Honest Assessment Research Articles

A netnographic study of anabolic-androgenic steroid initiation videos on YouTube.

YouTube personalities (YP) have amassed significant followings by distributing health information. There is concern that YP involved in anabolic androgenic steroid (AAS) communities are sharing information on how people should approach initiating AAS use. This research sought to explore how YP are using their platform to distribute information on AAS initiation, what information is being presented and how people are responding. This mixed methods research utilised a netnographic approach, a method adapted from traditional ethnographic techniques for the study of online sociocultural phenomena. The research included a selection of YouTube videos (n = 37) and user comments replying to the videos (n = 584). YP addressed the positives and negatives of AAS initiation (76%; n = 28 and 76%; n = 28 respectively), provided harm reduction strategies (76%; n = 28), and advice on which AAS people should use (97%; n = 36). A qualitative thematic analysis of the comments found two overarching themes: 'Authenticity, capital and the influence of the YP on their audiences' and 'The evolving landscape of enhancement and health'. Viewers engaged with the videos due to the YPs lived experience using AAS, and YP influenced the health behaviours of viewers. Many believed that the videos were useful for health and lifestyle enhancement purposes. YP are disseminating diverse information on AAS initiation which is derived from their lived experience using AAS. Harm reduction is a key component of the YPs' message and viewers responded positively to a balanced and honest assessment of AAS initiation which is perceived to respect their personal autonomy.

Balancing Honest Assessment and Compassion for Learners Experiencing Burnout: A Workshop and Feedback Tool for Clinical Teachers.

Burnout in medical trainees challenges their work effectiveness and impedes their ability to learn. Teachers in the clinical learning environment (CLE) are well situated to identify burnout and are often responsible for learner assessment. We developed a workshop to improve clinical teachers' identification and understanding of learner burnout while empowering them to provide constructive feedback and support. Building on best-practice feedback techniques and utilizing the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) as a framework, we designed the GetINBurnOUT method to provide feedback and support for learners experiencing burnout. Applying Kern's six-step approach to curriculum development, we created and implemented a workshop for clinical teachers centered on advanced burnout knowledge, application of the MBI to the CLE, and use of the GetINBurnOUT feedback method. Kolb's experiential learning theory informed workshop activities such as group discussion, case practice, and self-reflection. Participants completed surveys immediately after the workshop to assess planned behavior. We delivered the workshop eight times at local, regional, and national faculty development programs/conferences to over 188 participants. Participants rated the workshop favorably, with average scores of 4.5-4.8 out of 5 across all domains and program objectives; all participants planned to make a change to their practice. Positive comments emphasized the topic's importance and the GetINBurnOUT tool's practicality. This workshop can enhance clinical teachers' understanding of burnout and provide them with the tools to address it in the CLE. The GetINBurnOUT method offers a practical approach for providing honest assessments while supporting learners in the CLE.

From legacy systems to modernisation: A case study on migrating to a new customer relationship management system

This paper presents a case study of how one mid-size institution of higher education found themselves modernising their database of record with a new customer relationship management (CRM) system, while managing the realities of limited funding and staffing, changing strategies and organisational legacies of longstanding policies and processes. At their core, changes to systems are organisational changes. Software systems are updated in line with the changing technological improvements in global cultures and their intersection with the evolving needs of institutional strategies. At its best, a system and software update's primary purposes are to serve and amplify the people who design, build and work within those systems. As with everything involving change, there needs to be an honest assessment of the organisation's strengths and weaknesses in the areas of cultural readiness for the necessary human engagement and support for the updated systems, an actionable plan hung firmly on the vision and strategies outlining the specified changes and, most crucially, an evolving staffing alignment of skilled professionals to business needs. CRM conversions are a worthy test of these three essential pillars of successful systems change.

Exploring organizational digital readiness to offer youth E-Mentoring

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic prompted many youth mentoring programs to offer digital services (e-mentoring). The sustained success of these efforts depended, in large part, on organizations’ digital readiness. Although there are established, broad measures of digital readiness, mentoring organizations have unique requirements for readiness that have not been previously measured. The current cross-sectional survey research study measured the state of digital readiness for youth mentoring organizations and tested the organizational E-Mentoring Readiness Scale. Ninety-five representatives from U.S. mentoring programs completed an online survey. Participants felt mentors, mentees, and families were moderately comfortable with e-mentoring. There was less confidence and comfort with the required technology and execution of e-mentoring. A confirmatory factor analysis of the E-Mentoring Readiness Scale showed two distinct but related factors with good model fit. An honest assessment using this tool may allow the youth mentoring field to move into the digital age more seamlessly.

