Identifying the factors governing attitude towards the e-Agriservice among dairy farmers in Maharashtra, India

Information and communication technology (ICT) projects have a great potential to revolutionise the information delivery system by bridging the gap between farmers and extension personnel. aAQUA (Almost All Questions Answered) portal was launched by the Developmental Informatics Laboratory (DIL) at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Mumbai, Maharashtra, India in 2003 as an information providing system to deliver technology options and tailored information for the problems and queries raised by Indian dairy farmers. To measure the effectiveness of this service the attitudinal dimensions of the users of aAQUA e-Agriservice were investigated using a 22 item scale. A simple random sampling technique was used to select 120 dairy farmers from which data were collected and subjected to factor analysis to identify the underlying constructs in this research. From the attitude items, four components were extracted and named as the pessimistic, utility, technical and efficacy perspective, which influenced the development of varied level of attitudinal inclination towards the e-Agriservice. These components explained 64.40 per cent of variation in the attitude of the users towards the aAQUA e-Agriservice. This study provides a framework for technically efficient service provision that might help to reduce the pessimistic attitude of target population to adopt e-Agriservice in their farming system. The results should also be helpful for researchers, academics, ICT based service providers and policy makers to consider these perspectives while planning and implementing ICT projects.

Attitude in students of Health Sciences toward scientific knowledge

Educating health professionals implies the challenge of creating and developing an inquiring mind, ready to be in a state of permanent questioning. For this purpose, it is fundamental to generate a positive attitude toward the generation of knowledge and science. Objective: to determine the attitude toward science and the scientific method in undergraduate students of health sciences. Materials and methods: a cross-sectional study was made by applying a self-administered survey, excluding those who were transferred from other universities and repeated. The attitude toward science and the scientific method were valued using the scale validated and published by Hren, which contains three domains: value of scientific knowledge, value of scientific methodology, and value of science for health professions. Results: 362 students were included, 86,6% of them graded the attitude toward scientific knowledge above 135 points, neutral scale value. Similar scores were registered in the domains value of scientific knowlede for the human dimension of the students and value of science for health professions. 91,4% of the students graded the value of scientific methodology below 48 points. Conclusions: the favorable attitude of the students can be explained by the contact that they have with the scientific method since the beginning of their studies and its concordance with the evolution of science. The domain value of scientific methodology obtained the lowest grade on the part of the students, which could be related to the lack of knowledge about scientific methodology.

La medida de la eficacia docente. Descripci??n y aplicaci??n del Minnesota Teacher Attitude Inventory : un instrumento predictor

Ofrecer una panor??mica que pretende incluir el fundamento de la evaluaci??n en general, su concreci??n en el ??mbito de la evaluaci??n del docente, es decir, de su eficacia describiendo modalidades e instrumentos de evaluaci??n y sus agentes. Analizar una de esas modalidades: Minnesota Teacher Attitude Inventory a partir de una experiencia concreta. Hip??tesis: A) La clasificaci??n ordinal atendiendo a los promedios obtenidos en las calificaciones de las asignaturas cursadas durante la carrera, no guardan correlaci??n significativa con las puntuaciones del Minnesota Teacher Attitude Inventory. B) Las calificaciones en la asignatura de Did??ctica obtenidas por los alumnos de segundo curso guardan correlaci??n con las puntuaciones en el MTAI. C) Las actitudes de los estudiantes de Magisterio frente a la Educaci??n, despu??s de haber realizado su per??odo largo de pr??cticas docentes -3 meses-, se modifican negativamente. Alumnos de los tres cursos de las Escuelas de Formaci??n del Profesorado de EGB de Barcelona y Tarragona (oficiales) y Blanquerna de Barcelona (no oficial), durante el mes de mayo de 1979. Definidos los planteamientos te??ricos se aplica el MTAI despu??s de haberle hecho unas adaptaciones formales para poderlo aplicar a nuestro contexto y confeccionar una hoja de respuestas m??s operativa y ??til para la correcci??n manual con plantilla. En base a unas hip??tesis y disponiendo de unos datos se analizan los resultados y se extraen las conclusiones pertinentes. Consultas personales, textos, documentos y revistas educativas. MTAI (mide las actitudes, prev?? las relaciones que se establecen en la clase y la satisfacci??n que el futuro educador obtendr?? de la Ense??anza como profesi??n). Tabulaci??n de los datos mediante puntuaciones medias globales, pol??gonos de frecuencias, correlaciones graduales y correlaciones lineales. Las puntuaciones obtenidas no se corresponden con las de los baremos americanos, la media en el baremo es de 59.5 y la de nuestros estudiantes apenas sobrepasa el 30. Hay una necesidad de adaptaciones y validaciones completas para pruebas de prestigio en otras ??reas geogr??ficas. El instrumento es ??til para servirse de ??l como referencia, a pesar de las deficiencias que implica la aplicaci??n directa e inmediata tras la traducci??n del original.

