Collaborating to develop research data management services and collections

The Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Library, like many other academic and research institution libraries in Australia, has been collaborating with a range of academic and service provider partners to develop a range of research data management services and collections. Three main strategies are being employed and an overview of process, infrastructure, usage and benefits is provided of each of these service aspects. The development of processes and infrastructure to facilitate the strategic identification and management of QUT developed datasets has been a major focus. A number of Australian National Data Service (ANDS) sponsored projects - including Seeding the Commons; Metadata Hub / Store; Data Capture and Gold Standard Record Exemplars have / will provide QUT with a data registry system, linkages to storage, processes for identifying and describing datasets, and a degree of academic awareness. QUT supports open access and has established a culture for making its research outputs available via the QUT ePrints institutional repository. Incorporating open access research datasets into the library collections is an equally important aspect of facilitating the adoption of data-centric eresearch methods. Some datasets are available commercially, and the library has collaborated with QUT researchers, in the QUT Business School especially strongly, to identify and procure a rapidly growing range of financial datasets to support research. The library undertakes licensing and uses the Library Resource Allocation to pay for the subscriptions. It is a new area of collection development for with much to be learned. The final strategy discussed is the library acting as “data broker”. QUT Library has been working with researchers to identify these datasets and undertake the licensing, payment and access as a centrally supported service on behalf of researchers.

The application of the parallel track model in community health promotion : a literature review

The parallel track model is one of the several models that are used in health promotion programmes that focus on community empowerment. It is unique in that it explicitly incorporates an empowerment approach with a top-down health programme. Since its development in 1999-2000 the model has been used in various health programmes in both developed and developing countries. The aim of this review is to examine the nature and extent of the application of this model and its contribution to promoting health. A review of the literature published between 2000 and 2011 was conducted. Nine results matched the inclusion criteria and revealed that the model has been mostly applied to disadvantaged communities to address health determinants, such as poverty and health literacy. This review found that the model had a positive impact on specific health outcomes such as health literacy and community capacity. We concluded that the parallel track model has the most potential for building capacity for community health promotion and appears to be the least useful for interventions focusing on health behaviour change within a limited time frame.

Credit rating agencies' roles have to be reassessed

With the disintermediation of the financial markets, credit rating agencies filled the informational need of investors on the creditworthiness of borrowers. They acquired their privileged position in the financial market through their intellectual technology and reputational capital. To a large extent, they have gradually dissipated the authority of state regulators and supervisory authorities with their increasing reliance on credit ratings for regulatory purposes. But the recent credit crisis revives the question on whether states should retake their authorities and how far rating agencies should be subjected to competition, transparency and accountability constraints imposed by the public and the market on state regulators and supervisory authorities. Against this backdrop, this article critically explores the key concerns with credit rating agencies' functions to regulate financial market for further assessment

Statutory-backed continuous disclosure regime and corporate disclosure behaviour : does corporate governance matter?

Since 1 December 2002, the New Zealand Exchange’s (NZX) continuous disclosure listing rules have operated with statutory backing. To test the effectiveness of the new corporate disclosure regime, we compare the change in quantity of market announcements (overall, non-routine, non-procedural and external) released to the NZX before and after the introduction of statutory backing. We also extend our study in investigating whether the effectiveness of the new corporate disclosure regime is diminished or augmented by corporate governance mechanisms including board size, providing separate roles for CEO and Chairman, board independence, board gender diversity and audit committee independence. Our findings provide a qualified support for the effectiveness of the new corporate disclosure regime regarding the quantity of market disclosures. There is strong evidence that the effectiveness of the new corporate disclosure regime was augmented by providing separate roles for CEO and Chairman, board gender diversity and audit committee independence, and diminished by board size. In addition, there is significant evidence that share price queries do impact corporate disclosure behaviour and this impact is significantly influenced by corporate governance mechanisms. Our findings provide important implications for corporate regulators in their quest for...

People with ID as active participants in nursing research : a literature review.

Aim: The movement from a medical model of disability to a more social model implies an imperative to include the views of people with ID in research regarding their care. Contemporary quality processes in improving care require consumer involvement at many levels and in doing so have shown better outcomes. A New Zealand research study is being undertaken utilizing focus groups with people with ID to understand their experiences during a psychiatric inpatient admission. The primary focus of this presentation will concern the literature review, undertaken as part of the study, of research in which people with ID have participated. Method: The literature review was conducted using a variety of electronic databases and search terms to identify studies with people with ID as active participants. Results: Only a few studies have been undertaken with people with ID as participants. While these studies demonstrate numerous benefits in including the voice of the person with ID this still remains absent from much of the research discourse. Conclusion: It is accepted and indeed advocated that people with ID have the same rights as others in regard to choosing whether or not they wish to participate in research. High response rates in the few identified studies indicated that people with ID are eager to be consulted. It is recommended that the unique needs of people with ID be taken into account in the research evidence base for future services.

