Negative Opinions Research Articles

Poor Financial Management in South African Municipalities: Assessing Factors Contributing to Undesirable Audit Opinion

South African municipalities are the entities closest to citizens in local communities across the country, and they are required to provide services to them. The sustainable provision of services is heavily reliant on sound public finance management in all levels of government. It is unfortunate that municipalities in South Africa are failing to effectively manage and use public funds to improve service delivery. Most South African municipalities have received negative audit opinions for years, and their current financial situation is deteriorating year after year. This is concerning for a country that has recently celebrated 30 years of democracy; it is unfortunate that democratic gains are being reversed due to issues within South African municipalities such as irregular, fruitless, and wasteful expenditure, non-compliance, a lack of skills, a lack of consequence management, political infighting, corruption, and poor leadership, to name a few. Citizens are the ones who pay the price at the end of the day when services owed to them are not delivered by municipalities due to poor financial management. The objective of this paper is to examine the causes of unsatisfactory audit outcomes in the South African local government sector and recommend solutions to for improving financial management in South African municipalities. To achieve this objective, a systematic literature review was chosen as the appropriate research methodological strategy for this paper

Detection of Negative Online Public Opinion among College Students Based on STOA Optimization Algorithm and Dissemination Trend Data

Detection of Negative Online Public Opinion among College Students Based on STOA Optimization Algorithm and Dissemination Trend Data

Language awareness survey among university students

In this study we examined the linguistic awareness and dialect attitudes of university students studying at the University of Nyíregyháza. It is particularly important that the future teachers have a positive attitude towards the varieties of the Hungarian language and share their knowledge with their learners in an effective way. However, the results of various research studies show that in many cases, mother tongue education in schools does not build on a multi-standard approach to language varieties, and as a consequence, non-standard varieties are perceived more negatively than standard ones. The aim of this research is to find out what the university students in the research study know about the regional variation of language, conscious language use and how they view dialect speech. The study was conducted through an online questionnaire survey involving 70 respondents. As a starting point for the research, it was assumed that the respondents’ dialect attitudes and language awareness would be determined by their experiences at school, and thus negative attitudes towards dialect speech would be observed in their value judgments. It was also assumed that respondents would be less accepting of the occurrence of dialect phenomena in their own language use and in the speech habits of others in their locality. The results showed that the majority of the students surveyed did not have a negative opinion of dialect phenomena, so the first hypothesis was not confirmed. However, the second hypothesis was partially confirmed, as far fewer respondents acknowledged the occurrence of dialect phenomena in their own language use than in the speech of the people in their locality. Overall, the majority of respondents to the survey have a positive attitude towards linguistic diversity and strive to use the language consciously. It is hoped that the students surveyed here will adopt the right approach to teaching about linguistic diversity in their teaching practice, thus positively influencing learners’ attitudes towards dialects and linguistic diversity.

Lecanemab's Path Forward: Navigating the Future of Alzheimer's Treatment in Europe Amidst the EMA's Rejection.

Lecanemab (Leqembi©, Biogen), a humanized anti-amyloid-beta monoclonal antibody, has been approved for early-stage Alzheimer's disease (AD) in several countries, including the US and Japan. However, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) recently issued a negative opinion on its marketing authorization, reflecting concerns over the clinical value and manageability of anti-amyloid treatments. This decision highlights the ongoing disconnect between research advancements and clinical practice, where the focus on biological markers over tangible clinical improvements remains contentious. Despite promising biological effects, lecanemab's clinical outcomes have been modest, raising questions about its therapeutic role. The EMA's refusal underscores the need to address doubts surrounding the real-world effectiveness and safety of such treatments, especially concerning amyloid-related imaging abnormalities (ARIAs), a common side effect observed in clinical trials. The recent approval of lecanemab by the UK's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, despite the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence's rejection on cost-effectiveness grounds, further fuels the debate on the feasibility of anti-amyloid therapies. This commentary emphasizes the importance of real-world data on lecanemab's impact on cognitive decline, daily functioning, and side-effect management. As the global clinical use of lecanemab increases, continuous and standardized reporting on its outcomes is crucial for guiding future regulatory decisions and for potentially bridging the gap between research and practice in AD treatment.