Antecedents of the attitude towards inter-group reconciliation in a setting of armed conflict

Resumen tomado de la publicación

Psychometric properties of the Spanish Adaptation of the School Attitude Assessment Survey-Revised

Resumen tomado de la publicaci??n

Adaptation of the Evidence-Based Practices Attitude Scale in Spanish child welfare professionals

Resumen tomado de la publicaci??n

Driving places - Marc Augé, non-places, and the geographies of England's M1 motorway

In this article I provide a critical account of the 'placing' of England's M1 motor-way. I start by critiquing Marc Auge's anthropological writings on 'non-places' which have provided a common point of reference for academics discussing spaces of travel, consumption and exchange in the contemporary world. I argue that Auge's ethnology of supermodernity results in a rather partial account of these sites, that he overstates the novelty of contemporary experiences of these spaces, and that he fails to acknowledge the heterogeneity and materiality of the social networks bound up with the production of non-places/places. I suggest that, rather than focusing on the presences and absences associated with the polarities of place and non-place, academics should examine the multiple, partial, dynamic and relational 'placings' which arise through the diverse performances and movements associated with travel, consumption and exchange. I then trace the topologies of England's M1 motorway, examining some of the different ways in which the motorway has been assembled, performed and placed over the past 45 years.

The role of eddies in driving the tropospheric response to stratospheric heating perturbations

A simplified general circulation model has been used to investigate the chain of causality whereby changes in tropospheric circulation and temperature are produced in response to stratospheric heating perturbations. Spinup ensemble experiments have been performed to examine the evolution of the tropospheric circulation in response to such perturbations. The primary aim of these experiments is to investigate the possible mechanisms whereby a tropospheric response to changing solar activity over the 11-yr solar cycle could be produced in response to heating of the equatorial lower stratosphere. This study therefore focuses on a stratospheric heating perturbation in which the heating is largest in the tropics. For comparison, experiments are also performed in which the stratosphere is heated uniformly at all latitudes and in which it is heated preferentially in the polar region. Thus, the mechanisms discussed have a wider relevance for the impact of stratospheric perturbations on the troposphere. The results demonstrate the importance of changing eddy momentum fluxes in driving the tropospheric response. This is confirmed by the lack of a similar response in a zonally symmetric model with fixed eddy forcing. Furthermore, it is apparent that feedback between the tropospheric eddy fluxes and tropospheric circulation changes is required to produce the full model response. The quasigeostrophic index of refraction is used to diagnose the cause of the changes in eddy behavior. It is demonstrated that the latitudinal extent of stratospheric heating is important in determining the direction of displacement of the tropospheric jet and storm track.

Risk taking from the participant's perspective: the case of driving and accident risk

Although perceived health risk plays a prominent role in theories of health behavior, its empirical role in risk taking is less clear. In Study 1 (N = 129), 2 measures of drivers' risk-taking behavior were found to be unrelated to self-estimates of accident concern but to be related to self-ratings of driving skill and the perceived thrill of driving. In Study 2 (N = 405), out of a wide range of potential influences, accident concern had the weakest relationship with risk taking. The authors concluded that although health risk is a key feature in many theories of health behavior and a central focus for researchers and policy makers, it may not be such a prominent factor for those actually taking the risk.