Normative Themes Research Articles

Prioritizing research needs and opportunities at the intersection of implementation science and engagement science

BackgroundThere has been increased attention to the need for, and the positive impact of, engaged or participatory science in recent years. Implementation scientists have an opportunity to leverage and contribute to engagement science (ES) through the systematic integration of engagement into implementation science (IS). The purpose of this study was to gather information from researchers and others to develop a prioritized list of research needs and opportunities at the intersection of IS and ES.MethodsWe conducted three Zoom-based focus groups with 20 researchers to generate a list of unmet needs, barriers, and to describe normative themes about use of ES and IS. Then a panel of nine experts in IS and/or engagement ranked the needs and barriers using a survey and met via a Zoom meeting to discuss and generate research opportunities and questions, with reference to the focus group outputs.ResultsRespondents and experts concurred on the importance of engagement in IS. Focus group participants reported 28 needs and barriers under the themes of 1) need for best practice guidance related to engagement processes and outcomes and 2) structural barriers to integrating ES in IS. The expert panel prioritized six structural barriers and four barriers related to generating best practice guidance, with corresponding recommendations on research opportunities. Example research opportunities related to engagement processes included: define “successful” engagement in IS contexts; adapt engagement tools and best practices from other disciplines into IS. Example research opportunities related to outcomes included: assess the impact of engagement on IS outcomes; examine engagement practices that lead to optimal engaged research. Example research opportunities related to structural barriers included: leverage research evidence to create structural changes needed to expand support for engaged IS; examine factors that influence institutional buy-in of engagement in IS.ConclusionsResearch needs exist that relate to engagement processes, outcomes, and structural barriers, even for scientists who value engaged research. Expert panelists recommended sequential and reinforcing research opportunities that implementation and engagement scientists can tackle together to advance both fields and health equity. Future work should assess insights from broader invested parties, particularly patients and community members.

Pathways to leadership: what accounts for women’s (in)equitable career paths in the health sectors in India and Kenya? A scoping review

ObjectivesWe aimed to capture evidence on enablers and barriers to improving equal opportunity and effective organisational interventions that can advance women’s leadership in India and Kenya’s health sectors.MethodsWe systematically searched...

Virtue, Environmental Ethics, Nonhuman Values, and Anthropocentrism

This article discusses the encounter between virtue ethics and environmental ethics and the ways in which environmental virtue ethics confronts nonhuman axiology and the controversial theme of moral anthropocentrism. It provides a reasoned review of the relevant literature and a historical–conceptual rendition of how environmental and virtue ethics came to converge as well as the ways in which they diverge. It explains that contrary to important worries voiced by some non-anthropocentric environmental ethicists, environmental virtue ethics enables and requires a rich and nuanced engagement with nonhuman values of all sorts—intrinsic as well as extrinsic, moral as well as nonmoral, anthropocentric as well as non-anthropocentric—and neither presupposes nor implies moral anthropocentrism in its normativity. Finally, the article considers the fortunes of, and some challenges for, environmental virtue ethics in its application to the ethics of climate change, an increasingly central topic in environmental ethics. This article proceeds as follows: the first section introduces virtue ethics; the second section looks at axiological and normative themes in environmental ethics; the third section discusses environmental virtue ethics; and the fourth section considers its application to climate change. The fifth section draws some conclusions.

Responsible Artificial Intelligence and Journal Publishing

The aim of this opinion piece is to examine the responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI) in relation to academic journal publishing. The work discusses approaches to AI with particular attention to recent developments with generative AI. Consensus is noted around eight normative themes for principles for responsible AI and their associated risks. A framework from Shneiderman (2022) for human-centered AI is employed to consider journal publishing practices that can address the principles of responsible AI at different levels. The resultant AI principled governance matrix (AI-PGM) for journal publishing shows how countermeasures for risks can be employed at the levels of the author-researcher team, the organization, the industry, and by government regulation. The AI-PGM allows a structured approach to responsible AI and may be modified as developments with AI unfold. It shows how the whole publishing ecosystem should be considered when looking at the responsible use of AI—not just journal policy itself.

