Teaching end-user remote online searching

The Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Library bas recently commenced teaching higher degree students to search online systems such as BRS, ORBIT and STN. The emphasis is on education rather than training. with students being required to familiarise themselves with system commands and database structures whilst receiving necessarily limited tutorial help. The teaching strategies used and problems encountered in the program are outlined. Student responses to the experience of learning to online search are discussed.

A test of three interventions to promote people's communication of their consent for organ donation

People's decision to join an organ donor registry and have a discussion with family about their organ donation preference increases the likelihood that their family will consent to donation of their organs. This study explores the effectiveness of three interventions compared to a control condition to increase individual consent (registering and discussing donation wishes) for organ donation. Australian residents who had not previously communicated their consent (N = 177) were randomly allocated to complete an online survey representing either an extended theory of planned behaviour motivational intervention (strengthening intention via attitudes, subjective norms, control, moral norms and identity), a volitional intervention using constructs from the health action process approach (strengthening the translation of intentions into action using action plans and coping plans), a combined motivational and volitional intervention, or a control condition. Registering, but not discussing, intentions increased in the motivational compared to non-motivational conditions. For joining the organ donor registry, the combination of strengthening intentions (motivational) as well as forming specific action (when, where, how, and with whom for discussing) and coping (listing potential obstacles and how these may be overcome) plans (volitional) resulted in significantly higher rates of self-reported behaviour. There was no evidence for this effect on discussion.

Improving the design of online applications for social benefit through a behaviour change model

Community support agencies routinely employ a web presence to provide information on their services. While this online information provision helps to increase an agency’s reach, this paper argues that it can be further extended by mapping relationships between services and by facilitating two-way communication and collaboration with local communities. We argue that emergent technologies, such as locative media and networking tools, can assist in harnessing this social capital. However, new applications must be designed in ways that both persuade and support community members to contribute information and support others in need. An analysis of the online presence of community service agencies and social benefit applications is presented against Fogg’s Behaviour Model. From this evaluation, design principles are proposed for developing new locative, collaborative online applications for social benefit.

Work environment, job satisfaction, stress and burnout among haemodialysis nurses

Aim To examine the relationships among nurse and work characteristics, job satisfaction, stress, burnout and the work environment of haemodialysis nurses. Background Haemodialysis nursing is characterised by frequent and intense contact with patients in a complex and intense environment. Method Cross-sectional online survey of 417 haemodialysis nurses that included nurse and work characteristics, the Brisbane Practice Environment Measure, Index of Work Satisfaction, Nursing Stress Scale and the Maslach Burnout Inventory. Results Haemodialysis nurses reported an acceptable level of job satisfaction and perceived their work environment positively, although high levels of burnout were found. Nurses who were older and had worked in haemodialysis the longest had higher satisfaction levels, experienced less stress and lower levels of burnout than younger nurses. The in-centre type of haemodialysis unit had greater levels of stress and burnout than home training units. Greater satisfaction with the work environment was strongly correlated with job satisfaction, lower job stress and emotional exhaustion. Conclusion Haemodialysis nurses experienced high levels of burnout even though their work environment was favourable and they had acceptable levels of job satisfaction. Implications for Nursing Management: Targeted strategies are required to retain and avoid burnout in younger and less experienced nurses in this highly specialised field of nursing.

Driver perceptions of the benefits of reducing their driving speed on safety, emissions, and stress and road rage

The existing literature shows driving speed significantly affects levels of safety, emissions, and stress in driving. In addition, drivers who feel tense when driving have been found to drive more slowly than others. These findings were mostly obtained from crash data analyses or field studies, and less is known regarding driver perceptions of the extent to which reducing their driving speed would improve road safety, reduce their car’s emissions, and reduce stress and road rage. This paper uses ordered probit regression models to analyse responses from 3538 Queensland drivers who completed an online RACQ survey. Drivers most strongly agreed that reducing their driving speed would improve road safety, less strongly agreed that reducing their driving speed would reduce their car’s emissions and least strongly agreed that reducing their driving speed would reduce stress and road rage. Younger drivers less strongly agreed that these benefits would occur than older drivers. Drivers of automatic cars and those who are bicycle commuters agreed more to these benefits than other drivers. Female drivers agreed more strongly than males on improving safety and reducing stress and road rage. Type of fuel used, engine size, driving experience, and distance driven per week were also found to be associated with driver perceptions, although these were not found to be significant in all of the regression models. The findings from this study may help in developing targeted training or educational measures to improve drivers’ willingness to reduce their driving speed.

