Relational Processes Research Articles

Relational turbulence and couples’ convergence and divergence in weekly highs and lows during three months of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown

Previous research has found relational benefits of interpersonal emotional convergence. Drawing on relational turbulence theory, we expected that partners’ convergence in emotional high and low points is associated with relational uncertainty, qualities of interdependence, and relational turbulence. These hypotheses were tested using data retrieved from a longitudinal project in which spouses in 64 American married couples independently reported high and low experiences and completed relationship measures every week for ten weeks from June to August of 2020. Results from multilevel models confirmed some of the hypothesized benefits of convergence in highs, but predictions about convergence in lows were largely unsupported. The findings suggest that dyadic emotion is an antecedent of relational turbulence processes and highlight the importance of sharing positive experiences for maintaining relationship health.

The biobehavioral family model and the family relational assessment protocol: Map and GPS for family systems training.

The Biobehavioral Family Model (BBFM) was developed and evolved as a heuristic research model to support the investigation of pathways by which family relational function impacts individual family member wellbeing and disorder. Recently, the BBFM and its related assessment approach, the Family Relational Process Assessment Protocol (FRAP), have emerged as tools for clinical practice and training. The BBFM model will be presented, along with definitions of the dimensions constructed in the model, and research evidence in support of the model. To illustrate how the BBFM and FRAP are used in training, instructions for conducting the FRAP will be presented. Then, transcripts from two contrasting families participating in one of the interaction tasks will illustrate how, in training, the FRAP is interpreted through the BBFM lens to illuminate how these patterns of family relationship impact the identified patient. Finally, three applications of this training approach will exemplify the use of the BBFM and FRAP in the context of a Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship, a Family Medicine Fellowship, and a Family Therapy Training Program in Istanbul, Turkey. Limitations and future directions for the application of the BBFM in the exploration of multicultural aspects of family function for clinical and training purposes will be discussed.

Automated Battery Disassembly—Examination of the Product- and Process-Related Challenges for Automotive Traction Batteries

As the market share of electric vehicles continues to rise, the number of battery systems that are retired after their service life in the vehicle will also increase. This large growth in battery returns will also have a noticeable impact on processes such as battery disassembly. The purpose of this paper is, therefore, to examine the challenges of the battery disassembly process in relation to the required increase in the degree of automation. For this purpose, a survey of various experts along the battery value chain was conducted, and product-side hurdles, such as the wide range of variants, and process-side challenges, such as the opening of the housing cover or the removal of cables and connectors, were identified. Together with an assessment of the potential degree of automation in the context of downstream processes (reuse, repair, remanufacturing, and recycling), this results in a variety of streams for future research in the field of automated battery disassembly. The core aspect in this context is data availability consisting of product and component data as well as process-relevant parameters.

The conspiracy narrative “The Big Lie”—Psychoanalytical considerations on the development of susceptibility to an “alternative reality”

AbstractUsing the narrative “The Big Lie,” which is placed in the socio‐political context, and based on data gathered from social media, clinical material, interviews and documentaries, the author examines from a psychoanalytic perspective the effective power and dynamics of conspiracy narratives that create an “alternative reality” with “conviction capsules,” using lies and distortions of reality consciously employed as means of agitation on the breeding ground of unconscious relational and regression processes. To sketch the emergence and development of this willingness, the author combines the explanations of Wilfred Bion, Susan Isaacs and Herbert Rosenfeld and develops the hypothesis, including the concept of “perverted containing,” that due to unsuccessful containing processes in the earliest relationship experiences, defensively inflexible, sealed “conviction capsules” develop, permeated by fears of confusion and annihilation, by hatred as well as phantasies of powerlessness and superiority. Underlying these, experienced as existentially threatening, are panic about change and excessive identification with a hard, alleged omnipotent object, linked to an unconscious longing for symbiosis with a “savior”—a conglomerate that breeds susceptibility to conspiracy narratives and totalitarian, destructive populist leaders. As one example, the destructive‐symbiotic relationship dynamic between Donald Trump and his supporters is outlined with the escalation of violence.

