Services In Jordan Research Articles

Health Service Utilization among Syrian Refugees with Chronic Health Conditions in Jordan

IntroductionThe influx of Syrian refugees into Jordan presents an immense burden to the Jordanian health system, particularly in treating chronic health conditions. This study was undertaken to assess utilization of health services for chronic health conditions among Syrian refugees in non-camp settings.MethodsA survey of Syrian refugees in Jordan was undertaken in June 2014 to characterize health seeking behaviors and issues related to accessing care for hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, chronic respiratory diseases, and arthritis. A cluster design with probability proportional to size sampling was used to attain a nationally representative sample of 1550 non-camp Syrian refugee households.ResultsOf 1363 cases with a chronic health condition diagnosis, 84.7% had received care in Jordan. Public facilities faced a heavy burden serving over half (53.9%) of care-seekers; the remainder received care in the private (29.6%) and NGO/charity (16.6%) sectors. Individuals with non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in the central region of Jordan and with arthritis had the lowest rates of care-seeking when compared to other regions and conditions. Overall, 31.6% of care-seekers had an out-of-pocket payment for the most recent care-seeking event which averaged 18.8 USD (median = 0 USD), excluding cost of medications.DiscussionForced displacement presents major challenges to those with NCDs, which have the potential to seriously impact both the quality of life and life expectancy amongst refugees. NCD patterns among Syrian refugees indicate the importance of continuing support to public sector services in Jordan to adequately meet expanding needs and ensure appropriate prevention and control of priority NCDs.

Costs of hospital services in Jordan.

Policy makers are on quest for estimates of health costs to achieve maximum efficiency and sustainability. In Jordan, there is a scarcity of information on hospital service costs. The purpose of this study was to estimate the direct cost of hospital services in one of the biggest public hospitals in Amman, Jordan. A retrospective analysis forms a 400-bed public urban hospital. Costs were estimated in Jordanian dinars (JD) (exchange rate was US$1.41). Inpatient costs contributed to 50% of all costs whilst outpatient clinics consumed 17%. Average cost per admission was JD 481.6 (US$674.2), JD 106.7 (US$149.3) per inpatient day and JD 63.1 (US$88.3) per bed day. The average cost per visit to emergency room was JD 14.1 s (US$19.7). Cost per visit to ambulatory care services ranged between JD 37.3 and 473 (US$52.6-662.2). The average cost per surgery was JD 322.1 (US$454.2). With high health costs, areas for improvements in efficiency and cost savings must be identified and discussed with managers and policy makers. A larger-scale study is advocated to understand the costs of various health providers such as military, teaching and private hospitals.

Factors that Affect Commercial Banks Customers Intention towards Electronic Payment Services in Jordan

<p>This study aims to identify the factors influencing commercial banks customers intention toward electronic payment services in Jordan (AL-Karak) province. To achieve the aim of the study, a questionnaire has been developed to explore the effect of the independent variables (relative advantages, simplicity, security, consciousness and self efficacy) on the dependent variable (banks customers intention toward E-payment services). Six hundred questioners had distributed and 543 were returned to be valid for the final analysis with response rate of 90.5%. SPSS v 18 was used to test the reliability and composite reliability, normal distribution and correlation between the study variables. Also, Amos v 8 software has been used to examine the study hypotheses. Results of this study indicates an acceptance to four hypotheses related to influence of security, self efficacy, consciousness and simplicity continually. We reject one hypotheses related to relative advantages on banks customers toward E-payment services adoption. Finally, set of recommendations had been present throughout the study.</p>

An Empirical Investigation on the Adoption of e-Government in Developing Countries: The Case of Jordan