Land reform in the United States: Lost cause or simply a cause that has been lost?

In this commentary, I consider the topic of “land reform” in the United States, addressing the status of land reform as a key concept and goal among agrifood scholars, food/farm movements, and government actors. I do so in order to encourage sustainable food advocates to consider land reform’s importance, its social basis, and its challenges. Informed by secondary literature and my own thinking and doing over 20 years of food systems activism and research, I ask: Why isn’t land reform more prominent as a central objective? What dynamics keep land reform off the agenda of U.S. agrarian and food movements? What can previous histories of land reform agitation teach us? How can the elements necessary to advance toward land reform in the United States be built? I explore land reform’s lack with an eye especially to those explanations that open up potential avenues for action, in order to spark conversation on potential barriers to land reform efforts, and to suggest potential ways to overcome them. I discuss political-economic, ideological, and organizational barriers and emphasize the role of anticommunism in shaping today’s land politics among food and farming movements. It is hoped that the commentary offers researchers and practitioners actionable insights into the need for a land reform agenda, potential strategies toward a land reform agenda, and an honest assessment of the impediments to that agenda’s advance.

Learnings, Issues, and Challenges Encountered by Students and Faculty Members in the Implementation of Small Private Online Courses (SPOCs)

Consistent with the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) design of ISO 9001:2015, performance evaluation of policies pertaining to the University’s main functions, i.e., instruction, research, and extension, should be pursued, especially for a newly implemented policy. Small Private Online Courses (SPOCs) at Bulacan State University were crafted, developed, and enhanced not only in compliance with the demands of continuing education but also to suit the standard of learning that is equal to classroom instruction catered physically. Whether these courses became effective and efficient within the duration of implementation remains to be determined. In the hope of having a fair and honest assessment that willlead towards relevant refinement of offering SPOCs, this mixed method of research undertaking aims to re-examine its efficiency and effectiveness, specifically, the learnings, issues and challenges encountered by the facultymembers and students when using SPOC as modality. Thesurvey questionnaire and interview questions were developed and validated and the interview among faculty members were face to face while the survey questionnaire for the SPOC students was through Google form for answering online, and the respondents were five thousand and eight students and twenty-five faculty members were interviewed. The findings indicate the factors that may impede the success of the implementation of SPOCs, aside from personal logistic challenges, the lack of discipline to manage time and sustain the interest in a given lesson are problems that require attention and further innovation. While connectivity can be identified as a personal logistic challenge, it can also be a challenge on the part of the University. The problem of connectivity may be seen as an opportunity for the University to create its own Learning Management System that can be customized to suit fit according to bandwidth, accessible and affordable to students. It can be concluded that SPOC is a promising learning platform in a world where hybrid interactions are highly relevant and can help save a lot of time and resources which brings in the recommendation to revisit, redesign, and recalibrate it for the ever-changing landscape of education.

Emancipated worshipers? Performance studies and the question of participation in Anglican Eucharistic liturgy

ABSTRACT This soapbox article, which concentrates on liturgical (and especially Eucharistic) worship in my own context of English Anglicanism, has two main aims. First, to name antitheatrical prejudice as a limiting factor in our analysis of liturgy and worship. Second, to argue that we should pay attention to the resonances between theology and performance studies. I suggest that exploring these questions might refresh our reflections about what happens in worship. It will pay particular attention to the question of ‘participation’, as this has been an important area of debate in both liturgical and performance studies in recent years, and so forms a natural point of contact. The article begins with a brief overview of how participation has been understood in theatre and performance studies, including the value of participation as a concept and the problems of assuming that ‘participation’ is straightforwardly positive. Next, it more explicitly addresses how these understandings might apply to worship, acknowledging in the process some potential risks. It concludes by arguing that these risks are not simply necessary but unavoidable, and a chastening of our claims for participation might lead to a more honest assessment of both the opportunities and the limitations presented by participation in liturgy.

