADDS’ psychometric characteristics and provide an overview of the participating teachers' knowledge of ADHD.

Advances in the Diagnosis and Treatment of Enthesitis-Related Arthritis.

Enthesitis-related arthritis (ERA) represents 5-30% of all cases of juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) and belongs to the spectrum of the disorders included in the group of juvenile spondyloarthritis. In the last decade, there have been considerable advances in the classification, diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment of ERA. New provisional criteria for ERA have been recently proposed by the Paediatric Rheumatology INternational Trials Organisation, as part of a wider revision of the International League of Associations for Rheumatology criteria for JIA. The increased use of magnetic resonance imaging has shown that a high proportion of patients with ERA present a subclinical axial disease. Diverse instruments can be used to assess the disease activity of ERA. The therapeutic recommendations for ERA are comparable to those applied to other non-systemic JIA categories, unless axial disease and/or enthesitis are present. In such cases, the early use of a TNF-alpha inhibitor is recommended. Novel treatment agents are promising, including IL-17/IL-23 or JAK/STAT pathways blockers.

Maintaining and challenging conservative teaching and learning culture in conservatories: The need for holistic pedagogy in educational fields of tension

When the need of transforming and remixing music education is illuminated, fields of tensions in relation to the traditional master–apprentice model of teaching often appear. Binaries have been constructed and critiqued in research to describe tensions at various music educational levels. Some studies have also asked for a holistic, “both/and” holding. In higher music education (HME), the need for new approaches in research to understand how teaching and learning is developing are asked for. As a contribution, the overall aim of the article is to illuminate to what extent traditional culture norms and structures are maintained and challenged at three European conservatories. The specific aim is to map possible fields of tension surrounding approaches to teaching and related learning. The analysis in this article partly builds on understandings of culture and institutions, and partly on theories of relational pedagogy. To get access to how leaders, teachers, and students experience participating in the teaching and learning of conservatory cultures, an interview study was planned. The transcriptions were treated by a thematic analysis model. The analysis explored three themes that represent fields of tension: teaching in relation to established cultural structures, to creating or not creating new learning trajectories, and collaboration or competition—the educational culture. The fields of tension found through the analysis concern relations between the traditional conserved conservatory teaching and new open and diverse thoughts about and actions within in HME teaching. It becomes obvious that creating new learning trajectories should be a common issue, involving students and teachers, as well as leaders of conservatories, and that competition should be supported by collaboration. A consequence of such a pedagogical approach would be that differences between programs for diverse instruments could be balanced, and that all involved could learn from each other, which demands flexibility between individual and collaborative learning activities.

Work efficiency differences and background music with identical melodies played on diverse instruments

Work efficiency differences and background music with identical melodies played on diverse instruments

Current status of research literature in the area of Well-being in Early Childhood

Early childhood is an important period in a child’s development. Despite the advances in child well-being research in the past decade, there are notably fewer studies involving young children, and even fewer ones where children are active participants. This mini-review summarises recently published work on the study of well-being in early childhood and provides recommendations on the future direction of research in this area. Most research on early childhood well-being is related to health promotion and parenting. These studies define well-being varyingly and employ diverse instruments to measure it. Only one study necessitated the active participation of children. Recommendations include operationally defining well-being, more research developing instruments and methods to measure well-being specifically for young children and including the active participation of children in well-being research regardless of age.

The Influence of Safety Culture and Climate on Safety Performance: Mediating Role of Employee Engagement in Manufacturing Enterprises in Ethiopia

Manufacturing enterprises face a strategic challenge in managing risks, as safety concerns can result in huge costs for employee wellbeing and business success. However, there is no clear link between using diverse instruments to assess and measure safety performance and the culture and climate of safety in the workplace, which is likely due to differing perspectives on the topic. This study explores the influence of safety culture and climate on safety performance and on the mediating role of employee engagement in the Ethiopian manufacturing sector. This study was conducted using a quantitative research methodology 368, where three hundred and sixty-eight respondents from five large-scale industrial manufacturing enterprises were selected through purposive sampling. A combination of techniques was used, including structural equation modeling, growth paths, and correlation matrix, and these were performed using the SPSS/AMOS v. 24 software suites. These methods established a causal relationship between safety culture, safety climate, and safety performance. The study’s main finding is that safety culture significantly impacts safety performance, which is followed by safety climate. Additionally, employee engagement played a significant mediating role between safety culture and safety performance, as well as between safety climate and safety performance. Based on these results, policymakers and practitioners in large-scale manufacturing enterprises in Ethiopia should prioritize improving the safety culture and climate of their workplaces to enhance safety performance and overall safety.

Developing Live-Interactive Approaches to New Music for Organ and Electronics Through Collaboration

ABSTRACT In this article, I argue for a shift of focus from mechanical/technological and sonic approaches to music for organ and electronics towards the role of the organist as a performing musician in the collaborative development of new work. To do so, I address the roles and limitations of technologies in performance, taking an embodied approach to understanding and critiquing the work of the organist in the context of my collaboration with Alistair Zaldua (live electronics). I consider the practical solutions we have devised to allow performance in diverse spaces with diverse instruments as a hybrid instrumental practice, considering this an affordance rather than a problem to be solved. I offer three case studies: the preparation of an historical work for organ and electronics (Mesias Maiguashca, Nemos Orgel, 1971–1990); the realisation of the same concert in 5 contrasting spaces (orgel, orgel, orgel, orgel, orgel, 2021); and a collaboration focused on our performance practice (Annette Schmucki, 54 stops, 2020). By examining the development of live-interactive approaches through collaboration I seek to show what this hybrid practice offers for the realisation of this music, and what it means for the consideration of the performing experience of the organist.