While e-Government has the potential to improve public administration effectiveness as well as efficiency by increasing convenience, performance and accessibility of different government services to citizens, the success of these initiatives is dependent not only on government support, but also on citizens’ willingness to accept and adopt those e-government services. Although there is a great body of literature that discuss e-Government in developed countries, e-government in developing countries, in general, and Arab countries, in particular, has not received equal attention. The objective of this study is to determine the factors that influence the adoption of e-government services in a developing country, namely Jordan. An extended version of Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is utilized as the theoretical base of this study. Overall, the study proposes that citizens’ perceptions about e-Government services influence their attitude towards adopting e-government initiatives. A survey collected data from 853 online users of Jordan’s e-government services. Using partial least squares (PLS) of structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis technique, the results show that all the four factors, namely: Perceived Credibility, Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use and Computer Self Efficacy have significant effect on the adoption of e-government services in Jordan. Moreover, the study findings show that Perceived Ease of Use as the most important factor in predicting Jordanian citizens’ adoption of e-government services. The research limitations, implications for research and practice are discussed.

An Empirical Examination of Consumer Adoption of Mobile Banking (M-Banking) in Jordan

Scant research attention has been given to how Jordanian consumers' perceive and respond to m-banking services, and more specifically, the particular factors that drive consumers to adopt m-banking. This lack of knowledge and limited previous research has highlighted the need for further research. Therefore, the primary focus of this research is to advance our current understanding of m-banking from the consumer's perspective. A model of consumers' adoption of m-banking is developed by integrating and incorporating TAM with other relevant variables such as perceived trust, and perceived credibility along with consumers' attitudes and intention to use m-banking. Theoretically, the current study is among the first studies to develop a model of the major factors that influence consumers' attitude and intention to use m-banking services in Jordan. Practically, the results of this study may provide marketers with information that could be useful in attracting and convincing customers to use m-banking.

Marketing Jordan as a Regional Medical Service Center (View Point of Employee)

The author has conducted the study on the reality of medical sector in Jordan within title “The availability to marketing Jordan as regional medical care service center”. As researcher I applied the study on Jordanian medical sector for knowing the resources of basics medical industry. The study contains theoretical part and methodology, results and analysis, recommendations, in which there are three independents variables (medical care in Jordan: government, private, military sectors, and natural sites, government role) dependant variable (marketing Jordan regionally as medical service center). The study aimed to explore the role of government as: Jordan maybe promote medical sector regionally, make up the industry of medical sector and maximize the profit. The study explore there are many medical services in Jordan for investment as a regional attraction customer center.

Applying contingent valuation to measure the economic value of forest services: a case study in Northern Jordan

This paper reports an attempt to apply the contingent valuation method (CVM) to value ecosystem services in Jordan’s northern forests. I employed the CVM to obtain an estimate for the population’s willingness to pay (WTP) for restoration and conservation of services in this area. I sampled 300 rural households through in-person interviews, then applied two econometric models to examine the incentives for WTP. The aggregate present value benefit is 3,569,556 Jordanian Dinar for the whole of Jordan’s northern forests; this valuation is based on the amount participants were willing to contribute to maintain forest ecosystem services. The conservation cost is assumed to reflect the direct value gained from human utilization of forest services. Results suggest a correlation between WTP and household income, as well as WTP and classification of services. I assess that income and forest service type most directly shaped participants’ WTP for forest conservation. The study also indicates that the CVM can successfully be applied to Jordan and may be a viable and potentially useful direction for future research on environment valuation in other developing countries in the Middle East.

The Effect of Trust and Risk Perception on Citizen’s Intention to Adopt and Use E-Government Services in Jordan

This study was undertaken with the primary aim of identifying, examining and providing an understanding of the factors that could affect citizens’ intention to adopt and use e-government services in Jordan. The preliminary research model used here had been developed from the Technology Acceptance Model by incorporating additional constructs from other models, namely web trust and perceived risk. A self-administered questionnaire was completed by the selected sample. The response rate was 42.5 percent. The data were analyzed using parametric statistics including ANOVA and MANOVA. The finding of this study revealed that there were four main factors that affected citizens’ intention to engage in electronic government services; these were perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, perceived risk, and trust in electronic channels. A practical implication of the findings and conclusions of this study was that governments were urged to take into account the importance of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, trust and perceived risk in influencing the intention of citizens to use e-government services. This study was the first to provide important information on factors affecting citizens’ intention to adopt and use electronic government services in Jordan.