Improving ecological performance of industrialized building systems in Malaysia

For construction stakeholders to fully embrace sustainability, its long-term benefits and associated risks need to be identified through holistic approaches. Consensus among key stakeholders is very important to the improvement of the ecological performance of industrialized building systems (IBS), a building construction method gaining momentum in Malaysia. A questionnaire survey examines the relative significance of 16 potentially important sustainability factors for IBS applications. To present possible solutions,semi-structured interviews solicit views from experienced IBS practitioners, representing the professions involved. Three most critical factors agreed by key stakeholders are material consumption, waste generation and waste disposal. Using SWOT analysis, the positive and negative aspects of these factors are investigated, with action plans formulated for IBS design practitioners. The SWOT analysis based guidelines have the potential to become part of IBS design briefing documents against which sustainability solutions are contemplated, selected and implemented. Existing knowledge on ecological performance issues is extended by considering the unique characteristics of IBS and identifying not only the benefits, but also the potential risks and challenges of pursuing sustainability. This is largely missing in previous research efforts. Findings to date focus on providing much-needed assistance to IBS designers, who are at the forefront of decision-making with a significant level of project influence. Ongoing work will be directed towards other project development phases and consider the inherent linkage between design decisions and subsequent sustainability deliverables in the project life cycle.

Survey and Mapping Infrastructure Regulation 2004- Comments Relating to a 10-Year Review

Democratic governments raise taxes and charges and spend revenue on delivering peace, order and good government. The delivery process begins with a legislature as that can provide a framework of legally enforceable rules enacted according to the government’s constitution. These rules confer rights and obligations that allow particular people to carry on particular functions at particular places and times. Metadata standards as applied to public records contain information about the functioning of government as distinct from the non-government sector of society. Metadata standards apply to database construction. Data entry, storage, maintenance, interrogation and retrieval depend on a controlled vocabulary needed to enable accurate retrieval of suitably catalogued records in a global information environment. Queensland’s socioeconomic progress now depends in part on technical efficiency in database construction to address queries about who does what, where and when; under what legally enforceable authority; and how the evidence of those facts is recorded. The Survey and Mapping Infrastructure Act 2003 (Qld) addresses technical aspects of where questions – typically the officially recognised name of a place and a description of its boundaries. The current 10-year review of the Survey and Mapping Regulation 2004 provides a valuable opportunity to consider whether the Regulation makes sense in the context of a number of later laws concerned with management of Public Sector Information (PSI) as well as policies for ICT hardware and software procurement. Removing ambiguities about how official place names are to be regarded on a whole-of-government basis can achieve some short term goals. Longer-term goals depend on a more holistic approach to information management – and current aspirations for more open government and community engagement are unlikely to occur without such a longer-term vision.

Current practice in nutrition assessment for the management of Parkinson’s disease in Australia and Canada

AIM: To document and compare current practice in nutrition assessment of Parkinson’s disease by dietitians in Australia and Canada in order to identify priority areas for review and development of practice guidelines and direct future research. METHODS: An online survey was distributed to DAA members and PEN subscribers through their email newsletters. The survey captured current practice in the phases of the Nutrition Care Plan. The results of the assessment phase are presented here. RESULTS: Eighty-four dietitians responded. Differences in practice existed in the choice of nutrition screening and assessment tools, including appropriate BMI ranges. Nutrition impact symptoms were commonly assessed, but information about Parkinson’s disease medication interactions were not consistently assessed. CONCLUSIONS: he variation in practice related to the use of screening and assessment methods may result in the identification of different goals for subsequent interventions. Even more practice variation was evident for those items more specific to Parkinson’s disease and may be due to the lack of evidence to guide practice. Further research is required to support decisions for nutrition assessment of Parkinson’s disease.

