Multinational Comparative Study Research Articles

The Burden and Coping Mechanisms among the Caregivers of Immobilized Elderly Patients: A Multinational Comparative Study.

Caregivers face various difficulties that put a huge burden on them, especially when dealing with immobilized elderly patients. This study aimed to compare caregivers' burdens and coping mechanisms during the care of immobilized elderly patients. The descriptive comparative design was adopted for this study in Najran City, Saudi Arabia, and Damanhour City, Egypt, in 2022. A total of 104 caregivers were conveniently selected over 3 months of data collection using the following tools: Elderly Patient Caregivers' Knowledge, Elderly Caregivers' Practice, The Lazarus Coping Strategies Questionnaire, and Zarit Burden Inventory. The authors used descriptive statistics (mean, frequencies, and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (Chi-square, t-test, Pearson correlation, Spearman correlation) to analyze the data. In Najran, 57.70% of caregivers experienced a mild level of burden compared to 30.80% in Damanhour, indicating a significant difference in the total level of burden between the two groups (X2 = 7.90, df = 2, p = 0.01). The mean coping mechanism score among caregivers in Najran is significantly higher than the mean among caregivers in Damanhour. The duration of providing the care significantly influenced the total level of burden, the total level of practice, the coping mechanism, the income, the availability of health care, and the presence of additional caregivers, with all p values <0.05. It is essential to integrate nurses and caregivers into educational programs to help them cope effectively with the challenging duties they undertake. Based on the findings of this study, interventional studies to reduce the burden and improve coping among caregivers are recommended.

The Relationship of Health-Related Behavior and Chronic Diseases with Self-Rated Health, a Multinational Comparison among Adult Population: Evidence from EASS 2010 Health Survey.

Background:Multinational comparative study of the relation of self-rated health (SRH) with health behavior and chronic disease can ease our perception of differences in health factors between countries. We aimed to compare the relation of SRH with health behavior and chronic disease.Methods:We attempted to analyze larger data obtained from 2010 East-Asian-Social-Survey and to compare the situation of China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan (Special administrative region of China). As these are neighboring regions having both similarities and differences in socio-demographic aspects as well as environment and cultures. The study was composed of 10,137 participants. Univariate and multiple regression analyses were employed to estimate the Odds Ratio (OR) and 95% Confidence intervals (CI) for SRH and health-related behavior, sociodemographic, chronic disease variables.Results:The number of individuals reporting Good SRH was 6,648, with China having the higher proportion (P=<0.05). There were 3642 (35.9%) who suffered from chronic diseases. Overall, males, age group 18–30, nonreligious, higher education levels, singles, and those living in big cities had higher percentage of good health. Those without chronic diseases had higher percentage of good health (P=<0.05). The consumption of alcohol was associated with poor SRH in all regions. While less physical activity, diabetes mellitus, and ischemic heart disease were also responsible for poor SRH in all regions (P=<0.05).Conclusion:Several health-related behaviors and chronic diseases are associated with poor self-rated health. Effective public health strategies, in promoting healthy lifestyles, and disease prevention intervention should be encouraged.

Nurses' Attitudes Toward the Importance of Families in Nursing Care: A Multinational Comparative Study.

The aim of this study was to examine nurses’ attitudes about the importance of family in nursing care from an international perspective. We used a cross-sectional design. Data were collected online using the Families’ Importance in Nursing Care—Nurses’ Attitudes (FINC-NA) questionnaire from a convenience sample of 740 registered nurses across health care sectors from Sweden, Ontario, Canada, and Hong Kong, China. Mean levels of attitudes were compared across countries using analysis of variance (ANOVA). Multiple regression was used to identify factors associated with nurses’ attitudes and to test for interactions by country. Factors associated with nurse attitudes included country, age, gender, and several practice areas. On average, nurses working in Hong Kong had less positive attitudes compared with Canada and Sweden. The effects of predictors on nurses’ attitudes did not vary by country. Knowledge of nurses’ attitudes could lead to the development of tailored interventions that facilitate nurse-family partnerships in care.

A phenomenological exploration of children’s school life and well-being

This phenomenological study explored children’s school life as it relates to their subjective well-being in the United States (N = 22). It was conducted as part of a multinational comparative study of children’s well-being following a semi-structured qualitative interview protocol. Rural and urban children (aged 8–12 years) participated in an interview and mapping exercise that prompted them to illustrate and then describe aspects of and influences on their well-being. Interviews were transcribed and analysed using a phenomenological approach in which child verbal responses and mapped responses were analysed to explore (1) the essence of well-being from children’s perspectives and (2) their perceptions of the role that school life and context played in their well-being. Three main themes emerged. Theme 1 was that school climate is important to their well-being. Subthemes included positive environment, school safety, appropriate teacher dispositions, and supportive programming and policies. Theme 2 was that relationships within the school context are important to their well-being. Subthemes included relationships with teachers, peers and other school personnel. Theme 3 was that children view the school setting as one context, two worlds: academic and social. Subthemes included the importance of academic life, the importance of peer interactions that are unstructured in the school context, and the challenge of academic and peer worlds colliding. Results are discussed in regard to children’s self-report of the hedonic and eudaimonic aspects of their well-being, and in relation to what is currently known about the importance of school environments. Implications, strengths and weaknesses of the study are discussed.

