General Stance Research Articles

Theory of trust and acceptance of artificial intelligence technology (TrAAIT): An instrument to assess clinician trust and acceptance of artificial intelligence

BackgroundArtificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) technologies like generative and ambient AI solutions are proliferating in real-world healthcare settings. Clinician trust affects adoption and impact of these systems. Organizations need a validated method to assess factors underlying trust and acceptance of AI for clinical workflows in order to improve adoption and the impact of AI. ObjectiveOur study set out to develop and assess a novel clinician-centered model to measure and explain trust and adoption of AI technology. We hypothesized that clinicians’ system-specific Trust in AI is the primary predictor of both Acceptance (i.e., willingness to adopt), and post-adoption Trusting Stance (i.e., general stance towards any AI system). We validated the new model at an urban comprehensive cancer center. We produced an easily implemented survey tool for measuring clinician trust and adoption of AI. MethodsThis survey-based, cross-sectional, psychometric study included a model development phase and validation phase. Measurement was done with five-point ascending unidirectional Likert scales. The development sample included N = 93 clinicians (physicians, advanced practice providers, nurses) that used an AI-based communication application. The validation sample included N = 73 clinicians that used a commercially available AI-powered speech-to-text application for note-writing in an electronic health record (EHR). Analytical procedures included exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The Johnson-Neyman (JN) methodology was used to determine moderator effects. ResultsIn the fully moderated causal model, clinician trust explained a large amount of variance in their acceptance of a specific AI application (56%) and their post-adoption general trusting stance towards AI in general (36%). Moderators included organizational assurances, length of time using the application, and clinician age. The final validated instrument has 20 items and takes 5 min to complete on average. ConclusionsWe found that clinician acceptance of AI is determined by their degree of trust formed via information credibility, perceived application value, and reliability. The novel model, TrAAIT, explains factors underlying AI trustworthiness and acceptance for clinicians. With its easy-to-use instrument and Summative Score Dashboard, TrAAIT can help organizations implementing AI to identify and intercept barriers to clinician adoption in real-world settings.

The Genoa Conference of 1922 Through the Eyes of Russian Anarchists

In the article the author examines the attitude of Russian anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists to the 1922 Genoa Conference and the participation of representatives of Soviet Russia in it. This subject has not received much coverage in the works of anarchism scholars, who have so far focused primarily on the study of the general stance of Russian anarchism towards the Soviet regime and the issue of the New Economic Policy, on the problem of anti-anarchist repressions in Russia and on the ideological and organisational processes in the Russian anarchist emigration. The author made it his task to identify the place that the critique of the “Genoa policy” of the Soviet government enjoyed in the ideological concepts and political work of the anarchists, and to trace the main line of their reasoning. The main source for this article was the original, mainly émigré, press of the Russian anarchists between 1922 and 1923. The author demonstrates that the Russian anarchists' view of the Genoa Conference was primarily determined by ideological motives and their general analysis of the course and fate of the Russian Revolution itself. Being anti-statists, the anarchists had no particular conception of foreign policy and were indifferent to so-called state interests. The “Genoa policy” was perceived by them as a manifestation and confirmation of the new Bolshevik course, in which they saw an orientation towards restoring the positions of private capital within Russia itself and towards subordination to world capital on an international scale. Planned or real concessions on the part of the Soviet delegation at the Conference and repression of Russian anarchists and socialists were, in their eyes, two sides of the “Bolshevik counter-revolution”. The criticism of Bolshevism mounted by the anarchist emigration in connection with and after the Genoa Conference contributed to the demarcation in the international trade union revolutionary-syndicalist movement and the founding of the anarcho-syndicalist International.

