Making sense of mental illness as a full human experience : Perspective of illness and recovery held by people with a mental illness living in the community.

Recovery is a highly contextualized concept amid divergent interpretations and unique experiences. There is substantial current interest in building evidence about recovery from mental illness in order to inform best practice founded in the ways people find to live productive and meaningful lives. This paper presents some accounts related to recovery and illness expressed by eight people through a Participatory Action Research project. The research facilitated entry to the subjective experiences of living in the community as an artist with a mental illness. The people in the research shared an integrated understanding of illness, recovery and identity. Their understanding provided insight into mental illness as an inseparable aspect of who they were. Further, specific issue was raised of recovery as a clinical term with a requirement to meet distinct conventions of recovery. This paper emphasizes that being ill and being well, for the person with a mental illness, is a dynamic and complex development not easily explained or transformed into uniform process or outcomes. Attempts to establish an integral or consensual approach to recovery has, to date, disregarded mental illness as a full human experience. This paper argues that broader frameworks for thinking and responding to the dynamic processes of mental illness and recovery are needed and require acknowledgment of competing and contradictory ideas.

Outcomes following inpatient rehabilitation : a seven year perspective

Introduction: Improving physical and cognitive functioning is a key objective of multi-disciplinary inpatient geriatric rehabilitation. Outcomes relevant to minimum functional ability required for older adults to successfully participate in the community have been reported. However, there has been little investigation reporting outcomes of older inpatients receiving multi-disciplinary rehabilitation being discharged home from geriatric rehabilitation units. This study aims to investigate characteristics and physical and cognitive outcomes of this cohort. Method: The Princess Alexandra Hospital Geriatric and Rehabilitation Unit is the largest rehabilitation unit in Queensland. Multidisciplinary health professionals enter admission and discharge functional and clinical outcomes along with demographic information into a purpose designed database for all patients. Data collected between 2005 and 2011 was analysed using descriptive statistics. Results: During the seven-year period, 4120 patients were admitted for rehabilitation; 2126 (52%) were female, mean age of 74 years (Standard Deviation 14). Primary reasons for admission were for reconditioning post medical illness or surgical admission (n = 1285, 31%), and 30% (n = 1233) admitted for orthopaedic reasons. Of these orthopaedic admissions, 6.6% (n = 82) were for elective surgery, and 46% (n = 565) were for fractured neck-of-femurs. 76% (n = 3130) of patients were discharged home, 13% (n = 552) to residential care facilities and 10% (n = 430) were discharged to an alternative hospital setting or passed away during their admission. Mean length of stay was 44 days (SD 39) Preliminary analysis of FIM outcomes shows a mean motor score of 53 (SD = 19) on admission which significantly improved to 71 (SD = 18) by discharge. There was no change on FIM cognitive score (28 (SD7) vs 29 (SD 6). Conclusion: Geriatric patients have significant functional limitations even on discharge from inpatient rehabilitation; though overall cognition is relatively intact. Orthopaedic conditions and general deconditioning from medical/surgical admissions are the main reasons for admission. The majority of people receiving rehabilitation are discharged home.

The Corio Oval Tribe : a prosopographical perspective of the Geelong Football Club in the nineteenth century

This article analyses the occupational and class status of Geelong footballers in the nineteenth century via the methodology of prosopography. Prosopography is an empirical group biography approach to historical research. The article argues that during the period 1859-78 Geelong's playing group was largely derived from the squattocracy and urban middle class. In the later period 1878-96 the Geelong club recruited more widely from the working class, as in keeping with the increased participation of this class in football from the late 1870s. It can be argued that this more diverse group helped establish Geelong as a footballing power.

Towards improving public understanding of judgement practice in standards-referenced assessment : an Australian perspective

Internationally there has been a move towards standards-referenced assessment with countries such as Australia developing a National Curriculum and Achievement Standards, New Zealand adopting National Standards for literacy and numeracy that involve schools making and reporting judgements about the reading, writing and mathematics achievement of children up to Year 8 (the end of primary school) and in Canada, classroom assessment standards aimed at the improvement of assessment practice of K-12 education are being formulated. Standards-driven reform has major implications for teachers’ work. The consequences of adopting a standards-driven approach to educational change by systems are often under-estimated with the unintended effects not fully understood by either the policy writers, and the public, including parents. It is for these reasons that the contention developed in this article relates to the teacher’s role, which it is argued remains central to policy focused on the improvement of the quality of education and educational standards.