Home Health Care (HHC) Managers Perceptions About Challenges and Obstacles that Hinder HHC Services in Jordan.

Home care aims at supporting people with various degrees of dependency to remain at home rather than use residential, long-term, or institutional-based nursing care. Demographic, epidemiological, social, and cultural trends in Jordan as in other countries are changing the traditional patterns of care with growing emphasis on home care. The purpose of this study is to highlight the most common challenges related to home health care (HHC) services in Jordan as perceived by the managers of HHC agencies. Methods: a descriptive qualitative design that depends on focus group discussions has been used to collect data from a sample of 18 managers who met the selection criteria and who are willing to participate, the study found that, the main challenges of HHC services as perceived by managers were: shortage of female staff, lack of governance and regulation, poor management, unethical practices, lack of referral systems, and low accessibility of the poor and less privileged as HHC services are not included in health insurance schemes, it concludes also that the home health care industry in Jordan is facing many challenges and problems that may have negative effects on the effectiveness, efficiency, equity and quality of services and should be addressed by health policy makers.

Jordan’s e-Government at the crossroads

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to assess the maturity level of the Jordanian electronic Government (e-Government) program from the citizen’s perspective. This assessment aims to help in determining whether the Jordanian e-Government strategy, set back in 2002, has achieved its main objectives which are delivering services to people across society, irrespective of location, economic status, education or ICT ability; improving the ICT readiness and infrastructure; and developing new service delivery channels and increase the involvement of citizens through the use of ICTs. Jordan started a national e-Government initiative aiming to streamline government procedures and provide government information and services to the public online. This paper reveals the levels of citizens’ awareness, acceptance, usage and willingness to use the e-Government services in Jordan. It investigates issues such as Jordan’s e-Government maturity level, citizen’s preferences when dealing with e-Government, citizen’s attitude toward using various e-services, citizen’s concerns and the required services. Design/methodology/approach – To achieve the research purposes, which needed a high rate of respondents to generalize the findings, we opted for quantitative research through questionnaires as an appropriate instrument base to address the citizens’ awareness and usage of e-Government services. In total, 7,238 distributed surveys were conducted across Jordan. The average of the responses rate in the three regions was 58.6 per cent. Findings – The citizen’s interest in e-Government services is declining, as the citizens’ level of awareness of e-Government and its services is still modest after more than ten years of the start of the e-Government program in Jordan. Citizens’ attitude toward using e-Government services is changing and determined by various factors and issues reported in the paper. Research limitations/implications – The selected governorates might not be the best governorates to represent the three regions of Jordan, the data took almost 15 months to be collected and analyzed which may have resulted in some changes to the reality. Finally, developing countries are not a homogenous group and, therefore, the results of this paper may not be generalizable. Originality/value – The findings present a number of key factors that hinder Jordan’s e-Government development. These findings can be useful for researchers and practitioners, as they provide rich insights on e-Government development. The findings can be also useful to other developing countries, as they can help them in understanding citizen related challenges when designing, planning and implementing their e-Government initiatives.

Quitting smoking and utilization of smoking cessation services in Jordan: a population-based survey

Increasing rates of smoking in Jordan have been documented. It is therefore important to understand the trends and factors associated with attempts to quit smoking, such as the utilization of smoking cessation clinics and hotlines. A population sample of 3196 adults aged 18+ years were interviewed about their smoking habits; 1032 (32.3%) were current smokers and 93 (2.9%) had successfully quit smoking (8.7% of ever-smokers). A high percentage of current smokers (62.8%) had tried, unsuccessfully, to quit smoking. Almost half of them had heard of smoking cessation clinics and hotlines, but only 2.4% had ever utilized them. After being informed about these services, 53.0% of current smokers agreed that they were likely to utilize them. Only 19.9% of current smokers had ever received advice from a health-care practitioner about contacting these services. The study should guide decision-makers on strategies to reduce the high smoking rates in Jordan.