What drives a tough call: Determining the importance of contingency factors and individual characteristics in communication executives’ stance decision-making through a conjoint analysis

To further the understanding of how communication executives make tough calls in times of organizational-public conflict, we use a conjoint analysis to identify key drivers for organizational stance decision-making. This is the first-ever conjoint analysis applied to advancing the contingency theory of strategic conflict management by examining the relative importance of key contingency factors as determined by practitioners with varied individual characteristics. This study investigates: 1) the relevant importance of and dynamics between three key contingency factors (i.e., external threats, organizational characteristics, and dominant coalition characteristics); 2) the influence of individual characteristics (e.g., gender, experience, and personal ethics) in stance decision-making process; and 3) how different types of organizational stances (i.e., general stance, action-based accommodation, and qualified-rhetoric-mixed accommodation) are determined by these contingency factors and individual characteristics in different conflict situations. Results generated among our communication executive participants include: individual characteristics (i.e., gender, ethics and social responsibility, whistleblowing tendencies, and over 20 years in the communications field) are influential for their strategic conflict management decision-making. Implications for refining the contingency theory and unearthing complex public relations decision-making processes via novel statistical techniques are discussed.

Linguistic encounters in real world prescriptivism: Acknowledging its place and role

Many linguists regard the prospect of any linguistic prescriptivism as inconsistent with the kind of objectivity they believe should be maintained in their academic field. This general stance against prescriptivism, however, ignores the practical and appropriate use, as well as potential use, of some linguistic prescriptivism in a variety of applied linguistic disciplines. This paper argues that linguists should more readily recognize and acknowledge the place and role of measured prescriptivism in linguistic applications.

The Ambivalent Conjunction of Modernity and Human Rights

Modernity is a stage in societies’ development that is the corollary of enlightenment. It has variously been conceived to be the ultimate moment in the unfolding of human history in the sense that norms and values, and practices and institutions are nearly or at their most perfect. However, the conceived prelude to or realization of utopia does not accord with reality in many specific modern societies, even those that are generally considered to be the forerunners of modernity. In Africa, the onset of modernity and its extension into the diverse realms of human beings’ lives has entailed norms and values, and practices and institutions that are the genesis of dystopia. This article examines the ambivalent nexus of modernity and human rights in Africa from the onset of the modernization project to date. Using critical theory, the article argues that although modernity is credited with the birth of human rights, in Africa its primary actors, namely capital, the markets, and the state, are either ambivalent to and/or causal to widespread and deep human rights violations. The human rights violations are systemically and systematically cast as incidental and spurious rather than the hallmarks of modernity. Judicial, political, and educational institutions act and reiterate their capacities to address the incidental/spurious human rights violations, despite abundant evidence that, as part of modernity, these institutions are ambivalent to human rights and, therefore, can only mask the reality and perpetuate human rights violations. This general stance is the consequence of the pervasive logic of capital. This article explains how this pervasive phenomenon in its various forms, such as state capitalism and global capitalism, coupled with neopatrimonialism, has impacted the institution and practice of human rights in Africa. The analysis concludes that though modernity is credited with the birth of human rights regimes, its historicity has been causal of significant violations of human rights. The violations unleashed by capital are exacerbated by political elites who, in their processes of policy-making and budgetary deliberation, and implementation, marginally conceive nation-extensive notions of common good. Consequently, violation of human rights is rampant.

