Good Decisions Research Articles

Pentingnya Penerapan Etika Profesi Teknik Sipil dalam Pengambilan Keputusan Resiko Keselamatan dan Kesehatan Kerja & Lingkungan (K3L)

This study aims to analyze the importance of applying professional ethics in civil engineering for decision-making related to safety, health, and environmental risks (K3L). This is crucial because, like other professions, civil engineering is a complex and intricate field that requires not only engineers with good technical skills but also sound decision-making abilities. The decision-making process significantly impacts the execution of infrastructure projects. Professional ethics serve as a guideline for engineers in making decisions that consider K3L. The issue is that decision-making is not solely based on technical skills but also on other soft skills such as emotional control. This study found that emotional intelligence (EQ) can influence the decision-making process of engineers. The higher an engineer's emotional intelligence, the better their decision-making regarding K3L risks. This is also related to engineers adhering to the professional code of ethics. Furthermore, good decision-making processes are expected to promote sustainable infrastructure development.

Discordant Care and Decision Quality: Patients' Reasons for Not Receiving Their Initial Test of Choice in Colorectal Cancer Screening.

Concordance between a person's values and the test or treatment they ultimately receive is widely considered to be an essential outcome for good decision quality. There is little research, however, on why patients receive "discordant" care. A large, randomized trial of decision aids for colorectal cancer (CRC) screening provided an opportunity to assess why some patients received a different test than the one they preferred at an earlier time point. Of 688 patients who participated in the trial, 43 received a different CRC screening test than the one they selected after viewing a decision aid 6 mo prior. These patients answered 2 brief, open-ended questions about the reasons for this discordance. The research team analyzed their answers using qualitative description. Patient responses reflected 6 major categories: barriers or risks of initially favored test, benefits of alternative test, costs or health insurance coverage, discussion with family or friends, provider factors or recommendation, and health issues. Some of the patients' explanations fit well with the informed concordance approach, which infers poor decision quality from the existence of discordant care, since in these cases it appears that the patient's values and preferences were not adequately respected. Other statements suggest that the patient had an informed rationale for changing their mind about which test to undergo. These cases may reflect high-quality decision making, despite the existence of discordance as measured in the trial. This analysis highlights a major challenge to a popular approach for assessing decision quality, the difficulty of normatively assessing the quality of decision making when apparent discordant care has been provided, and the need to assess patient values and preference over time. Value-choice concordance is an accepted measure for assessing decision quality in decision aid trials, but greater exploration of apparently discordant care challenges key assumptions of this method; this study provides evidence that discordance as typically measured may not always reflect low-quality patient decision making.Researchers evaluating decision aids and assessing decision quality should consider the use of qualitative methods to supplement measures of decision quality and consider assessing patient preferences at multiple time points.

Latissimus dorsi transfer or lower trapezius transfer: a treatment algorithm for irreparable posterosuperior rotator cuff tears muscles transfers in posterosuperior rotator cuff tears

IntroductionTendon transfers of the latissimus dorsi (LDT) or the lower trapezius (LTT) are treatment options for irreparable posterosuperior rotator cuff tears (PSIRCT). There is still no consensus on which type of tendon transfer is superior in the treatment of PSIRCT. Due to the differences in the anatomy and biomechanics, we hypothesize that there are different clinical situations in which either LDT or LTT should be preferred. The aim of this study was to evaluate the clinical and radiological outcomes of LDT and LTT in patients with PSIRCT to establish a clinical algorithm for the treatment decision. Materials and MethodsThis is a retrospective, single center observational study. Included were patients who underwent arthroscopically assisted LDT (aaLDT) or arthroscopically assisted LTT (aaLTT) for PSIRCT. In all patients, range of motion (ROM), external rotation strength, Visual Analogue Scale of Pain (VAS) and Subjective Shoulder Value (SSV) were determined pre- and postoperatively. Constant-Murley Score (CS) was evaluated at final follow-up. Complication rate, failure of the tendon transfer and revision rate were analyzed. ResultsIn total, 29 aaLDT (age 64 years, median follow-up time 45 months) and 8 aaLTT (age 54 years, median follow-up time 34 months) were included. Active ROM, VAS and SSV was significantly improved in both cohorts. At follow-up, the median CS was 73 (aaLDT) and 77 (aaLTT), respectively. Failure rate including revision surgery was 14% (aaLDT) and 13% (aaLTT), respectively. Low functional findings preoperatively were correlated to a lower functional outcome at follow-up in both groups. Painful loss of anterior elevation (PLEA) and loss of ER had no significant impact on functional outcomes in aaLDT. ConclusionFollowing the treatment algorithm based on the clinical examination, clinical outcome parameters, active ROM and pain could be significantly improved. Good preoperative function was associated with a good clinical outcome in both transfers. A low failure and revision rate supports the good decision-making of the algorithm presented.