Electric Vehicle Sentiment Analysis Using Large Language Models

Sentiment analysis is a technique used to understand the public’s opinion towards an event, product, or organization. For example, sentiment analysis can be used to understand positive or negative opinions or attitudes towards electric vehicle (EV) brands. This provides companies with valuable insight into the public’s opinion of their products and brands. In the field of natural language processing (NLP), transformer models have shown great performance compared to traditional machine learning algorithms. However, these models have not been explored extensively in the EV domain. EV companies are becoming significant competitors in the automotive industry and are projected to cover up to 30% of the United States light vehicle market by 2030 In this study, we present a comparative study of large language models (LLMs) including bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT), robustly optimised BERT (RoBERTa), and a generalised autoregressive pre-training method (XLNet) using Lucid Motors and Tesla Motors YouTube datasets. Results evidenced that LLMs like BERT and her variants are off-the-shelf algorithms for sentiment analysis, specifically when fine-tuned. Furthermore, our findings present the need for domain adaptation whilst utilizing LLMs. Finally, the experimental results showed that RoBERTa achieved consistent performance across the EV datasets with an F1 score of at least 92%.

‘제주환경보전분담금(관광세)’ 제도 도입과정 분석 : 정책흐름모형(PSM)의 적용

Jeju Special Self-Governing Province has been reviewing the introduction of a tourism system related to a Tourism Tax for the environmental conservation of tourist destinations since 2012. However, the system, now referred to as the ‘Environmental Conservation Contribution,’ was ultimately postponed in May 2024 due to legal issues, political interests, negative public opinion regarding the system’s introduction, and a lack of supporting evidence. This study analyzes the process through the application of Kingdon(1984)’s Policy Streams Model(PSM), noting that discussions surrounding the ‘Jeju Environmental Conservation Contribution’, which faced long-standing challenges, did not follow a rational policy process due to differences in stakeholder opinions and the fluid nature of the system’s details. The anaylsis identified two main factors congributing to the difficulty in introducing the Jeju Environmental Conservation Contribution System. First, the window for policy decision-making did not open because the problem stream, policy alternatives stream, and political stream were not aligned, largely due to the insufficient formation of the political stream. Second, the policy leader who held significant influence in aligning these three streams, were unable to strongly lead the introduction of the system to it’s conclusion. Based on the research results, the practical implications of this study are as follows. First, for the successful implementation of the system, political efforts to persuade the public and shape public opinion are essential. Additionally, effective policy PR strategies are needed to foster social consensus through negotiations with multilateral consultative bodies and to enhance public awareness of the system. Second, it suggests that a logical and reasonable design that can change and persuade public perception is necessary when designing policy alternatives. Third, policy leaders should lead changes in the national atmosphere and public opinion formation based on professional knowledge and resources, and combine the three streams of the policy formation process with innovative strategies. The academic contribution of this study is that it lies in its application of empirical research using policy theory in the field of tourism studies, by clearly identifying the complex factors and problems involved in the introduction of the tourism system. Furthermore, this study enhances the clarity and objectivity of the analysis by refining the factors analyzed in the existing Policy Streams Model.