The Factors That Impact of e-Customer Relationship Management Performance (e-CRM) of Mobile Services in Jordan

e-Customer Relationship Management (e-CRM) helps business use technology and human recourses to gain insight into the behavior of customer and the value of those customers. The main objective of this paper is to investigate the antecedents of e-CRM performance and its impact on customer loyalty and Customer-switching intention (CSI). A conceptual model, adapted from Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), was built to relate Customer Privacy (CP) and Customer-Switching Intention (CSI) to e-CRM performance of Jordanian Mobile Services. Self-administered questionnaires were used to collect the data from University's students were selected as the respondents for this research. This paper will describe literature review of CRM and e-CRM, customer factors that including CP and CSI. Also, Will describe research model based on Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Hypotheses. The data collocation, sample, Analysis of data and desiccation of results.

The Factors Predicting Students' Satisfaction with Universities' Healthcare Clinics' Services : A Case-Study from the Jordanian Higher Education Sector

In this paper, customer satisfaction cues in universities’ healthcare clinics’ services in Jordan are examined. The study proposes an instrument of students’ satisfaction that considers healthcare service quality in the narrow view and educational service quality in the wider view; such attributes are medical services' prices, doctors' experience, medical clinics’ convenience, temperature and cleanliness, and treatment by employees. The researcher used both secondary and primary data resources to study this phenomenon and adapt a quantitative approach to survey students who use such services as a main means of data collection. The questionnaires were directly distributed to the students and were retrieved immediately after completion. 500 questionnaires were distributed and the response rate was 60%. A 5-point Likert Scale has been used in all questionnaire items beyond the demographical elements to examine student satisfaction with identified healthcare services provided by one of the Universities in Jordan. The Regression method was used to test all study hypotheses. The study found that students were satisfied with medical service centre location and medical services' prices, doctors' experience, medical clinic temperature and cleanliness, and treatment by employees, but were dissatisfied with appointment waiting times. Additional issues have been explained regarding hypotheses development, testing and discussions supported by recommendations for future studies purposes.

Students with Learning Disabilities and Challenging Behaviors in Jordan

This paper reports the findings of a study which aimed to explore the learning and behavioral characteristics of students with Learning Disabilities (LDs) in Jordan. Specifically, variables that related to challenging behaviors, school's type, and gender differences were investigated. Four resource room teachers in public and private schools were asked to rate (168) students with LDs on the Arabic version of the Building Blocks Questionnaire (Mather & Goldstein, 2008). The findings indicate that over half of the students with LDs are suffering from challenging behaviors. In addition, students with LDs in private schools presented a better learning and behavioral profile than students with LDs in public schools. The results also showed that there are female under representation in special education services in Jordan. Implications and limitations of the study are discussed with reference to previous research and directions for future investigation.

Primary care patients’ reasons for choosing emergency department services in Jordan

Over-use of emergency departments (EDs) by patients with primary care problems is a matter of concern. I studied patients and carers of children attending the family medicine clinics in the ED of Al-Bashir Hospital in Amman, Jordan1 from May to July 2011, during office hours (Sunday to Thursday, 8:00–16:00) to determine their main reason …

Understanding the adoption and usage of mobile payment services by using TAM3

This study aims at introducing a modified Technology Acceptance Model 3 TAM3 to investigate key factors that affect individuals' intention to adopt and use mobile payment M-payment in Jordan. It also helps merchandisers avoid spending thousands or even millions of dollars that, on investments, may have minimal and modest effect on whether or not the individuals tend actually to adopt and to use. To reach such ends, a questionnaire was distributed to collect data from 475 undergraduate university students by using a proportional stratified random sample, and analysed by using a structural equation modelling SEM. Results show that user's adoption and use of M-payment services can be anticipated from users' behavioural intentions, which are significantly affected by the following: perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, subjective norm, image, output quality, self-efficacy, perceptions of external control, and playfulness. This study shows that there is a promising and bright future for M-payment services in Jordan as more than 62% of respondents said that they are willing to merchandise by using their mobile phones.

