Development of the rural statistical sustainability framework tool

It is important to promote a sustainable development approach to ensure that economic, environmental and social developments are maintained in balance. Sustainable development and its implications are not just a global concern, it also affects Australia. In particular, rural Australian communities are facing various economic, environmental and social challenges. Thus, the need for sustainable development in rural regions is becoming increasingly important. To promote sustainable development, proper frameworks along with the associated tools optimised for the specific regions, need to be developed. This will ensure that the decisions made for sustainable development are evidence based, instead of subjective opinions. To address these issues, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), through an Australian Research Council (ARC) linkage grant, has initiated research into the development of a Rural Statistical Sustainability Framework (RSSF) to aid sustainable decision making in rural Queensland. This particular branch of the research developed a decision support tool that will become the integrating component of the RSSF. This tool is developed on the web-based platform to allow easy dissemination, quick maintenance and to minimise compatibility issues. The tool is developed based on MapGuide Open Source and it follows the three-tier architecture: Client tier, Web tier and the Server tier. The developed tool is interactive and behaves similar to a familiar desktop-based application. It has the capability to handle and display vector-based spatial data and can give further visual outputs using charts and tables. The data used in this tool is obtained from the QUT research team. Overall the tool implements four tasks to help in the decision-making process. These are the Locality Classification, Trend Display, Impact Assessment and Data Entry and Update. The developed tool utilises open source and freely available software and accounts for easy extensibility and long-term sustainability.

Analysis of rural activity spaces and transport disadvantage using a multi-method approach

Current knowledge about the relationship between transport disadvantage and activity space size is limited to urban areas, and as a result, very little is known about this link in a rural context. In addition, although research has identified transport disadvantaged groups based on their size of activity space, these studies have, however, not empirically explained such differences and the result is often a poor identification of the problems facing disadvantaged groups. Research has shown that transport disadvantage varies over time. The static nature of analysis using the activity space concept in previous research studies has lacked the ability to identify transport disadvantage in time. Activity space is a dynamic concept; and therefore possesses a great potential in capturing temporal variations in behaviour and access opportunities. This research derives measures of the size and fullness of activity spaces for 157 individuals for weekdays, weekends, and for a week using weekly activity-travel diary data from three case study areas located in rural Northern Ireland. Four focus groups were also conducted in order to triangulate quantitative findings and to explain the differences between different socio-spatial groups. The findings of this research show that despite having a smaller sized activity space, individuals were not disadvantaged because they were able to access their required activities locally. Car-ownership was found to be an important life line in rural areas. Temporal disaggregation of the data reveals that this is true only on weekends due to a lack of public transport services. In addition, despite activity spaces being at a similar size, the fullness of activity spaces of low-income individuals was found to be significantly lower compared to their high-income counterparts. Focus group data shows that financial constraint, poor connections both between public transport services and between transport routes and opportunities forced individuals to participate in activities located along the main transport corridors.

Expansion of support for first year law students : an overview from a first year coordinator

In the context of government funding and targets for increased participation in higher education and equity groups, as well as attrition rates, the literature on first year higher education highlights the importance of appropriate levels of support for students transitioning to higher education. In the law school context, support of first year students is also important in the response to the high levels of stress among law students. It is therefore necessary for universities to provide a variety of support to first year students from both a student perspective and a curriculum perspective. This paper explores the process of investigating the expansion of student support, including peer support programs, staff led programs, appointing a first year coordinator and developing a curriculum plan. These programs promote engagement and ensure a cohesive and integrated first year experience from both curriculum design and student experience perspectives. This paper will explain the process undertaken at QUT of expanding support for first year law students, overview the program details and will reflect on the feedback from students, peer facilitators and staff of expanding support for first year law students at QUT. The paper will conclude with recommendations for improvement to the program.

Urban informatics for rural knowledge economies

This position paper provides an overview of a proposed study that seeks to design and develop tools, methods and applications of urban informatics to promote an innovation culture and knowledge economy in regional Queensland. The National Broadband Network has the potential to leapfrog regional Queensland to join the knowledge economy, but effective applications and content strategies are required. The Edge is the Queensland Government’s Digital Culture Centre to engage young people in the technology/culture nexus. This position paper provides an overview of a proposed study that will set up Living Labs at The Edge and in a new precinct in rural Queensland (Goondiwindi) as sites to trial strategies and applications that engage people in entrepreneurial thinking, sustainability initiatives, and new creative practices across the urban and rural boundaries.