Brexit references in UK financial disclosure discourse (2015-2017): a corpus study

Major political events become a dominant topic of the discussions in the countries involved, and various actors, often other than political parties, take a stance towards them. The withdrawal of the UK from the European Union as a result of the 2016 UK referendum was one of those, and a quite polarised atmosphere from supporters of both sides was observed in the UK and the rest of Europe since the referendum was announced in 2015. Based on the impact of the Brexit on the economy, this study focused into the financial domain of the UK, and the ways that UK financial services referred towards it in their financial disclosures before, during and just after the referendum. For that purpose, I collected the 2015, 2016 and 2017 annual reports from five UK-based financial companies (Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, Royal Bank of Scotland and Santander UK), and I used thematic keywords to identify all the texts referring to the 2016 UK referendum, its outcome, and the response of the financial services to the exiting process of the UK from the European Union. This set of texts composed the Brexit-related data set, in which different analytical tasks were performed. I explored the context in which the thematic keywords are found, compared statistically the three yearly subsets of the corpus, and searched the significant words of the subset in terms of their keyness strength. This case study revealed that the discourse around a major political event such as Brexit cannot be considered as neutral or objective, and that financial companies clearly expressed negative opinion regarding the 2016 referendum and the UK’s decision to exit the European Union.

“We Pupils Had to Hear…” Marginalised Youths’ Experiences of Racialising Language and Symbolic Violence in Swedish Schools

Guided by Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical approaches of symbolic capital and symbolic violence, this article examines the everyday mechanisms of ‘otherising’ language practices in schools that reinforce racism against marginalised youths in Sweden. The empirical material is based on focus group discussions and individual in-depth interviews with youths with migrant backgrounds in Sweden. The stories told by the participants in this study indicate how young people with immigrant backgrounds are discursively racialised and otherised as a group that does not belong to Swedish society, through the articulation of negative opinions, attitudes, and ideologies as part of established colonial discourses. It is argued that the marginalisation of migrants in Sweden, which is a consequence of social policy, has even resulted in utilisation of a marginalised language — one that deviates from the majority language in several different ways.

Three Delays Model in the Context of Maternal Mortality in Longido District, Tanzania

This study dealt with the three delays model in the context of maternal mortality in Longido District, Tanzania, using the descriptive correlational design. The study selected the district due to the highest maternal mortality rates and number of women giving birth to traditional birth attendants compared to other districts in Arusha. A sample of 311 respondents from 14 health facilities participated by filling out a questionnaire. Data analysis took place through descriptive statistics and regression analysis. Based on the findings, the study concluded that although respondents possessed essential knowledge to prevent maternal mortality, they also possessed negative opinions that could delay their actions against the maternal mortality. While women’s readiness to reach the healthcare facilities prevailed, male partners’ willingness to escort their wives to the healthcare facilities did not exist. Therefore, male-female partnerships in reaching healthcare support emerged as a challenge. Furthermore, the care received from medical facilities sounds unsatisfactory due to limited medical personnel, facilities, and equipment. Social cultural practices predicted the maternal mortality. Therefore, strengthening community awareness, addressing socio-cultural barriers and positivity in accessing services will alleviate delays and reduce maternal mortality. Enhancing family and spousal support towards decision-making and financial support will overcome barriers to care, improve maternal health and reduce the maternal mortality. Strengthening the health system by sustaining resources, accountability, and improved working environment are essential steps towards enhancing the quality of care and consequently reducing maternal mortality.

Analisa Sentimen Drama Korea Melalui Media Sosial X dengan Menggunakan Algoritma Naïve Bayes

In this digital era, technological advancements allow easy access to various social media platforms, including Twitter or X, which has over 500 million users. This platform is often used to share opinions through the concept of microblogging. In Indonesia, Korean trends like K-Pop and K-Drama are highly popular, sparking various discussions on social media, especially on X, generating both positive and negative opinions. Sentiment analysis is an effective method for extracting public opinion from large text data, such as those found on X, by classifying comments into positive and negative classes using the Naïve Bayes method. Tweets were collected from X using hashtags related to Korean dramas. The data was then cleaned and processed for sentiment analysis using Naïve Bayes. The Naïve Bayes algorithm is based on Bayes' theorem and is often used in sentiment analysis due to its accuracy and speed in producing results. This study achieved a precision rate of 88.44%. For negative sentiment data, precision was 67.86%, and recall (specificity) for negative sentiment was 59.38%, indicating that the model is quite good at identifying truly negative data. Meanwhile, recall for positive sentiment reached 91.70%. The model's accuracy was 84.33%, showing that the algorithm used can classify sentiment well with the given data. These results can be useful for content creators, marketers, and cultural and social research