Understanding the role of physical trial for good shopping decisions

Purpose In the context of omnichannel distribution development, this study aims to understand how and why trying products out helps people make good purchase decisions (i.e. decisions that they do not regret later). Design/methodology/approach The paper uses mixed methods consisting of an experiment (n = 162), a series of interviews with consumers (n = 16) and in-store observations (n = 202). Findings Results show that trying products out allows us to evaluate how they will fit, which increases purchase intention. They also indicate that trying leads to better decision-making. Research limitations/implications This paper enriches product trial literature and sheds new light on how sales channels combine in omnichannel distribution. Practical implications The conclusions of this research will be useful to retailers who want to help consumers make better purchasing decisions. Social implications Helping consumers make better decisions minimizes the societal impact of consumption by reducing the frequency of re-purchases and product returns. Originality/value The originality of this research lies in using mixed methods, providing a complete understanding of why consumers try products out and how they do so.

Accessibility Score – Data analytics for the holistic assessment of urban mobility networks and the case of Braunschweig

The accessibility and quality of urban mobility networks (UMN) depend on a multitude of static and dynamic conditions for each individual. Promoting sustainable mobility, such as walking, requires a very specific assessment of UMN’s qualities given the specific needs of pedestrians. The objective of this research is to provide a new approach for the comprehensive, mode-specific understanding of a UMN as a base for good planning and decision making. With the Accessibility Score (AccessS), we propose an integrated, indicator-based, holistic geospatial framework for the quantified assessment of qualitative UMN attributes identified in an extensive literature review.

Justice as a requirement for the effectiveness of law-enforcement acts

The article is devoted to the study of the peculiarities of the understanding of the category «justice» in the context of understanding the latter as a requirement for the effectiveness of law enforcement acts. It has been established that justice at the level of legislation literally permeates the basic Ukrainian legislation. This concerns, first of all, numerous regulatory legal acts of a constitutional nature and basic codifications in various branches of the legal system. The principles of justice are enshrined in the current legislation of Ukraine, in particular in the following legislative acts: Civil Procedure Code of Ukraine, Economic Code of Ukraine, Criminal Code of Ukraine, Criminal Executive Code of Ukraine, etc. In practice, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine implements the principle of justice in its decisions. It is proven that the requirements of justice cannot be absorbed by the concepts of good faith and reasonableness, but have an independent meaning. It is impossible to agree with the fact that the requirements of justice of a law-enforcement act exist in a «hidden form», because its concept and content can be defined by a specific term. A decision that violates the principles of good faith and reasonableness cannot be recognized as fair. At the same time, a good faith and reasonable decision may theoretically contradict the principle of justice. It was concluded that justice as a requirement for the effectiveness of law-enforcement acts must be perceived in a broad sense - in relation to the entire process of establishing facts, their research, qualification and, ultimately, the law­enforcement act itself. This makes it possible to follow the influence of all stages of law enforcement activities on the adoption of fair law enforcement acts, to evaluate their effectiveness, based on the fact that such decisions acquire not only legal, but also moral force. The legal criteria for the fairness of a law-enforcement act are: the fairness of the law itself (as a general criterion) and the fairness of the normative legal acts that were used during the adoption of the law-enforcement act (as a direct criterion). The justice of a law-enforcement act depends not only on its legality and reasonableness, but also on its compliance with the principles of social justice and moral norms.