Query expansion using term relationships in language models for information retrieval

Language Modeling (LM) has been successfully applied to Information Retrieval (IR). However, most of the existing LM approaches only rely on term occurrences in documents, queries and document collections. In traditional unigram based models, terms (or words) are usually considered to be independent. In some recent studies, dependence models have been proposed to incorporate term relationships into LM, so that links can be created between words in the same sentence, and term relationships (e.g. synonymy) can be used to expand the document model. In this study, we further extend this family of dependence models in the following two ways: (1) Term relationships are used to expand query model instead of document model, so that query expansion process can be naturally implemented; (2) We exploit more sophisticated inferential relationships extracted with Information Flow (IF). Information flow relationships are not simply pairwise term relationships as those used in previous studies, but are between a set of terms and another term. They allow for context-dependent query expansion. Our experiments conducted on TREC collections show that we can obtain large and significant improvements with our approach. This study shows that LM is an appropriate framework to implement effective query expansion.

Caregiving experience and its influencing factors : rural versus urban adult-child caregivers caring for parents with dementia in China

Background: It is predicted that China will have the largest number of cases of dementia in the world by 2025 (Ferri et al., 2005). Research has demonstrated that caring for family members with dementia can be a long-term, burdensome activity resulting in physical and emotional distress and impairment (Pinquart & Sorensen, 2003b). The establishment of family caregiver supportive services in China can be considered urgent; and the knowledge of the caregiving experience and related influencing factors is necessary to inform such services. Nevertheless, in the context of rapid demographic and socioeconomic change, the impact of caregiving for rural and urban Chinese adult-child caregivers may be different, and different needs in supportive services may therefore be expected. Objectives: The aims of this research were 1) to examine the potential differences existing in the caregiving experience between rural and urban adult-child caregivers caring for parents with dementia in China; and 2) to examine the potential differences existing in the influencing factors of the caregiving experience for rural as compared with urban adult-child caregivers caring for parents with dementia in China. Based on the literature review and Kramer.s (1997) caregiver adaptation model, six concepts and their relationships of caregiving experience were studied: severity of the care receivers. dementia, caregivers. appraisal of role strain and role gain, negative and positive well-being outcomes, and health related quality of life. Furthermore, four influencing factors (i.e., filial piety, social support, resilience, and personal mastery) were studied respectively. Methods: A cross-sectional, comparative design was used to achieve the aims of the study. A questionnaire, which was designed based on the literature review and on Kramer.s (1997) caregiver adaptation model, was completed by 401 adult-child caregivers caring for their parents with dementia from the mental health outpatient departments in five hospitals in the Yunnan province, P.R. China. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was employed as the main statistical technique for data analyses. Other statistical techniques (e.g., t-tests and Chi-Square tests) were also conducted to compare the demographic characteristics and the measured variables between rural and urban groups. Results: For the first research aim, the results indicated that urban adult-child caregivers in China experienced significantly greater strain and negative well-being outcomes than their rural peers; whereas, the difference on the appraisal of role gain and positive outcomes was nonsignificant between the two groups. The results also indicated that the amounts of severity of care receivers. dementia and caregivers. health related quality of life do not have the same meanings between the two groups. Thus, the levels of these two concepts were not comparable between the rural and urban groups in this study. Moreover, the results also demonstrated that the negative direct effect of gain on negative outcomes in urban caregivers was stronger than that in rural caregivers, suggesting that the urban caregivers tended to use appraisal of role gain to protect themselves from negative well-being outcomes to a greater extent. In addition, the unexplained variance in strain in the urban group was significantly more than that in the rural group, suggesting that there were other unmeasured variables besides the severity of care receivers. dementia which would predict strain in urban caregivers compared with their rural peers. For the second research aim, the results demonstrated that rural adult-child caregivers reported a significantly higher level of filial piety and more social support than their urban counterparts, although the two groups did not significantly differ on the levels of their resilience and personal mastery. Furthermore, although the mediation effects of these four influencing factors on both positive and negative aspects remained constant across rural and urban adult-child caregivers, urban caregivers tended to be more effective in using personal mastery to protect themselves from role strain than rural caregivers, which in turn protects them more from the negative well-being outcomes than was the case with their rural peers. Conclusions: The study extends the application of Kramer.s caregiving adaptation process model (Kramer, 1997) to a sample of adult-child caregivers in China by demonstrating that both positive and negative aspects of caregiving may impact on the caregiver.s health related quality of life, suggesting that both aspects should be targeted in supportive interventions for Chinese family caregivers. Moreover, by demonstrating partial mediation effects, the study provides four influencing factors (i.e., filial piety, social support, resilience, and personal mastery) as specific targets for clinical interventions. Furthermore, the study found evidence that urban adult-child caregivers had more negative but similar positive experience compared to their rural peers, suggesting that the establishment of supportive services for urban caregivers may be more urgent at present stage in China. Additionally, since urban caregivers tended to use appraisal of role gain and personal mastery to protect themselves from negative well-being outcomes than rural caregivers to a greater extend, interventions targeting utility of gain or/and personal mastery to decrease negative outcomes might be more effective in urban caregivers than in rural caregivers. On the other hand, as cultural expectations and expression of filial piety tend to be more traditional in rural areas, interventions targeting filial piety could be more effective among rural caregivers. Last but not least, as rural adult-child caregivers have more existing natural social support than their urban counterparts, mobilising existing natural social support resources may be more beneficial for rural caregivers, whereas, formal supports (e.g., counselling services, support groups and adult day care centres) should be enhanced for urban caregivers.

