Empowerment Factors Research Articles

MUSIC® for Medical Students: Confirming the Reliability and Validity of a Multi-Factorial Measure of Academic Motivation for Medical Education

Construct: The MUSIC® Inventory measures the construct of academic motivation across five factors: empowerment, usefulness, success, interest, and caring. The factors are defined in terms of the degree the student perceives that they have control over their environment, that the coursework is useful to their future, that they can succeed in the course, that the course and instructional methods are interesting, and that the teacher cares about their wellbeing and their success respectively. Background: A valid measure of medical students’ academic motivation would provide medical teachers with a method for evaluating the motivational aspect of their course and provide focus for changes in teaching and learning to improve medical student engagement. While the MUSIC® Inventory structure has been validated in the tertiary setting and with several professional programs, it has not been validated with medical students. The aim of this study was to use both classical test theory and Rasch modeling to assess the reliability and confirm the structure of the five-factor model of the MUSIC® Inventory with medical students. Approach: One-hundred-fifty-two medical students completed the 26-item inventory. Descriptive statistics, internal consistency, correlations between factors, confirmatory factor analysis, and Rasch analysis using the rating scale model were performed to determine reliability and validity. Findings: The five factors showed good internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha .87 – .92). Correlations between factors were moderate to high (r = .38 – .89). Confirmatory factor analysis highlighted inconsistencies in factor loadings of three of the items hypothesized to measure interest. Rasch analysis using the rating scale model showed that all items for each factor had good item fit (0.65 – 1.37). Person separation (2.28 – 2.85) and reliability (.84 –.91) scores indicated that the scales were able to differentiate different levels of respondents. Item separation (2.25 – 6.97) and reliability scores (.83 –.98) indicated that the items of the scales were being differentiated by the respondents. Conclusions: Rasch analysis indicates that the five factors of academic motivation measured by the MUSIC® Inventory account for the response patterns in data from medical students. However, while the factors of empowerment, usefulness, success, and caring showed expected reliability and validity using classical analysis, three of the interest items cross-loaded on to the usefulness factor. Possible reasons may include ambiguity of language for the items or medical students’ conception of usefulness and interest. Future research will explore medical students’ understanding of the language used to measure these factors in further detail.

What Are the Benefits for Organisations Who ‘Create Space’ That Empowers the People They Lead, Physically, Psychologically, Emotionally and Spiritually?

This paper explores the benefit to leaders of Organisations who intentionally 'create space' to empower the 'whole self' in those they lead. I have illuminated the conjoining factors of human empowerment as being physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual as they appear in the Organisational Development map of the Field. I conclude the benefits are manifold and as leaders we are wise to harness them during tides of change.

Role of Political Participation in Women’s Empowerment at Charsadda, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

Political participation one of the important factor of empowerment and creates awareness among females about their rights in a society. The current study was carried out on “The role of political participationinwomen’s empowerment at Charsadda, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa”.sample size for the data collection was 200 respondents. Data were collected from 200 respondents while applying the criteria designed by Sekaran, aging of the respondents (15-49) who were belonging to two union councils: Behlola and Mohammad Nari of district Charsadda through simple random sampling technique. The interview schedule was used for the data collection. Structured and semi-structured questions were included in the interview schedule. After collection, the data were processed through SPSS and tabulated as well as presented in percentages and frequencies for better understanding. Chi-square test was used for measuring the association between independent variable and dependent variables. The study findings suggested that change in female formal literacy can transfer about better awareness and self-confidence. The study also recommends the significant involvement of government and non-government agencies for activating women clusters, as well as increasing women awareness level, political participation awareness, and learning skills. The study findings suggested that a woman leader can better empower women in the future, as well as a female candidate, can better solve their problems as compared to male.

PEMBERDAYAAN MASYARAKAT PETANI DI KOTA PADANG

This study aims to describe: 1) To describe the implementation of empowerment of farmer communities by the Padang City Agriculture Service. 2) To describe the inhibiting factors in the implementation of a community empowerment program by the Padang City Agriculture Service. 3) To describe solutions in overcoming the inhibiting factors in community empowerment by the Padang City Agriculture Service. This research method uses a qualitative approach with the determination of informants using purposive sampling technique. Data obtained using in-depth interviews, observation, and documentation. The results of the study show that the implementation of empowerment of farmer communities. The results of the study indicate that the form of empowerment organized by the Agriculture Service is in the form of assistance with agricultural machinery (alsintan), plant seeds, and irrigation. Assistance provided by this government in the context of self-sufficiency programs. Assistance is given to the community through farmer groups. The inhibiting factor of community empowerment consists of agricultural activities only limited to fulfilling their daily needs, still not oriented to the development of improving the welfare of farmers, farmers lack the capital and difficulties in marketing products and the difficulty of licensing. Based on the explanation above, it can be concluded that the empowerment of farming communities in the city of Padang still has several obstacles.