고려 인종 원년(1123) 설행 대송 외교의례의 구성과 특징

Examined in this article are the “Sujo” and “Yeon-rye” chapters inside Goryeodogyeong, with the intention to reconstruct individual steps as well as the general structure of diplomatic rituals that were observed for the Song Envoy, which visited Goryeo in King Injong’s first year on the throne. Their characteristics are also explored here.<BR> The aforementioned chapters of Goryeodogyeong, “Sujo” and “Yeon-rye,” display contents in a considerably chaotic fashion, as they are positioned quite arbitrarily by compiler Seo Geung, the Song envoy. Yet careful examination of the dates, places and nature of individual events reveal that the diplomatic protocols prepared for the visiting Song envoy in 1123 was comprised of two distinct phases: Sujo(受詔) ritual, and Baepyo(拜表) ritual.<BR> The Sujo ritual observed at this time was composed of two subsets, the Yeongjo-rye and Yeon-rye steps, while the Baepyo ritual was composed of three: Baepyo-rye, Baepyo-yeon and Munjeon. Yet both rituals shared basically the same procedure, from the envoy members’ leaving their quarters, to their entrance into the predesignated venue for ritual, then to the main official event and a private ceremony, and their eventual exiting from the scene.<BR> What should be noted is that the place and position of the Goryeo king in these Sujo and Baepyo rituals do not correspond with the usual practices that had been observed in East Asia and reflected traditional perception of rituals. It is indeed difficult to ascertain what was the general stance of the Goryeo king, and what he chose to prioritize. Yet it seems obvious that the Goryeo king intentionally shifted his own positions and appearances, by sitting in different places and performing different acts, according to the nature and venue of rituals he was attending (whether it was either official functions such as Yeongjo-rye or Baepyo-rye, or more private occasions as the Yeon-rye, Baepyoyeon and Munjeon, which involved banquets), in order to feature himself as both a vassal of the Song Emperor and a Goryeo king as he saw fit and necessary.

Age-related nuances in knowledge assessment

Although crystallized intelligence (gc) is a prominent factor in contemporary theories of individual differences in intelligence, its structure and optimal measurement are elusive. Analogously to the personality trait hierarchy, we propose the following hierarchy of declarative fact knowledge as a key component of gc: a general fact knowledge factor at the apex, followed by broad knowledge areas (e.g., natural sciences, social sciences, humanities), knowledge domains (e.g., chemistry, law, art), and nuances. In most scientific contexts we are predominantly concerned with aggregate levels, but we argue that the sampling of knowledge items strongly affects distinctions at higher levels of the hierarchy. We illustrate the magnitude of item-level heterogeneity by predicting chronological age differences through knowledge differences at different levels of the hierarchy. Analyses were based on an online sample of 1629 participants between age 18 and 70 who completed 120 broadly sampled declarative knowledge items across twelve domains. The results of linear and elastic net regressions, respectively, demonstrated that the majority of the age variance was located at the item level, and the strength of the prediction decreased with increasing aggregation. Knowledge nuances seem to tap important variance that is not covered by aggregate scores (e.g., sum or factor scores) and that is useful in the prediction of age. In turn, these effects extend our understanding how knowledge is acquired and imparted. On a more general stance, to gain new insights into the nature of knowledge, its optimal measurement and psychometric representation, item and person sampling issues should be considered.

Social Security and Fairness in a Changing World

People are not alike. Hence, the basic difficulty in a democracy is that elections may determine the general stance of policy, but do not provide operational information on how to customize for diversity in the business of governance in a world that in changing after the crash-landing of covid-19. This background calls for a restructuring of social security, and introduces a situational mode of contracting that deals with asymmetric information in principal-agent theory when perspectives of suppliers and beneficiaries of public support may differ. Its core question is how to combine customized support for diverging needs, capabilities and employability, as recognized by caseworkers, with customized obligations on the part of beneficiaries, in co-production between civil servants and individual clients or their representative organizations. Situational contracts match demand and supply in social support throughout the process of public policymaking and delivery, and in horizontal relations with network partners as well. Inspired by recent findings from behavioral public administration, the situational mode deals with complexity in a consensual principal-agent model. This paper claims that there is scope for transaction as a tool to reveal, from the actual decisions taken, how we can match efficiency and fairness in a mode of situational contracting as developed below.

