Multi-level Understanding Research Articles

The CAMPUS Study: A Systems Approach to Alcohol-Involved Sexual Violence on College Campuses.

Developing a better mechanistic and multilevel understanding of sexual violence on college campuses can help us evaluate and implement existing interventions, as well as develop new ones. We brought together scientists, practitioners, and college students to collaboratively characterize the systems surrounding alcohol-involved sexual violence on college campuses. Using collaborative model-building, they created models that highlight interconnected and multilevel influences and consequences of sexual violence. Collaborative model-building activities involved two collaborator groups (twelve students and eight practitioners) and a core modeling team (seven scientists). Each collaborator group met for four two-hour sessions to develop systems models of alcohol use and sexual violence on college campuses. The core modeling team facilitated each session and worked between sessions to ensure the successful development of the model. Specific activities included identifying and prioritizing the causes and consequences of alcohol-involved sexual violence, characterizing the causal relationships between these factors, and developing and modifying causal loop diagrams to illustrate these relationships. Both students and practitioners identified key causes and consequences, including both individual-level (e.g., drinking to intoxication) and campus-level (e.g., institutional support for survivors) constructs. Both groups identified the causal relationships between these variables and identified salient, modifiable mechanisms for reducing alcohol-involved sexual violence. The collaborative model-building process successfully included diverse collaborator voices, integrating influential factors across multiple social-ecological levels. This iterative and capability-building approach can bridge intensive modeling efforts with the implementation and development of more effective sexual violence interventions.

Legal analysis of different approaches to understanding the phenomenon of miscarriage of justice in administrative proceedings

The article is devoted to the study of various approaches to understanding the phenomenon of a miscarriage of justice in administrative proceedings. The author establishes that a miscarriage of justice in administrative proceedings can be referred to in several senses. Firstly, a miscarriage of justice in administrative proceedings can be understood in a narrow sense, depending on the aspect specifically chosen (epistemological, praxeological and teleological) or their combination. The epistemological aspect of understanding a miscarriage of justice in administrative proceedings relates to the processes of mental and cognitive activity of a judge. Within this aspect, a miscarriage of justice is considered as a result of a defect in the subject matter of a judge’s cognitive actions, which may be manifested in incorrect processing or interpretation of information. The praxeological aspect of understanding a miscarriage of justice in administrative proceedings focuses on the compliance of the judge’s actions with the requirements and procedural rules set forth in the law. In this context, a miscarriage of justice is manifested as an unlawful act (action or inaction) of a judge, which consists in the judge’s incorrect application of substantive law or violation of procedural law. The teleological aspect of understanding a miscarriage of justice relates to the purposes of administrative proceedings. Under this approach, a miscarriage of justice is defined as a result that does not meet the goals of administrative proceedings. The interconnection and interdependence of the epistemological, praxeological and teleological aspects forms a comprehensive understanding, a holistic perception of this phenomenon in administrative proceedings. This integration of different perspectives makes it possible to characterize a miscarriage of justice by providing a deep and multilevel understanding of its nature. In a broad sense, a miscarriage of justice in administrative proceedings can be understood as a judge’s procedural activity related to the misperception, analysis or reproduction of legal norms, which is reflected in the adoption of a court decision that is unable to achieve the purpose of administrative proceedings.

Imaging genetics of language network functional connectivity reveals links with language-related abilities, dyslexia and handedness

Language is supported by a distributed network of brain regions with a particular contribution from the left hemisphere. A multi-level understanding of this network requires studying its genetic architecture. We used resting-state imaging data from 29,681 participants (UK Biobank) to measure connectivity between 18 left-hemisphere regions involved in multimodal sentence-level processing, as well as their right-hemisphere homotopes, and interhemispheric connections. Multivariate genome-wide association analysis of this total network, based on genetic variants with population frequencies >1%, identified 14 genomic loci, of which three were also associated with asymmetry of intrahemispheric connectivity. Polygenic dispositions to lower language-related abilities, dyslexia and left-handedness were associated with generally reduced leftward asymmetry of functional connectivity. Exome-wide association analysis based on rare, protein-altering variants (frequencies <1%) suggested 7 additional genes. These findings shed new light on genetic contributions to language network organization and related behavioural traits.