Body‐worn cameras and representation: What matters when evaluating police use of force?

AbstractPublic administration scholarship seeks to understand ways to increase accountability within the policing profession. We employ an online conjoint experiment to disentangle the effects of both representation and body‐worn cameras (BWC) on police accountability and legitimacy. In the experiment, we ask participants to rate the likelihood that a police use of force incident prompts an investigation when there is a BWC present and racial and gender representation matches between the officer and the civilian in the use of force incident. We find that Caucasian officers who use force are more likely to be investigated. Our findings also reveal that civilians believe male officers who use force should be investigated and there is no need for further investigation when a BWC is utilized during a use of force situation. The implications of this study show that civilians view BWCs as the most important tool in providing accurate and honest assessment of police‐civilian encounters.

Ensuring the economic security of the country in the new geopolitical realities

The issue of ensuring Russia’s economic security is an important and priority task, especially in the tightening conditions of the consolidated sanctions policy of the European Union countries and the United States. The process of developing measures that allow Russian economy to develop sustainably and effectively counter the growing geopolitical threats is complex and requires a comprehensive and honest assessment, including the import dependence degree of business, the degree and level of involvement in global supply chains, the development level of domestic production, etc. For each assessment area, indicators should be identified that have a preventive nature and make it possible to detect a growing potential threat. In the research theoretical provisions on economic security are considered; existing threats to economic security in geopolitical realities are formulated; indicators presented by the Federal State Statistics Service are identified that allow assessing the threat degree; directions for ensuring economic security are developed.

Diversifying board starts with honest assessment of culture, barriers

By now, nearly all nonprofits are on board with diversifying their boards. The benefits of a diverse and inclusive board are numerous, and nonprofit leaders have gotten the message that they need to actively take steps on this front.

Honest assessment of board culture is key first step in diversifying your board

Chance are, your organization is on board with diversifying your board. After all, the benefits of a diverse and inclusive board are numerous, and most nonprofit leaders have gotten the message that they need to take active steps to improve in this area.

Strategic behaviour and manipulation resistance in Peer-to-Peer, crowdsourced information gathering

To realize the potential of crowdsourcing to tap into collective intelligence, one should consider how “crowds” are incentivized. One model, widely applied in blockchain oracles, constructs a coordination game where “true reporting” should be a focal point. Beyond well-known strategic behaviour associated to Keynesian Beauty Contests, we see this model provokes an additional layer of strategic behaviour. Specifically, for voting and payoff systems that satisfy minimal attack resistance assumptions, there always exist situations where participants are incentivized to provide rankings between three or more alternatives that neither reflect their honest assessment of the truth, nor correspond to their expectations of which alternatives are likely to win the vote. This result nuances our understanding of this class of Beauty Contests and mirrors issues in preference aggregation.

Transforming World Language Teaching and Teacher Education for Equity and Justice: Pushing Boundaries in US Contexts ed. by Beth Wassell and Cassandra Glynn

