Forms Of Information Provision Research Articles

Choice, Information Inequity, and the Production, Legitimation, and Reduction of Educational Inequality

Background: Choice is a key part of the culture of the United States. Americans believe deeply in the personal and social usefulness of being able to make many choices. Hence, all sorts of efforts have been made to increase students’ options, whether by creating many different kinds of schools and colleges, offering a great array of majors and degree programs, or allowing multiple modes of attending higher education. However, this proliferation of choices reproduces social inequality in two crucial ways. First, the provision of many options produces social inequality: people often make choices that do not serve their interests as well as they might wish, particularly if they are faced with many options and do not have adequate information. Second, the provision of many choices legitimates social inequality: the more one thinks in terms of choices in the context of a highly individualistic culture such as that of the United States, the easier it is for dominant groups to blame nondominants as creating their own troubles through feckless choices. Purpose: This paper focuses on one particularly important realm of choice—higher education—because it has come to play a central role in the transmission and legitimation of social inequality. Four higher education choices are of particular interest: whether to enter higher education, which college to attend, what major to choose, and what modality to attend college (for example, part time versus full time or in person versus online). Analyzing this choice-making process, the paper focuses on the impact of inequitable access to high-quality information. Beyond analyzing how choice proliferation and information inequity join to produce and legitimate educational inequality, the paper lays out detailed recommendations for what can be done to reduce this inegalitarian impact. Research Design: The paper draws on a wide variety of social science literatures including sociology of education, critical race theory, behavioral economics, and cognitive and social psychology. More particularly, the paper synthesizes sociology of education research inspired by Pierre Bourdieu and work drawing on critical race theory. Although there are major tensions between these two bodies of work, they can be fruitfully combined to both illuminate and overcome the ways information inequity produces and legitimates educational inequality. Recommendations: To reduce the role of information inequity in producing and legitimating educational inequality, the paper recommends four strands of change. One strand involves providing high-quality information more equitably through restructured and much more pervasive school counseling and other forms of information provision during middle school, high school, and higher education. A crucial component of this more equitable information provision is drawing on the community cultural wealth of nondominant communities. Second, it is important to design an “architecture of choice” that simplifies choice making and nudges students toward better choices by such means as simplifying the financial aid process, improving credit articulation for community college transfer students, and building guided pathways through college. A third strand involves reducing the harms of suboptimal choices by creating the means to monitor student progress and intervene when students might or actually do go off course. Finally, because suboptimal choices will still occur, it is important to enlighten student choosers and their observers about how choice making under conditions of information inequity produces and legitimates social inequality and to empower them to combat that stratified and stratifying process.

Embarrassment, Shame, and Reassurance: Emotion and Young People's Access to Online Sexual Health Information.

IntroductionResearch suggests that embarrassment and shame are significant barriers to young people’s access to sexual health information. In this article, we analyse the relationship between emotion and young people’s engagement with online sexual health information.MethodsDrawing on the work of Ahmed on the performativity of emotion and Probyn’s theorisation of shame, we analyse interviews conducted in 2020 with 37 young people in Australia on sources of sexual health information.ResultsBased on themes emerging from the data, our analysis considers the role of embarrassment and shame in shaping young people’s access to sexual health information, the sources they seek, and the forms of information provision they prefer. Overall, we find that shame, embarrassment, and judgement shape our participants’ access to sexual health information in four key ways: (1) by enacting suitable sources of information; (2) by propelling curiosity in different directions; (3) by constituting ‘normal’ bodies, sexuality, and sexual health; and (4) by constituting desired forms of communication.ConclusionsAs part of these dynamics, our participants use a range of strategies to avoid potential embarrassment or judgement when seeking sexual health information. The article concludes by exploring the implications of these practices and dynamics.Policy ImplicationsOur analysis suggests the need for research, policy, and public health initiatives that are open to the multiple effects of emotion, including those traditionally thought of as negative, and their role in materialising encounters with sexual health information.