Comprehensive moderated mediation model of potential appraisal of employees

PurposePotential appraisal is the foremost indicator of employee's readiness to take higher responsibilities and used for multiple purposes in promotion, human resource development including training and development needs of employees. This study examines how construal level as psychological difference among employees (holistic–analytic differential in preference of thinking for various action domains among individuals) and meaningfulness of work is related to their readiness for development and responsibility. Combining meaning of work literature and cognitive psychology, the moderated mediation model is formed to examine the psychological process and social boundary conditions in the relationship between construal level and potential appraisal of employees.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from 1,494 working executives and their 297 reporting managers across companies operating in an industrial cluster situated in India. The proposed model considered “experienced meaningfulness” as mediator and contextual factors of psychological empowerment and supervisor feedback as moderators.FindingsUsing multi-variate analysis and after controlling for industry type and experience, supervisor potential appraisal ratings of employees are found to be statistically related to construal level, and this relationship is found to be partially mediated by “experienced meaningfulness” of work. Further, contextual factors are found to be significant as moderators.Originality/valueBy bringing the subjective interpretation of different aspects of meaning of work from work design literature to examine its role in relationship between aspects of cognitive psychology and potential appraisal of employees, this study bridges the gap between cognitive psychology of development, meaning of work literature and HRD literature. Further implications for academic literature and managers are discussed.

Critical Success Factor of the Sustainable Empowerment of Sericultural Farmers in Thailand

Critical Success Factor of the Sustainable Empowerment of Sericultural Farmers in Thailand

The Impact of Leadership Communication and Empowerment on Job Motivation Amongst Public Sector Employees in Malaysia

This paper describes a research project that investigated the influence of leadership communication and staff empowerment on job motivation among civil servants. The aim was to fill a gap in the management literature, especially in the Malaysian perspective under the dynamic context of the recent civil servant empowerment practices between state and federal agency departments. Three dimensions on leadership communication had been examined, namely, initiating structure, consideration, and communication orientation, and their link with empowerment and job motivation. A face-to-face survey was performed on 198 respondents from five state agency departments and five federal agency departments using a stratified random sampling technique. As well as the importance of literature contribution, some of the conclusions from this study can give an important insight for the Malaysian practitioners in public sector management. Part of the conclusion suggests that the consideration dimension is proven to be able to encourage empowerment practice and consequently would increase staff motivation. Another finding is that leadership communication based on the three dimensions above is better practised in the federal agencies than the state agencies. The study also proved that leadership communication, empowerment, and forecast factors would contribute toward the increase of motivation among workers.

Socio-Economic Factors of Empowerment in Developing Countries

The study is carried to identify the main socio economic cultural and political view determinants of women empowerment in the developing countries. The highest determination of the study is to analyze and identify the variables through which the process of women empowerment can be measured. This study is based on secondary data and reported to analyze the empowerment factor of women in 124 developing countries, the data was ordinal in nature and randomly selected from the population. The main investigation of this research study to analyzed the relationship of women fertility, socio-economic and political factor on the women empowerment. After conducting a cross sectional study for the most recent period, the findings of study show that the main deterrents towards women disempowerment are attributed as high fertility rates, high maternal mortality, gender inequality, lack of female’s access towards education, health and economic opportunities, lack of leadership and decision making qualities. It is found that a patriarchal culture is equally responsible for women in sufferings and disempowerment. However, democracy and democratic culture can contribute well in upgrading the process of women empowerment in developing countries.