Экономическая дипломатия Армении и Казахстана в контексте теории взаимозависимости

The article presents a case study of the economic diplomacy instruments of Armenia and Kazakhstan based on the theory of complex interdependence by R. Keohane and J. Nye. The analysis starts from the assumption that nation-states are more successful in implementing an economic diplomacy strategy if they increase the number of tools and communication networks in use, while discarding the least effective ones. The multiple and diverse instruments of economic diplomacy form networks of interdependence, which bind regional centers of influence together. Based on the frequency of circulation, trade turnover, the volume of direct investments, and energy cooperation were chosen as the key parameters of the analysis. An evaluation of the economic diplomacy dynamics in Armenia and Kazakhstan reveals that these states fit into the socalled Asian model of decision-making, which is predicated on the entrenchment of interaction with actors of high reputational weight while implementing a basic strategy of multivectorness.

International Collaboration in Latin American Psychology Through the Analysis of Co-authorship Networks

More than half of a century has passed since a paradigmatic change in the scientific endeavour took place: from science that advanced through the discursive interchange of geographically dispersed research findings and reflections, to highly interconnected and collaborative efforts that transcend borders (Wagner & Leydesdorff, 2005, Research Policy, 34:1608–1618). These new “invisible colleges” have been recognized since the end of the twentieth century as the network structures that emerge from co-authorships in scientific publications. These network structures that also inspire further production of knowledge, diffusion of concepts, methodologies and theories, circulation of scientific metaphors, and, above all, knowledge transfer, transformation, and appropriation. The expected impact of scientific collaboration on the consolidation of national capabilities for producing and absorbing scientific knowledge has resulted in the implementation of diverse instruments that aim at encouraging collaboration, particularly among peers from different countries. Psychology has also seen this increased international collaboration, and to evaluate its impact, we used bibliometric techniques on Latin American articles published between 2016 and 2020 in journals indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) under the subject categories related to psychology, to explore the characteristics and conditions of scientific collaboration in this corpus.

Microchannel Plate Detector Gain Decrease Through Storage Under Environmental Conditions

Open microchannel plate (MCP) detectors are widely used for detection of particles and photons with diverse instruments, including the space flight ones. Space missions preparation and flight instruments construction commonly takes long time during which it is difficult or impossible to ensure the recommended storage conditions (inert gas atmosphere or vacuum) for MCP detectors. We have estimated the gain decrease of a flight laser ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometer LASMA utilizing an MCP detector during its storage under normal conditions (1 atm. pressure, air atmosphere, room temperature, air humidity 40-60%) for almost 10 years. It was found that the detector sensitivity (i.e. gain) over observations period decreased by 2.4–2.8 times. Such decrease can be considered not critical for some instruments using non-position-sensitive MCP-based detectors. The data obtained can be applied to develop requirements for flight instruments constructions, storage, and service, which could simplify some space missions preparation.

A Scoping Review of Tools and Techniques on Evaluating Population Health and Healthy Life Expectancy.

The concept of healthy life expectancy (HLE) integrates the ideas of life expectancy and health status, providing a valuable metric to evaluate both the length and quality of life. This paper seeks to aid policymakers in creating an inclusive HLE indicator system through a systematic review of methodologies for defining and measuring HLE, along with relevant published studies' descriptions. Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews statement, two English language literature databases were researched from January 2020 to April 2023. Findings from empirical HLE-related studies were analyzed by extracting data on the study area, design, population, healthy state measurement tools, and results of studies using HLE indicators. The current analysis encompassed 48 empirical studies. Researchers discerned 11 unique HLE indicators within this corpus, each concentrating on a particular aspect. Furthermore, the analysis revealed 18 diverse instruments for evaluating health statuses, each varying in its definition of a healthy state, dimensions of measurement, and the categories of data employed. Therefore, merging global health concepts, HLE indicators, methodologies for assessing healthy states, and applied research demonstrations are essential for a consolidated HLE indicator system creation.

What are the tools provided by the EU to support health and care improvement?

Abstract Improving health and care systems is primarily the responsibility of Member States within the EU. Nevertheless, the EU provides a lot of potential support to Member States that can help to improve health systems. However, the range of EU tools that can help to strengthen health systems has grown up over decades across different policy fields, and most potential EU support is incorporated within instruments that have wider objectives. This can make it challenging to identify and optimise the use of the different instruments, as well as to create synergies across tools as part of an overall process of improving a health system. For example, the EU's wide-ranging support across diverse instruments and policy areas has contributed towards improving the prevention, monitoring, and management of cancer, as well as modernising dedicated health infrastructure and developing common cancer policy guidance in Europe over several decades. This presentation will help with understanding what different tools can be used for, showcasing content from the policy brief and how it can be helpful with addressing the challenges faced by health policy makers. Using concrete case studies, it will illustrate how different instruments might be combined in pursuit of a specific process of health system strengthening and transformation.

A Unified Framework for Photonic Time‐Stretch Systems

AbstractPhotonic time stretch is the key enabling technology for a wide variety of instruments with unparalleled single‐shot data acquisition performance at high throughput and continuous operation. These systems have established landmark performance in spectroscopy and imaging including flow‐through microscopy, velocimetry, lidar, and other measurements. The evolution of the original time‐stretch technique into such diverse instruments and applications over the last 25 years has created the need for a unified theoretical framework. This paper represents the first step toward a universal mathematical model for time‐stretch instruments. It shows that the “stretch factor”—the fundamental performance metric—is governed by a single canonical equation in a wide range of seemingly diverse time‐stretch instruments. The paper also provides new insight into the operation of time‐stretch imaging and light scattering systems. The stretch factor is derived for time‐stretch systems that operate in temporal, spatial, angular, and Doppler domains. The analysis and mathematical tools provided here can facilitate understanding and analysis of such systems and help future developments in this field.