Interest Commitment Research Articles

Characteristics of Marginalized Populations Seeking Acupuncture: Findings from an Observational Study of an Inner-City Community Health Service.

Introduction: Marginalized populations experience health inequities and are often underserved within existing health systems. Australian marginalized populations and their use of complementary medicine, including acupuncture, lack investigation. We have collected information on the health-seeking behaviors of marginalized individuals who utilize an acupuncture service within a community-based integrative health setting. Methods: A secondary analysis of pre-existing data involving the linking of three datasets. Information was collected across four domains: health characteristics, socio-demographics, health services utilization, and vulnerability markers. Bivariate analysis using Fisher's exact and chi-square tests additional to logistic regression analysis were conducted to determine the characteristics of the study population. All data once analyzed were then presented as a cumulative statistic. Results: Study participants (n = 42) included 28% of individuals with reported histories of homelessness (n = 12) and 32% with a history of psychological trauma (n = 13). Eighty-three percent (n = 31) of the population sought acupuncture to manage pain and 91% (n = 36) for musculoskeletal conditions. Sixty-three percent (n = 24) reported a mental health diagnosis, most commonly depression (n = 18). Participants were most likely to engage with three other health services within the study setting, in addition to acupuncture. Participants with an illicit substance abuse problem were 12 times more likely to seek a greater number of acupuncture treatments, and individuals with trauma histories were twice as likely to attend the acupuncture clinic eight or more times. Discussion: Our study findings suggest a robust level of engagement with acupuncture treatment among the target population and a willingness to engage with integrative health services when barriers to uptake such as accessibility and affordability are removed. Findings support current evidence pertaining to acupuncture's use as an adjunct to managing pain in marginalized populations as well as a perceived acceptability and feasibility of the integration of acupuncture within conventional health settings. There is the further observation that acupuncture in a group setting is suitable for a marginalized population and an interest in commitment to treatment among individuals with substance abuse problems.

Using a Concept Inventory to Assess the Reasoning Component of Citizen-Level Science Literacy: Results from a 17,000-Student Study.

After articulating 12 concepts for the reasoning component of citizen-level science literacy and restating these as assessable student learning outcomes (SLOs), we developed a valid and reliable assessment instrument for addressing the outcomes with a brief 25-item science literacy concept inventory (SLCI). In this paper, we report the results that we obtained from assessing the citizen-level science literacy of 17,382 undergraduate students, 149 graduate students, and 181 professors. We address only findings at or above the 99.9% confidence level. We found that general education (GE) science courses do not significantly advance understanding of science as a way of knowing. However, the understanding of science’s way of knowing does increase through academic ranks, indicating that the extended overall academic experience better accounts for increasing such thinking capacity than do science courses alone. Higher mean institutional SLCI scores correlate closely with increased institutional selectivity, as measured by the institutions’ higher mean SAT and ACT scores. Socioeconomic factors of a) first-generation student, b) English as a native language, and c) interest in commitment to a science major are unequally distributed across ethnic groups. These factors proved powerful in accounting for the variations in SLCI scores across ethnicities and genders.

Counterculture kaleidoscope: musical and cultural perspectives on late sixties San Francisco

This book offers a bold reconsideration of the meaning of 1960s San Francisco counterculture.Counterculture Kaleidoscope explores the traditions represented in the cultural and musical practices of the late Sixties San Francisco counterculture. Dismantling the notion that the movement was all about rebellion and opposition, the book dislodges two myths: first, that the counterculture was an organized socio political movement consisting of progressive people (dubbed hippies) with a shared agenda who opposed the mainstream, and second, that the counterculture was a pure and innocent entity co-opted by commercialism and transformed over time into an agent of so-called hip consumerism.As several recent books on the concept of hipness illustrate, counterculture has become synonymous with rebellion and opposition. Movement-based Sixties histories, nostalgic accounts of the great sex, drugs, and rock n' roll era, and conservative polemics stigmatizing counter cultural radicalism have reinforced this equation. As an alternative, this book examines primary source material (including music, artwork, popular literature, personal narratives, and first-hand historical accounts) to demonstrate that the San Francisco counterculture in 1966-67 displayed no interest in commitment to a cause and made no association with divisive issues - embracing everything in general, but nothing in particular.

On distributor commitment in industrial channels of distribution: A multicomponent approach

Despite a recent surge of interest in commitment, its conceptual scope and components in channel relationships remain equivocal. The authors suggest continuance, behavior, and affect as three essential components of distributor commitment and hypothesize that each component of commitment has a different set of driving forces. A proposed model was tested with data collected in a national survey of industrial distributors. Estimation results indicate that (a) three suggested components are interrelated, yet distinctive, elements of distributor commitment, and (b) each component of distributor commitment is driven by a different set of driving forces. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

The Role of Commitment in Collective Action: Comparing the Organizational Behavior and Rational Choice Perspectives

Powerful environmental forces are transforming the way organizations operate. In particular, forces such as innovations in information technology, demographic changes, and globalization (Drucker, 1988; Naisbitt, 1982; Peters, 1990; Toffler, 1990) require organizations to reduce their managerial structure, allow greater discretion and responsibility among their front-line employees, and operate more innovatively if they are to survive (Cleveland, 1985; Drucker, 1988; Peters, 1988). The call for such organizational changes is being made for the private as well as the public sector (Barzelay, 1992; DiIulio, Garvey, & Kettl, 1993; National Academy of Public Administration, 1993; Osborne & Gaebler, 1992). As a result, the move is away from more rigid and control-oriented bureaucracies to decentralized and mission-driven organizations that are more responsive to their local constituents and environments. In these organizations, effective collective action depends to a large extent on the active involvement of self-motivated participants. The commitment organizational participants-to each other and to the organization itself - becomes a critical and, at times, even necessary, mechanism for directing their behavior toward collective goal accomplishment. In recent years, the role of commitment in collective action(1) has received increasing attention from the social sciences. In particular, this attention is apparent in two distinct literatures, namely, literature based in the field of organizational behavior (OB) and the portion of the rational choice literature identified as the new institutionalism.(2) While each of the two perspectives analyzes commitment through different theoretical lenses, both develop similar arguments about how informal social mechanisms affect the pattern of interaction among participants and their commitment to collective action. The common interest in commitment and informal social mechanisms provides a reference point for linking insights from both of these perspectives. The similarities between the two perspectives are evident when one examines the role of commitment in shaping the effectiveness of public schools, in particular those that have adopted school-based management (SBM). Consistent with the organizational trends noted above, SBM entails a shift in decision-making authority away from a school district's central administration to constituents at the school level (Swanson, 1989). It is a popular reform mechanism that has received considerable public attention over the last decade, as school districts across the country have taken steps to decentralize decision making to their individual schools. The objective of SBM is to improve school functioning by allowing school-level participants - staff, teachers, and parents - to have greater influence on decisions in selected domains. These participants' commitment to collective objectives becomes a critical factor affecting the outcome of SBM. Hence, school-based management provides a good case for examining the role of commitment in collective action. We begin this article by first discussing the concept of commitment as addressed from each of the two prospective, organizational behavior and rational choice. Next, we compare the perspectives in terms of their differences in foci and assumptions regarding the role of commitment in collective action. Then we examine several general strategies - social processes, leadership, and structural design - for fostering commitment in organizational settings. Finally, we discuss these strategies as they are used in school-based management, drawing on ideas from the two perspectives to analyze the role of commitment in this situation. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our analysis for future research on organizations and collective action. The Concept of Commitment The field of organizational behavior examines behavior in and of organizational systems. …