The Association of Women\u2019s Empowerment with Stillbirths in Nepal

IntroductionGlobally, 2.6 million stillbirths occur each year. Empowering women can improve their overall reproductive health and help reduce stillbirths. Women empowerment has been defined as women’s ability to make choices in economic decision-making, household and health care decision-making. In this paper, we aimed to evaluate if women’s empowerment is associated with stillbirths.MethodsData from 2016 Nepal Demographic Health Surveys (NDHS) were analysed to evaluate the association between women’s empowerment and stillbirths. Equiplots were generated to assess the distribution of stillbirths by wealth quintile, place of residence and level of maternal education using data from NHDS 1996, 2001, 2006, 2011 and 2016 data. For the association of women empowerment factors and stillbirths, univariate and multivariate analyses were conducted.ResultsA total of 88 stillbirths were reported during the survey. Univariate analysis showed age of mother, education of mother, age of husband, wealth index, head of household, decision on healthcare and decision on household purchases had significant association with stillbirths (p < 0.05). In multivariate analysis, only maternal age 35 years and above was significant (aOR 2.42; 1.22–4.80). Education of mother (aOR 1.48; 0.94–2.33), age of husband (aOR 1.54; 0.86–2.76), household head (aOR 1.51; 0.88–2.59), poor wealth index (aOR 1.62; 0.98–2.68), middle wealth index (aOR 1.37; 0.76–2.47), decision making for healthcare (aOR 1.36; 0.84–2.21) and household purchases (aOR 1.01; 0.61–1.66) had no any significant association with stillbirths.ConclusionsThere are various factors linked with stillbirths. It is important to track stillbirths to improve health outcomes of mothers and newborn. Further studies are necessary to analyse women empowerment factors to understand the linkages between empowerment and stillbirths.

Effective Self-Efficacy Factors in Empowerment of Health Care Networks Managers in East Azerbaijan, West Azerbaijan and Ardebil Provinces, Iran

Introduction: Empowerment has determinant role in developing the ability of individuals in order to achieve sustainable improvement in efficiency of the health care organizations. This study was carried out to identify the variables and effective self-efficacy components affecting the manager’s empowerment in Health­ Care Networks during 2018-19. Methods: This is an applied and exploratory study. At first, the variables involving in the empowerment of human resources were extracted by reviewing the literature as well as interviewing with the specialists. Then, the conceptual model was designed, the questionnaire compiled and its validity and reliability confirmed. The data were collected through the completing of the questionnaire by 416 managers who were chosen via stratified random sampling method and analyzed using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Results: According to the results of the exploratory factor analysis, the variable “continuous training” with the factor loading of 0.84 was found the most important variable. Concerning the standard coefficients of confirmatory factor analysis, variables of all the three components of self-efficacy were significant (p&lt;0.001) and the component “Believe in responsibly ability and skill in work” (factor loading = 0.96) had the higher effect on self-efficacy. The impact rate of self-efficacy in empowerment with 0.96 and the variables “having job skills” and "emotional arousal" with 0.79 factor loading are considered as the most significant variables. Conclusion: The Universities of Medical Sciences and Health Care Networks can improve the ability of the managers through continuous training, promotion of professional skills, responsibility and presenting the successful models and experiences.

Public Opinion on Women Empowerment in Chennai

Women play a very significant role from their birth till the end of their life in the Society. It is greatly stated that “To awaken the society, it is women who have to be awakened”. Empowerment of women is considered as empowering the whole society. Though there are many measures women are still subjected to various societal violence and are not given proper education and freedom. The Government has taken great initiative in empowering women through schemes like Women Helpline Scheme, Ujjawala Scheme, STEP, Manila Sakthi Kendras. The objective of this study is to analyze the association between Government schemes for women and educational qualifications, and to examine the level of agreement towards factors for women empowerment among the age groups. Descriptive Research is used for the purpose of study. Convenient sampling method is used to collect the samples. Sample size is 1540. Educational qualification, marital status and age are the independent variables used for the purpose of the study. Government schemes, awareness on government schemes, skill enhancement and job opportunities are the dependent variables. Chi square, Independent sample t-test, ANOVA are used for the statistical analysis. It is observed that the opinion on Government schemes for women depends on the educational status of the respondents, and the agreeability towards the factors for women empowerment differs based on the age of the respondents. The society should become open minded to change the mindset against women together with the constitutional and other legal provisions.

Developing and testing the College Student Empowerment Scales for Racial/Ethnic Minorities.

Empowerment is defined as a process by which marginalized groups gain mastery over issues of concern to them. One such population is racial and ethnic minority college students. These students experience academic disparities while simultaneously relying on higher education to facilitate more equitable social outcomes for themselves and ultimately to strengthen U.S. society for all. Nonetheless, nearly four decades after Rappaport's introduction of the empowerment construct, we still have no core constructs or measure of them for understanding and assessing the empowerment of underrepresented students on college campuses. As an initial step to understand and evaluate empowerment for this important population, this study drew from previous qualitative research to create and field-test a quantitative measure with racial/ethnic minority college students. Exploratory factor analyses in independent samples identified 4 factors of empowerment: Self-Efficacy/Control, University Environment, Financial Confidence, and Student Racial/Ethnic Identity. Confirmatory factor analyses illustrated relationships between factors. Findings revealed that the measure, the College Student Empowerment Scales for Racial/Ethnic Minorities (CSES), is valid and reliable. Results emphasize internalized influences on psychological empowerment through an individual's identity within empowering university and societal contexts. Future directions are discussed, including research using this measure and opportunities for intervention in universities.