The Role of Employee Ownership, Financial Participation, and Decision‐Making in Corporate Governance: A Multilevel Review and Research Agenda

ABSTRACTResearch Question/IssueThe allocation of return and control rights to employees has been somewhat overlooked in governance literature, but it has garnered interest from scholars across various fields. Our analysis of five decades of research integrates and juxtaposes theory and evidence from three independent yet intertwined domains: employee ownership, financial participation, and decision‐making. Our work synthesizes an extensive body of past and current findings and introduces a multilevel contingency framework to formulate novel theoretical, methodological, and contextual remedies.Research Findings/InsightsWe conducted a multilevel analysis of 184 articles published in reputable journals. Our results reveal complementary and substitutive relationships between employee financial participation and decision‐making and show that various contextual variables operating at different levels (i.e., individual, company and country) jointly impact employees behaviors and firm outcomes. Our findings help explain the mixed or ambiguous results of previous studies and offer novel theoretical and methodological pathways for future research.Theoretical/Academic ImplicationsOur study invites scholars to further investigate the antecedents and consequences of employee ownership, financial participation and decision‐making. Specifically, we recommend adopting theories and methods that illuminate the complex nature of the employee ownership construct, develop a multilevel understanding of the phenomenon, and analyze the moderating effects of various contextual variables.Practitioner/Policy ImplicationsInsights from our review can assist practitioners and policymakers in designing plans that allocate either one or both of ownership rights to employees, enhancing their understanding of the role and impact of diverse contextual factors operating at various levels.

Beyond ‘Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay’: the simultaneous impacts of co-agency in migration

ABSTRACT What are the impacts of migration on those directly involved in it: those who stay and those who leave? The deceptive simplicity of this question becomes obvious once we look at the diverse and mutually contradictory empirical answers it has received. On the basis of Web of Science data, we provide a mapping of existing studies on migration’s impacts, which reveals a clearly pronounced modularity between different disciplines and theoretical approaches, with psychological studies on migrants’ mental health, political science studies of remittances, and economic studies on labour market impacts, for example, often speaking at cross-purposes and not engaging in a meaningful dialogue. To reconcile available evidence and bridge the gap between different disciplines and approaches, in this Special Issue, we put forward the concept of co-agency that underlines the dynamic, relational, co-constructed, and co-performed nature of migration and its impacts. The concept of co-agency draws attention not to what happens to actors involved in migration, but on what they attain, what they perform, ultimately: what they do through migration. Furthermore, co-agency emphasises what actors involved in migration – both those who leave and those who stay behind – do together, rejecting a distinction between migrants as active and those staying behind as simply passive recipients of remittances, development, etc. Focusing on the co-agency of a wide variety of actors – both individual and collective, our conceptual approach emphasises the need to study the interplay between simultaneous impacts of co-agency in migration – including, but not limited to, health impacts on individuals, care-provision impacts on families, and development and policy impacts on states as collective actors. Ultimately, rather than promoting migration-pessimism or migration-optimism, we argue for a nuanced multi-level understanding of the complex interacting impacts of co-agency in migration.