Discursive Representation of Teacher Identity in News Media Articles

Teacher identity is discursively represented in the discursive spaces of the news media, which influence the public opinion on teachers and the teaching profession in general. Informed by Systemic Functional Linguistics, specifically Halliday's transitivity analysis, this study analyzed these discursive representations in 30 news media articles from three of the largest news media outlets in the Philippines. It was found that teachers are ascribed to material, mental, verbal, relational, and behavioral processes. As participants in the process types, it was revealed that the teachers were discursively represented as perpetrators, victims, and role models. This reveals the discursive representations of teacher identity in media that are perpetuated in the public discourse consumed by educational stakeholders.

Meso-level processes of intellectual imperialism: the disruption of intellectual lineage formation in modern Japan and China by ‘juniority effects’

The contemporary sociology of knowledge treats meso-level institutions of intellectual production as its primary investigative focus but seldom studies global intellectual inequalities. Decolonial and postcolonial studies of knowledge focus on global intellectual inequalities, but they seldom examine meso-level institutions. This study’s research objective is to help bridge the research gap that results from these two fields’ disconnection: meso-level processes of intellectual imperialism. It does so by analysing the disruption of intellectual lineage formation in non-Western contexts and theorising this disruption as a processual aspect of intellectual imperialism. It coins the shorthand term ‘juniority effects’ to describe these relational processes. It investigates data on the careers of the first two cohorts of prominent thinkers in Japan between the 1860s and the 1910s and in China between the 1880s and the 1920s. The data sources include a wide variety of primary historical materials and secondary studies. Based on illustrating how these thinkers experienced and confronted reputational disruptions, it illustrates that juniority effects existed and seriously obstructed local intellectual lineages.

The Weight of Witnessing: Commitment, Expectation, and Responsibility in Child Protection Ethnography

Abstract The practice of witnessing holds particular power regarding the question of how best to assure children’s wellbeing. This is especially true for the field of internationally initiated attempts at child protection, often against corporal punishment, as I have explored them in Zanzibar, Tanzania. Acts of witnessing are imbued with a sense of commitment, with a variety of expectations, and with a certain obligation, or responsibility, to act upon what one comes to see or know. In order to understand witnessing as a relational and collaborative process first, rather than as an anthropological self-identification, I propose to think with witnessing as having a weight, and of potential ways to reconsider how this weight of witnessing may be distributed differently, in child protection ethnography specifically, and anthropology more generally.

Missed Appointments: Research Protocol for a mixed method study about the causes of patient non-attendance at medical appointments in Denmark.

Approximately one third of patient appointments in health care result in failures, leading to patient risk and sizable resource "waste". Existing interventions to alleviate the no-shows often target the patients. The underlying reason behind these interventions is a view that attendance/non-attendance is solely the patient's problem. However, these interventions often prove ineffective and can perpetuate social biases and health inequalities, leaving behind the more vulnerable or disadvantaged patients (in terms of social, economical, linguistic factors, etc.). A more holistic understanding of no-shows is needed to optimize processes, to reduce waste and support vulnerable patients. This study aims to gain a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the causes, mechanisms and recurring patterns and elements contributing to non-attendance at Danish hospitals in the Region of Southern Denmark. It emphasizes the patient perspective and analyses the relational and organizational processes surrounding no-shows in healthcare. Additionally, the study aims to identify effective communicative strategies and organizational processes that can support development and implementation of successful interventions. The research employs mixed quantitative-qualitative methods, encompassing four analytical projects focusing on non-attendance patterns, patient knowledge and behaviour, management of hospital appointments, and in-situ communication. To address the complexity of no-shows in healthcare the study incorporates various data sources. The quantitative data sources include the electronic patient records, the Danish central registries, the Danish National Patient Registry, and the Register of Medicinal Product Statistics. Baseline characteristics of patients at different levels are compared using Chi2 and Kruskal-Wallis tests. The qualitative studies involve observational data, individual semi-structured interviews with patients and practitioners, and video recordings of patient consultations. This paper presents the protocol of the study, which was funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation in July 2022. The study was registered with The Danish Data Protection Agency (Registry ID: 22/54791) and with The Open Patient Data Explorative Network (Registry ID: OP_1800) in January 2023. Recruitment started in February 2023. It is anticipated that the quantitative data analysis will be completed by the end of September 2023, with the qualitative investigation starting in October 2023. The first study findings are anticipated to be available by the end of 2024. The existing research on non-attendance in Danish healthcare is inadequate in addressing relational and organisational factors leading to hospital no-shows. Interventions have had limited effect, high-lighting the Danish healthcare system's failure to accommodate for vulnerable patients. Effective interventions require a qualitative approach and robust ethnographic data to supplement the description and categorization of no-shows at hospitals. Obtaining comprehensive knowledge about the causes of missed patient appointments will yield practical benefits, enhancing safety, coherence and quality of treatment in healthcare.