Poor-inclusive workplace model: A Relational Perspective

PurposeThe theory building of inclusive workplace is still in its early stages, particularly concerning the inclusion of the poor in the developing countries. Through the exploration of social entrepreneurial inclusion, this study extends the inclusive workplace theory by featuring the inclusive dynamism of organizations for the poor in developing countries.Design/methodology/approachA case study approach was selected, as the goal of this study is to build on the theory in an under-researched area. This qualitative study is described as theory elaboration as it expands upon theoretical links that have received little attention among workforce diversity scholars.FindingsWe have established a conceptual framework of social entrepreneurial inclusion, which encompasses the following normative themes: organizational perspective for promoting social equality, empowering relationships, a sense of inclusion, organizational access to valuable resources and empowered inclusion.Research limitations/implicationsAlthough we have taken an exploratory qualitative approach and made efforts to report our data neutrally, we acknowledge that the ethical and theoretical positions taken in analyzing the data may have influenced the outcome of this research and, therefore, our findings can never be truly objective. We also acknowledge that this study was conducted in developing countries, thus the poor inclusive workplace model is not generalizable for the poor in developed countries due to different institutional and ecological settings.Practical implicationsWe have illustrated the importance of business leaders leveraging the opportunities in the space between interdependency of individuals and organizations through doing well by doing good. Poor-inclusive workplaces need business leaders who can demonstrate the effective interpersonal skills to develop constructive and personalized relationships with the workers, the family and community members to encourage the idea that the poor be included in the workplace.Social implicationsThe findings from this study also infer how corporations may collaborate with SEs and humanitarian agencies for inclusive growth so they can simultaneously unleash economic value and social value to develop more effective poor-inclusive business models in both sectors. Social entrepreneurs (SEs) and humanistic agencies tend to have situated knowledge of the poor in terms of locally embedded needs and knowledge of the community that corporations do not have.Originality/valueThis paper promotes the integrative workplace models of inclusion where inclusion of poor is empowered through involvement of multiple parties inside and outside workplaces. The empowered inclusion outcomes are strengthened through organizational access to valuable resources at the institutional level.

Communicating social support online: a new classification dichotomy for exploring coping in interaction concerning infertility

Objective: This study explores how social support is utilised in the context of an online infertility support group. Background: Social support is often studied to decipher how those with health concerns cope through communication and interaction. Method: Online socially supportive messages (N = 200) were examined using a hybrid approach (i.e. deductive and inductive) to thematic analysis. Results: Analysis developed a dichotomy of social support (i.e. normative and transformative themes). This dichotomy creates a new theoretical framework for evaluating social support with implications for cognitive coping strategy. The normative and emotional themes were the most frequently represented in the studied context demonstrating overall network-level positivity. Messages did not demonstrate tangible support. Conclusion: Expected characteristics of emotional and informational support were demonstrated, but the forum included no tangible support. The support messages also possessed latent characteristics that should be further studied to understand implications for forum participant coping.

Europe and the Welfare State—Friends, Foes, or . . .?

Europe’s relationship with its Member States’ national welfare systems attracts the headlines nowadays. In particular, the negotiations regarding a new settlement for the UK in a reformed European Union and the referendum to follow, which may result in a UK exit from the EU (‘Brexit’), seem to have exposed the tensions in this relationship to a higher degree than ever. Thus, this article goes to the heart of the puzzle and seeks to throw light upon the existing tensions in thinking. The analysis anchors itself in the following three themes: (1) the conundrum inherent in the overall simmering feud, if viewed as a clash of different perspectives; (2) the overall role of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in supporting or curing these tensions, where recurring issues are, among others, judicial activism in the context of social benefits; and (3) recent thinking in EU legal scholarship in the area. Although all three themes are strongly inter-related, the first of them may be viewed as a macro-theme; the second as a micro-theme; and the third as a more critical and normative theme serving as a kind of self-reflective wing mirror.

