Explaining landholders' decisions about riparian zone management: The role of behavioural, normative, and control beliefs

Water quality is a key concern in the current global environment, with the need to promote practices that help to protect water quality, such as riparian zone management, being paramount. The present study used the theory of planned behaviour as a framework for understanding how beliefs influence decisions about riparian zone management. Respondents completed a survey that assessed their behavioural, normative, and control beliefs in relation to intentions to manage riparian zones on their property. The results of the study showed that, overall, landholders with strong intentions to manage their riparian zones differed significantly in terms of their beliefs compared to landholders who had weak intentions to manage their riparian zones. Strong intentions to manage riparian zones were associated with a favourable cost-benefit analysis, greater perceptions of normative support for the practice and lower perceptions of the extent to which barriers would impede management of riparian zones. It was also evident that willingness to comply with the recommendations of salient referents, beliefs about the benefits of riparian zone management and perceptions of the extent to which barriers would impede riparian zone management were most important for determining intentions to manage riparian zones. Implications for policy and extension practice are discussed. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Tympanometric findings in children at school entry: A normative study

This study presents tympanometric normative data for Australian children at school entry in view of the lack of age-specific population-based data for this group. Participants were 327 children (164 boys, 163 girls) aged between 5 and 6 years, who had no history of middle ear infection, and passed pure-tone screening at 20 dB HL. Normative values for static admittance (SA), ear canal volume (ECV), tympanometric peak pressure, tympanometric width (TW) and tympanometric gradient were established. Based on these normative data, the use of the ASHA (1997) guidelines for medical referral, in which ECV > 1.0 ml in the presence of a flat tympanogram, SA < 0.3 ml, or TW > 200 daPa may not provide the best criteria for Australian children aged between 5 and 6 years. If SA < 0.3 ml were used instead of SA < 0.16 ml, a greater proportion of Australian children would have failed tympanometry, thus increasing the false alarm rate.

Confirmatory factor analysis and psychometric properties of the Anxiety Sensitivity Index-Revised in clinical and normative populations

The present investigation aimed to critically examine the factor structure and psychometric properties of the Anxiety Sensitivity Index - Revised (ASI-R). Confirmatory factor analysis using a clinical sample of adults (N = 248) revealed that the ASI-R could be improved substantially through the removal of 15 problematic items in order to account for the most robust dimensions of anxiety sensitivity. This modified scale was renamed the 21-item Anxiety Sensitivity Index (21-item ASI) and reanalyzed with a large sample of normative adults (N = 435), revealing configural and metric invariance across groups. Further comparisons with other alternative models, using multi-sample analysis, indicated the 21-item ASI to be the best fitting model for both groups. There was also evidence of internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and construct validity for both samples suggesting that the 21-item ASI is a useful assessment device for investigating the construct of anxiety sensitivity in both clinical and normative populations.

High frequency (1000 Hz) tympanometry in normal neonates

The characteristics of high frequency (1000 Hz) acoustic admittance results obtained from normal neonates were described in this study. Participants were 170 healthy neonates (96 boys and 74 girls) aged between 1 and 6 days (mean = 3.26 days, SD = 0.92). Transient evoked otoacoustic emissions (TEOAEs), and 226 Hz and 1000 Hz probe tone tympanograms were obtained from the participants using a Madsen Capella OAE/middle ear analyser. The results showed that of the 170 neonates, 34 were not successfully tested in both ears, 14 failed the TEOAE screen in one or both ears, and 122 (70 boys, 52 girls) passed the TEOAE screen in both ears and also maintained an acceptable probe seal during tympanometry. The 1000 Hz tympanometric data for the 122 neonates (244 ears) showed a single-peaked tympanogram in 225 ears (92.2 %), a flat-sloping tympanogram in 14 ears (5.7 %), a double-peaked tympanogram in 3 ears (1.2 %) and other unusual shapes in 2 ears (0.8 %). There was a significant ear effect, with right ears showing significantly higher mean peak compensated static admittance and tympanometric width, but lower mean acoustic admittance at +200 daPa and gradient than left ears. No significant gender effects or its interaction with ear were found. The normative tympanometric data derived from this cohort may serve as a guide for detecting middle ear dysfunction in neonates.

Variants of temporal defeasible logics for modelling norm modifications

This paper proposes some variants of Temporal Defeasible Logic (TDL) to reason about normative modifications. These variants make it possible to differentiate cases in which, for example, modifications at some time change legal rules but their conclusions persist afterwards from cases where also their conclusions are blocked.

Strategic argumentation: A game theoretical investigation

Argumentation is modelled as a game where the payoffs are measured in terms of the probability that the claimed conclusion is, or is not, defeasibly provable, given a history of arguments that have actually been exchanged, and given the probability of the factual premises. The probability of a conclusion is calculated using a standard variant of Defeasible Logic, in combination with standard probability calculus. It is a new element of the present approach that the exchange of arguments is analysed with game theoretical tools, yielding a prescriptive and to some extent even predictive account of the actual course of play. A brief comparison with existing argument-based dialogue approaches confirms that such a prescriptive account of the actual argumentation has been almost lacking in the approaches proposed so far.

Modeling control objectives for business process compliance

Business process design is primarily driven by process improvement objectives. However, the role of control objectives stemming from regulations and standards is becoming increasingly important for businesses in light of recent events that led to some of the largest scandals in corporate history. As organizations strive to meet compliance agendas, there is an evident need to provide systematic approaches that assist in the understanding of the interplay between (often conflicting) business and control objectives during business process design. In this paper, our objective is twofold. We will firstly present a research agenda in the space of business process compliance, identifying major technical and organizational challenges. We then tackle a part of the overall problem space, which deals with the effective modeling of control objectives and subsequently their propagation onto business process models. Control objective modeling is proposed through a specialized modal logic based on normative systems theory, and the visualization of control objectives on business process models is achieved procedurally. The proposed approach is demonstrated in the context of a purchase-to-pay scenario.

The relationship between multiple birth children's early phonological skills and later literacy

Previous studies have shown that multiple ; birth children (MBC) are prone to early phonological ;difficulties and later literacy problems. However, to date, ;there has been no systematic long-term follow-up of MBC with phonological difficulties in the preschool years to determine whether these difficulties predict later literacy problems. In this study, 20 MBC whose early speech and language skills had been previously documented were compared to normative data and 20 singleton controls on tasks assessing phonological ; processing and literacy. The major findings indicated that MBC performed significantly more poorly on some tasks :df phonological processing than singleton controls did. Further, the early phonological skills of MBC (i.e., the number of inappropriate phonological processes used) correlated with poor performance on visual rhyme recognition, word repetition, and phoneme detection tasks 5 years later. There was no significant relationship between early biological factors (birth weight and gestation period) and performance on the phonological processing and literacy-related subtests. These results cl-support the hypothesis that MBC's early speech and language difficulties are not merely a transient phase;of; development, but a real disorder, with consequences for later academic achievement.