ICT shared services in the higher education sector : foundations, benefits, success factors and issues

Universities are more and more challenged by the emerging global higher education market, facilitated by advances in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). This requires them to reconsider their mission and direction in order to function effectively and efficiently, and to be responsive to changes in their environment. In the face of increasing demands and competitive pressures, Universities like other companies, seek to continuously innovate and improve their performance. Universities are considering co-operating or sharing, both internally and externally, in a wide range of areas to achieve cost effectiveness and improvements in performance. Shared services are an effective model for re-organizing to reduce costs, increase quality and create new capabilities. Shared services are not limited to the Higher Education (HE) sector. Organizations across different sectors are adopting shared services, in particular for support functions such as Finance, Accounting, Human Resources and Information Technology. While shared services has been around for more than three decades, commencing in the 1970’s in the banking sector and then been adopted by other sectors, it is an under researched domain, with little consensus on the most fundamental issues even as basic as defining what shared services is. Moreover, the interest in shared services within Higher Education is a global phenomenon. This study on shared services is situated within the Higher Education Sector of Malaysia, and originated as an outcome resulting from a national project (2005 – 2007) conducted by the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) entitled "Knowledge, Information Communication Technology Strategic Plan (KICTSP) for Malaysian Public Higher Education"- where progress towards more collaborations via shared services was a key recommendation. The study’s primary objective was to understand the nature and potential for ICT shared services, in particular in the Malaysian HE sector; by laying a foundation in terms of definition, typologies and research agenda and deriving theoretically based conceptualisations of the potential benefits of shared services, success factors and issues of pursuing shared services. The study embarked on this objective with a literature review and pilot case study as a means to further define the context of the study, given the current under-researched status of ICT shared services and of shared services in Higher Education. This context definition phase illustrated a range of unaddressed issues; including a lack of common understanding of what shared services are, how they are formed, what objectives they full fill, who is involved etc. The study thus embarked on a further investigation of a more foundational nature with an exploratory phase that aimed to address these gaps, where a detailed archival analysis of shared services literature within the IS context was conducted to better understand shared services from an IS perspective. The IS literature on shared services was analysed in depth to report on the current status of shared services research in the IS domain; in particular definitions, objectives, stakeholders, the notion of sharing, theories used, and research methods applied were analysed, which provided a firmer base to this study’s design. The study also conducted a detailed content analysis of 36 cases (globally) of shared services implementations in the HE sector to better understand how shared services are structured within the HE sector and what is been shared. The results of the context definition phase and exploratory phase formed a firm basis in the multiple case studies phase which was designed to address the primary goals of this study (as presented above). Three case sites within the Malaysian HE sector was included in this analysis, resulting in empirically supported theoretical conceptualizations of shared services success factors, issues and benefits. A range of contributions are made through this study. First, the detailed archival analysis of shared services in Information Systems (IS) demonstrated the dearth of research on shared services within Information Systems. While the existing literature was synthesised to contribute towards an improved understanding of shared services in the IS domain, the areas that are yet under-developed and requires further exploration is identified and presented as a proposed research agenda for the field. This study also provides theoretical considerations and methodological guidelines to support the research agenda; to conduct better empirical research in this domain. A number of literatures based a priori frameworks (i.e. on the forms of sharing and shared services stakeholders etc) are derived in this phase, contributing to practice and research with early conceptualisations of critical aspects of shared services. Furthermore, the comprehensive archival analysis design presented and executed here is an exemplary approach of a systematic, pre-defined and tool-supported method to extract, analyse and report literature, and is documented as guidelines that can be applied for other similar literature analysis, with particular attention to supporting novice researchers. Second, the content analysis of 36 shared services initiatives in the Higher Education sector presented eight different types of structural arrangements for shared services, as observed in practice, and the salient dimensions along which those types can be usefully differentiated. Each of the eight structural arrangement types are defined and demonstrated through case examples, with further descriptive details and insights to what is shared and how the sharing occurs. This typology, grounded on secondary empirical evidence, can serve as a useful analytical tool for researchers investigating the shared services phenomenon further, and for practitioners considering the introduction or further development of shared services. Finally, the multiple case studies conducted in the Malaysian Higher Education sector, provided further empirical basis to instantiate the conceptual frameworks and typology derived from the prior phases and develops an empirically supported: (i) framework of issues and challenges, (ii) a preliminary theory of shared services success, and (iii) a benefits framework, for shared services in the Higher Education sector.