Jesus on Cooperation

Cooperation, meaning collaboration between people who assist each other to achieve common goals, is argued to be one of Jesus’ major normative themes. This proposal has not previously been made in Christian ethics. Jesus’ emphasis on cooperation occurs within His major undertaking, His practice of obedience to God. Outlined initially is the meaning of cooperation that aims for mutual help and partnership with others in a friendly, trusting and harmonious alliance. Following that, Jesus’ teachings relating to cooperation are assessed, as interpreted by Biblical exegetes. These teachings include the Golden Rule, Jesus’ admonitions for forgiveness, the need for generosity, required relations between His disciples, and Jesus’ healings. In the penultimate section, objections to the extension of Jesus’ teachings on cooperation in the modern world are found to be unpersuasive.

Updating International Law Enforcement Ethics: International Codes of Conduct

For any profession, establishing codes of ethics that are both practically relevant and up to date is an ongoing challenge. Law enforcement is no exception to this as agencies are faced with an evolving modern environment. With changes in technology, types of policing, and sources of societal conflict there is a potential array of new or evolving ethical considerations that confront the profession. Attempts to distill and prescribe law enforcement ethics at the international level have resulted in the creation of the “Law Enforcement Code of Conduct” of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) and the “Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials” of the United Nations (U.N.). However, both these codes were created decades ago, so they do not cover some of the more contemporary ethical issues that have arisen. This article compares the content of the IACP and UN codes and identifies a range of ethical issues either absent or insufficiently addressed. Normative themes and issues are organized around the following topics: difficulties in applying the codes, human rights and the use of force, misconduct and integrity, and enforcement and accountability.

ONLINE JOURNALISM AND CIVIC COSMOPOLITANISM

Web-based civic participation in democracies, especially in the sprawling domain of alternative politics, continues to grow. In this paper I explore the intersection of two trajectories of such participation: one that takes the form of journalism (broadly understood) and the other that is transnational in character. Participatory journalism unavoidably evokes normative issues that professional journalism has always grappled with. Global activism, in turn, can be analytically framed by the theme of civic cosmopolitanism. My aim is to highlight and juxtapose these two sets of ideals, two normative frameworks for guiding practice in regard to journalism. In the first section I survey the Web environment from the standpoint of its enhanced capacity to enable citizens to engage with their societies and the world. Journalistic activity has become a part of this kind of online engagement, and thus normative issues about these practices quickly arise. In the second section, I sketch some of the relevant contours of cosmopolitanism, underscoring the normative themes that it raises. The final section comprises an interface with horizons of civic cosmopolitanism and those of a dilemma-ridden professional journalism; I try to pull the strands together by elucidating the implications that ensue.

Exploring health beliefs and care-seeking behaviors of older USA-dwelling Mexicans and Mexican-Americans

Objective. This study explored health beliefs and healthcare-seeking behaviors of older USA-dwelling Mexicans and Mexican-Americans using the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) as a conceptual guide. Design. A mixed-method cross-sectional design was utilized using semi-structured interviews to obtain detailed descriptions of 31 older (50 + ) participants' behavioral, normative, and control beliefs about health and healthcare utilization. An interview schedule consisting of open-ended and demographic questions and one standardized tool, the Bidimensional Acculturation Scale (BAS) for Hispanics, was used to collect data. Results. Several themes emerged for each belief area. Behavioral belief themes reflect participants' faith in, comfort with, and knowledge of traditional methods of care (e.g., herbs, teas, and use of curanderas) as well as their faith in the effectiveness of conventional care (e.g., medicine, technology, and use of physicians). Normative belief themes indicate that participants perceive that family and community contacts support participants' use of traditional methods and that family supports use of conventional methods. Control belief themes suggest that traditional methods are accessible and affordable but that conventional methods are not. BAS scored indicated that most (90.3%) participants adhered to Hispanic culture. Two (6.5%) participants adhered to non-Hispanic culture and one (3.2%) scored as bi-cultural. Conclusions. Themes from the data suggest that beliefs about healthcare impact the types of care utilized and the ways in which they are utilized. Clinicians and researchers striving to reduce health disparities and develop more culturally competent healthcare services for ethnic minority groups should work toward a better understanding of minority groups' belief systems about healthcare and its utilization. Utilization of the TPB allows for empirical model development that can better predict healthcare utilization behavior, further augmenting efforts to provide services that will help reduce health disparities for older Mexicans and Mexican-Americans and other populations.