Pendidikan Kewarganegaraan dan Pembentukan Karakter: Membentuk Individu yang Bertanggung Jawab dan Peduli

Citizenship education is an important component in character formation that can improve the moral quality of the Indonesian nation. Citizenship education can be an effort to create character or morals based on Pancasila regarding the understanding, values , and behavior of the nation's generation. In character formation, citizenship education is the main effort to improve skills in terms of critical thinking, collaborative communication skills, and good decision-making skills. Citizenship education focuses onl forming a quality young generationlby optimizing the potential in each individual which is reflected in awareness, understanding, and behavior. With Citizenship Education, it is hopedl that it can be an effort to strengthen the identity and quality of the nation by creating individuals whol are not only intellectually intelligent but also have strong, responsive, critical, creative, responsible character and can contribute positively to societyl andl the nation.

Clinical reasoning in real-world practice: a primer for medical trainees and practitioners.

Clinical reasoning is a crucial skill and defining characteristic of the medical profession, which relates to intricate cognitive and decision-making processes that are needed to solve real-world clinical problems. However, much of our current competency-based medical education systems have focused on imparting swathes of content knowledge and skills to our medical trainees, without an adequate emphasis on strengthening the cognitive schema and psychological processes that govern actual decision-making in clinical environments. Nonetheless, flawed clinical reasoning has serious repercussions on patient care, as it is associated with diagnostic errors, inappropriate investigations, and incongruent or suboptimal management plans that can result in significant morbidity and even mortality. In this article, we discuss the psychological constructs of clinical reasoning in the form of cognitive 'thought processing' models and real-world contextual or emotional influences on clinical decision-making. In addition, we propose practical strategies, including pedagogical development of a personal cognitive schema, mitigating strategies to combat cognitive bias and flawed reasoning, and emotional regulation and self-care techniques, which can be adopted in medical training to optimize physicians' clinical reasoning in real-world practice that effectively translates learnt knowledge and skill sets into good decisions and outcomes.

Humans forage for reward in reinforcement learning tasks.

How do we make good decisions in uncertain environments? In psychology and neuroscience, the classic answer is that we calculate the value of each option and then compare the values to choose the most rewarding, modulo some exploratory noise. An ethologist, conversely, would argue that we commit to one option until its value drops below a threshold, at which point we start exploring other options. In order to determine which view better describes human decision-making, we developed a novel, foraging-inspired sequential decision-making model and used it to ask whether humans compare to threshold ("Forage") or compare alternatives ("Reinforcement-Learn" [RL]). We found that the foraging model was a better fit for participant behavior, better predicted the participants' tendency to repeat choices, and predicted the existence of held-out participants with a pattern of choice that was almost impossible under RL. Together, these results suggest that humans use foraging computations, rather than RL, even in classic reinforcement learning tasks.

Preoperative electroacupuncture versus sham electroacupuncture for the treatment of postoperative ileus after laparoscopic surgery for colorectal cancer in China: a study protocol for a multicentre, randomised, sham-controlled trial

IntroductionPostoperative ileus (POI) is a postoperative complication that can cause lingering recovery after colorectal resection and a heavy healthcare system burden. Acupuncture aims to prevent postoperative complications, reduce the duration...

Strategy for strengthening local culture-based character education in class iii students at SDN Menanga 1

Character education based on local culture is values education, character education, moral education, and character education which aims to develop students' abilities to make good and bad decisions, maintain what is good according to their outlook on life and science. This is a challenge for the author to study more deeply. This research was carried out to answer the following problems: The theoretical basis of this research is character education theory by Thomas Lickona, social learning theory by Bandura and behaviourism theory by Burrus Frederic Skinner. The type of research is qualitative research with a phenomenological approach. The technique for determining informants uses purposive sampling. Data collection techniques include observation, interviews, literature study, documentation and using qualitative data analysis, namely data reduction, data presentation and verification or drawing conclusions.