The importance of individual difference : examining anthropomorphic tendency and responses to spokes-characters

Anthropomorphism is a cognitive bias, which occurs when individuals see human characteristics in a non-human agent, object or animal. Anthropomorphism is especially interesting to marketers, because once anthropomorphic bias has been triggered, it can lead to a greater feeling of connectedness to a non-human agent (Tam, Lee and Chao, 2013), the emulation of behaviours (Aggarwal and McGill, 2012) or greater attribution of brand personality and brand liking (Delbaere, McQuarrie and Phillips, 2011). Importantly, research now shows that levels of this tendency vary between individuals (Waytz, Cacioppo and Epley, 2010), but research to date has failed to focus on how anthropomorphic tendency influences individual responses to marketing communications messages. Spokes-characters present an ideal context through which to examine this gap, given that they function as personified brands, designed to trigger consumer anthropomorphic tendency. Further, little is understood about how spokes-characters operate and which consumers will prefer them to their human counterparts. Like anthropomorphic research, much empirical work to date has focused on design and outcomes, examining the sender’s encoding process and the feedback generated, but ignoring the individual decoding process that is so important to understanding individual differences and message effectiveness. The current research employs three experiments using an online survey with stimulus exposure to show that anthropomorphic tendency, personality similarity and spokes-character type all have relevance to the understanding of this complex relationship. Study one and two indicate that while a human spokesperson is still preferred by many, higher levels of anthropomorphic tendency increase likeability of cartoon spokes characters. Study three highlights the importance of personality similarity, which further increases likability. Additional analyses provide key findings concerning the nature of anthropomorphic tendency as an individual difference and trait. This research contributes to a greater understanding of anthropomorphism theory and fills existing gaps in the consumer psychology and marketing communications literature.

Organisational change stressor and nursing job satisfaction : the mediating effect of coping strategies

Aim To examine the mediating effect of coping strategies on the consequences of nursing and non-nursing (administrative) stressors on the job satisfaction of nurses during change management. Background Organisational change can result in an increase in nursing and nonnursing- related stressors, which can have a negative impact on the job satisfaction of nurses employed in health-care organisations. Method Matched data were collected in 2009 via an online survey at two timepoints (six months apart). Results Partial least squares path analysis revealed a significant causal relationship between Time 1 administrative and role stressors and an increase in nursing-specific stressors in Time 2. A significant relationship was also identified between job-specific nursing stressors and the adoption of effective coping strategies to deal with increased levels of change-induced stress and strain and the likelihood of reporting higher levels of job satisfaction in Time 2. Conclusions The effectiveness of coping strategies is critical in helping nurses to deal with the negative consequences of organisational change. Implications for nursing management This study shows that there is a causal relationship between change, non-nursing stressors and job satisfaction. Senior management should implement strategies aimed at reducing nursing and nonnursing stress during change in order to enhance the job satisfaction of nurses. Keywords: Australia, change management, job satisfaction, nursing and non-nursing stressors, public and non-profit sector

Capping them off! Exploring and explaining the patterns in undergraduate capstone subjects in Australian business schools

Universities are increasingly offering capstone subjects as part of curricula to prepare final year undergraduates for employment through consolidating and integrating their knowledge and skills while bridging the gap between academic learning and professional work. This study investigates capstone subjects offered by Australian business schools, drawing on national survey data collected in 2010-2011, complemented by interviews with associate deans teaching and learning instrumental in course and curricula design. Findings indicate the sector-wide use of capstone subjects in business disciplines, diversity in the patterns of offerings, and instances where subjects labelled as capstones do not meet the definition of capstones. We argue that these features are explained by a range of historic and strategic factors, such as the ad hoc development of subjects and a lack of understanding of the features of capstones. The findings of this paper inform the debate on the design, development, value and use of capstone subjects identifying the implications for staff development and knowledge management in higher education.