The Fair Share – Multilevel Distributive Justice as Cross-Level Moderator for the Impact of Restructuring Perceptions

ABSTRACT Drawing on the conservation of resources (COR) theory, we analyze multilevel restructuring impact perceptions and their association with emotional exhaustion. We explore whether distributive justice at the individual (perceived distributive justice), team, and organizational levels (distributive justice climate) moderates the association of restructuring impact and emotional exhaustion. In total, 1523 employees, nested in 166 teams and 26 organizations, participated in our study. To test our hypotheses, we used Bayesian multilevel modelling. We found positive associations between restructuring impact and emotional exhaustion on all three organizational levels. Distributive justice at the team level cross-level moderated the relationship between restructuring impact and emotional exhaustion at the individual level. Our study contributes a multilevel understanding of restructuring impact, possible consequences for emotional exhaustion, and the moderating role of distributive justice. Furthermore, it substantiates COR theory’s caravan passageway notion, which as yet lacks empirical support. MAD statement This article empirically tests the Conservation of Resources Theory’s central concept of caravan passageways, proving cross-level resource bundles can buffer restructuring impact. Using Bayesian multilevel modelling we show, that restructuring impact and emotional exhaustion are related to each other on various organizational levels and that multilevel distributive justice constitutes resource caravans, which provide support for individuals. We add to change literature by contributing to the understanding of complex cross-level restructuring conditions, and the meaningfulness of higher-order contextual factors for individual outcomes. This is particularly relevant in terms of designing working conditions in order to avoid negative restructuring consequences for individuals.

Exploring Teen Suicide Rates through the Lens of Macro Risk Factors

ABSTRACT As the second leading cause of death in teenagers, suicide has been a consistent public health issue for the past decade. Our goal is to understand the relationship between increasing teen suicide rates by state policies. We explore links between macro-level risk factors and state suicide rates. Risk factors explored include state behavioral health spending, child access policies for firearms, insurance coverage, tax revenue from tobacco and alcohol, school spending per pupil, pupil support services funding, and teacher spending. This research shows a relationship between pupil support spending, any child access law, required legislation, and lower teen suicide rates. The results from this study can aid in the understanding of macro-level influences on teen suicide; empowering advocates, lawmakers, and researchers to develop informed interventions and policies. Increasing multi-level understanding around suicide can provide an opportunity to slow or stop suicide rates.

Catastrophic health expenditures, insurance churn, and non-employment among women with breast cancer.

Breast cancer treatment and survivorship entails a complex and expensive continuum of subspecialty care. Our objectives were to assess catastrophic health expenditures, insurance churn, and non-employment among women younger than 65 years who reported a diagnosis of breast cancer. We also evaluated changes in these outcomes related to implementation of the Affordable Care Act. The data source for this study was the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (2005-2019), which is a national annual cross-sectional survey of families, providers, and insurers in the United States. To assess the impact of breast cancer, comparisons were made with a matched cohort of women without cancer. We estimated predicted marginal probabilities to quantify the effects of covariates in models for catastrophic health expenditures, insurance churn, and non-employment. We identified 1490 respondents younger than 65 years who received care related to breast cancer during the study period, representing a weight-adjusted annual mean of 1 062 129 patients. Approximately 31.8% of women with breast cancer reported health expenditures in excess of 10% of their annual income. In models, the proportion of women with breast cancer who experienced catastrophic health expenditures and non-employment was inversely related to increasing income. During Affordable Care Act implementation, mean number of months of uninsurance decreased and expenditures increased among breast cancer patients. Our study underscores the impact of breast cancer on financial security and opportunities for patients and their families. A multilevel understanding of these issues is needed to design effective and equitable strategies to improve quality of life and survivorship.

A molecular view of single-atom catalysis toward carbon dioxide conversion.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) conversion has attracted much interest recently owing to its importance in both scientific research and practical applications, but still faces a bottleneck in selectivity control and mechanism understanding owing to diversified active sites. Single-atom catalysts (SACs) featuring isolated and well-defined active centers are proved to not only exhibit unparalleled performances in various processes of CO2 conversion but also provide excellent research paradigms by circumventing the heterogeneity of active sites. Herein, we will not only critically review recent progress on the application of SACs in chemical CO2 conversion based on previous comprehension of general thermodynamics and kinetics, but also try to offer a multi-level understanding of SACs from a molecular point of view in terms of the central atom, coordination environment, support effect and synergy with other active centers. Meanwhile, crucial scientific issues of research methods will be also identified and highlighted, followed by a future outlook that is expected to present potential aspects of further developments.