Organizational culture and willingness to share knowledge : a competing values perspective in Australian context

A considerable amount of research has confirmed the relationship between organizational culture and knowledge sharing behaviours. However, less research has been conducted on the impact of project sub-cultures in relation to the sharing of knowledge between projects, particularly in project based organizations (PBOs). The unique structures and contexts characterized by PBOs indicate the need to investigate further the impact of cultures present within PBOs and their effect on knowledge sharing. We report on a rich case study of four large Australian-based PBOs whereby the cultural values of these large organizations were seen to impact significantly on whether project teams were more or less likely to improve inter-project knowledge sharing. Furthermore, this research demonstrates the utility of using Cameron and Quinn's (2005) Competing Values Framework to evaluate culture in the context of PBOs

Well-being of refugees from Burma: a salutogenic perspective

A salutogenic approach explored themes of strength and well-being in life stories of Burmese refugees (N = 18) in Australia. Previous refugee studies have tended to focus on negative responses to traumatic events (e.g. posttraumatic stress disorder, depression). To widen the scope of refugee related research the focus of the current study was informed by a salutogenic perspective, exploring sources of strength that may facilitate well-being. Semi-structured narrative interviews explored: the participant's life before fleeing Burma, the journey of exile, and post-migration in Australia. Eight women and 10 men (Mage = 39 years) were interviewed and transcriptions analysis of narratives was conducted using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), with major themes being explicated. Super-ordinate themes pertaining to strength during times of hardship were identified and explicated as: support from interpersonal relationships, the pivotal role of values, a sense of future and agency, and reliance on spiritual or religious beliefs. Results indicate the existence of sources of strength that may contribute to human responses in times of hardship. Recognition and reflection of strengths may be incorporated into therapeutic and resettlement approaches for people from refugee backgrounds.

Hot topic detection in news blogs from the perspective of W2T

News blog hot topics are important for the information recommendation service and marketing. However, information overload and personalized management make the information arrangement more difficult. Moreover, what influences the formation and development of blog hot topics is seldom paid attention to. In order to correctly detect news blog hot topics, the paper first analyzes the development of topics in a new perspective based on W2T (Wisdom Web of Things) methodology. Namely, the characteristics of blog users, context of topic propagation and information granularity are unified to analyze the related problems. Some factors such as the user behavior pattern, network opinion and opinion leader are subsequently identified to be important for the development of topics. Then the topic model based on the view of event reports is constructed. At last, hot topics are identified by the duration, topic novelty, degree of topic growth and degree of user attention. The experimental results show that the proposed method is feasible and effective.

Reasoning about component similarity in building product models from the construction perspective

Identifying the design features that impact construction is essential to developing cost effective and constructible designs. The similarity of building components is a critical design feature that affects method selection, productivity, and ultimately construction cost and schedule performance. However, there is limited understanding of what constitutes similarity in the design of building components and limited computer-based support to identify this feature in a building product model. This paper contributes a feature-based framework for representing and reasoning about component similarity that builds on ontological modelling, model-based reasoning and cluster analysis techniques. It describes the ontology we developed to characterize component similarity in terms of the component attributes, the direction, and the degree of variation. It also describes the generic reasoning process we formalized to identify component similarity in a standard product model based on practitioners' varied preferences. The generic reasoning process evaluates the geometric, topological, and symbolic similarities between components, creates groupings of similar components, and quantifies the degree of similarity. We implemented this reasoning process in a prototype cost estimating application, which creates and maintains cost estimates based on a building product model. Validation studies of the prototype system provide evidence that the framework is general and enables a more accurate and efficient cost estimating process.