The contributions of executive functions to decision-making in sport

ABSTRACT In sports, when the game situations become complex, untypical, and uncertain, making good decisions requires controlled processing, i.e., executive functions to regulate thought and action. The current study aimed at comprehending the effects of three core executive functions on decision-making in sport. In study 1, 86 volleyball players (49 experts and 37 novices) completed a routine blocking decision task as well as three core executive function tasks assessing updating, inhibition and shifting. Results showed that the effects of executive functions on blocking decision accuracy were moderated by sports level, with significant predictivity observed only for experts. In study 2, 32 expert players engaged in a dual-task version of the blocking decision task. In this study, only updating was correlated with decision accuracy. Study 3, involving 26 experts, introduced interference during the decision task. The findings highlighted a closer, albeit not statistically significant, relationship between decision accuracy and inhibition compared to updating. Collectively, these findings demonstrated the nuanced yet crucial roles of executive functions in decision-making in sport, underscoring more efficient cognitive processing among higher-level athletes and the different roles served by each executive function.

A Heuristic Procedure for Improving the Routing of Urban Waste Collection Vehicles Using ArcGIS

This paper proposes a heuristic procedure created to improve the collection routes obtained with the support of the ArcGIS software and its complement, Network Analyst. After a series of experiments, it was found that the software presents several inconsistencies with logistical and operational management concepts, such as the unnecessary realization of U-turns in a dead end and unnecessary access to areas with difficult access to a single customer. These are issues that a collection route planner must consider to make a good decision that considers the cost of visiting areas with difficult access and the benefits of reaching that area. In this sense, our heuristic procedure considers a set of best practices in operational and logistical strategies that could be programmed within the Network Analyst. As it is well known in the science of vehicle routing, U-turns and sub-tours in the routes travelled by vehicles increase distances and operating costs, so in our work, we propose a systematic heuristic procedure to reduce the number of U-turns performed by a municipal waste collection truck, while using the ArcGIS-Network Analyst add-on to reduce the number of sub-tours in the route under the Directed-Capacitated Arc Routing Problem approach. It is then shown how the routes improved using our conceptual heuristic procedure, which provides better quality than the original routes obtained with ArcGIS and Network Analyst. Specifically, reducing the total distances travelled by the vehicle fleet, increasing the coverage of sidewalks visited by the truck in the urban perimeter of a city, and minimizing the time used in municipal solid waste collection operations. The importance of our work lies in the fact that effective MSW management is an essential municipal service whose regulation can drive innovation, sustainability, and efficiency in the MSW sector.

The influence of the textile substrate color on the contrast of thermochromic prints

Thermochromic inks have attracted much attention due to their application in various fields, including the textile industry. The application of these colors in sports clothing enables the monitoring of the athlete’s physiological state through the possibility of changing the color of the material under the influence of skin temperature. Due to the printing of thermochromic inks on textile materials used for visual control, there is a need to analyze the contrast of the printed elements. Contrast plays a significant role in visually highlighting shapes and details and also facilitates the recognition of printed parts and information on textile materials. Contrast analysis of thermochromic inks on different colors of textile materials plays a role in determining the optimal combination of base colors and thermochromic inks that will result in the most noticeable color change. This analysis allows designers and manufacturers to make good decisions about choosing the colors of textile materials when printing with thermochromic inks because, in this way, a high level of aesthetics and functionality is achieved. This work aims to compare and analyze the contrast of thermochromic inks on different colors of the substrate of different types of materials, as well as to determine whether the color of the fabric on which the thermochromic ink is printed affects the color contrast when it is changed, i.e., its discoloration and return to its original state. Magenta reversible thermochromic water-based leuco dye was used to print the samples. The work used textile materials for printing with different structures and different colors. The colors were chosen to be bright and to provide a good contrast with the magenta color so that their combination attracts the viewer’s attention and can create a strong visual effect. Colorimetric and contrast analyses determined that the color of the substrate is dependent on the contrast value. In the case of polyester textile material, the white color of the substrate showed the highest contrast values. On the other hand, in the case of printed samples on a material made of a mixture of polyester and elastane, it can be concluded that the gray color of the substrate gives the highest contrast values. In conclusion, the research highlights the importance of choosing colors and materials to achieve optimal results in the design and production of textile materials with thermochromic inks.