Tea for Sport and Fitness: A Scoping Review

An extended evidence-base has evaluated the role of nutrition in sports and fitness. The roles of hydration are also well covered but within this the specific roles of tea are not yet discussed widely. Subsequently, the present scoping review aims to evaluate the potential roles of tea in relation to aspects of sports and fitness performance. Searches for human observational studies and clinical trials were undertaken in PubMed. gov, Science Direct and Google Scholar databases. Sixteen relevant publications were identified with five focusing on outcomes related to body weight, composition, adiposity, or fat oxidation. Other reported outcomes included strength, muscle strength, or mass, oxidative/antioxidant and hydration status, salivary antibacterial capacity, and balance performance. Evidence appeared strongest for green and matcha tea with the typical ingestion of 2 to 3 cups daily being associated with improved body composition, antioxidant profile, sleep quality (low caffeine green tea), salivary defence mechanisms against microbial pathogens and reduced adiposity. From a general stance tea drinking could be an alternative beverage choice for those keeping active, providing a source of fluids and polyphenols. Older populations, those undertaking activities in colder climates, or for prolonged durations e.g., long-distance walking may benefit from personalised hydration programmes that could involve tea drinking. Larger and longer randomised controlled trials using tea in beverage form rather than as extracts or supplements are now warranted to further advance science in this field.

Who is in and who is out: parents’ views on barriers to learning

ABSTRACT South Africa, a country that suffered from discriminatory practices in the past, is still feeling the impact of these practices currently. One of these practices limited access to educational institutions, particularly for children experiencing barriers to learning. The focus of this article is on parents’ perceptions of barriers to learning as they aid or constrain learners’ access to education. In addition, the article explores how the notion of value, as it is expressed in the capability approach, influences support for formal and epistemological access. Four hundred and six parents of children without barriers to learning completed a self-report questionnaire from seven mainstream primary schools in Gauteng, while two hundred and twenty-two parents responded to the open-ended questions. The questionnaire comprised a demographic section and 61 item Likert-type scale and two open-ended questions which explored parents’ perceptions of barriers to learning. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the responses to the open-ended questions, while responses to the scale were analysed using SPSS. The results clustered around the themes of behaviour, school climate/environment, learning ability, discrimination and teachers, which indicate that parents assign greater value to the functioning of education than to inclusivity. The general stance however was in favour of formal access over epistemological access.

Introduction to Michel Foucault’s “Political Spirituality as the Will for Alterity”

AbstractAn introduction to an interview with Michel Foucault in 1979, which contextualizes his general stance on the Iranian uprising, as well as his conception of philosophical journalism and poli...

Sense-making of conflicting political news among Baltic Russian-speaking audiences

ABSTRACT This article offers a theoretically explained model for analysing the strategies of vernacular sense-making used by transnational audiences in times of political disagreement. The analysis proceeds from the findings of earlier studies that reveal that audience members interpret news in a geopolitically indoctrinated manner despite their exposure to alternative information from geopolitically opposing sources and their general critical stance towards the objectivity of the media in political conflicts. The authors of this qualitative study among Latvian and Estonian Russian-speaking audiences explain how geopolitical convictions are (re)established through interpretations of news reports about politically conflicting events involving Russia vs. Western states. The results reveal that despite of the widespread scepticism and mistrust towards media organizations, the members of audiences strive for independence in their sense-making. In general, there are no signs of a degradation of deliberation as an ideal among the audiences. Nevertheless, the use of moral-cultural heuristics and the search for ‘authentic’ information from personal networks contributes to the enduring hegemony of Russian geopolitical narratives.

Minority Rights, Freedom of Religion and the Issue of Burqa

General stance of the Human Rights discourse is that minorities are subjected to discriminations, they are treated as second class citizens by the majority, and, hence, their rights are specially to be protected. Religious minorities encounter typical problems in practicing and observing their religions and cultures. Religious minorities in European countries in which secular and liberal democratic form of governments are in place enjoy their rights comparatively better is a fact not much contested. However, the burqa ban in France in 2010 followed by Belgium and many other European countries provides a testing field of religious minority rights and religious freedom under secular and liberal democratic states. This essay tries to explore how two of the founding stones of Human Rights discourse namely equality and non-discrimination are protected or breached with the ban of burqa. Views pro and against are evaluated on the basis of various theories and concepts. UN declarations and conventions as well as European conventions were readily consulted for authorization, verification and validation of facts. ECtHR’s remarks on the validity of the ban are tested against human rights discourse, equality and non-discrimination in particular. The essay opens an avenue for discussion of different views about the ban from different perspectives. Key Words: Religious minority, substantive equality, non-discrimination, public good &amp; safety, tolerance, reciprocity, pluralism.