Parent and adolescent perceptions of family functioning : a comparison of clinic and non-clinic families

In this paper two studies are reported which compare (a) the perceptions of family functioning held by clinic and non-clinic adolescents, and (b) the perceptions of family functioning held by adolescents and their mothers in clinic and non-clinic families. In Study 1, matched group of clinic and non-clinic adolescents were compared on their responses to a 30-item scale (ICPS) designed to measure three factors of family functioning: Intimacy (high vs. low), Parenting Style (democratic vs. controlled) and Conflict (high vs. low). Clinic and non-clinic adolescents were also compared on their responses to a multi-dimensional measure of adolescent self-concept. Although there was little difference between the two groups of adolescents in terms of their perceptions of family functioning, there were strong relationships between the self-concept variables and the family functioning variables. In Study 2, comparisons were made between the perceptions of family functioning held by mothers and adolescents for both clinical and non-clinic families. There were no differences between the two groups of adolescents in terms of their perceptions of family functioning, although there were clear differences between the two groups of mothers. In addition, clinic adolescents and their mothers did not differ in their perceptions of the family, whereas adolescents in the non-clinic group saw their families significantly as less intimate and more conflicted than did their mothers.

Agility of the firm : customer's perspective

Agility is emerging as an important determinant of success and achieving sustained competitive advantage in hyper-competition. Whilst the digital natives are on the rise, ubiquitous technologies, networks and associated systems are increasingly weaving themselves into the very fabric of everyday life of both individuals and corporations. With a global shift towards “everywhere retailing”, ubiquitous contemporary information systems such as mobile CRM systems (C-CRMS) are evolving. Unlike in traditional CRMS, customers are becoming an important user group in this new paradigm. Draws on agility literature, this study examine how customers’ use of C-CRMS influence firm’s customer sensing capability, firm’s customer responding capability, and how customer-perceived firm’s responsiveness influence customers use of C-CRMS. Following the notions of agility we theorized firm’s customer agility from customers’ standpoint where we use customers’ use of C-CRMS and customer-perceived firm’s responsiveness for sensing and responding components of agility respectively. This research-in-progress paper investigates how C-CRMS facilitates firm’s customer agility, and reports the approach pursued in adopting sense and response measures of customer agility taking the customers perspective derived through extant literature.

State of multilevel research perspective in the information systems discipline

Existing distinctions among macro and micro approaches have been jeopardising the advances of Information Systems (IS) research. Both approaches have been criticized for explaining one level while neglecting the other; thereby, the current situation necessitates the application of multilevel research for revealing the deficiencies. Instead of studying single level (macro or micro), multilevel research entails more than one level of conceptualization and analysis, simultaneously. As the notion of multilevel is borrowed from reference disciplines, there tends to be confusions and inconsistencies within the IS discipline, which hinders the adoption of multilevel research. This paper speaks for the potential value of multilevel research, by investigating the current application status of multilevel research within the IS domain. A content analysis of multilevel research articles from major IS conferences and journals is presented. Analysis results suggest that IS scholars have applied multilevel research to produce high quality work ranging from a variety of topics. However, researchers have not yet been consistently defining “multilevel”, leading to idiosyncratic meanings of multilevel research, most often, in authors’ own interpretations. We argue that a rigorous definition of “multilevel research” needs to be explicated for consistencies in research community.

Exploring shared services from an IS perspective : a literature review and research agenda

Shared services have gained significance as an organizational arrangement, in particular for support functions, to reduce costs, increase quality and create new capabilities. The Information Systems (IS) function is amenable to sharing arrangements and information systems can enable sharing in other functional areas. However, despite being a promising area for IS research, literature on shared services in the IS discipline is scarce and scattered. There is still little consensus on what shared services is. Moreover, a thorough understanding of why shared services are adopted, who are involved, and how things are shared is lacking. In this article, we set out to progress IS research on shared services by establishing a common ground for future research and proposing a research agenda to shape the field based on an analysis of the IS literature. We present a holistic and inclusive definition, discuss the primacy of economic-strategic objectives so far, and introduce conceptual frameworks for stakeholders and the notion of sharing. We also provide an overview of the theories and research methods applied. We propose a research agenda that addresses fundamental issues related to objectives, stakeholders, and the notion of sharing to lay the foundation for taking IS research on shared services forward.