Picture Your Science Educators: Through the Eyes of the Student Teachers

This study was aimed to examine and compare the opinions of science teachers studying at undergraduate and master levels in Norway and Turkey towards their instructors. 22 students studying in science fields at a state university in Norway and 28 students studying in science fields at a state university in Turkey participated in the research. The students participating in the research were selected on the basis of a easily accessible sample. Research data was collected using a structured interview form consisting of 5 open-ended questions that questioned students' opinions about the instructors. The data obtained at the end of the research was analyzed using content analysis and descriptive analysis methods. Considering the findings, the themes of student opinions were obtained: 21st century skills of the science instructors, methods and techniques they use in the classroom, the effects of the science instructors on themselves, what I would do if I were a science educator, and role modeling. While some of the participating students in Turkey found the lecturers inadequate in terms of 21st Century skills, most of the students in Norway found the lecturers sufficient. While student teachers in Turkey emphasized that science instructors ' interaction and communication with students and a strong academic infrastructure are important, participants in Norway pointed out that science instructors have positive effects that contribute to being a good teacher. However, participating students in both groups stated that more traditional teaching methods were used in the classroom. It was determined that students had negative opinions as well as positive opinions. The two most important components of the university learning environment that are meaningful to each other are students and science instructors. Therefore, it is thought that more qualified teaching activities will be realized if science instructors care about what students think about them

The Impacts of Corporal Punishment on Students in Schools: An investigation through Sindh Province

The purpose of the study was to determine the effects of corporal punishment on students, with a particular focus on students in grades 9 and 10 at the chosen boys' schools in the Hyderabad area. The study also aimed to determine the nature, sorts, and effects of corporal punishment on students. Finding the social and other effects of physical punishment on the pupils in the aforementioned classrooms was the main goal of the study. This study is the first of its kind in Hyderabad district. There were 500 parents, instructors, and students in the sample overall. It was shown that physical punishment remained a barrier to the development of positive teacher-student relationships, character development, a decrease in the rate of dropouts, a discouragement of the learning environment, a negative opinion of teachers, and a decrease in students' enthusiasm in their studies. Furthermore, pupils' hostile attitudes and anxiousness were primarily brought on by corporal punishment, which also reduced their academic performance and caused psychological damage. The analysis suggests that physical punishment be outlawed and that the current legal framework be strictly enforced. Through training programs, teachers must be made aware of the detrimental effects of corporal punishment. The study goes on to say that in order for children to engage in healthy extracurricular activities and create a learning environment for themselves, there needs to be a supportive school environment.

Home Team Effect and Opinion Network after the Sewol Ferry Disaster: A mixed-method study of the influence of symbol and feedback on liberal versus conservative newspapers’ negative opinions

Studies on the symbol and feedback effects on the opinion based on the theory are lacking. Acknowledging that the media express their stance and opinion and that negative opinions are critical to policy change, this paper fills the gap in the literature by illustrating and comparing the effects of emotional and cognitive symbols and positive and negative feedback on the liberal and conservative newspapers’ negative opinions of South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s administration (Park administration) after the Sewol Ferry sank. This study used qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze the archival data, including 424 newspaper editorials and economic data published from April to December 2014. Multiple regression analyses were conducted following a content analysis of newspaper editorials, and network analysis was used to analyze the data. The results mostly supported the hypotheses that symbols and feedback affect the negative opinion on the political discourse, with new findings that deviate from the existing theories. The emotional symbols exerted a stronger influence on the negative opinion compared to cognitive symbols, regardless of the newspaper’s stance. The political system’s response to the positive and negative feedback was not definite; instead, it varied depending on the situation and newspaper perspective. The liberal newspaper responded to symbols and feedback more sensitively compared to the conservative one under the conservative administration. The conservative newspaper expressed more lenient negative opinions towards the conservative administration than the liberal newspaper, supporting the home team effect. These findings have practical and theoretical implications for future studies, highlighting the application of opinion networks in social science.

