Institutional Choice Research Articles

Regionalism against Centralization: Resistance to Federal Education after the Mexican Revolution

AbstractWhy are states in the developing world able to centralize policy regulation and implementation in some places inside their territory but not in others? I argue that uneven state capacity in periods of centralization is a function of the political resources that regional politicians have to resist the advancement of central institutions. These resources include cohesion against the center and independent popular support. I analyze the expansion of primary education after the Mexican Revolution in four subnational cases representing scenarios of regional resistance to institutional centralization and compare the framework to alternative explanations. The article contributes to evaluating the causes of “state weakness” in developing countries and understanding the politics of institutional choice under federal constitutions.

Social factors impacting student’s choice of institution for higher studies in India

PurposeThis study intends to build up a thorough understanding of social factors that largely influence students’ decision-making to opt institution for higher studies in India.Design/methodology/approachThis descriptive research follows two sequential phases consisting of the literature review to identify social factors and validate the factors through the questionnaire method. Factor analysis was applied to identify the various factors that influence the student’s institution choice.FindingsThe research work explores and identified four factors and their associated attributes that impact students’ decision-making to opt institution for higher studies. It was found that the career advisor influence variable has the highest level of variance, followed by societal norms, social platform and cohort influence.Research limitations/implicationsThe present study is limited to social factors only. Therefore, many other determinants which may influence the student’s decision-making to opt the institute for higher studies remain unaddressed in this study.Practical implicationsThe findings of the study can guide the institutions' admission management in underpinning the acceptance of social factors to observe their influence on student’s choice of an institution. An important implication is the identification of career advisor influence as the strongest social factor which may bridge the student's career fit in the institution and social platform influence which may help higher education institutions to redesign their marketing strategies to augment students’ enrolment.Originality/valueThis study provides insight into the important role of social factors that impact the student's decision-making regarding institution choice in India.

Effect of Socioeconomic Factors on the Choice of Health care Institutions for Delivery Care

During the past two decades, Pakistan witnessed a significant progress in maternal health outcomes. However, there exist persistent urban-rural and socio-economic inequalities in access and utilization of maternal healthcare services across the country. The overall objective of this research was to identify the significant socio-economic factors determining the choice of healthcare institutions for delivery care. This was a cross-sectional study conducted in Rajan Pur, a predominantly rural district in Punjab province. Using a multi-stage random sampling technique, 368 mothers who had childbirths from 1st October to 31st December 2020 in different healthcare institutions were interviewed. Data for the study was collected through a validated study instrument used by earlier studies on maternal healthcare utilization. The results of logistic regression analysis showed that use of public healthcare facilities for delivery care increases with increasing maternal education, monthly household income, and distance to healthcare facilities. The findings and recommendations drawn from the research would provide some insights to health policymakers and planners in developing an integrated and viable maternal healthcare program in Pakistan.

Institutional choice among medical applicants: a profile paper for The United Kingdom Medical Applicant Cohort Study (UKMACS) prospective longitudinal cohort study

PurposeTo generate a large cohort of those in 2019 seriously considering applying to study Medicine, collecting data on a range of socioeconomic and other demographic factors that influence choice of...

PERLINDUNGAN HUKUM BAGI KONSUMEN YANG MELAKUKAN IZIN PENUNDAAN PEMBAYARAN ANGSURAN

One itype of financing business in a financial institution is consumer financing. Consumer financing is a business entity that carries out financing activities for the procurement of goods based on consumer needs with an installment or periodic payment system by consumers. This situation encourages the importance of the existence and development of consumer finance institutions. The public's choice of consumer financing institutions is due to the need for fast service, uncomplicated procedures, and easy-to-fulfill requirements.

Supporting College Choice Among International Students through Collaborative Filtering.

In this paper we use historic score-reporting records and test-taker metadata to inform data-driven recommendations that support international students in their choice of undergraduate institutions for study in the United States. We investigate the use of Structural Topic Modeling (STM) as a context-aware, probabilistic recommendation method that uses test-takers’ selections and metadata to model the latent space of college preferences. We present the model results from two perspectives: 1) to understand the impact of TOEFL score and test year on test-takers’ preferences and choices and 2) to recommend to the test-taker additional undergraduate institutions for application consideration. We find that TOEFL scores can explain variance in the probability that test-takers belong to certain preference-groups and, by accounting for this, our system adjusts recommendations based on student score. We also find that the inclusion of year, while not significantly altering recommendations, does enable us to capture minor changes in the relative popularity of similar institutions. The performance of this model demonstrates the utility of this approach for providing students with personalized college recommendations and offers a useful baseline approach that can be extended with additional data sources.