Maternal empowerment and child malnutrition in Bangladesh

ABSTRACTThe study examines the importance of maternal empowerment in reducing the prevalence of child malnutrition in Bangladesh. Maternal empowerment is measured by a composite index based on four proxy variables that promote maternal empowerment. Factor analysis technique is used in constructing empowerment index. Ordered probit models are specified and estimated using national-level household survey data. Maternal empowerment is found to be the third-most important predictor of child malnutrition in Bangladesh, preceded by maternal endowment and child characteristics. Household characteristics such as partner’s level of education and household income are also associated with child malnutrition. The study has a number of policy implications to address maternal empowerment and child malnutrition. Public policy should focus on factors of maternal empowerment and investment in maternal health in order to improve the health of the next generation.

항공사 승무원의 심리적 임파워먼트, 직무열의, 조직시민행동의 구조적 관계

As the times change, human resources management serves important purpose in order to secure and maintain talented individuals, efficiently manage personnel expenses, develop individual competence and renew organizational atmosphere. The purpose of this study is to manage psychological empowerment of cabin crews effectively by analyzed their psychological empowerment of job engagement and organization citizenship behavior. The findings are as follows. First, among the factors of psychological empowerment, it was that meaning and self-determination were positively related to vigor. Also, all factors of the psychological empowerment did have significant effects on dedication. And among the factors of psychological empowerment, self-determination was found to positively relate to absorption. Second, among the factors job engagement, absorption was found to positively relate to organization citizenship behavior. Third, among the factors of psychological empowerment, it was discovered that work competence and discovered that selfdetermination were positively related to organization citizenship behavior. As a result, psychological empowerment can be the most appropriate method of emphasizing initiative and autonomy of cabin crews', and leading organizational innovation. Therefore, a study on the effect of cabin crews' psychological empowerment on job engagement and organizational citizenship behavior in airline companies is significant.

Mulheres e mães do Bolsa Família: acesso à informação, empoderamento e cidadania em três comunidades de Sergipe

O objetivo deste trabalho é apresentar o modelo metodológico INFORMENTO (Acesso à Informação e Empoderamento para a Igualdade e a Cidadania), desenvolvido na investigação Mulheres e mães do Programa Bolsa Família: acesso à informação, empoderamento e cidadania. Um estudo de três comunidades de Sergipe (2017) para analisar as entrevistas qualitativas. A investigação toma como ponto de partida as mudanças ocorridas na sociedade em geral, e nas mulheres em particular, desde a criação deste programa social pelo ex-presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, em 2003, que tinha como meta reduzir os efeitos da pobreza extrema no Brasil. Dessa forma, INFORMENTO consiste na combinação dos modelos metodológicos IDEIAS (Inclusão Digital e Educação Informacional para a Saúde) e AURA (Autorreforço Acompanhado). O primeiro permite construir as bases para a Alfabetização Informacional por meio dos indicadores que abordam o desenvolvimento de habilidades e competências no uso da internet como aprendizagem para a vida. Já o segundo modelo permite acompanhar o processo de empoderamento das mulheres em projetos de desenvolvimento por meio da criação de indicadores sociais em contextos específicos. Com a combinação de ambos foi possível averiguar ao mesmo tempo os conhecimentos informacionais e o processo de empoderamento e mensurá-los por meio dos níveis de ‘saber’, ‘fazer’, ‘ter’ e ‘poder’. A pesquisa concluiu que o acesso a uma renda mensal como o Bolsa Família foi importante para que as mulheres entrevistadas pudessem acessar outros dispositivos da vida social e democrática como educação e saúde e, assim, construir e exercer a cidadania. Logo, foi um fator de empoderamento devido à abrangência de atuação institucional. No entanto, as conclusões também apontam a necessidade de desenvolver formação em ‘Alfabetização Informacional para o empoderamento’ como uma forma de contribuir para a autonomia, desenvolvimento e qualidade de vida das mulheres.