Personal career decisions during medical training are not complicated, they are complex.

For medical training to be deemed successful, in addition to gaining the skills required to make appropriate clinical decisions, trainees must learn how to make good personal decisions. These decisions may affect satisfaction with career choice, work-life balance, and their ability to maintain/improve clinical performance over time-outcomes that can impact future wellness. Here, the authors introduce a decision-making framework with the goal of improving our understanding of personal decisions. Stemming from the business world, the Cynefin framework describes five decision-making domains: clear, complicated, complex, chaotic, and confusion, and a key inference of this framework is that decision-making can be improved by first identifying the decision-making domain. Personal decisions are largely complex-so applying linear decision-making strategies is unlikely to help in this domain. The available data suggest that the outcomes of personal decisions are suboptimal, and the authors propose three mechanisms to explain these findings: (1) Complex decision is susceptible to attribute substitution where we subconsciously trade these decisions for easier decisions; (2) predictions are prone to cognitive biases, such as assuming our situation will remain constant (linear projection fallacy), believing that accomplishing a goal will deliver lasting happiness (arrival bias), or overestimating benefits and underestimating costs of future tasks (planning fallacy); and (3) complex decisions have an inherently higher failure rate than complicated decisions because they are the result of an ongoing, dynamic person-by-situation interaction and, as such, have more time to fail and more ways to do so. Based upon their view that personal decisions are complex, the authors propose strategies to improve satisfaction with personal decisions, including increasing awareness of biases that may impact personal decisions. Recognising that the outcome of personal decisions can change over time, they also suggest additional interventions to manage these decisions, such as different forms of mentoring.

The Influence of Neural Behavior on Individuals’ Financial Decisions

To cope with the complexity of modern life, the need for better financial education is more crucial than ever. To make a good financial decision, a person needs to equip himself or herself with the knowledge and skills necessary to make an informed financial decision, manage debt effectively, plan for the future, and navigate a complex economic landscape. To exercise these complex economic decisions, the brain plays an important role in integrating information, assessing risk and reward, managing emotions, and executing strategies to achieve financial goals. As a result, an emerging field in the area of behavioral finance has emerged, which acts as a multidisciplinary field of study known as neurofinance. Neurofinance is a combination of fields of study like neurology, psychology, and finance and is an important tool for understanding an individual’s behavior towards financial activity done through brain mapping. Thus, this paper constructs the concept of neurofinance in the life of an individual financial decision-maker. The present study demonstrates the available studies constructed by different researchers, authors, and organizations. After reviewing the existing literature, the researcher found a major gap in that there was not a single study conducted to determine the influence of neural behavior on financial decision-making among the private and government sector employees of a selected region. Therefore, it is imperative to know whether there is any association between neurofinance and the individual financial decision-making of the people in North-East India. Accordingly, it is anticipated that this review paper will facilitate forthcoming empirical research to examine individual financial decision-making in detail.

Ten Years of Quality Monitoring of Abdominal Organ Procurement in the Netherlands and Its Impact on Transplant Outcome.