Making the train : re-conceptualising accessibility for intra-urban rail travel

Australian authorities have set ambitious policy objectives to shift Australia’s current transport profile of heavy reliance on private motor cars to sustainable modes. Improving accessibility of public transport is a central component of that objective. Past studies on accessibility to public transport focus on walking time and/or waiting time. However, travellers’ perceptions of the interface leg journeys may depend not only on these direct and tangible factors but also on social and psychological factors. This paper extends previous research that identified five salient perspectives of rail access by means of a statement sorting activity and cluster analysis with a small sample of rail passengers in three Australian cities (Zuniga et al, 2013). This study collects a new data set including 144 responses from Brisbane and Melbourne to an online survey made up of a Likert-scaled statement sorting exercise and questionnaire. It employs factor analysis to examine the statement rankings and uncovers seven underlying factors in the exploratory manner, i.e., station, safety, access, transfer, service attitude, traveler’s physical activity levels, and environmental concern. Respondents from groups stratified by rail use frequency are compared in terms of their scores of those factors. Findings from this study indicate a need to re-conceptualize accessibility to intra-urban rail travel in agreement with current policy agenda, and to target behavioral intervention to multiple dimensions of accessibility influencing passengers’ travel choices. Arguments in this paper are not limited to intra-urban rail transit, but may also be relevant to public transport in general.

Making the train : re-conceptualising accessibility for intra-urban rail travel

Australian authorities have set ambitious policy objectives to shift Australia’s current transport profile of heavy reliance on private motor cars to sustainable modes. Improving accessibility of public transport is a central component of that objective. Past studies on accessibility to public transport focus on walking time and/or waiting time. However, travellers’ perceptions of the interface leg journeys may depend not only on these direct and tangible factors but also on social and psychological factors. This paper extends previous research that identified five salient perspectives of rail access by means of a statement sorting activity and cluster analysis with a small sample of rail passengers in three Australian cities (Zuniga et al, 2013). This study collects a new data set including 144 responses from Brisbane and Melbourne to an online survey made up of a Likert-scaled statement sorting exercise and questionnaire. It employs factor analysis to examine the statement rankings and uncovers seven underlying factors in the exploratory manner, i.e., station, safety, access, transfer, service attitude, traveler’s physical activity levels, and environmental concern. Respondents from groups stratified by rail use frequency are compared in terms of their scores of those factors. Findings from this study indicate a need to re-conceptualize accessibility to intra-urban rail travel in agreement with current policy agenda, and to target behavioral intervention to multiple dimensions of accessibility influencing passengers’ travel choices. Arguments in this paper are not limited to intra-urban rail transit, but may also be relevant to public transport in general.

Heritage language for Chinese Australians : negotiating 'Chineseness' and, capitalising on resources in the lived world