Використання майна територіальних громад як засобу для місцевого економічного розвитку

Проаналізовано вітчизняний і зарубіжний досвід управління об’єктами комунальної власності. Наголошено на важливості дотримання конкурсних засад і застосування електронних засобів для якісного управління майном територіальних громад. Розкрито особливості застосування публічно-приватного партнерства для активізації місцевого економічного розвитку. Обґрунтовано доцільність укладання концесійного договору щодо використання майна територіальної громади.

Development of the Personal Site of a Modern Scientist

The article is devoted to the actual and practically important problem for modern science - to provide free access to the scientific creative heritage of the scientist. After all, the weight of the scientist in the professional community, his influence on the events occurring in his chosen field of science, today largely depends on how fully, constructively and organically presented the results of his research on the Internet. The central element of a visiting card of a modern scientist is a link to a personal website. Keeping your own site allows you to create an electronic library of scientific and methodological developments, share your thoughts, finds. In addition, the creation and maintenance of their site contributes to replenishing the portfolio of achievements of the scientist. The authors proceed from the basic provision that the personal page as a form of information provision in the scientific community gives scientists and specialists new opportunities for solving scientific and practical problems. The materials of the scientist, presented on the site, allow to show the level of erudition in the branches of science and culture, help to achieve public recognition.
 The article analyzes the scientific and special literature on web programming, examines the requirements for the creation of sites, developed a personal site of a scientist, written recommendations on its use.
 The developed personal site of a modern scientist is a significant source of biographical and bibliographic information, gives an opportunity to present to the international scientific community information about their activities and ideas in the form of published and unpublished scientific works, which enables the scientist to solve the issues of creating their own image in the scientific space.

Scientific publications: from a library card index to bibliographic profiles

Information on scientific publications of Pushchino Research Center staff is originally seen as an important component of implementing the library information function of the Centralized Library System of the Central Library in Pushchino, which is a department of the Library on Natural Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences (LNS RAS). During the library activity, since 1968, it could distinguish three main periods in creating and developing the information-bibliographic support of users’ publication activity in all research institutes of the Center. The first stage is starting creation of the employees card files, based on which the bibliographical indices of scientists’ publications have been published. The accuracy and completeness of accumulated information has laid an excellent foundation for transition to electronic databases reflecting the researchers’ works of all institutions of the Center. The second stage has shown that in some cases a scientist’s bibliography is incomplete, but ease of information entry about publications and well-chosen software allows revealing all the information about the publication to the reader in a convenient form. The third stage is characterized by emerging new forms of information provision about scientific publications. The copyrights profiles have appeared for identifying standards of the scientific works authorship that allow creating a tool to search and analyze both publication activity of organizations and researchers. But at this stage the problem of creating a complete and reliable scientific bibliography list in scientometric databases has not solved yet.

Interventions to improve patient understanding of cancer clinical trial participation: a systematic review.

Patient misunderstanding of cancer clinical trial participation is identified as a critical issue and researchers have developed and tested a variety of interventions to improve patient understanding. This systematic review identified nine papers published between 2000 and 2013, to evaluate the effects of interventions to improve patient understanding of cancer clinical trial participation. Types of interventions included audio-visual information, revised written information and a communication training workshop. Interventions were conducted alone or in combination with other forms of information provision. The nine papers, all with methodological limitations, reported mixed effects on a small range of outcomes regarding improved patient understanding of cancer clinical trial participation. The methodological limitations included: (1) the intervention development process was poorly described; (2) only a small element of the communication process was addressed; (3) studies lacked evidence regarding what information is essential and critical to enable informed consent; (4) studies lacked reliable and valid outcome measures to show that patients are sufficiently informed to provide consent; and (5) the intervention development process lacked a theoretical framework. Future research needs to consider these factors when developing interventions to improve communication and patient understanding during the informed consent process.

Information Discovery in Ambiguous Zones of Research

Electronic environments for information discovery are considered in relation to open-ended and dynamic research practices in the humanities, but a system suitable for these scholars would have many other applications as well. Considerations of flexible electronic environments that would support research are based on the holistic view of information processes and the requirements that information systems enable connections, as well as the trustworthiness and authenticity of information. The proposed electronic environment consists of flexible networks of connections between information of different granularity. Strong and weak information paths are established through use, which contributes to the development and informational value of the system. Organizational support, as well as new forms of information provision and services, are required to enable novel approaches to information discovery and research.