In this study, 10 years of procurement quality monitoring data were analyzed to identify potential risk factors associated with procurement-related injury and their association with long-term graft survival. All deceased kidney, liver, and pancreas donors from 2012 to 2022 and their corresponding recipients in the Netherlands were retrospectively included. The incidence of procurement-related injuries and potential risk factors were analyzed. Of all abdominal organs procured, 23% exhibited procurement-related injuries, with a discard rate of 4.0%. In kidneys and livers, 23% of the grafts had procurement-related injury, with 2.5% and 4% of organs with procurement-related injury being discarded, respectively. In pancreas procurement, this was 27%, with a discard rate of 24%. Male donor gender and donor BMI >25 were significant risk factors for procurement-related injury in all three abdominal organs, whereas aberrant vascularization was significant only for the kidney and liver. In the multivariable Cox regression analyses, procurement-related injury was not a significant predictor for graft failure (kidney; HR 0.99, 95% CI 0.75-1.33, p = 0.99, liver; HR 0.92, 95% CI 0.66-1.28, p = 0.61, pancreas: HR 1.16; 95% CI 0.16-8.68, p = 0.88). The findings of this study suggest that transplant surgeons exhibited good decision-making skills in determining the acceptability and repairability of procurement-related injuries.

Deciding for others: Local public good contributions with intermediaries

Given that pure public goods' broader use is often limited by distance, congestion, or borders, local public goods are prevalent. The decision for the provision of these local public goods is often made by individuals who do not get to consume them. It is, therefore, not clear whether the classic free-riding problem result holds in this framework. We study the provision of a local public good where the public good contribution decisions are made by non-local intermediaries who neither contribute from their own endowment nor directly benefit from the local public good. Each intermediary decides for only one public good beneficiary. Intermediaries make decisions under two compensation mechanisms where their incentives are either non-aligned (fixed), or aligned (variable), with those of the beneficiaries they represent. We find that the use of intermediaries, regardless of the compensation mechanism, significantly increases contributions to the provision of the public good.

Evaluation of the performance characteristics of a new chemical sensor, device, or method

For those of us involved in the design of novel sensors and methods, understanding the analytical requirements based upon their intended use is essential. In the case of a medical sensor, we must know how the results of a test, performed with the novel sensor, will increase the probability of a good diagnostic or disease management decisions by a physician. So, to assess whether the new sensor meets the expectations, one must design and execute experiments and analyze the results by appropriate statistical methods. As a last step of the evaluation of a novel sensor, one can measure the agreement between the results provided by an established method and the new sensor in a method comparison study. However, the correct statistical approach in method comparison studies is not obvious. In this paper a new evaluation method for determining the unbiased parameters of the association between the compared methods is discussed. It is based on the relationship between the slope and intercept of the regression line in the scatter plot and the parameters of the regression line in the Bland and Altman plot of the differences, in which the differences between the values measured by the compared methods in the same samples are plotted as a function of the average of the measured values. Moreover, we suggest a graphical representation of the data for assessing both the association and the agreement between the compared methods and show the limits of the proposed evaluation method theoretically and using computer-generated data and real-world examples.

Reduction of rejects by combining data from the casting process and automatic X-ray inspection

Automatic inspection of castings with X-rays (radiographic and computed tomography) is widespread for parts that are relevant for safety or have high quality requirements. Examples in the automotive sector are aluminum wheels, chassis parts and new parts within the electric power train. Those parts are automatically inspected, which means that both the image acquisition and the evaluation of the images is done fully automatically. Today, in most industrial implementations, the generated data with a size up to several gigabytes per part is summarized to a simple good or bad decision, according to specification. All other data is dismissed, although this information can be valuable to optimize production processes and thus minimize rejects. This contribution gives an overview about the results of the project Cast Control, which is a collaboration of Fraunhofer Development Center for X-ray Technology EZRT, Fraunhofer Center for Applied Research on Supply Chain Services SCS and industry partner RONAL GROUP. RONAL GROUP is a major aluminum wheel manufacturer, mainly for the OEM market. Within the project we combined serial production data from the low pressure die casting process from a foundry of the RONAL GROUP with the data generated in the automatic X- ray inspection. After collecting a large base of sample data, we were able train a neural network for the prediction of error metrics obtained by X-ray inspection. We apply a combination of layer-wise relevance propagation and dimensionality reduction to find correlations between data of the casting machines (process and sensor) and the characteristics of anomalies detected during X-ray inspection. With this information, it is possible to adjust the casting process in an early stage – even before rejects are produced. This enables the foundry to reduce their rejects rate, which saves costs and energy and results in a better competitiveness.