Mothers' perceptions of Melbourne InFANT Program : informing future practice

Intervention programs to prevent childhood obesity are more likely to be successful when mothers are involved and engaged. Yet programs that involve mothers do not often employ process evaluation to identify aspects of the intervention that participants enjoyed or viewed as useful. The aims of this study were to describe how participants of the Melbourne InFANT Program-an early childhood obesity prevention intervention-engaged in the program and perceived its usefulness. Process evaluation data were collected at multiple time points during and after the intervention, using mixed methods drawing upon both quantitative and qualitative data. Results from short surveys (n = 271) and interview transcripts (n = 26) revealed that the Melbourne InFANT Program was perceived as useful and relevant by most (82-93%) participants. The formats through which the knowledge and skills were delivered were considered concise and effective, and aspects considered particularly useful included group sessions and advice on practical strategies to minimize stress around mealtimes. Findings from this study are important to inform future practice and the development of interventions which are well received by participants.

Universal design practice in Malaysia: Architect's perceptions of its terminology

Universal Design is a concept that embraces and covers issues of accessibility in the built and natural environments. The concept has progressively been introduced into the Malaysian built environment and architecture practice. However, its implementation in Malaysia is still considerably deficient. This paper investigates the contemporary perceptions of Malaysian architects towards the implementation of Universal Design in Malaysian built environment practice with an emphasis on their understanding of the terminology of Universal Design by means of face-to-face interviews. Findings indicate misconceptions towards the terminology of Universal Design exist in Malaysian practice due to a lack of understanding of the terminology that is negating its implementation in built environment practice. © 2014 The authors and IOS Press.

Stakeholders' perceptions of the benefit of introducing an Australian intermediary system for vulnerable witnesses

Vulnerable witnesses (e.g. children and adults with communication impairment) face many barriers to testifying and achieving justice when participating in the criminal justice system. To date, reforms have been implemented in Australia to address these, yet the barriers remain. Several other countries have implemented an intermediary scheme, whereby an independent third party assists vulnerable witnesses to understand the questions and processes encountered during interviews and trials, and helps witnesses to be understood. This study provides a qualitative analysis of stakeholders' (N = 25 professionals) perceptions regarding the potential benefits of implementing an intermediary scheme in Australia. While all participants demonstrated an open-minded attitude to new reform in this area, their perspectives did not support the introduction of an intermediary scheme at this time. Stakeholders highlighted the need for improved use and effectiveness of current measures, and expressed concern about adding further complication to the system.

Cancer patients' perceptions of the barriers and facilitators to patient participation in symptom management during an episode of admission

BACKGROUND:: Symptoms by definition are subjective, and patients' role in their assessment and management will impact on patient outcomes; thus, symptom management is an area of acute care practice where facilitation of patient participation is vital if quality outcomes are to be achieved. OBJECTIVE:: This study originated from a large multimethod research program exploring patient participation in symptom management in an acute oncology setting. The purpose of this article is to explore patients' perceptions of the barriers and facilitators to participating in their symptom management during an episode of admission to an acute oncology ward and the relationships between these perceptions and patients' preference for participation. METHODS:: One hundred seventy-one cancer inpatients consented and completed an interview-administered questionnaire. Patients' preference for participation was measured using the Control Preference Scale. Responses to open-ended survey questions were evaluated using content analysis. RESULTS:: Ten categories were identified in the analyses of patient perceptions of the barriers and facilitators to participating in care decisions relating to their symptoms. Patients, irrespective of their Control Preference, reported multiple barriers and facilitators to participating in their symptom management. CONCLUSIONS:: Patients overall perceived information as the most critical component of participation. Irrespective of patients' preference for participation, there were similarities in the barriers and facilitators to the operationalization of participation in the acute care setting reported. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE:: Understanding patient perceptions of barriers and facilitators of participating in symptom management has provided important insights into person and system factors in the acute care sector impacting quality patient symptom outcomes.