Promoting rural and remote teacher education in Australia through the Over the Hill project

Attracting quality teachers to rural areas is an ongoing international concern. Teacher education institutions have been criticised for contributing to this problem by failing to raise an awareness of teaching in rural areas in their teacher education programs. This study investigates preservice teachers’ perceptions towards teaching in rural areas after participating in a rural experience through the Over the Hill project. A self-selected group of second and third year preservice teachers from a regional campus of an urban Queensland university participated in a six-day rural experience, which included being billeted with local families, attending local community events and observing and teaching in rural primary and secondary schools. Data collected from the preservice teachers before and after the rural teaching experience were analysed to reveal positive perceptions towards teaching and living in rural communities. The findings revealed that even a brief immersion into rural schooling communities can positively influence preservice teachers’ attitudes towards seeking rural teaching placements. These findings have implications for the ways in which teacher education institutions can promote rural teaching opportunities in their teacher education programs.

Conceptualising climate change in rural Australia : community perceptions, attitudes and (in) actions

Public engagement and support is essential for ensuring adaptation to climate change. The first step in achieving engagement is documenting how the general public currently perceive and understand climate change issues, specifically the importance they place on this global problem and identifying any unique challenges for individual communities. For rural communities, which rely heavily on local agriculture industries, climate change brings both potential impacts and opportunities. Yet, to date, our knowledge about how rural residents conceptualise climate change is limited. Thus, this research explores how the broader rural community – not only farmers – conceptualise climate change and responsive activities, focussing on documenting the understandings and risk perceptions of local residents from two small Australian rural communities. Twenty-three semi-structured interviews were conducted in communities in the Eden/Gippsland region on the border of New South Wales and Victoria, and the North-East of Tasmania. There are conflicting views on how climate change is conceptualised, the degree of concern and need for action, the role of local industry, who will 'win' and 'lose', and the willingness of rural communities to adapt. In particular, residents who believed in anthropogenic or human-induced factors described the changing climate as evidence of 'climate change', whereas those who were more sceptical termed it 'weather variability', suggesting that there is a divide in rural Australia that, unless urgently addressed, will hinder local and national policy responses to this global issue. Engaging these communities in the 21st century climate change debate will require a significant change in terminology and communication strategies.