Analysis and Modeling of the Onion Peeling Process in the Blowing Compressed Air Method

This paper presents the relationship between the efficiency of the process of onion peeling and the amount of waste generated in the process. The research was carried out on a pilot test stand for onion peeling. The process variables were the value of the compressed air pressure (p) and the value of the flow opening time through the control valve (t). The experiment took into account the influence of the onion diameter (d0) and its hardness (H). The obtained results were subjected to statistical analysis. Standard deviations were of the percentage loss of onion mass in the form of the peel removed in the onion peeling process in relation to the obtained average values. Tukey’s multiple comparison test was performed in order to identify the importance of individual process variables on the final effect of onion peeling. This was the basis for the development of a predictive model in the form of a non-linear regression Mp = f(p,t,d0,H), which is a mathematical description of the onion peeling process. Finally, the response surface area of the relationship between analyzed variables was determined. The results of research show that the peeling efficiency of the onion and waste of peel mass depend on the compressed air pressure. Extending the onion blowing time does not improve the process efficiency, while the hardness and size of the onion are irrelevant to the process.

Framing the wider determinants of health and health inequalities: local stakeholder views in England

Background:Despite decades of concern, health inequalities persist and collaborations to address them at a local level are yet to prove effective. One potential way of improving actions to address health inequalities is to pay greater attention to the way the problems and solutions are framed. Aims and objectives:The aims of the study were to: 1) review existing advice and guidance on how to frame the wider determinants of health, health inequalities and how to address them in policy; 2) critically appraise this guidance with reference to a study of local action to address the wider determinants of health and health inequalities in England; and 3) offer insight into the future of framing these issues at the local level. Methods:An exploratory qualitative study of local actors’ activities and experiences that relate to framing health inequalities. Analysis is drawn from 14 in-depth, qualitative interviews with people working in health- and other-sector partnerships. Findings:Local actors engaged in systemic framing of the wider determinants, health inequalities and what to do about them across localities, albeit in a non-routinised or uniform way. Evidence and data were a key part of telling the story. Owing in part to resource constraint, local practitioners tended to work with people who quickly ‘got it’ (the structural, systemic nature of health inequalities) and focused their efforts on working in these partnerships; this was a reflection of the relational process of ‘co-framing’. Other tactics were used to try and persuade unconvinced colleagues or elected members. There were multiple challenges, however, to framing consistency, coherency and comprehensiveness of coverage, and using a systemic frame was no guarantee of cross-sectoral collaborative working. Discussion and conclusion:Re-framing health inequalities is challenging and relational for local practitioners. Local tactics that include tailoring, co-framing and building strong local examples offer promise.

Trend Modelling as a Support of Managerial Decision-Making Process in Relation to Customers

The issue of managerial decision-making in relation to customers plays a significant role in any enterprise. Managerial decisions are often based on input information that is difficult to quantify. Therefore, common statistical methods cannot be easily used. A trend is the least informative quantifier. The goal of the paper is to present a new formal tool of the managerial decision-making process based on the trend model. This tool is demonstrated using the following variables: word of mouth, electronic word of mouth, brand trust, consumer experience and consumer price perception. These variables were chosen from scientific papers that confirmed a relationship among them. A trend analysis of the model involves assessing the relevant group of particular situations. The model’s predictions can be described as a sequence of these scenarios. The findings show that the trend model is a powerful and suitable tool in the managerial decision-making process.