Making learning visible – parents perceptions of children's learning outdoors

Parents as partners in their children's learning is predicated by a notion of a mutual understanding of the learning as shared by educators. Documenting learning in early childhood education and care (ECE & C) settings has evolved from more traditional developmental approaches to include photographs, artefacts and social stories to make learning visible for parents. However, while educators are using these approaches to document learning in ECE & C settings, the shared understanding of the learning for parents is not always mutually understood. The paper presents a small-scale case study, which examined the way parents in one long day ECE & C service which had recently redeveloped an outdoor play area to bring in more natural affordances to support the children's learning and development. The paper reports on the perceptions of two parents with children attending this centre in how the educators were making visible the learning and development afforded the children through engaging in this newly designed space. The study found that while educators were using a range of documentation approaches, the parents had little shared understanding of their children as engaging in this space.

Nurses' perceptions of using an evidence-based care bundle for initial emergency nursing management of patients with severe traumatic brain injury: A qualitative study.

Evidence to guide initial emergency nursing care of patients with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) in Thailand is currently not available in a useable form. A care bundle was used to summarise an evidence-based approach to the initial emergency nursing management of patients with severe TBI and was implemented in one Thai emergency department. The aim of this study was to describe Thai emergency nurses' perceptions of care bundle use. A descriptive qualitative study was used to describe emergency nurses' perceptions of care bundle use during the implementation phase (Phase-One) and then post-implementation (Phase-Two). Ten emergency nurses participated in Phase-One, while 12 nurses participated in Phase-Two. In Phase-One, there were five important factors identified in relation to use of the care bundle including quality of care, competing priorities, inadequate equipment, agitated patients, and teamwork. In Phase Two, participants perceived that using the care bundle helped them to improve quality of care, increased nurses' knowledge, skills, and confidence. Care bundles are one strategy to increase integration of research evidence into clinical practice and facilitate healthcare providers to deliver optimal patient care in busy environments with limited resources.

Perceptions of fairness in the psychological contracts of allied health professionals

Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships between components of the psychological contract, organisational justice, and negative affectivity (NA), with key employee outcomes (i.e. organisational commitment, job satisfaction, depression, and psychological distress) among allied health professionals. Design/methodology/approach-In total, 134 (response rate of 46 per cent) Australian allied health professional completed a questionnaire. Findings-Multiple regressions revealed that higher NA was associated with lower organisational commitment, lower job satisfaction, and higher levels of depression. The psychological contract variable, breach, was associated with depression. Informational justice was associated with organisational commitment. Distributive justice was associated with job satisfaction. Research limitations/implications-This research is limited by its cross-sectional design and that the data were self-reported. The results obtained suggest the potential utility of collecting longitudinal data to replicate and extend the results. Practical implications-While NA may be beyond management control, it may be ameliorated by attention to improving communication of management decisions and by sensitivity to the elements implicit in psychological contracts. The negative consequences of contract breach may be offset by informational and distributive justice. Originality/value-This study is one of the first to examine multiple measures of the psychological contract in addition to organisational justice and NA. Further, this study adds to the literature for allied health professionals, where little is known about factors contributing to their turnover.

Patients' perceptions of participation in nursing care on medical wards

BACKGROUND: Patient participation benefits the patient and is a core concept of patient-centred care. Patients believe in their ability to prevent errors; thus, they may play a vital role in combating adverse event rates in hospitals. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: To explore hospitalised medical patients' perceptions of participating in nursing care, including the barriers and facilitators for this activity. RESEARCH METHODS: This interpretive study was conducted on four medical wards, in two hospitals. Purposeful maximum variation sampling was operationalised to recruit patients that differed in areas such as age, gender and mobility status. In-depth semi-structured audiotaped interviews were undertaken and analysed using inductive content analysis. RESULTS: Twenty patients participated in the study. Four categories were uncovered in the data. First, valuing participation showed patients' willingness to participate, viewing it as a worthwhile task. Second, exchanging intelligence was a way of participating where patients' knowledge was built and shared with health professionals. Third, on the lookout was a type of participation where patients monitored their care, showing an attentive approach towards their own safety. Fourth, power imbalance was characterised by patients feeling their opportunities for participation were restricted. CONCLUSIONS: Patients were motivated to participate and valued participation. Cultivating this motivation may be crucial to patient empowerment and practices of safety monitoring, a fundamental strategy to addressing patient safety issues in hospitals. Engaging nurse-patient relationships, inclusive of knowledge sharing, is required in practice to empower patients to participate. Educating patients on the consequences of non-participation may motivate them, while nurses may benefit from training on patient-centred approaches. Future research should address ways to increase patient motivation and opportunities to participate.