Motivations, expectations and experiences of Australian rural and regional planners

Despite playing an extremely important role in shaping communities, the role and contribution of planners is not widely understood or acknowledged. At the same time, there is a shortage of planners in Australia, especially in non-urban areas. Thus, though an online survey of 185 rural and regional planners, this research explores their motivations, expectations and experiences. Most enjoyed and felt confident in their role, explaining that they valued the relaxed family orientated rural lifestyle and the varied nature of the planning work. Although they sometimes felt isolated, the non-urban location provided quicker progression to senior roles, the ability to engage directly with the community and to see the consequences of their decisions. Only half felt their education had prepared them well for their role, citing gaps in terms of computerised modelling, team leadership and conflict resolution skills. Their feedback centred on providing a more practical course, focussing more on regional planning, and encouraging urban and rural experience placements. As the first study to quantifiably explore rural and regional Australian planners perceptions of their role and challenges, the findings illustrate current experiences, key planning challenges, perceived educational gaps and future priorities.

Tensor query expansion : a cognitively motivated relevance model

In information retrieval, a user's query is often not a complete representation of their real information need. The user's information need is a cognitive construction, however the use of cognitive models to perform query expansion have had little study. In this paper, we present a cognitively motivated query expansion technique that uses semantic features for use in ad hoc retrieval. This model is evaluated against a state-of-the-art query expansion technique. The results show our approach provides significant improvements in retrieval effectiveness for the TREC data sets tested.

Towards an automatic system for road lane marking extraction in large-scale aerial images acquired over rural areas by hierarchical image analysis and Gabor filter

An automatic approach to road lane marking extraction from high-resolution aerial images is proposed, which can automatically detect the road surfaces in rural areas based on hierarchical image analysis. The procedure is facilitated by the road centrelines obtained from low-resolution images. The lane markings are further extracted on the generated road surfaces with 2D Gabor filters. The proposed method is applied on the aerial images of the Bruce Highway around Gympie, Queensland. Evaluation of the generated road surfaces and lane markings using four representative test fields has validated the proposed method.

Collaboration : developing integration in multi-purpose services in rural New South Wales, Australia

Introduction: The Multi-purpose Service (MPS) Program was introduced to rural Australia in 1991 as a solution to poor health outcomes in rural compared with metropolitan populations, difficulty in attracting healthcare staff and a lack of viability and range of health services in rural areas. The aim of this study was to describe the main concerns of participants involved in the development of multi-purpose services in rural New South Wales (NSW). This article is abstracted from a larger study and discusses the extent to which collaboration occurred within the new multi-purpose service. Methods: A constructivist grounded theory methodology was used. Participants were from 13 multi-purpose services in rural NSW and 30 in-depth interviews were conducted with 6 community members, 11 managers and 13 staff members who had been involved in the process of developing a multi-purpose service. Results: The main concern of all participants was their anticipation of risk. This anticipation of risk manifested itself in either trust or suspicion and explained their progression through a phase of collaborating. Participants who had trust in other stakeholders were more likely to embrace an integrated health service identity. Those participants, who were suspicious that they would lose status or power, maintained that the previous hospital services provided a better health service and described a coexistence of services within the multi-purpose service. Conclusions: This study provided an insight into the perceptions of community members, staff members and managers involved in the process of developing a multi-purpose service. It revealed that the anticipation of risk was intrinsic to a process of changing from a traditional hospital service to collaborating in a new model of health care provided at a multi-purpose service.

The growth and international expansion of an emerging market retailer in Latin America

This study contributes to the literature on international retailing by addressing a gap in the literature as to how retailers from emerging markets expand internationally. This historical case study analyzes the growth and internationalization process of Chilean retailer Falabella, one of the largest in Latin America and has been able to compete with multinationals from developed countries. The research is based upon primary and secondary data sources including 33 oral interviews with company managers and family executives, as well as industry data, corporate reports, and trade journals. Drawing on institutional theory, the findings show that by belonging to a family conglomerate, engaging in networks and partnerships, organizational learning, and having an experienced management team helped Falabella gain legitimacy in all international markets.

Safeguarding rural Australia : addressing masculinity and violence in rural settings : framework and scope for secondary data analysis in a rural Australia context

This report is an update of an earlier version produced in January 2010 (see Carrington et al. 2010) which remains as an ePrint through the project’s home page. The report provides an introduction to our analyses of extant secondary data with respect to violent acts and incidents relating to males living in rural settings in Australia using data which were available in public data bases at the time of production. It clarifies important aspects of our overall approach primarily by concentrating on three elements that required early scoping and resolution.