Exploring complementarity among interdependent pastoral institutions in Mongolia

This article combines Aoki’s institutional complementarity concept with actor-centered institutional analysis of action situations to study herder behavior and institutional change in a complex pastoral social–ecological system. Transformation of the Mongolian Steppe Ecosystem in the face of climate and social change has led to a decline in pastoral mobility, which in turn is making the ecosystem less sustainable. Responding to this concern, Mongolian policymakers have designed pasture use and conservation policies. We evaluate whether the enacted policies are complementary to herders’ strategic choices. First, we reconstruct institutional choices herders make in the commons domain, where herders interact to use common pastures. Second, we track this process in the political economy domain, where pasture users support or resist government policies. Finally, we evaluate the complementarity of the strategic choices and resulting institutions in the interdependent action situations of both domains. In combination with game-theoretic model building, we have employed the process tracing method during field research in Mongolia. We have not identified any evident, stable institutional complementarity between high pastoral mobility and support for a policy of leasing and certification of land for winter and spring camps. Conversely, our findings do suggest that policies for establishing pasture user groups and pasture use planning can be effective. A critical mass of herders choosing to comply with these policies and engage in pastoral mobility will be crucial for sustaining the ecosystem. This will strengthen conditions for institutional complementarity and create a new institutional arrangement overall.

The Alignment Challenges of Development Planning and Budgeting: Insights from Indonesia

This article examines the alignment challenges between development planning (DP) and public budgeting (PB), drawing on the Indonesian experience. DP is a policy tool to cover substantive policy, but its alignment with PB has received less attention in recent studies of public administration. We investigate the context of institutional choices and their implications for dynamic inside governance using qualitative methods and data analysis from in-depth interviews and data observation with those involved in law-making and institutional building of DP and PB. The findings conclude that the difference in reform reference and institutional rivalry has resulted in the separation of governance between DP and PB. This choice of governance raises issues of policy goals and budget alignment. Furthermore, this article discusses broader lessons on institutionalization, influential factors, and differentiation functions.

IMPACT OF BRAND IDENTITY COMPONENTS ON UNIVERSITY BRAND IMAGEIN HO CHI MINH CITY

We all see that newly established schools, the building of identity and brand image becomes more urgent and needs more attention than schools that have existed for many years. However, HUTECH University established in 1995, has undergone certain changes that require repositioning with the brand image. Therefore, the choice of educational institutions for this case study becomes more significant. The results of the study show that the factors that make up brand identity, which affect the brand image of HUTECH University from high to low, are: Brand Relevance (BRL) β= 0.357; Teaching Staff (TS) β=0.287; Brand Reputation (BRP) β= 0.200; Brand Personality (BPS) β=0.182; Brand Relationship (BRT) β=0.073; Brand Performance (BPF) β= 0.044; and Educational Opportunity (EF) β= 0.039.

Allowing for segregation in ECEC? Legal conditions, administrative structures and enrolment practice in Germany

Supposedly children are to learn together in surroundings mirroring the overall democratic and diverse make-up of society. Segregation in ECEC is undesirable. However, substantial segregation exists - even in systems designed for universal, high-quality ECEC provision. While some research has already carved out the role of parents´ choice of institutions, little is known about how children are selected by institutions. This article attempts to shed light on institutional choice as a variable for segregation. Including a detailed picture of the German ECEC system and pointing out administrative relations between municipalities and providers in Germany, this article will depict enrolment. It will draw an empirically based ‘tryptich’, focusing on municipalities´, provider organisation managers` and ECEC centre managers` views on enrolment. Findings will lead to a call for providers and municipalities to join efforts in order to design and implement enrolment procedures that prevent segregation.