The ethnic identity and commitment of Heritage Language Learners play salient roles in Heritage Language learning process. The mutually constitutive effect amongst Heritage Language Learner's ethnic identity, commitment, and Heritage Language proficiency has been well documented in social psychological and poststructuralist literatures. Both social psychological and poststructural schools offer meaningful insights into particular contexts but receive critiques from other contexts. In addition, the two schools largely oppose each other. This study uses Bourdieu's sociological triad of habitus, capital, and field to reconcile the two schools through the examination of Chinese Heritage Language Learners in Australia, an idiosyncratic social, cultural, and historical context for these learners. Specifically, this study investigates how young Chinese Australian adults (18-35 in age) negotiate their 'Chineseness' and capitalise on resources through Chinese Heritage Language learning in the lived world. The study adopts an explanatory mixed methods design to combine the quantitative approach with the qualitative approach. The initial quantitative phase addresses the first research question: Is Chinese Heritage Language proficiency of young Chinese Australian adults influenced by their investment of capital, the strength of their habitus of 'Chineseness', or both? The subsequent qualitative phase addresses the second research question: How do young Chinese Australian adults understand their Chinese Heritage Language learning in relation to (potential) profits produced by this linguistic capital in given fields? The initial quantitative phase applies Structural Equation Modelling to analyse the data from an online survey with 230 respondents. Findings indicate the statistically significant positive contribution made by the habitus of 'Chineseness' and by investment of capital to Chinese Heritage Language proficiency (r = .71 and r = .86 respectively). Subsequent multiple regression analysis demonstrates that 62% of the variance of Chinese Heritage Language proficiency can be accounted for by the joint contribution of 'Chineseness' and 'capital'. The qualitative phase of the study uses multiple interviews with five participants. It reveals that Chinese Heritage Language offers meaningful benefits for participants in the forms of capital production and habitus capture or recapture. Findings from the two phases talk to each other in terms of the inherent entanglement amongst habitus of 'Chineseness', investment of capital, and Chinese Heritage Language proficiency. The study offers important contributions. Theoretically, by virtue of Bourdieu's signature concepts of habitus, capital, and field, the study provides answers to questions that both social psychological and poststructuralist theories have long been struggling to answer. Methodologically, the position of 'pluralism' talks back to Bourdieu's theory and forwards to the mixed methods design. Particularly, the study makes a methodological breakthrough: A set of instruments was developed and validated to quantify Bourdieu's key concepts of capital and habitus within certain social fields. Practically, understanding Chinese Australians' heterogeneity and the potential drivers behind Chinese Heritage Language learning contributes to the growing interest in Chinese Australians' contemporary life experiences and helps to better accommodate linguistically diverse Chinese Heritage Language Learners in Chinese language courses. In addition, this study is very timely. It resonates with the recently released Australia in the Asian Century White Paper: Chinese Australians, with sound knowledge of Chinese culture and language obtained through negotiating their 'Chineseness' and capitalising on diverse resources for learning, will help to serve Australia's economic, social, and political needs in unique ways.

Professional development and technology in second language learning : do best practices work?

This study was undertaken to examine the influence that a set of Professional Development (PD) initiatives had on faculty use of Moodle, a well known Course Management System. The context of the study was a private language university just outside Tokyo, Japan. Specifically, it aimed to identify the way in which the PD initiatives adhered to professional development best practice criteria; how faculty members perceived the PD initiatives; what impact the PD initiatives had on faculty use of Moodle; and other variables that may have influenced faculty in their use of Moodle. The study utilised a mixed methods approach. Participants in the study were 42 teachers who worked at the university in the academic year 2008/9. The online survey consisted of 115 items, factored into 10 constructs. Data was collected through an online survey, semi-structured face-to-face interviews, post-workshop surveys, and a collection of textual artefacts. The quantitative data were analysed in SPSS, using descriptive statistics, Spearman's Rank Order correlation tests and a Kruskal-Wallis means test. The qualitative data was used to develop and expand findings and ideas. The results indicated that the PD initiatives adhered closely to criteria posited in technology-related professional development best practice criteria. Further, results from the online survey, post workshop surveys, and follow up face-to-face interviews indicated that while the PD initiatives that were implemented were positively perceived by faculty, they did not have the anticipated impact on Moodle use among faculty. Further results indicated that other variables, such as perceptions of Moodle, and institutional issues, had a considerable influence on Moodle use. The findings of the study further strengthened the idea that the five variables Everett Rogers lists in his Diffusion of Innovations model, including perceived attributes of an innovation; type of innovation decision; communication channels; nature of the social system; extent of change agents' promotion efforts, most influence the adoption of an innovation. However, the results also indicated that some of the variables in Rogers' DOI seem to have more of an influence than others, particularly the perceived attributes of an innovation variable. In addition, the findings of the study could serve to inform universities that have Course Management Systems (CMS), such as Moodle, about how to utilise them most efficiently and effectively. The findings could also help to inform universities about how to help faculty members acquire the skills necessary to incorporate CMSs into curricula and teaching practice. A limitation of this study was the use of a non-randomised sample, which could appear to have limited the generalisations of the findings to this particular Japanese context.