Doing masculinity, not doing health? a qualitative study among dutch male employees about health beliefs and workplace physical activity

BackgroundBeing female is a strong predictor of health promoting behaviours. Workplaces show great potential for lifestyle interventions, but such interventions do not necessarily take the gendered background of lifestyle behaviours into account. A perspective analyzing how masculine gender norms affect health promoting behaviours is important. This study aims to explore men's health beliefs and attitudes towards health promotion; in particular, it explores workplace physical activity in relation to masculine ideals among male employees.MethodsIn the Fall of 2008, we interviewed 13 white Dutch male employees aged 23-56 years. The men worked in a wide range of professions and occupational sectors and all interviewees had been offered a workplace physical activity program. Interviews lasted approximately one to one-and-a-half hour and addressed beliefs about health and lifestyle behaviours including workplace physical activity, as well as normative beliefs about masculinity. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data.ResultsTwo normative themes were found: first, the ideal man is equated with being a winner and real men are prepared to compete, and second, real men are not whiners and ideally, not vulnerable. Workplace physical activity is associated with a particular type of masculinity - young, occupied with looks, and interested in muscle building. Masculine norms are related to challenging health while taking care of health is feminine and, hence, something to avoid. Workplace physical activity is not framed as a health measure, and not mentioned as of importance to the work role.ConclusionsCompetitiveness and nonchalant attitudes towards health shape masculine ideals. In regards to workplace physical activity, some men resist what they perceive to be an emphasis on muscled looks, whereas for others it contributes to looking self-confident. In order to establish a greater reach among vulnerable employees such as ageing men, worksite health promotion programs including workplace physical activity may benefit from greater insight in the tensions between health behaviours and masculinity.

Symptoms of schizophrenia and social cognition

This study investigated the relationship between deficits in social cognition and the dimensional descriptors for schizophrenia. Social cognitive functioning was measured using patient narratives describing card arrangements using the picture arrangement subtest of the Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale—Revised. Stories were rated for number of normative themes, number of words, coherence, plausibility of attributions of emotions, and plausibility of attributions of intentions. Symptoms of Psychoticism were positively related to all ratings except of the plausibility of attributions of intentions. Ratings of story coherence, number of normative ideas, plausibility of attributions of intentions, and plausibility of attributions of emotions were negatively related to symptoms of disorganization. There was a negative relationship between negative symptoms and all rating categories except story coherence. Results indicate that it could be productive to attempt to tailor psychosocial interventions to the dominant symptom picture of patients with schizophrenia in order to improve aspects of social cognitive functioning.

On the Overland Trail: Sheet Music, Masculinity and Travelling ‘Country’

On the Overland Trail: Sheet Music, Masculinity and Travelling ‘Country’

Euroscepticism as a political label: The use of European Union issues in political competition in the new Member States