834 - Trainee burnout in the United States and Europe: A multi-national comparative study

834 - Trainee burnout in the United States and Europe: A multi-national comparative study

A multinational comparative study highlighting students' travel motivations and touristic trends

The aim of this study is to assess differences and commonalities in the student travel market across different countries and to determine typologies based on touristic attractions/activities. The study generates groups based on travel motivations largely drawn from the Leisure Motivation Scale and other relevant tourism literature. To achieve the aim, data is obtained from a sample of 3431 respondents from eight countries, i.e. Brazil, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, Portugal, Spain, Thailand, and the USA. The data are analysed using two principal component analyses (PCAs), a combination of two clustering methods: the Ward method, and an optimal solution method, the K-Means method. Seven clusters based on touristic attractions/activities emerged. The findings from the current study suggest that perceptions of touristic attractions/activities are different by country although some similarities do exist. Besides providing important new insights for theory, this large comparative study also suggests synergies that could be generated from the information for both destination marketers and managers.

Cohort-Controlled Comparison of Umbilical Cord Blood Transplantation Using Carlecortemcel-L, a Single Progenitor–Enriched Cord Blood, to Double Cord Blood Unit Transplantation

Umbilical cord blood (UCB) transplantation has a high early mortality rate primarily related to transplanted stem cell dose. To decrease early mortality and enhance engraftment, a portion of selected cord blood units (20% to 50%) was expanded with cytokines and the copper chelator tetraethylenepentamine (carlecortemcel-L) and transplanted with the unmanipulated fraction after myeloablative conditioning. The primary endpoint was 100-day survival, which was compared with a contemporaneous double-unit cord blood transplantation (DUCBT) group. We enrolled 101 patients at 25 sites; the DUCBT comparison (n = 295) was selected from international registries using study eligibility criteria. Baseline carlecortemcel-L study group unit nucleated cell (NC) and CD34+ were 3.06 × 107 cell dose/kg and 1.64 × 105 cell dose/kg. Median NC and CD34+ fold expansion were 400 and 77, with a mean total CD34 infused of 9.7 × 105/kg. The 100-day survival was 84.2% for the carlecortemcel-L study group versus 74.6% for the DUCBT group (odds ratio, .50; 95% CI, .26 to .95; P = .035). Survival at day 180 was similar for the 2 groups; the major cause of death after day 100 was opportunistic infections. Faster median neutrophil (21 days versus 28 days; P < .0001), and platelet (54 days versus 105 days; P = .008) engraftment was seen in the carlecortemcel-L study group; acute and chronic graft-versus-host disease rates were similar. In this multinational comparative study, transplanting expanded CD34+ stem cells from a portion of a single UCB unit, with the remaining unmanipulated fraction improved 100-day survival compared with DUCBT control patients while facilitating myeloid and platelet engraftment. This trial was registered at www.clinicaltrials.gov as #NCT00469729.

Stock Market Autoregressive Dynamics: A Multinational Comparative Study with Quantile Regression

We study the nonlinear autoregressive dynamics of stock index returns in seven major advanced economies (G7) and China. The quantile autoregression model (QAR) enables us to investigate the autocorrelation across the whole spectrum of return distribution, which provides more insightful conditional information on multinational stock market dynamics than conventional time series models. The relation between index return and contemporaneous trading volume is also investigated. While prior studies have mixed results on stock market autocorrelations, we find that the dynamics is usually state dependent. The results for G7 stock markets exhibit conspicuous similarities, but they are in manifest contrast to the findings on Chinese stock markets.

UPPER GASTROINTESTINAL MALIGNANCIES: 6976 ENDOSCOPY REVIEW IN A MULTINATIONAL STUDY

IntroductionThis is a multinational study to compare the prevalence of upper gastrointestinal malignant and pre-malignant conditions in three different populations. The populations involved in this study included British, Japanese and...

PTH-059 Upper Gastrointestinal Malignancies: 6976 Endoscopy Review in a Multinational Study

IntroductionTo compare the prevalence of upper gastrointestinal (UGI) malignant and premalignant conditions in three separate populations; British, Japanese and Arabian.Methods6976 Upper Gastrointestinal (UGI) endoscopies were retrospectively reviewed in a multinational...