Reviewed by: Transforming World Language Teaching and Teacher Education for Equity and Justice: Pushing Boundaries in US Contexts ed. by Beth Wassell and Cassandra Glynn Diana Ruggiero Wassell, Beth, and Cassandra Glynn, editors. Transforming World Language Teaching and Teacher Education for Equity and Justice: Pushing Boundaries in US Contexts. Multilingual Matters, 2022. Pp. 202. ISBN 978-1-78892-650-8. In Transforming World Language Teaching and Teacher Education, editors Beth Wassell and Cassandra Glynn alongside contributing authors to this edited volume illuminate the ways in which educators are working toward greater social equity and justice in the world language classroom. In the process, they also critically reflect on how the structural and institutional dynamics of the field as well as their own respective backgrounds are complicit in upholding and perpetuating systemic injustice and inequity in world language education. Consciously drawing on a diverse range of perspectives from scholars on the margins of the field, many of them first-time authors, the chapters provide a snapshot of world language education in a state of transformation as scholars rethink the assumptions that inform how educators think about and approach world language teaching today. Introspective, critical, and bold in its honest assessment of and efforts to reform world language education, this book and its conclusions are both timely and relevant for a field in need of such critical reassessment and transformation. The volume consists of ten chapters, including an introduction, and is divided into two main sections. The introduction provides the premise for and approach to the book as well as a brief synopsis of the book’s contents relative to the major arguments. The remainder of the chapters are divided into two equal parts, the first part addressing systemic challenges to equity and social justice in world language programs as well as responses to them by educators, presenting theoretical frameworks and curricular models based on authors experiences and [End Page 164] research along the way. The second part similarly addresses more directly ways in which world language educators on the margins of world language education are addressing curricular reform. For instance, Dorie Conlon Perugini and Manuela Wagner present a model for integrating and foregrounding intercultural citizenship in world language education as a way of moving beyond a focus on vocabulary and grammar and engaging issues of social justice in the classroom. Similarly, Mary Curan and Joan Clifford in their respective chapters discuss the significance of community engagement in redressing issues of social justice in world education; Curran through a presentation of her pre-service Urban Social Justice Teacher Education Program at Rutgers University, and Clifford through the presentation of a curricular model that blends community-based language learning and global health to likewise enact greater equity and social justice in the world language curriculum. Though there are many books and edited volumes now calling for change and transformation in world language education, this book is unique in its call for and focus on critical self-reflection. Indeed, as a framing device for the book’s contents and approach, Wassell and Glynn use the tropes of “calling out” and “calling in.” By “calling out,” they mean looking at how educators themselves may be complicit in the process of maintaining and perpetuating systemic racism and social inequities in the classroom. This could include biases and unquestioned standards and norms in teaching world languages stemming from one’s own privilege (stemming from gender, race, ethnicity, etc.). By “calling in” they mean similarly reflecting on the ways in which the field itself is likewise complicit in perpetuating systemic racism, social inequity, and injustice. This includes an assessment of the field as a whole as well as the curriculum, standards, and approaches at the local, state, and national levels of world language teaching. While this level of critical self-reflection is not new in the field, Wassell and Glynn remind us that a positive first step in redressing these problems begins with recognizing that there is indeed a problem and that we, as educators trained within a field founded and situated within a specific historical context worth examining for its shortcomings, have much to rethink in order to and as we move forward. While the book presents...

Cardiothoracic Surgery Training: An Honest and Anonymous Assessment of the Trainee Experience

Cardiothoracic Surgery Training: An Honest and Anonymous Assessment of the Trainee Experience

Expectile-based hydrological modelling for uncertainty estimation: Life after mean

Predictions of hydrological models should be probabilistic in nature. Our aim is to introduce a method that estimates directly the uncertainty of hydrological simulations using expectiles, thus complementing previous quantile-based direct approaches as well as generalizing mean-based approaches. Expectiles are new risk measures in hydrology. Compared to quantiles that use information of the frequency of process realizations over a specified value, expectiles use additional information of the magnitude of the exceedances over the specified value. Expectiles are least square analogues of quantiles and can characterize the probability distribution in much the same way as quantiles do. Moreover, the mean of the probability distribution is the special case of the expectile at level 0.5. To this end, we propose calibrating hydrological models using the expectile loss function, which is strictly consistent for expectiles. We apply our method to 511 basins in contiguous US and deliver predictive expectiles of hydrological simulations with the GR4J, GR5J and GR6J hydrological models at expectile levels 0.5, 0.9, 0.95 and 0.975. An honest assessment empirically proves that the GR6J model outperforms the other two models at all expectile levels. Great opportunities are offered for moving beyond the mean in hydrological modelling by simply adjusting the objective function.

Honest calibration assessment for binary outcome predictions

Summary Probability predictions from binary regressions or machine learning methods ought to be calibrated: if an event is predicted to occur with probability $x$, it should materialize with approximately that frequency, which means that the so-called calibration curve $p(\cdot)$ should equal the identity, i.e., $p(x) = x$ for all $x$ in the unit interval. We propose honest calibration assessment based on novel confidence bands for the calibration curve, which are valid subject to only the natural assumption of isotonicity. Besides testing the classical goodness-of-fit null hypothesis of perfect calibration, our bands facilitate inverted goodness-of-fit tests whose rejection allows for the sought-after conclusion of a sufficiently well-specified model. We show that our bands have a finite-sample coverage guarantee, are narrower than those of existing approaches, and adapt to the local smoothness of the calibration curve $p$ and the local variance of the binary observations. In an application to modelling predictions of an infant having low birth weight, the bounds give informative insights into model calibration.

