Empowering audiences to measure quality

This paper addresses four indicators of the audience experience in the performing arts: knowledge, risk, authenticity and collective engagement, and argues that these provide a measure of the audience's experience of the quality of a performance. Qualitative interviews with four performing arts companies
demonstrated a range of strategies for gathering audience feedback. In particular, the paper addresses systems for gathering "deep feedback" by audiences, and argues that these are a means of collecting information about the quality of the audience experience. "Deep feedback" is a critical mechanism by which performing arts organisations can engage in audience development and audiences are empowered to measure quality.

Far from equilibrium

Examines Terry Gilliam's cinema via his interest in systems: mechanical, philosophical, aesthetic, mythological and scientific. Argues for Gilliam as in interpreter of the late twentieth century experience, his films interweaving contemporary theory with archaic lore in dramatisation of the ongoing quest to apprehend the world's processes.

Cognitive evaluation : prompts used to measure sponsorship awareness

Marketing managers have the same accountability for their spending on sponsorship as they do for their general advertising spend. Since the direct impact on customer loyalty and profit is so hard to measure, surrogate measures such as recall are often used. Key issues with recall measures are the nature and type of prompting given. This paper reports the results of an experiment on three different ways of measuring sponsorship recall based on brand, category and event prompts. Differences between the prompts are shown with some facilitating and another inhibiting recall. The results are discussed within the framework of spreading activation theory which has the potential to explain and predict recall.

Factors that predict work ability : incorporating a measure of organisational values towards ageing

This research conducted in an Australian public sector organisation aimed to identify the main factors that predict work ability for employees. According to Ilmarinen's (1999) model of work ability, an individual's work ability is influenced by their general health, attitudes, values and motivation interacting with workplace and other environmental demands. However what is unknown is the influence of value incongruence (i.e. the lack of fit between individual and organisational values), particularly when that incongruence results in age discrimination. This is important in an Australian context where youth and symbols of youth are over-valued in business environments and where older workers themselves perceive age discrimination as the single most important cause of early exit from the labour force.

109 participants completed a survey about work ability. Differences between work ability and health were not found between older and younger workers suggesting that strategies for improving work ability could be targeted at all employees rather than just older employees. However there were significant differences found between older and younger workers on reasons that would influence employees to stay longer in the organisation. Older workers tended to be more influenced by the provision of less demanding work, and positive attitudes towards older workers. Younger workers tended to be more influenced by opportunities to be employed in another section of the organisation, skills training opportunities and career advancement opportunities.

Results from hierarchical regression analyses suggested that good physical and mental health, and low occupational stress related to workplace culture were significant predictors of increased work ability. Results also suggested that occupational stress is likely to decrease with: high work ability and work satisfaction; and high value congruence. Implications for wellbeing programs to include the development of targeted organisational values are discussed.

Towards a better understanding of 'delocalized charge' in ionic liquid anions

One of the main characteristics that are attributed to ionic liquids (especially those with a low melting point) is that the anions comprising the ionic liquids possess a certain degree of charge delocalization as compared to anions in traditional molten salts. Based on the proton affinity equilibrium we proposed a new energetic criterion that can be used as a measure of charge delocalization. The proposed proton affinity comparison quantifies the extent to which ionic liquid anions are delocalized. Thus it should lead to a better understanding towards the design of task-specific ionic liquids. Therefore, this criterion can be applied to newly designed anions to assure that the extent of charge delocalization falls within the same range of values on the proton affinity scale as other commonly used ionic liquid anions.

The convergent validity of two sensory processing scales used with school - age children : comparing the sensory profile and the sensory processing measure

Abstract: Aim: To investigate the convergent validity between the Sensory Profile, the Sensory Profile School Companion, and the Home and Main Classroom Forms of the Sensory Processing Measure.

Method: Thirty mothers completed the Sensory Profile and the Sensory Processing Measure - Home Form on one child each. Nineteen teachers of the same children completed the Sensory Profile School Companion and the Sensory Processing Measure - Main Classroom Form.

Results: The Sensory Profile and the Sensory Processing Measure - Home Form were significantly correlated (rho=0.86, p less-than .01). The Sensory Profile School Companion and Sensory Processing Measure - Main Classroom Form were also significantly correlated (rho=.74, p less-than .01).

Conclusion: The two sets of sensory processing scales had moderate levels of convergent validity.

A step toward a common measure of organizational justice

Dimensions of the organizational justice construct were examined in a public sector context utilizing an organizational justice measure developed by Colquitt in 2001. Exploratory factor analysis and standard error scree test supported four dimensions of justice as measured by Colquitt's scale. There was evidence of a new factor called procedural-voice justice that taps a possible association with the concept of voice. Future research on organizational justice must investigate its dimensionality based on more representative samples to develop a more globally applicable measure.