Voice is not enough: A multilevel model of how frontline voice can reach implementation.

When frontline employees' voice is not heard and their ideas are not implemented, patient care is negatively impacted, and frontline employees are more likely to experience burnout and less likely to engage in subsequent change efforts. Theory about what happens to voiced ideas during the critical stage after employees voice and before performance outcomes are measured is nascent. We draw on research from organizational behavior, human resource management, and health care management to develop a multilevel model encompassing practices and processes at the individual, team, managerial, and organizational levels that, together, provide a nuanced picture of how voiced ideas reach implementation. We offer a multilevel understanding of the practices and processes through which voice leads to implementation; illuminate the importance of thinking temporally about voice to better understand the complex dynamics required for voiced ideas to reach implementation; and highlight factors that help ideas reach implementation, including voicers' personal and interpersonal tactics with colleagues and managers, as well as senior leaders modeling and explaining norms and making voice-related processes and practices transparent. Our model provides evidence-based strategies for bolstering rejected or ignored ideas, including how voicers (re)articulate ideas, whom they enlist to advance ideas, how they engage peers and managers to improve conditions for intentional experimentation, and how they take advantage of listening structures and other formal mechanisms for voice. Our model also highlights how senior leaders can make change processes and priorities explicit and transparent.

Leader interlocks in Swedish civil society organizations

This paper contributes to the understanding of power structures in civil society by the exploring organizational connections of leaders holding multiple top-level leadership positions in resource-rich civil society organizations (CSOs) in Sweden. Based on unique association network data among national level CSOs collected in 2018, we discuss possible explanations behind the observed clusters of organizational connections via leader interlocks. Our results show that the resource-rich, national CSOs in Sweden are highly connected with each other via leader interlocks. We find that working within similar policy areas, sharing similar ideological backgrounds or historical legacies, and being a member of sectoral umbrella organizations or federations are among the salient characteristics of CSOs connected via leader interlocks. We suggest a multilevel understanding of leader interlocks among CSOs, including those at the individual level, as an avenue for further research. The focus on the individual level explanation would allow an understanding of the field of CSOs through the lens of an elite phenomenon rather than an organization-centered view.

A Methodology for the Study of Interspecific Cohabitation Issues in the City

The present article will introduce a proposition of semiotic methodology that can be used to diagnose cohabitation issues in cities between human inhabitants and non-human liminals. This methodology is built on a few sets of data that should be easy to obtain in any important city, and can therefore be utilised in a variety of situations. The different sets of data allow us to map the cohabitation semiosphere (following Hoffmeyer’s meaning of the term) of the situation along three axes: the materiality of the situation, the symbolic significance of the relationship, and the emotional significance of the interaction. These three aspects allow us to see gaps, paradoxes and points of consistency, enabling complex and multi-level understanding of the situation.

Gender neutral HPV vaccination programs: Reconsidering policies to expand cancer prevention globally.

Human papillomavirus (HPV) infection is responsible for many cancers in both women and men. Cervical cancer, caused by HPV, is the fourth most common cancer among women worldwide, even though it is one of the most preventable cancers. Prevention efforts include HPV vaccination, however these programs remain nascent in many countries. In 2020 the World Health Assembly adopted the Global Strategy for cervical cancer elimination including a goal to fully vaccinate 90% of girls with the HPV vaccine by the age of 15. However, very few countries have reached even 70% coverage. Increased vaccine availability in the future may allow the opportunity to vaccinate more people. This could add to the feasibility of introducing gender-neutral HPV vaccination programs. Adopting a gender-neutral HPV vaccine approach will reduce HPV infections transmitted among the population, combat misinformation, minimize vaccine-related stigma, and promote gender equity. We propose approaching programmatic research through a gender-neutral lens to reduce HPV infections and cancers and promote gender equality. In order to design more effective policies and programs, a better understanding of the perspectives of clients, clinicians, community leaders, and policy-makers is needed. A clear, multi-level understanding of these stakeholders' views will facilitate the development of target policy and programs aimed at addressing common barriers and optimizing uptake. Given the benefit of developing gender-neutral HPV vaccination programs to eliminate cervical cancer and address other HPV associated cancers, we must build knowledge through implementation research around this topic to inform policy-makers and funders for future policy shifts.