Contemporary Drug Problems, Then and Now: An Editor's Envoi

The first issue of Contemporary Drug Problems appeared in 1971 . It was founded by Laurence London, its first editor, and Martin Greenberg, then and now its publisher, as (as its front cover continued to state long after its contents had broadened out). London's editorial on pages 1 and 2 of the first issue promised that while it would be legally oriented, it will not be traditional law journal, either in style or in content. It was to be a scholarly, thoughtful and authoritative journal whose principal goal will be to provide practice guidance and information particularly to attorneys, but also to various other professions and agency staff. Already the first issue included not only practical legal articles with titles such as New frontiers in the defense of drug cases, but also articles with farther reach, such as Regulating and controlling marijuana: A first attempt.The early issues of the journal were product of their time - on the one hand, about seven years after the advent of the first wave of countercultural drug use in the U.S. and three years after the San Francisco Summer of Love, and on the other hand, in the same year that President Nixon declared an official war on and declared drug abuse as Public Enemy No. 1. The conflict between these two cultural-political forces produced burgeoning demand in the U.S. for drug case defense lawyers, the primary authence for Contemporary Drug Problems at its inception.In this context, Contemporary Drug Problems began as very United States-oriented journal, and continued as such for its first nine volumes. But within this framing, the focus on illicit drugs and the law soon began to broaden. Articles reflecting treatment policy constituency made an early appearance. Alcohol made its first appearance in an article's title in the last issue of volume 2, in 1973 (Planning alcoholism services); by volume 4 there was an article on Combined treatment of alcoholics and drug addicts. History, political economy, policy, and sociology all also made their appearance in the early volumes - along with discussion of conceptual issues (Is alcoholism really disease? by D. L. Davies in volume 3). The transition from legal journal to more general social science and policy journal was already under way by volume 4.In 1977, alcohol policy issues made their first appearance (Prohibition of youthful drinking: A need for reform). Volume 9, for 1 980, saw the first issue entirely devoted to alcohol articles. The advent of alcohol meant that with volume 10 the journal became much more international in scope - six countries that year, instead of, essentially, one previously - reflecting the stronger international orientation of alcohol than of drug studies at the time. Recent volumes reflect further internationalization of the journal, in line with trends in the literature: by rough count, volume 35 (2008) had articles about 15 countries, by scholars from 12; volume 36 had articles about 13 countries and several analyses from multinational comparative study, by authors from 13 countries.In 1977, London had begun to bring in guest editors for particular issues. …

Predictors of E-commerce Use of the Internet: A Multinational Comparative Study – the U.S., the Netherlands, and S. Korea

With a focus on online consumer behavior in highly-wired countries (the United States, the Netherlands, and South Korea), this study attempted to identify and compare predictors of e-commerce activities in three areas — finance, product, and entertainment. The cross-national comparison revealed that users in each country did not have a compatible pattern of predictors in e-commerce activities. Although an age, web experiences, and a motivation of having less pressure were common predictors, there existed different social and cultural impacts on online consumer behaviors in each country. The main implication of this exploratory crossnational comparative study for e-commerce is that there are both global and local determinants of online consumer behavior. Therefore, researchers and practitioners should consider both

Reactive and undifferentiated arthritis in North Africa: use of PCR for detection of Chlamydia trachomatis

Little is known about the possible role of Chlamydia in patients with reactive or unclassified arthritis in North Africa. This study used polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to survey this population. In addition, we compared the results in three different laboratories for PCR analyses for Chlamydia trachomatis (Ct) in synovial fluid (SF) and tissue (ST) from these North African patients with reactive arthritis (ReA), undifferentiated arthritis (UA), and in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and osteoarthritis (OA). Eight ReA (six posturethritic, two postenteritic), 23 UA, 13 OA, and 12 RA patients were studied in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. Serum, SF, and ST were obtained from each patient. Ct-PCR was performed in the three different laboratories and compared to Ct-serology [microimmunofluorescence (MIF) and anti-hsp60 enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA)] performed in one laboratory. The rate of Ct-PCR positivity in SF/ST was low: none out of the eight ReA and three out of 23 UA patients. In the controls, Ct DNA was detected in two OA SF and in one RA SF. There was no concordance for Ct-PCR positivity between the three laboratories. MIF suggested previous Ct infection (IgG-positive) in two out of five posturethritic ReA, none out of one postenteritic ReA, one out of 17 UA, and nine out of 21 RA/OA patients tested. No MIF-positive patient was PCR-positive from SF or ST. However, anti-hsp60 IgG was detected in all four out of four patients positive by PCR and in 11 out of 44 PCR-negative patients (p = 0.002). In this multinational comparative study, the rate of Ct-PCR-positive synovial specimens in North African ReA/UA patients was low. Concordance among the three PCR testing laboratories was poor indicating the need for test standardization. All Ct-PCR-positive patients were found positive by anti-hsp60 IgG serology.