Abstract. During the 1990s, political consensus on European Union (EU) membership in Central Europe gave way to widespread ambiguous positions – many parties approved the principle of European integration while criticizing EU policies. In the late 1990s, two analytical frameworks – cleavage theories and typologies of Euroscepticism – were developed to account for this change in political debate. Cleavage theories tend to downplay the evolution of party positions during the 1990s, whereas typologies of Euroscepticism create analytical categories that are difficult to operationalize. Both perspectives have a limited understanding of the relationship between ideology and strategy with regard to party positions on European integration. This article follows a broader research design focusing on the use of European issues in political competition in Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic after the fall of communism. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu, ideology and strategy are closely related because ideologies are created by politicians in order to differentiate themselves from their competitors and to gain political capital. Politics is essentially a competition to impose certain lines of division in the political field and to classify actors along those lines. In Central Europe after 1989, references to Europe allowed politicians to shape and reshape three lines of division, distinguishing mainstream from protest parties, mainstream political actors from their competitors and intra‐party currents from each other. Yet EU issues could be used only according to some general rules of political competition that evolved over time. As early as 1990, a pro‐European stance was a political norm acting as a normative theme– that is, a general rule that determined political actors' behaviours. As the pre‐accession process unfolded, a tension emerged between a necessary collusion between parties that moderated their criticisms in order to appear to be legitimate political actors, and instrumentalization of EU issues to gain political capital at the expense of competitors. In the late 1990s, saying ‘yes, but’ to accession to the EU became a pragmatic rule of the political game – that is, a set of rules of a lesser importance that actors could freely define without any risk of stigmatization. This shift resulted in ambiguous party positions on EU integration. Considering the word ‘Euroscepticism’ as a tool for political classification rather than as an analytical notion sheds a new light on the dynamics of party positions on European issues. These findings have wider relevance for the study of the Europeanization of national political systems in the enlarged EU because pre‐accession politics in Central Europe amplified logics that also exist in Western Europe. There is a difference in degree, but not in kind, between the uses of the European themes in political competitions in new and in old EU Member States.

A Covenant Model of Global Ethics

AbstractThere is increasing conviction that to enjoy and promote the mutual fl ourishing of human life in mutual relationship to the fl ourishing of all life on Earth is the ultimate meaning of human history. Yet the contemporary human condition is one of profound alienation from that meaning. The metaphor and model of a new global covenant, a new covenant with Earth, provides the most constructive and practical way individuals and communities can respond to this spiritual situation, and inspires e ff orts such as the Earth Charter, and draft International Covenant on Environment and Development, to articulate a new global ethic. The new model of Earth covenant has emerged over a long course of history from interactions between Earth-affirming religious sensibilities, evolutionary/ecological understandings, and democratic ideals. Although it is still very much in the making, and requires much wider global dialogue, we can extrapolate ten major normative themes central to the new covenantal vision.

Industrial Ecology

Industrial ecology is an evolving framework for the analysis and design of public policy, corporate strategy, and technological systems and products. Its metaphorical denotation springs from conceptual models characteristic of sustainable or long-lived ecosystems. Some authors stress the material and energy flows within a system of producers and consumers and aim to build knowledge about these flows that can be used for such design purposes as above. Others see industrial ecology primarily in its more metaphorical sense as providing new normative themes for a possibly sustainable world. Such norms include connectedness, cooperation, and community. These particular norms are, more or less, contrary to prevailing elements of social structures in market-based, industrialized nations. The paradigmatic, normative potential of industrial ecology is contrasted with its potential as an emerging “science” of sustainability.