Understanding Motivation, Career Planning, and Socio-Cultural Adaptation Difficulties as Determinants of Higher Education Institution Choice Decision by International Students in the Post-pandemic Era

The world is facing an unprecedented health crisis with the spread of COVID-19 across different corners of the globe. This pandemic has raised more significant concerns about international students’ learning environment, personality development, and career planning, particularly in high-ranked institutes in China. Now the question concerning this dilemma is, would the COVID-19 pandemic negatively affect students’ education and the country culture where they are bound to seek information and the subject education? Therefore, this study examines the impact of innovative learning environment, career planning, and socio-cultural adaptation-related difficulties faced by international students as determinants of higher education institution choice decisions made by international students in the post-pandemic era. This quantitative study examined international students in high-ranked universities across China. The data from 260 students were collected through a structured questionnaire and analyzed using the AMOS technique. Moreover, it has been observed that the current global health crisis has intensified social inequalities across different international higher education systems. Countries fail to maintain the scale of the innovative international learning environment. The results further indicated that international students are more considerate of innovative learning environments, cultural adoption, career planning, and personality development, specifically after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has drastically affected the global higher education system. Unusually, more than half of the participants wanted to maintain the option of overall distance education after the pandemic. However, apart from this argument, it is appropriate to demand significant changes in post-pandemic education adapted to the post-digital era and to satisfy the concerns and expectations of the students.

Социализирующая функция вуза как условие профессионального и личностного становления выпускников

The period of study of students at the university should be considered as a special one that determines the subsequent line of life, since each person becomes the subject of his life path. From the choice of an educational institution to the final result, enough time passes in order, along with the main educational function, to form the necessary professional and social skills in students through a set of organizational measures.

ALTERNATIVE PROVIDERS IN THE UK: UNDERSTANDING STUDENTS’ SATISFACTION AND CHALLENGES

In the United Kingdom (UK) higher education policy changes, especially since 2010, focus on supporting quasi-markets by allowing greater institutional competition and student choice. The decision to open-up the higher education market to alternative providers has resulted in the remarkable growth of providers gaining access to public-backed funding. There has been very little empirical study on alternative providers and/or students within alternative provider institutions, especially in the context of students studying for a degree programme. Using both the education and marketing literature, this article examines students’ perspectives on their educational experiences. This article reports on the outcomes of a small survey conducted with learners within alternative providers in the UK to capture learners’ satisfaction with their educational experience.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0927/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

The Effect of Medical Choice on Health Costs of Middle-Aged and Elderly Patients with Chronic Disease: Based on Principal-Agent Theory.

(1) Background: The discussion on how to reduce the health costs of chronic disease patients has become an important public health issue. Limited research has been conducted on how chronic disease patients’ medical choice of public and private medical institutions affect health costs. (2) Methods: This study used the panel data composed of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey (CHARLS) from 2011 to 2018, adopted the quasi-natural experimental research method, and set up a control group and an experimental group that chose public medical institutions and private medical institutions, to analyze the association between the medical choice and health costs of chronic disease patients. (3) Results: Compared with chronic disease patients who chose private medical institutions, patients who chose public medical institutions increased their total cost by 44.9%, total out-of-pocket cost by 22.9%, and decreased the total out-of-pocket ratio by 0.117%, total drug cost out-of-pocket ratio by 0.075%, and drug cost ratio by 0.102%. (4) Conclusions: According to the triple principal-agent relationships, the resource advantages given by the government to public medical institutions, the salary incentive system of medical institutions, and the information asymmetry advantage held by physicians may be important factors for the increase in health costs for chronic disease patients.

An investigation of the factors influencing the choice of healthcare facility in South Africa

The objective of the study was to assess the factors that motivate or demotivate households to choose among the three healthcare facilities, public healthcare, private health care and traditional healthcare facilities in South Africa as revealed by Statistics South Africa . The utilisation of healthcare facilities in South Africa is such that more households prefer public healthcare facilities more than other healthcare facilities. The multinomial logit model was used, with traditional/self-medication category as the reference or baseline category. The results indicated that gender, income and access to grants were significant in influencing the probability of a household choosing a public healthcare facility, while age, income, grants, salaries/wages/commission and pensions were significant in influencing the choice of private healthcare institutions. Therefore the study recommends that due to a large portion of households that are using public health facilities compared to private and traditional facilities, the government must invest more in public healthcare facilities in South Africa.