Commentary: How does socioeconomic disadvantage during childhood damage health in adulthood? Testing psychosocial pathways

The multi-national comparative study by Power and colleagues 1 provides strong evidence for a significant correlation between low socioeconomic status (SES) and health risk in adulthood. As expected, adult SES was related to obesity and smoking behaviours. However, low childhood SES was also significantly related to adult health risk, even after adjusting for contemporaneous adult SES. The evidence supports a long-term association between childhood SES and adult health that is not simply due to the life course continuity of low SES. To obtain such broadly consistent findings in seven samples from six countries is impressive, more so, because of the many factors that work against this outcome (e.g. historical, cultural, sampling, and measurement differences across studies). The challenge is now to explain the reasons for these disparities, ideally by mapping the developmental pathways leading from childhood socioeconomic adversity to poor adult health. Currently little is known about mediating pathways, mainly because most datasets documenting health inequalities have limited data to explore possible explanations for these inequalities. 2 The key limiting factor has been the lack of longitudinal birth cohort studies that contain detailed life history data from birth to adulthood and direct physiological assessments of health. To date, empirical work has been limited by several factors. First, the majority of research on the psychosocial correlates of physical health has been crosssectional. In contrast, longitudinal methods and within-subject comparisons offer a stronger strategy for inferring developmental influences. Second, many available longitudinal studies have suffered high attrition rates, selectively losing unhealthy participants. Third, reported associations between psychosocial risk factors (e.g. psychiatric symptoms) and health outcomes (e.g. obesity) often neglect to control for confounding factors (e.g. medical illness). Fourth, and more generally, epidemiological studies with good health data tend to have weak psychosocial data and vice versa. Gold standard measurement of psychosocial variables is paramount, as are

Loneliness and social adaptation in Brazilian, Canadian, Chinese and Italian children: a multi-national comparative study.

Research on children's loneliness has been conducted mostly in Western, especially North American, cultures. The purpose of the study was to examine relations between loneliness and social adaptation among children and adolescents in four different societies. A total of 2263 children from grade 3 to grade 6, aged 9 to 12 years, in Brazil, Canada, P. R. China, and Southern Italy participated in the study. The participants completed a self-report measure of loneliness. Information about social behaviors and peer relationships was obtained from peer assessments. Multi-group analyses revealed that the overall patterns of relations among social behaviors, peer relationships and loneliness differed across the samples. Specifically, sociability was positively associated with peer relationships and made negative indirect contributions to loneliness through peer relationships in all four samples. Aggression made significant indirect contributions to the prediction of loneliness in Chinese children, but not in other samples. Shyness-sensitivity was associated with loneliness directly in Brazilian and Italian children and indirectly through peer relationships in Canadian children, but not associated with loneliness in Chinese children. The results suggest that the nature of children's loneliness may be affected by the broad socio-cultural context.

Sports sponsorship management: a multinational comparative study

While sports sponsorship has attracted an increasing interest as well as growing investments from marketing professionals, research reported in the literature has failed to investigate empirically either the process by which it is managed, or, possible influencing factors such as country of operation or industry sector. This study relies on a survey of sponsorship decision-makers in the USA and Australia and examines the differences and similarities expressed by two samples in relation to objectives, decision-making process and outcome evaluation. A number of hypotheses relating to respondents' industry background and related sponsorship objectives and performance measurements were tested and, in some cases, supported. Overall, the results reveal a coming of age of this promotional tool, with the USA seemingly leading the way in terms of managerial expertise.

The economic and sociological problems of tourism in Europe. A multinational comparative study: (TSM) By J. Bystrzanowski. Estudios Turisticos (Instituto Espanol de Turismo, Ministerio de Comercio y Turismo, Madrid-4, Spain), 1977 (3/4):29–40

The economic and sociological problems of tourism in Europe. A multinational comparative study: (TSM) By J. Bystrzanowski. Estudios Turisticos (Instituto Espanol de Turismo, Ministerio de Comercio y Turismo, Madrid-4, Spain), 1977 (3/4):29–40

The Migration and Return of Professionals

Under the auspices of the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) a multi-national comparative study is being undertaken of the migration and return of professionals from developing countries who study in developed countries. This paper summarizes the results obtained from analysis of the responses to questionnaires given to: between 500 and 2,000 foreign students in three industrially developed countries; between 100 and 400 foreign professionals working in these developed countries; and between 200 and 600 professionals who have returned to seven developing countries after education in a developed country. Questionnaires are being given to the same three groups of individuals in several other countries, as well as to between 50 and 100 employers in several of the developing countries.1