Punishment as Misdirected Discipline: A Psychological Study of “The Lumber Room” by H. H. Munro alias Saki

“The Lumber Room” by Hector Hugh Munro(1870-1916),who wrote under the penname “Saki”, is a short story that covers the survival struggle of the juvenile Nicholas growing in the care of some authoritarian adults. The conditions Nicholas suffers in the story parallel with some details of Munro’s childhood that he spent in the custody of his aunts after the death of his mother. Based on what transpires in the life of Nicholas as a child, this paper attempts to carry out a psychological study of punishment as misdirected discipline, in order to establish that the intelligent independently develop their own stance about the good and the bad, however much they are suppressed in society. From this general stance on Munro’s short stories, this paper investigates the psychological effects of punishment on the Aunt and Nicholas in their respective roles as the prosecutor and the offender in “The Lumber Room” in a situation of misdirected discipline.

A General Scenario Theory for Nonconvex Optimization and Decision Making

The scenario approach is a general methodology for data-driven optimization that has attracted a great deal of attention in the past few years. It prescribes that one collects a record of previous cases (scenarios) from the same setup in which optimization is being conducted and makes a decision that attains optimality for the seen cases. Scenario optimization is by now very well understood for convex problems, where a theory exists that rigorously certifies the generalization properties of the solution, that is, the ability of the solution to perform well in connection to new situations. This theory supports the scenario methodology and justifies its use. This paper considers nonconvex problems. While other contributions in the nonconvex setup already exist, we here take a major departure from previous approaches. We suggest that the generalization level is evaluated only after the solution is found and its complexity in terms of the length of a support subsample (a notion precisely introduced in this paper) is assessed. As a consequence, the generalization level is stochastic and adjusted case by case to the available scenarios. This fact is key to obtain tight results. The approach adopted in this paper applies not only to optimization, but also to generic decision problems where the solution is obtained according to a rule that is not necessarily the optimization of a cost function. Accordingly, in our presentation we adopt a general stance of which optimization is just seen as a particular case.

Opting for an open society? Personality traits and attitudes toward the openness of Switzerland

The tension between openness and closedness is one of the most important cleavages in Swiss political debates. In the present article, we study the psychological foundations of attitudes regarding this issue. More precisely, we examine the link between personality and attitudes toward the degree of openness of Switzerland as a general stance toward the cultural, economic and political alignment of the country. Personality is understood as a complex and multifaceted concept that forms the basis for consistent patterns of attitudes and behavior. We build on the Five-Factor Theory to explain the link between personality traits, contextual factors and political attitudes. Analyzing survey data from a random sample of Swiss citizens, we find clear evidence that personality traits affect political attitudes. Furthermore, we are able to demonstrate that the relationship between personality and attitudes toward the degree of openness of Switzerland is moderated by perceived ethnic diversity in the neighborhood.

La red teórica de la dinámica de poblaciones

The general aim of this article is to carry out a reconstruction of the theory of Population Dynamics (DP) in Ecology, according to Castle’s (2001) general stance with regard to the semantic view of theories, but doing it within the framework of metatheoretical structuralism. Thus, we will first identify Population Dynamics’ basic theory-element: its core K(DP) – with the class of potential models, the class of models (through the identification of its fundamental law) and the class of partial potential models (though leaving aside the identification of its constraints and its intertheoretical links) –, and its domain of intended applications I(DP). Then, we will establish the general guiding lines of its theory-net, developing in some detail one of its main lines of specialization – namely, that related to the so-called “continuous growing” of the considered populations –, with DP’s principal “models”, and leave developing of the other of its main lines of specialization – namely, that related to the so-called “discrete growing” of the considered populations – for a further publication.