ВПЛИВ ЕКОНОМІЧНОЇ СИТУАЦІЇ На ВИБІР МОДЕЛІ ПРОФЕСІЙНОГО НАВЧАННЯ

The article forms a vision of the impact of the economic situation on the choice of higher education institutions of the appropriate model of vocational training. The level of demand for educational services in accordance with the change of their consumers, effective demand in the labor market, the specifics of the global pandemic COVID-19, which led to the emergence of blended learning. The multifaceted nature of development is highlighted. Studies of the state of national education over the past five school years have confirmed its abrupt nature due to the influence of demographic, economic, political factors and the growth of services provided. The current trends in education and its new trends are highlighted: digitalization, prioritization, microlearning, visualization, humanization, immersive learning, additional online educational profession, editing, balance and well-being, proactivity. As an integral part of the educational process, the online format has become the basis for the emergence of blended (hybrid) learning. Applicants for higher education become active participants in the learning process. Changing pedagogical technologies that adapt to the challenges of blended learning have affected the use of digital tools and shifted the emphasis to the active position of higher education seekers. The emergence of a new model of education as a set of learning formats, pedagogical approaches, tools for their implementation requires the restructuring of the educational process. In this sense, it is important to ensure an individual educational trajectory, which makes it necessary to propose such a trajectory and internal perception of its choice. The stages of preparation of various forms of classes for online classes are considered. The detailed algorithm of preparation of educational and methodical materials on the Google Classroom platform is given; selection of the system of notification of applicants; formation of information about the organizational content of the discipline and other auxiliary components. The specifics of preparing and conducting an online lecture with the selection of elements that distinguish it from the offline format are analyzed. The rules of preparation for a practical lesson as a complex process are given. Features of preparation for modular tests, consultations and online exam are considered. It is established that any model of training is associated with the cost of its implementation, which necessitates a change in the structure of these costs for each entity under the influence of economic and political factors and increase the share of costs for technical support of distance learning

Influential factors contributing to the understanding of international students’ choice of Malaysian higher education institutions: Qualitative study with a focus on expected benefits

This research aimed to identify the influential factors contributing to the international students’ choice of Malaysian Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), focusing on the expected benefits. Additionally, the study contributes to the development of the higher education sector in Malaysia by providing recommendations to the HEIs based on the students’ perceptions. To achieve this purpose, the researchers utilized a qualitative approach through interviews where the study targeted the international students in Malaysia; 18 students were interviewed until saturation was reached. The thematic analysis was utilized to analyze the interviews where five major influential factors were highlighted and investigated: reliability, assurance, tangibility, empathy, and responsiveness. The results showed that the Malaysian universities provide higher than average services to international students, which met most of their expectations; this is clear through the international students’ answers to questions under different constructs such as reliability, assurance, tangibles, empathy, and responsibility. The international students believe that the brand image and reputation of HEIs have a positive impact on their choice and expectations, and they believe that Malaysian HEIs are among the world’s top universities. The study contributes to Malaysian HEIs in terms of the students’ feedback that could be an advantage for existing efforts to develop the academic services of the country.
 Received: 17 January 2021Accepted: 18 February 2022

Институциональный выбор в ситуации бифуркации социально-экономической системы и стремления к устойчивости (Institutional choice in case of bifurcation of socio-economic system and Striving for Economic Stability)

Институциональный выбор в ситуации бифуркации социально-экономической системы и стремления к устойчивости (Institutional choice in case of bifurcation of socio-economic system and Striving for Economic Stability)

Land tenure security and preferences to dispute resolution pathways among landholders in Nigeria

The occurrence of land-related disputes remains inevitable due to conflicting interests often associated with land rights. However, how these disputes are resolved remains of great interest to development scholars and policy makers alike. In this paper, both perceived land tenure (in)security and dispute resolution pathway preferences of plot holders are examined using a nationally representative survey dataset from Nigeria. The degree of perceived tenure security in an ordinal scale is measured using the combined indicators of perception of occurrence of ownership dispute and the perception of not losing plot should dispute occurs. Further, a two-stage sequence of choice of institutions for land-related dispute resolutions was constructed from the data to obtain four categories of possible resolution pathways. Partially constrained generalized ordered logit and multinomial logit models were also employed to assess the effects of plot holders’ socio-economic and plot characteristics on perceived tenure (in)security and choice of dispute resolution pathway, respectively. Results reveal that the level of perceived tenure security decreases with increasing indicator combination and the choice of informal – informal pathway remains dominant even in the presence of legal pluralism. Policies that promote land documentation, strengthened extension services, and strengthened institutional capacities and access are envisioned to play significant roles in reducing land-related disputes and facilitating their resolution.

Theoretical Change and Institutional Choice: A Historical Observation of Progressive Income Tax in the United States

Theoretical Change and Institutional Choice: A Historical Observation of Progressive Income Tax in the United States