Corporate bond default prediction using bilateral topic information of credit rating reports

The default of corporate bonds can result in large financial losses as well as irreparable harm to investors’ trust and the economy as a whole, which implies that the identification of corporate bond default must be done promptly and properly. Current studies mainly rely on accounting and/or macroeconomic data and use the credit rank (CR) to disclose the credit status of corporate bonds in the default prediction task. However, the textual data of credit rating reports (CRRs) contain richer and more comprehensive information and are neglected in related work. In this paper, we propose a novel framework that draws on the unstructured data in CRR to predict the default of corporate bonds. We extract the rating opinion sentences (categorized as positive and negative) from the collected CRR files and use latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) models to mine topic information. The bilateral topic information of positive and negative opinions can reflect the anti-risk ability and potential risk of corporate bonds, respectively, based on which the constructed topic features are used for default prediction. Results on real-world Chinese corporate bonds dataset show that the bilateral topic information of CRR can significantly improve the predicting power of models (LR, SVM, KNN and MLP) under three performance metrics (AUC, KS and H-measure). By analyzing the ranking of topic features using SHAP value, the proposed framework can explain the factors that affect bond defaults, which can provide a basis for the decision-making of investment behavior.

Public opinion and Chinese exports: evidence from Twitter sentiment analysis

This paper employs web-crawling and sentiment analysis techniques to quantify public opinion and then investigates its effects on Chinese exports to trading partners during 2007–2019. The empirical results show that, after the control of possible reverse causality, negative China-related public opinion is associated with decreased exports. This relationship could be nurtured through three channels namely consumer preference, economic policy uncertainty and political conflicts. Further analysis reveals that the observed relationship is especially prevalent in developed markets and non-participatory countries of the Belt and Road Initiative as well as for industrial and capital-intensive products. In addition, it is found that political relation is positively associated with exports and plays a mitigating role in the negative relationship between public opinion and exports. Our findings have important policy implications. Policy makers are encouraged to think outside the box and exploit soft power of country image to promote exports.

Telemedicine's Hesitant Reception Among Digital Natives: A Cluster Analysis of Polish Students' Attitudes.

Objective: As digital natives appear to be the most suitable target group for technological innovations, we tested this notion by analyzing their attitude toward the implementation of telemedicine in Poland. Methods: An online survey was conducted from April to October 2021, yielding responses from 475 university students on their experience with teleconsultations, which are an essential part of telemedicine. Satisfaction-related questions were used to perform cluster analysis, and subsequently, clusters were compared based on significant differences in responses including sociodemographic and utilization patterns. Open-ended questions were analyzed to further gauge the rationale behind the demonstrated attitude. Results: The responses were polarized. In the cluster analysis, on one side were the "Skeptics" and "Enemies," who shared negative opinions on professionalism and convenience, differing only in their assessment of intangible skills. On the other side were the "Enthusiasts," who were satisfied in all categories; the "Indifferent," who lacked strong opinions; and the "Time-pressed," who, while openly admitting its drawbacks, were highly likely to continue using it due to its time-saving potential. Recurring concerns in open-ended questions focused on unreliable diagnoses and uncooperative administrative personnel. Conclusions: The reception was polarized. The split in answers suggests that administrative problems were limited to some providers, indicating they should be possible to overcome. There is a clear pattern that telemedicine is seen as an incomplete service. However, many would happily continue to use it due to its convenience and time-saving benefits.