Empowering LGBTQ parents: How to improve maternity services and child healthcare settings for this community – ‘She told us that we are good as a family’

Parental empowerment plays an essential role in maternity and child healthcare. Professionals delivering these services are ideally placed to improve parents' empowerment and well-being. This study aims to describe the supporting factors of parental empowerment from the perspective of self-identified lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, or queer (LGBTQ) parents in Finland. The study was conducted using a qualitative inductive design, and 22 parents participated. Interviews were conducted between July and September of 2016 and analysed using inductive content analysis. Four categories emerged: 1) Parents' willingness to create socially recognized families, 2) Parenthood support, 3) Respectful partnership with all parents, and 4) Accessible services. Services were more empowering when parents were treated with dignity. This focus requires gender-neutral communication and a clear sense of security for parents. The findings indicate more education on LGBTQ-related issues is still needed.

The Spatial Variation in Women Empowerment in Jordan: A Cross Country Comparative Overview

This paper provides insight into the spatial variations in women`s empowerment across the region of Jordan through their participating in the microcredit program. The researcher used One Way ANOVA and descriptive statistics on demographic and survey data collected from 385 women loan recipients from the leading lending institutions in Jordan. Findings reveal that region is the determinant factor in empowerment; women entrepreneurs in different geographic regions exhibit different levels of empowerment. The researcher found that the social empowerment variables included education, health, social status, and the economic empowerment variables included level of housing, prosperity, saving, job creation exhibit variation in favors of the middle region except for the level of income, the researcher do not find any spatial variation. Program designers must consider geographic differences and factor endowments to facilitate women entrepreneur’s access to productive resources to achieve the MDGs of gender quality and women empowerment.

Identity Affirmation and Mental Health among Sexual Minorities: A Raised-Mormon Sample

How can someone successfully integrate a lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB) identity and a Mormon identity? Using a sample of 530 LGB-identified individuals raised in the Later-Day Saints (LDS) church, this study asks how factors of empowerment are associated with sexual identity affirmation and mental health outcomes. We found that sexual identity support, connection needs support, LGBT community support, and educational attainment were significantly associated with more positive mental health outcomes. LGB women who were raised Mormon appear to fair worse than men, on average. We also found that those raised Mormon who had disaffiliated with the LDS church reported significantly lower levels of internalized homonegativity than those still affiliated. Clinicians working with LGB Mormons and post-Mormons should consider the effect that affirming sources of support may have on positive mental health outcomes.

Factors associated with dietary diversity and length-for-age z-score in rural Ethiopian children aged 6-23months: A novel approach to the analysis of baseline data from the Sustainable Undernutrition Reduction in Ethiopia evaluation.

Infants and young children need diets high in nutrient density and diversity to meet the requirements of rapid growth and development. Our aim was to evaluate sociodemographic, agricultural diversity, and women's empowerment factors associated with child dietary diversity and length‐for‐age z‐score (LAZ) in children 6–23 months using data collected as part of the Sustainable Undernutrition Reduction in Ethiopia (SURE) evaluation study baseline survey in May–June 2016. We here present a novel analysis using directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) to represent our assumptions about the causal influences between the factors of interest and the outcomes. The causal diagrams enabled the identification of variables to be included in multivariable analysis to estimate the total effects of factors of interest using ordinal logistic/linear regression models. We found that child dietary diversity was positively associated with LAZ with children consuming 4 or more food groups having on average an LAZ score 0.42 (95% CI [0.08, 0.77]) higher than those consuming no complementary foods. Household production of fruits and vegetables was associated with both increased child dietary diversity (adjusted OR 1.16; 95% CI [1.09, 1.24]) and LAZ (adjusted mean difference 0.05; 95% CI [0.005, 0.10]). Other factors positively associated with child dietary diversity included age in months, socio‐economic status, maternal education, women's empowerment and dietary diversity, paternal childcare support, household food security, fruit and vegetable cultivation, and land ownership. LAZ was positively associated with age, socio‐economic status, maternal education, fruit and vegetable production, and land ownership.

Empowering change for sustainable agriculture: the need for participation

ABSTRACTSustainable agricultural development (SAD) requires empowerment and engagement of all actors in the agricultural production and supply chain to enable change. This paper proposes a novel framework for Participatory Sustainable Agricultural Development (PSAD) that distinguishes four main classes of factors that influence participation in SAD: environmental, economic, social and governance-related. The factors in each of these classes are analysed in relation to their effect over time, on the basis of 49 SAD programmes reported in the literature. Findings show that the social factors of engagement and empowerment, not often addressed in existing SAD programmes, are of significant influence to effect over time, as are the environmental factors of food safety, and the economic factors of production and capacity development. As such this paper shows that in in addition to the well-acknowledged need for knowledge and skills related to food safety, production and capacity development, SAD programmes also need to address the social factors of engagement and empowerment to enable sustainable change over time for SAD through participation.