The Liberal Prince on the Democratic Seesaw

The Liberal Prince on the Democratic Seesaw Jack N. Rakove (bio) Richard K. Mathews. If Men Were Angels: James Madison and the Heartless Empire of Reason. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995. xviii 297 pp. Notes and index. $25.00. When I think about James Madison — as I often do, even while doing laps in the university pool — two visual images swim into view. One is the familiar portrait painted by Gilbert Stuart in 1805, in which Madison appears so aloofly serious and dispassionate as to recall Francois Truffaut’s portrayal of the physician Itard in his film, L’enfant Sauvage. But the other portrait conveys a strikingly different impression. This is Asher Durand’s more intimate painting of 1833, which captures the deep, brooding power of Madison’s intellect at the late moment in life when he realized he had “outlived” not only his “contemporaries” but even “myself.” Stuart’s Madison looks somewhat abstractedly away from the painter, but Durand had Madison’s complete attention, making us the humbled objects whom his penetrating gaze challenges. Both portraits would have served Richard Mathews well in this middle volume of a projected trilogy that began with The Radical Politics of Thomas Jefferson (1984) and will conclude (he now informs us) with Alexander Hamilton and the Creation of the Heroic State. The interpretive and normative themes which guide this project were clearly announced in the first volume and are both reprised and elaborated here. Jefferson was the true radical democrat who understood that our fulfillment as humans could only be attained through a politics of participation that included the recognition that each generation (however its span is measured) retains both the right and duty to frame its own constitution. Jefferson’s dream of an America grounded in sociability, community, participation, and continued political possibility was the road not adventured; instead we have been saddled with the “nightmare” (p. 279) first conjured by Madison and Hamilton, true liberals both. They were the real allies whose decisive collaboration in the late 1780s imposed on the American people the Constitution that permitted the triumph of market society and its attendant evils. In this story, the half-century political alliance between the two Virginians neither masks nor outweighs the profound [End Page 582] philosophical differences between them. Mathews thus rejects the conventional story of this great friendship, which usually emphasizes how a sober and discriminating Madison repeatedly tugged his impulsive friend back from the sudden enthusiasms and “round” expressions to which Jefferson was prone. How should historians evaluate this argument, which is avowedly anchored in the concerns of normative political theory, and which arguably draws greater inspiration from the writings of the late C. B. Macpherson, Sheldon Wolin, and even N. O. Brown, than from the usual lineup of those scholars who have fashioned the dominant interpretations of the origins of American political ideas and ideologies? Historians found much to fault with the first volume, and it is noteworthy that Mathews’s revisionist view of Jefferson garners only a single mention in the text of the not unrevisionist essays collected in Peter Onuf, ed., Jeffersonian Legacies (1993). I doubt whether a similar volume commissioned to commemorate the quarter-millennium of Madison’s birth in 2001 would pay any greater attention to If Men Were Angels. Yet it may be worth asking why Mathews can get certain facets of Madisonian thinking right, yet produce conclusions that fall somewhere between wrong-headed and silly. There are, I think, three main lines along which a respectful but critical assaying of this installment in the Mathews project can deploy: (1) its quest for the essential Madison; (2) its now more fully articulated reappraisal of his relationship with Jefferson; and (3) its mega/meta-historical argument about the relation between the Madisonian Constitution and the foreclosing of political participation in the less-than-truly Jeffersonian democracy we have inherited. As to the first of these broad headings, historians can find much to accept, or at least take seriously, in Mathews’s account of the historical Madison. For Mathews, Madison was the “constant liberal prince” in a quasi-Machiavellian sense of the term. That is, Madison framed in the 1780s a compelling...

Empirical Validity of the Thematic Apperception Test

This study of interpretation of abstract meaning in Thematic Apperception Test (TAT; Murray, 1943) cards investigated three questions; (a) is meaning predicted by personality theory, (b) is meaning consensual or idiosyncratic, and (c) how does emotional response relate to meaning? A visual triad task using 21 TAT cards was presented to 32 subjects. Subjects also rated intensity of emotional response to each card using a Likert scale. Multidimensional scaling and consensus analysis applied to results showed a correlation between emotional rating and cognitive judgment, with consensus for both meaning and emotional response. No support was found for normative themes reported by Bellak (1986), but results supported Westen's (1991) claim that TAT responses reveal object relations.

Dual-Career Couples' Career Transitions and Normative Dilemmas

A review of the literature indicates few concepts to assess dual-career couples during counseling. Limitations of past definitions and theories of career development are discussed in the context of the complexity of the dual-career life-style. New definitions are proposed to increase knowledge about the dual-career couple as a special group in career development. A preliminary assessment model is presented focusing on the normative dilemmas of dual-career couples. Develop-mental areas and normative dilemmas in careers, gender roles, and marriage-family are discussed in the context of 23 career transitions. Normative themes related to dual-career couple dilemmas are then enumerated. The assessment model promotes greater understanding of how career events affect interpersonal-family relationships as well as how these relationships affect a couple's career development. Implications of the assessment model for counseling dual-career couples and conducting future research are discussed.