Capacity of People with Intellectual Disabilities to Consent to Take Part in a Research Study

Background Within the context of current legislation relating to mental capacity in adults, the capacity of people with intellectual disabilities to consent to take part in research studies and the impact of different forms of information provision was experimentally investigated.Materials and methods A questionnaire measure of ability to consent to take part in this research study was administered individually to participants. A total of 102 participants with intellectual disabilities were recruited from three day services for adults with intellectual disabilities. Consent information appertaining to taking part in an actual research project was presented to participants and their capacity assessed using a questionnaire. Three experimental conditions were used: Control (n = 34) – consent information was presented followed by the questionnaire. Section (n = 34) – consent information was broken into sections and the appropriate questions were asked following each section. Photograph (n = 34) – consent information was accompanied by six colour photographs, followed by the questionnaire. Participants also completed measures of memory ability, verbal ability and non‐verbal problem‐solving ability.Results Seventeen participants withdrew from the study at some point. Of the remaining 85 participants, no significant differences in ability to consent scores were found between the experimental conditions. Using this measure, only five participants (5.9%) were deemed able to consent, i.e. scored the minimum required on each aspect of consent.Conclusions The validity and usefulness of the current dichotomous concept of consent is challenged as only a small proportion of participants were deemed able to consent.

Congressional Memberships as Political Advertising: Evidence from the U.S. Senate

The present article analyzes signaling by elected officials of moderate or centrist legislative behavior from a benefits/costs perspective. To do so, we provide statistical evidence regarding the tendency of senators to join the U.S. Senate Centrist Coalition, a congressional membership organization of moderate legislators. We find that changes in party loyalty, perhaps due to changes in constituent preferences, and U.S. Senate tenure are both important determinants of membership in the Centrist Coalition. Tests also point out that freshman senators are more likely than more senior senators to seek membership as a form of information provision.

Congressional Memberships as Political Advertising: Evidence from the U.S. Senate

The present article analyzes signaling by elected officials of moderate or centrist legislative behavior from a benefits/costs perspective. To do so, we provide statistical evidence regarding the tendency of senators to join the U.S. Senate Centrist Coalition, a congressional membership organization of moderate legislators. We find that changes in party loyalty, perhaps due to changes in constituent preferences, and U.S. Senate tenure are both important determinants of membership in the Centrist Coalition. Tests also point out that freshman senators are more likely than more senior senators to seek membership as a form of information provision.

The Satisfaction with Information about Medicines Scale (SIMS): a new measurement tool for audit and research

Objective—To develop and examine the psychometric properties of the Satisfaction with Information about Medicines Scale (SIMS), a new 17-item tool designed to assess the extent to which patients feel they...

Information Used by Visually Impaired People While Walking

As part of the efforts to help visually impaired people participate in society, tactile ground surface indicators are installed along roadways in Japan. Recent years have observed the beginning of studies of voice guidance along sidewalks. But, for visually impaired people to actually walk alone to their destinations, they must confirm each intersection and continually check their location against a mental map. It is important to conduct studies to clarify how visually impaired people obtain these kinds of information and what forms of information provision (voice guidance) should be provided to support this process. To this end, this research project involved interviews with 20 visually impaired people concerning the information they use when walking and experiments conducted with the help of 12 visually impaired people to find out which locations along sidewalks require voice guidance. The results revealed that as visually impaired people walk, they confirm their location by means of information ranging from unchangeable features, such as facilities along the route and the shape of the sidewalk, to the sounds and smells of shops they pass. Results also indicated that voice guidance should be provided where two four-lane roads intersect, but that if too many voice guidance points are provided close together, visually impaired people might become confused. It is vital that future road improvement planning incorporate the findings of this study to create spaces where visually impaired people can walk safely and comfortably.