Community-, network-, and individual-level predictors of uptake of medication for opioid use disorder among young people who inject drugs and their networks: A multilevel analysis

BackgroundOpioid use has been increasing at alarming rates over the past 15 years, yet uptake of medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD) remains low. Much of the research on individual characteristics predicting MOUD uptake is equivocal, and there is a dearth of research on setting-level and network-level characteristics that predict MOUD uptake. Towards a more holistic, multilevel understanding, we explore individual-level, network-level, and community-level characteristics associated with MOUD uptake. MethodsBaseline data from a longitudinal study of young people who inject drugs and their injection and support network members living in Chicago (N = 165) was used to conduct cross-sectional multilevel logistic regression analyses to examine associations between MOUD uptake and a set of potential predictors at the individual-, network-, and community-levels that were chosen based on theoretical relevance or support from previous empirical studies. ResultsStigma at both the individual and community levels was significantly associated with MOUD uptake (though in different directions). Greater individual-level stigma was associated with a higher likelihood of MOUD uptake, while having a more normatively stigmatizing community environment was associated with a lower likelihood of MOUD uptake. Using heroin and cocaine simultaneously and having a larger support network were associated with a greater likelihood of MOUD uptake. ConclusionsThe present study’s holistic, multilevel approach identified three individual-level characteristics, one network-level characteristic, and one community-level characteristic associated with MOUD uptake. However, more research is needed examining multilevel predictors, to help with developing interventions addressing barriers to MOUD use at multiple levels of influence.

A multi-level understanding of trust development in contexts of blurred organizational boundaries: the case of crowdfunding

Are trust development processes in settings of blurred organizational boundaries different from those in conventional organizational settings, and if so, how? Taking the crowdfunding campaigns of the Fin-Tech Monzo as examples of settings of blurred organizational boundaries, we analyze how the three main trust forms (individual, organizational, and institutional trust) emerge and interact in the campaigns’ online discourse and develop a process model that captures distinct trust development dynamics. We contribute to the trust literature by highlighting increased dynamics and co-existence of trust forms, and by showing that the validation of extra-organizational boundary spanners is crucial to compensate for a missing personal interaction in settings of blurred organizational boundaries. We also contribute to the crowdfunding literature and derive managerial implications.

New understanding of multidrug efflux and permeation in antibiotic resistance, persistence, and heteroresistance.

Antibiotics effective against Gram-negative ESKAPE pathogens are a critical area of unmet need. Infections caused by these pathogens are not only difficult to treat but finding new therapies to overcome Gram-negative resistance is also a challenge. There are not enough antibiotics in development that target the most dangerous pathogens and there are not enough novel drugs in the pipeline. The major obstacle in the antibiotic discovery pipeline is the lack of understanding of how to breach antibiotic permeability barriers of Gram-negative pathogens. These barriers are created by active efflux pumps acting across both the inner and the outer membranes. Overproduction of efflux pumps alone or together with either modification of the outer membrane or antibiotic-inactivating enzymes and target mutations contribute to clinical levels of antibiotics resistance. Recent efforts have generated significant advances in the rationalization of compound efflux and permeation across the cell envelopes of Gram-negative pathogens. Combined with earlier studies and novel mathematical models, these efforts have led to a multilevel understanding of how antibiotics permeate these barriers and how multidrug efflux and permeation contribute to the development of antibiotic resistance and heteroresistance. Here, we discuss the new developments in this area.