Board monitoring and judgement as processes of sensemaking

When organizational scandals occur, the common refrain among commentators is: 'Where was the board in all this?' 'How could the directors not have known what was going on?''Why didn't the board intervene?' The scandals demonstrate that board monitoring or oganizational performance is a matter of great importance. By monitoring, we mean the act of keeping the organization under review. In many English-speaking countries, directors have a legal duty of care, which includes duties to monitor the performance of their organizations (Hopt and von Hippel 2010). However, statutory law typically merely states the duty, while providing little guidance on how that duty can be met.

Nurse-administered procedural sedation and analgesia in the cardiac catheter laboratory : an integrative review

Objectives: To identify and appraise the literature concerning nurse-administered procedural sedation and analgesia in the cardiac catheter laboratory. Design and data sources: An integrative review method was chosen for this study. MEDLINE and CINAHL databases as well as The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews and the Joanna Briggs Institute were searched. Nineteen research articles and three clinical guidelines were identified. Results: The authors of each study reported nurse-administered sedation in the CCL is safe due to the low incidence of complications. However, a higher percentage of deeply sedated patients were reported to experience complications than moderately sedated patients. To confound this issue, one clinical guideline permits deep sedation without an anaesthetist present, while others recommend against it. All clinical guidelines recommend nurses are educated about sedation concepts. Other findings focus on pain and discomfort and the cost-savings of nurse-administered sedation, which are associated with forgoing anaesthetic services. Conclusions: Practice is varied due to limitations in the evidence and inconsistent clinical practice guidelines. Therefore, recommendations for research and practice have been made. Research topics include determining how and in which circumstances capnography can be used in the CCL, discerning the economic impact of sedation-related complications and developing a set of objectives for nursing education about sedation. For practice, if deep sedation is administered without an anaesthetist present, it is essential nurses are adequately trained and have access to vital equipment such as capnography to monitor ventilation because deeply sedated patients are more likely to experience complications related to sedation. These initiatives will go some way to ensuring patients receiving nurse-administered procedural sedation and analgesia for a procedure in the cardiac catheter laboratory are cared for using consistent, safe and evidence-based practices.

The Convergence Review and the principle of Australians' access to and opportunities for participation

The recent Australian Convergence Review’s second principle states: “Australians should have access to and opportunities for participation in a diverse mix of services, voices, views and information”. However, in failing to define its own use and understanding of the terms ‘access’ and ‘participation’ the Convergence Review exposes itself to criticism. These terms would no doubt be made unambiguously clear should the Review’s recommendations move towards policy, and this paper contributes to this discussion by framing access and participation, from the perspective of the ‘produser’ (Bruns, 2008), around three separate but related issues: the failure to frame the discussion that will be undertaken by the Australian Law Reform Commission’s 2012 2013 Copyright Inquiry; the prioritising of the market over and above media accountability and the health of the public sphere; and the missed opportunity to develop a national framework for digital literacy and advanced digital citizenry.

Designing a continuum of quality external cause of injury information in Queensland : from ambulance to hospital

This study is the first to employ an epidemiological framework to evaluate the ‘fit-for-purpose’ of ICD-10-AM external cause of injury codes, ambulance and hospital clinical documentation for injury surveillance. Importantly, this thesis develops an evidence-based platform to guide future improvements in routine data collections used to inform the design of effective injury prevention strategies. Quantification of the impact of ambulance clinical records on the overall information quality of Queensland hospital morbidity data collections for injury causal information is a unique and notable contribution of this study.

Quality assessment of service bundles for governmental one-stop portals : a literature review

Service bundles, in the context of e-government, are used to group services together that relate to a certain citizen need. These bundles can then be presented on a governmental one-stop portal to structure the available service offerings according to citizen expectations. In order to ensure that citizens utilise the one-stop portal and comprised service bundles for future transactions, the quality of these service bundles needs to be managed and maximised accordingly. Consequently, models and tools that focus on assessing service bundle quality play an important role, when it comes to increasing or retaining usage behaviour of citizens. This study focuses on providing a rigorous and structured literature review of e-government outlets with regards to their coverage of service bundle quality and e-service quality themes. The study contributes to academia and practice by providing a framework that allows structuring and classifying existing studies relevant for the assessment of quality for government portals. Furthermore, this study provides insights into the status quo of quality models that can be used by governments to assess the quality of their service bundles. Directions for future research and limitations of the present study are provided as well.