Reflections on Limiting Social Media Use and Mental Health

The relationship between social media use and mental health has been well documented. A study by Bradley et al. (2023) examined whether reducing social media use to 30 minutes per day would improve mental health, but found no significant improvements, partly due to participants’ lack of adherence to study instructions. The current study examines qualitative responses to an open-ended reflection question from participants of this previous study. Most participants struggled to limit their social media use, largely because of benefits social media use provided and perceived consequences of not using social media. Many participants wanted to limit their social media use, despite most failing to do so during the study. Participants who did limit their social media use experienced improved mental health when limiting. Additionally, many participants had negative opinions about social media use, such as increasing social comparison, though positive and mixed opinions were also reported. This study suggests social media use limiting interventions may not be viable, and that different types of social media use must also be considered. Additionally, research viewing social media use as only having negative impacts is inaccurate; this study demonstrates that there is a continuum of effects it may have.

Assessment of Hospital Managers' Sustainable Leadership Levels

This study aims to evaluate the sustainable leadership levels of hospital managers with the participation of healthcare professionals working in public hospitals in Bitlis province. The cross-sectional and descriptive study was conducted on 354 healthcare professionals and the information form and Sustainable Management Behaviors Scale were used as data collection tools. The demographic analysis of the study shows that the majority of the participants are male, under the age of 30 and have a bachelor's degree. In terms of occupational groups, it was observed that other health personnel and nurses were predominant. The findings revealed that the participants generally evaluated the sustainable leadership behaviors of the managers at a level above medium. Especially environmental sensitivity and conservation sensitivity dimensions have high mean values. Nurses were found to have the most negative opinions about managers' sustainable leadership levels, while administrative staff had the most positive opinions. It was determined that positive perceptions were higher for managers who are experienced, act in accordance with ethical principles and adopt the philosophy of continuous learning. The study draws attention to the importance of sustainable leadership practices in the healthcare sector and offers strategic recommendations to increase the leadership capacity of hospital managers.

Investigating the Differentiated Experiences of an Academician in the Transition to Distance Education Through a Documentational Framework

This study examines the documentational genesis of an academician transitioning to distance education during the pandemic. Using qualitative case study design, the research involved an associate professor in engineering at a Turkish state university. Selected via purposeful sampling, the participant was open to sharing experiences and participating in the study. Data were collected through online course video recordings, semi-structured interviews, observations and researcher notes. Content analysis was used for the data analysis, and from the obtained themes, the elements of the participant's schemes in online education, the challenges experienced, and the variations in these schemes were presented from a documentational perspective. As a result of the research, it was found that the participating academician used different types of knowledge, including both content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge, in online education. Additionally, it was concluded that the academician continued to use some resources from face-to-face education during the transition to and process of online education, modified some resources to create differentiated resources, and completely abandoned some resources. Another finding of the research is that the participating academician faced many challenges during the online education process. These challenges were primarily found to be due to student-related and institutional factors. Moreover, the academician expressed both positive and negative opinions about distance education.

The contribution of socio-demographic, health-related and psychological factors to the perception of changes in life following a few waves of the COVID-19 pandemic

BackgroundAs a result of the long-lasting COVID-19 pandemic, we have experienced numerous losses in psychological and economic domains. Research covering two years (2020-2021) of the pandemic suggests that at present, the period is also perceived in terms of gains. The factors affecting opinions about the losses and gains include personality traits, intensity of COVID-19 PTSD, age, and others. The study aimed to determine which aspects changed in life after two years of the pandemic, which were assessed as negative or positive, and which factors contributed to these opinions.Participants and procedureAn online survey was carried out and responses were received from an international sample of 418 adults. The following tools were used: the Ten Item Personality Inventory, Impact of Event Scale-Revised, and COVID-19 Sense of Life Changes Questionnaire.ResultsConscientiousness and emotional stability were those personality traits which increased positive perceptions of the past years of the pandemic. The older age of respondents contributed to a more negative opinion about the changes in life caused by the pandemic.ConclusionsThe personality traits of conscientiousness and emotional stability and younger age may protect against negative percep-tions of the two-year period of the pandemic.