EXPLORING STUDENTS’ WEAKNESSES IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE AT SHAQRA UNIVERSITY (HURIMLAA CAMPUS), SAUDI ARABIA

This research explores the reasons for the weaknesses of students of English Language at Shaqra University (Hurimlaa Campus), Saudi Arabia. University records show that students’ marks in these courses are deteriorating and this research paper explores the reasons that might account for this. Spurred by this phenomenal reality, the researcher developed a questionnaire incorporating twenty questions covering four dimensions: educational factors, cultural factors, social factors and attitudinal factors with the ultimate aim of attributing the students' status to justifiable reasons. The analytical method was adapted through which noticeable results showed that almost half of the sample experienced difficulties with both reading and sentence structuring. Nearly 70% of the students surveyed thought that learning English is crucial for communication and understanding. These results suggest that students are aware of the importance of and need for this language, and that these shortcomings can be attributed to educational factors including schools, university, instructors and modules. This humble research does not, however, answer all questions arising from the general stance of the English Language in Saudi Arabia. Further studies are still needed to cover other educational institutions

Experiences of primary care professionals providing healthcare to recently arrived migrants: a qualitative study.

ObjectivesThe main objectives of the study were to explore the experiences of primary care professionals providing care to recent migrants in a superdiverse city and to elicit barriers and facilitators to meeting migrants' care needs. This paper focuses on a strong emergent theme: participants' descriptions and understandings of creating a fit between patients and practices.DesignAn exploratory, qualitative study based on the thematic analysis of semistructured interviews.Setting and participantsA purposive sample of 10 practices. We interviewed 6 general practitioners, 5 nurses and 6 administrative staff; those based at the same practice opted to be interviewed together. 10 interviewees were from an ethnic minority background; some discussed their own experiences of migration.ResultsCreating a fit between patients and practice was complex and could be problematic. Some participants defined this in a positive way (reaching out, creating rapport) while others also focused on ways in which patients did not fit in, for example, different expectations or lack of medical records. A small but vocal minority put the responsibility to fit in on to migrant patients. Some participants believed that practice staff and patients sharing a language could contribute to achieving a fit but others outlined the disadvantages of over-reliance on language concordance. A clearly articulated, team-based strategy to create bridges between practice and patients was often seen as preferable.ConclusionsAlthough participants agreed that a fit between patients and practice was desirable, some aimed to adapt to the needs of recently arrived migrants, while others thought that it was the responsibility of migrants to adapt to practice needs; a few viewed migrant patients as a burden to the system. Practices wishing to improve fit might consider developing strategies such as introducing link workers and other ‘bridging’ people; however, they could also aim to foster a general stance of openness to diversity.

The influence of item sampling on sex differences in knowledge tests

Few topics in psychology have generated as much controversy as sex differences in intelligence. For fluid intelligence, researchers emphasize the high overlap between the ability distributions of males and females, whereas research on sex differences in declarative knowledge often uncovers a male advantage. However, on the level of knowledge domains, a more nuanced picture emerged: while females perform better in health-related topics (e.g., aging, medicine), males outperform females in domains of natural sciences (e.g., engineering, physics). In this paper we show that sex differences vary substantially depending on item sampling. Analyses were based on a sample of n=3306 German high-school students (Grades 9 and 10) who worked on the 64 declarative knowledge items of the Berlin Test of Fluid and Crystallized Intelligence (BEFKI) assessing knowledge within three broad content domains (science, humanities, social studies). Using two strategies of item sampling—stepwise confirmatory factor analysis and ant colony optimization algorithm—we deliberately manipulate sex differences in multi-group structural equation models. Results show that sex differences considerably vary depending on the indicators drawn from the item pool. Furthermore, ant colony optimization outperforms the simple stepwise selection strategy since it can optimize several criteria simultaneously (model fit, reliability, and preset sex differences). Taken together, studies reporting sex differences in declarative knowledge fail to acknowledge item sampling issues. On a more general stance, handling item sampling hinges on profound considerations of the content of measures.