Before reflexivity comes preflexivity

Before reflexivity comes preflexivity

Speech act and experiential analysis of Bali netizen reactions to the pandemic regulation posts

Social media has enabled individuals to publicly express their feelings, opinions, or sentiments about specific issues, including government policies. The accumulation of similar views from social media users can represent how the public perceives certain matters. The research was done by analysing netizen comments on posts regarding the pandemic regulation in Bali from August to November 2021 in a popular Instagram local news account Infodenpasar. The research employs the theory of speech act to describe the illocutionary force of netizen utterances to express particular sentiments and the systemic functional theory about experiential metafunction to explore the construal of participants and actions in the discourse. The finding shows that the most dominant speech act is conflictive, which expresses disbelief, complaint, and skepticism. In addition, the events in the clauses are constructed with various processes and participant types, especially relational process

Experience of flexibility and educational interaction in a technological high school in the context of emergency remote teaching. Learned lessons

The objective of this document is to visualize the experience of educational flexibility lived during a period of emergency remote teaching through the graphic representation of the relationships between the actors and the teaching-learning processes, the determination of criteria and academic-administrative categories of the structure in the institution of El Grullo Technological High School that allows the implementation of a procedure of a multimodal system itself which facilitates the adaptation of learning processes mediated by technology with educational quality by identifying the interactions in pedagogical mediations that favor learning and give way to the choice of appropriate technological mediations that develop educational innovation as a significant change in their interaction internally and with the environment, understanding education as a relational process. These relationships are presented as a result of the collection of information and data obtained through interviews, sample survey and analysis of documents of the institution, interaction that is shown in the schematization, and visual representation of the educational processes of the case study in the community education of the El Grullo High School as learned lessons.

Preliminary study of some of the main intratumor stroma components in gastric carcinomas.

The relationship between stromal compartment and tumor behavior in gastric carcinomas is still poorly understood and defined. Therefore, the authors started, with this preliminary study, an analysis of stromal compartment morphology and behavior in tumors arising from gastric mucosa epithelium. The study group included 75 patients operated for gastric carcinoma. Five parameters describing tumor morphology and behavior and eight parameters describing tumor stroma (TS) morphology were assessed. Histopathological examination included six serial sections of formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tumor tissue samples, stained with three classical stains and three antibodies to reveal the different parameters. For data comparison, Pearson's correlation test and the chi-squared (χ²) correlation test were used. Studied tumors were, usually, infiltrating, undifferentiated∕diffuse type, invasive in subserous spaces and with a Ki67 index higher than 20%. Collagen fibers dominated the stromal components, with a predominance of mature type and an average fibrillary index of 2.7. The whole amount of stromal components accounted for around one quarter of the tumor area. Mature collagen fibers were in opposite correlation with their immature counterpart, and both were in opposite correlation with smooth muscle fibers and expressed an opposite trend of correlation with components of vascular compartment. The whole amount of stromal components had divergent behavior with the components of vascular compartment. The latter expressed generally an opposite trend of correlation with individual fibrillary stromal components. We found only isolated relationships statistically significant between stromal components and tumor characteristics. TS is in a continuous remodeling process in relation to the evolution of tumor parenchyma, tumors less differentiated proving to have an immature stroma, with newly formed collagen fibers and higher vascular density. Further studies are required.

ПОВЫШЕНИЕ ЭФФЕКТИВНОСТИ ОРГАНИЗАЦИИ ДОРОЖНОГО ДВИЖЕНИЯ МЕТОДОМ ОТНЕСЕННОГО ЛЕВОГО ПОВОРОТА

The object of the study is the process of traffic flow in cities, and the subject is this process in relation to regulated street intersections. The main goal of the study is improving the efficiency of traffic organization by preventing the formation of traffic congestion on the street and road network. To achieve this, the creation of an offset left turn was proposed. During the study, the street and road network of Tyumen was considered, and areas for possible construction of the offset left turn were identified. The regulated intersection of 50 Let VLKSM St. and Geologorazvedchikov St. was chosen as the most appropriate. The results of the study showed that the use of the offset left turn would significantly reduce traffic delays and accident risk by reducing conflict points. The evaluation of the effectiveness of proposed solutions also confirmed the positive technological, social, economic and environmental effects.

