Population norms and meaningful differences for the Assessment of Quality of Life (AQoL) measure

Objective: The Assessment of Quality of Life (AQoL) instrument is widely used in Australian health research. To assist researchers interpret and report their work, this paper reports population and health status norms, general minimal important differences (MIDs) and effect sizes.

Method: Data from the 1998 South Australian Health Omnibus Survey (n=3,010 population-based respondents) were analysed by gender, age group and health status. Data from four other longitudinal studies were analysed to obtain estimated MIDs.

Results: The mean (SD) AQoL utility score was 0.83 (0.20). Gender and age subgroup differences were apparent; the mean scores for women were consistent until their 50s, when scores declined. Greater variability was observed for males whose scores declined more slowly but consistently between 40–80 years. For both genders, those aged 80+ years had the lowest scores When assessed by health status, those reporting excellent health obtained the highest utility scores; progressive declines were observed with decreasing health status. Effect sizes of 0.13 or greater may reflect important differences between groups A difference in AQoL scores of 0.06 utility points over time suggests a general MID.

Conclusions: AQoL population norms, MIDs and effect sizes can be used as reference points for the interpretation of AQoL data. These findings add to the growing evidence that the AQoL is a robust and sensitive measure that has wide applicability.

Implications: The availability of population norms will assist researchers using the AQoL to more easily interpret and report their work.

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.

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.

Discriminating DDoS flows from flash crowds using information distance

Discriminating DDoS flooding attacks from flash crowds poses a tough challenge for the network security community. Because of the vulnerability of the original design of the Internet, attackers can easily mimic the patterns of legitimate network traffic to fly under the radar. The existing fingerprint or feature based algorithms are incapable to detect new attack strategies. In this paper, we aim to differentiate DDoS attack flows from flash crowds. We are motivated by the following fact: the attack flows are generated by the same prebuilt program (attack tools), however, flash crowds come from randomly distributed users all over the Internet. Therefore, the flow similarity among DDoS attack flows is much stronger than that among flash crowds. We employ abstract distance metrics, the Jeffrey distance, the Sibson distance, and the Hellinger distance to measure the similarity among flows to achieve our goal. We compared the three metrics and found that the Sibson distance is the most suitable one for our purpose. We apply our algorithm to the real datasets and the results indicate that the proposed algorithm can differentiate them with an accuracy around 65%.

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.

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.