Preparing for progressive change from opposition

Preparing for progressive change from opposition

Guest Editorial: More Than Just Talk What Senior Leaders Must Do To Drive Safety Performance Improvement

_ Over the past few decades, the upstream oil and gas industry has demonstrated marked improvement in safety performance as measured by traditional lagging indicators. This success has been supported by the development of safety management systems, improved training and equipment, as well as numerous guides on the most critical component: safety leadership. Organizations such as the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers (IOGP), Step Change in Safety, and Center for Offshore Safety (COS), to name a few, provide guidance and encourage leadership to actively participate in driving the message and expectations around leadership engagement on safety. The SPE Technical Report Getting to Zero and Beyond: The Path Forward (March 2018) states that to achieve a culture of perfection, actions must be led from the top. In the context referenced in this article, leaders are those individuals in senior positions who are recognized by their organization as having responsibility for operations and can commit financial resources to reduce risk (the US Federal Aviation Administration would call this person an “accountable executive” per the regulations). Many leaders commit to the aspiration of no harm to people, but they may need help on the substance and actions that will make a difference. The guidance documents from the organizations and technical report listed above provide sound foundations for messaging, as well as what follows in this article. The authors have had robust experience in safety culture and performance improvement, and where it succeeds or fails. Start With the Basics The first thing leaders must do is provide a Statement of Organizational Intent (SOI). An SOI starts with, but goes well beyond, the aspiration of No Harm. The SOI should cover what operational leaders will do to help improve the safety culture. This should be specific to the needs of the organization and include an honest assessment of the current state of safety. It is vital to understand what is going on at the front lines: (a) why are incidents occurring, and (b) what are the trends of the failures. The SOI will move past the superficial view that “incident rates are too high and therefore, we must do better.” There is a need for more information on performance beyond the traditional lagging indicators of incident rates. A good starting point is adding near misses, observations, and incidents with a high potential for serious outcome. Beyond that, leaders need to identify measures of inputs that make a difference in performance. Traditionally this may have meant something like training hours, but that assumes the training is effective. The measures must include a view of strategic plans and implementation progress. A means of tracking and verification of progress is needed as well. Senior leadership then must routinely, and personally, follow up on the progress and hold the organization accountable for following through to completion. If not, there can be elements within the organization who will simply wait out the strategies, knowing there is no consequence for lack of participation.

The honest attitude of fifth-grade students in thematic learning: Research for the development of an assessment instrument

The goal of this study was to develop a reliable honest attitude assessment instrument for use with students. The Borg and Gall stages were adopted in this research and development. Seven elementary schools in the Pagelaran Subdistrict, Lampung Province, Indonesia that had adopted the 2013 Curriculum made up the population, whereas one school was randomly selected for the research sample. Data were collected via interviews, questionnaires, observation sheets, and documents, in which the collected data were analysed both qualitatively and quantitatively. The results show that the honest attitude assessment instrument created is of a very good quality. The increasing average score served as evidence for this. The average value of the two expert validations was evaluated, and the results were 3.75, which were rated as very good.

Examining the Dependability and Practicality of Analytic Rubric of Summary Writing Using Multivariate Generalizability Theory: Focusing on Japanese University Students with Lower-Intermediate Proficiency in English

English teachers, especially those who teach summary writing to students with relatively lower proficiency in English face difficulty in teaching summary writing and while assessing their students’ performances. In the classroom context, an analytic rubric is pedagogically more helpful than a holistic rubric because the teacher can confirm the strengths and weaknesses of their students’ summary performance and the students can receive constructive feedback (Yamanishi et al., 2019). This study examined the practicality of the analytic rubric which consisted of four rating scales, including language use, by investigating seven in-service English teachers’ honest assessment of 160 summaries of Japanese private university students who are inexperienced in writing English summaries and have lower-intermediate proficiency of English. Furthermore, this study examined the dependability of the analytic rubric using multivariate generalizability theory (Brennan, 2001). The results showed that assessing language use and judging summaries, copied, to a lesser or greater extent, from the source text was difficult because of diverse linguistic errors and the use of paraphrasing was lacking. Therefore, it is necessary to define the gravity of language errors and that of copying in more detail to develop a rubric that suits to assess the summaries written by English learners with lower-intermediate level of English.