Participation through the lens of care: Situated accountabilities in the codesign of a digital health platform for HIV care

Participation of citizens and service users is increasingly commonplace in research, policy and technology development. Alongside this development, social scientists have become increasingly incorporated into large-scale research and innovation projects to facilitate participatory spaces. This requires reflection on the mechanisms, outcomes and, ultimately, the accountabilities of participation. In this paper, we propose the lens of care framework for approaching such reflections. We illustrate its value by using it to account for our role in establishing participatory spaces as part of a European Horizon 2020-funded research and innovation project, entitled EmERGE. We describe the codesign processes we developed and implemented with the aim of enabling heterogeneous voices, distinct experiences and multiple ideas to be articulated to inform the development and implementation of a digital platform for HIV care. We show how the lens of care framework enables us to trouble participation along prior theoretical distinctions between patients/citizens roles, invited/uninvited spaces and inclusive/scientistic voices and provides novel lines of inquiry to capture the relational and emergent processes of participation in digital health innovation. In the EmERGE project, spaces of participation were co-created within and by the community, whose members skilfully arranged the material, social and temporal set-up. Within these spaces we were able to articulate voices, deliberate knowledge and study the potentialities of technology so that initial technological inscriptions of empowerment through information-push were challenged and were, eventually, replaced by more interactive forms of clinician-patient engagement in digital HIV care. Through the lens of care, this paper aims to provide a reflective tool for researchers and practitioners who are involved in the design, implementation, and evaluation of participatory projects.

Like Animals Like Human Beings: An Ecocritical Metaphor Discourse of Leadership in Selected Poems of Niyi Osundare

Niyi Osundare extensively investigates the natural world, which is the habitat inhabited by nonhuman beings, in his poems. As a result, his poetry is referred to as eco-poetry. There have been a lot of studies of Niyi Osundare’s poetry that have focused on traditional aesthetics, political power, exile, and the African experience, but not enough studies that have looked at the leadership of animals in their natural habitats. The main sources of information for the study are Niyi Osundare’s The Leader and the Led and Random Blues. This study examined the animal metaphor in relation to leadership from the viewpoints of Lakoff and Johnson’s conceptual metaphor theory and Michael Halliday’s transitivity theory. Four main participant and process categories are identified by the data as being present in the poems, with the Material and Relational processes having the largest frequency distributions (62.98% and 22.22%, respectively). This large proportion indicates both the ongoing activity in the African continent and the significant demands that people are under in their desire to rule the biosphere. The the low occurrence of verbal and mental processes in followers (11.11% and 7.40%, respectively) suggests that both animal and human leadership aspirants are more interested in what followers do than followers are. Also, the findings revealed the metaphorical representation of each animal thus: serpent(complacence), leeches and lice (parasite), orangutans (class), beasts (hard labor), crocodile (betrayal), hive (defense), lion (subjugation), antelopes/impalas (fright), hyena (glutton), giraffe (nonchalance), zebra (duplicity), elephant (destruction), warthog (ugliness), rhino (violence), snake (anarchy), lamb (peace), tiger (aggression), doe (compassion). Overall, the study concluded that we need leaders and followers who are similar to lambs and does for harmonious cohabitation in the ecosystem.

Exploring Child-Patient Autonomy: Findings from an Ethnographic Study of Clinic Visits by Children

In research into the involvement of children in decision-making about their health and treatment there is an over-reliance on interviews (with children, parents and doctors) as a research method. What actually happens during clinic visits in terms of child-adult communication and how children participate in decision-making has been largely overlooked. This study aims to fill this gap by exploring how child-patient autonomy functions in a child-parent-doctor triadic relationship. The study is based on ethnographic non-participatory observations of appointments with doctors involving 31 children and young adults ranging in age from 2 to 19 years. The study demonstrates that patient autonomy is not clearly attributed to either the child or the parent by the doctor, but is shared between them, and therefore child-patient autonomy is a relational process that is conceptualised as autonomy-making in this article.

AI amplifies the tough question: What is higher education really for?

ABSTRACT The dominant response within higher education to the emergence of free online text- and graphic-generating software has been a concern with identifying AI usage in students’ work. We argue that this is both a waste of time and neglects our educational responsibilities. A police-catch-punish approach to AI, as with the use of this process in relation to plagiarism, ignores the broader purposes of higher education. If higher education is understood as being a space for nurturing transformative relationships with knowledge, AI can be harnessed to enhance learning experiences. Such an approach would also enable a critical understanding of the limitations and ethical deliberations around AI usage. Those critical academics who emphasise transformative learning over surveillance-driven approaches are likely to foster more meaningful higher education experiences.