Users’ Perception and Satisfaction of Current Situation of Home Health Care Services in Jordan

Background: The healthcare system in Jordan is evolving and has to continuously respond to the changing risk profile of the population. The purpose of this study was to examine perception of users and providers of the quality of home health care services. Methods: A descriptive design was used to collect data from a convenience sample of 82 users of home health care services. Results: Users had low to fair satisfaction (30.5% - 69.5%) about the quality of care provided, had moderate satisfaction (72.0% to 81.7%) about the information received, and had low to fair satisfaction about education related to goal of treatment and medication (46.4% - 53.3%). Users had high level of agreement (>70%) that health agencies provided interpersonal care. Conclusion: The ability of the frail people to choose from a variety of cost-effective long-term care services is limited.

Challenges and Factors Affecting the Implementation of E-Government in Jordan

Electronic government (e-Government) in its simplest form can mean using information and communication technology (ICT) tools to provide services to citizens. Still with the huge benefits and synergies that e-Government grants to governments and societies, it faces many obstacles and challenges. Therefore, there are always a number of critical success factors and risks associated with e-Government. This paper highlights some of the key ones; it critically assesses key factors that influence e-Government services adoption and diffusion. Thus, the aim of this study is to examine and identify the factors that influence and affect the utilization of e-Government in the developing countries, specifically in Jordan. Furthermore, this article investigates the challenges and barriers that must be overcome in order to successfully implement e-Government in Jordan. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and used in this study to collect the data. The results of this study show that the most significant challenges and factors influencing the implementation of e-Government services in Jordan are related to budgeting and financial costs, human expertise, social influence, technological issues, lack of awareness, resistance of public employees, data privacy and security, the legal framework, the needed technology, administrative obstacles, and trust or believing in e-Government. Conclusions, recommendations and future work are stated at the end of the paper.

Assessing Key Factor that Influence on the Acceptance of Mobile Commerce Based on Modified UTAUT

This study presents a modified Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) to examine keyfactors that affect the intention to accept and the subsequent use of mobile commerce (M-commerce) amongJordanian consumers. A survey questionnaire was used to collect data from 447 undergraduate universitystudents using a stratified random sample, and analyzed by using a structural equation modeling (SEM); byusing the WarpPLS 3.0 software. Results show that user acceptance and use of Mobile commerce services canbe predicted from the users’ behavioral intentions, which are affected significantly by Performance Expectancy,Effort Expectancy, and Social Influence. From among these variables, Social Influence is the most significantdeterminant that directly affects behavioral intention to use M-commerce services in Jordan followed by EffortExpectancy then Performance Expectancy. Facilitating Conditions and moderating variables (gender, age,monthly expense, and experience) have no significant effect on Behavioral Intention to use M-commerceservices in Jordan.Ultimately, this study finds that there is a direct effect between behavioral intention and the eventual use ofM-commerce services in Jordan. This research should help merchandisers avoid spending thousands or evenmillions of dollars that may on investments that will have little effect on whether or not the consumer willactually accept and use M-commerce. The study also gives quantified indicators and presents a model that mighthelp in understanding the M-commerce environment in Jordan. It concludes with an examination of theimplications of the research findings and offers suggestions for future research.

Special education in Jordan

The purpose of this article is to provide a brief background about special education system in Jordan and particularly describes the present types of programmes and legislation provided within the country to students with special needs, as well as integration movement. Jordan has historically provided a limited number of educational opportunities for individuals with disabilities, but has recently demonstrated a movement toward a more comprehensive educational system that includes students with disabilities in general education classrooms. Nevertheless, special education in Jordan still faces many problems and challenges. Barriers to implementation, as well as recommendations to improve special education services in Jordan are also discussed.