Assessing the roles of crops and livestock in nutrient circularity and use efficiency in the agri-food-waste system: A set of indicators applied to an isolated tropical island

Increasing nutrient circularity and use efficiency is a leading topic in the search for more sustainable agri-food-waste systems (AFWS). This paper proposes a method to assess the role of crops and livestock in nutrient circularity and use efficiency in an AFWS. The method is based on the analysis of nutrient flows, a detailed typology of flows, and a set of 3 groups of indicators to characterize (i) circularity between sub-systems, (ii) the process efficiency of the sub-systems and (iii) the efficiency of the AFWS. The method is illustrated using the nitrogen metabolism of the AFWS of a tropical Island, French Reunion Island. The island's current nitrogen use efficiency is very low (0.7%). Crops and livestock are major sources of inefficiencies due to their processes, they account for respectively, 42% and 9% of total AFWS inefficiency. However, crops and livestock are involved in circularity, as they play, respectively, a recycling receiver and recycling supplier role. Among the internal recycling routes between all sub-systems, 41% go to crops and 31% come from livestock. The paper argues that circularity and process efficiency are not objectives per se but means to achieve AFWS efficiency, and that the distinction between these three elements enable a systemic multi-level understanding of the roles of crops and livestock.

Creating a developmental scale to chart the development of psychopathology with different informants and measures across time.

Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) aims to advance a dimensional, multilevel understanding of psychopathology across the life span. Two key challenges exist in applying a developmental perspective to RDoC: First, the most accurate informants for assessing a person's psychopathology often differ across development (e.g., parents and teachers may be better informants of a person's externalizing problems in early childhood, whereas peer- and self-report may also be important to assess in adolescence). Second, many constructs change in their behavioral manifestation across development (i.e., heterotypic continuity). Thus, different informants and measures across time may be necessary to account for the construct's changing manifestation. The challenge of using different informants and measures of a construct across time is ensuring that the same construct is assessed in a comparable way across development. Vertical scaling creates a developmental scale to link scores from changing informants and measures to account for heterotypic continuity and study people's development of psychopathology across the life span. This is the first study that created a developmental scale to assess people's development by putting different informants and measures on the same scale. We examined the development of externalizing problems from ages 2 to 15 years (N = 1,364) using annual ratings by mothers, fathers, teachers, other caregivers, and self-report. The developmental scale linked different informants and measures on the same scale. This allowed us to chart people's growth trajectories and to identify multilevel risk factors, including poor verbal comprehension. Creating a developmental scale may be crucial to advance RDoC's goal of studying the development of psychopathology across the life span. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Exploring Leadership Through Social Networks: The Next Frontier

As conceptualizations of leadership have shifted to embrace the relational, multilevel, and co-constructed nature of leadership, perspectives that incorporate social networks have garnered increasing attention from scholars and practitioners alike. This increasing prevalence of social network approaches in the leadership literature has challenged researchers to change the way they understand and examine leadership. Accordingly, this shift has come with additional complexities in terms of measurement and analysis. Thus, there remain critical issues in both theorizing about and empirically examining leadership from a network perspective that must be addressed to capitalize on the potential strengths of social networks for advancing a relational, contextual, and multilevel understanding of leadership. This panel symposium session aims to propel this mission by focusing on three key goals: 1) highlighting the benefits of a network-based perspectives for advancing leadership theory and methods, 2) clarifying the challenges of employing various types of social network models in the study of leadership, and 3) identifying where leadership and networks research needs to improve and advance in order to continue answering important organizational questions. To do so, we have brought together an esteemed group of panelists to address these questions and provide additional insights to advance the science and practice of social network perspectives of leadership. Their combined expertise will not only provide the audience with a view into state- of-the-art science on leadership and networks, but will also introduce rich insights into the future of social network approaches to leadership.

American and European Guidelines on Disorders of Consciousness: Ethical Challenges of Implementation.

American and European Guidelines on Disorders of Consciousness: Ethical Challenges of Implementation.