The decline of experts in the age of Web 2.0: Lay blogger perceptions of experts

With the advent of Web 2.0 tools such as Weblogs (blogs), lay people can more easily share knowledge with the public and have far greater reach and impact. At the same time a literature review reveals that experts have been criticised on many fronts. This paper explores key criticisms of experts using 1) a literature review and 2) an interpretive study of lay blogger perceptions of experts. The paper provides important insights into lay blogger criticisms of experts. Findings indicate that a major lay blogger criticism of experts is class-based and powerbased. Experts are perceived as elitists who wish to control the flow of knowledge. Interestingly, many of the lay bloggers studied held mixed feelings about experts and the value of lay knowledge on the internet. Implications for theory and practice are discussed. © 2009 Sharman Lichtenstein.

The impact of employee perceptions of organizational corporate social responsibility practices on job performance and organizational citizenship behavior: evidence from the Chinese private sector

This paper examines the impact of employee perceptions of organizational corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices on their job performance and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Hierarchical regression analysis on two-wave data from 184 supervisor/subordinate dyads from three organizations located in Zhejiang Province, South-East China, revealed that employee perceptions of CSR toward social and non-social stakeholders strongly influenced their OCB. However, employee perceptions of CSR toward employees, customers and government influenced neither their job performance nor OCB.

Perceptions of public security in post-reform urban China: a routine activity analysis

This paper investigates the personal and environmental determinants of public security perceptions across 32 Chinese cities within the risk/opportunity framework of Cohen and Felson's (American Sociological Review 44:588-608, 1979) routine activity theory. Structural path analysis reveals that public security perceptions in China are informed by similar personal and environment characteristics to those reported as important in extant research within Western contexts. However, the frequently reported influence of gender on public security perceptions in the West does not appear to extend to post-reform urban China. The results provide support for the routine activity theory in terms of extending our understanding of the factors that influence perceptions of public security to a non-Western context. © 2009 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

Who wants safer cities? Perceptions of public safety and attitudes to migrants among China's urban population

Most extant research in the economics of crime literature has focused on explaining variations in crime rates. Public action to prevent crime, however, is often dependent on the level of concern about public safety that is expressed in public perceptions surveys. The economics of crime literature has largely overlooked responses to such surveys as data sources and therefore it has not accounted for the role that public opinion might have in mobilizing public action against crime. We use a unique survey administered in 2003 in 32 Chinese cities to examine the determinants of perceptions of public safety among China's urban population. One of our major findings is that individuals who have a negative perception of rural-urban migrants living in their city have a poor perception of public safety. We also find that the unemployment rate, the masculinity ratio and expenditure on armed police in the city in which the individual resides, whether the individual lives in the coastal region as opposed to the central or western region and average changes in housing prices and average changes in rental prices in the city in which the individual lives are important predictors of perceptions of public safety. © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Migration and the right to social security: perceptions of off-farm migrants' rights to social insurance in China's Jiangsu Province

In 2001 China ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. By so doing the national government became legally bound, "to the maximum of its available resources", to achieve "progressively" full realization of the rights specified in the Covenant. Included amongst these entitlements is the "right of everyone to social security, including social insurance". This paper uses data from Jiangsu to examine the extent to which urbanites agree that previously disenfranchised migrants have the same right to social insurance as the urban population. Many urbanites fear that their existing entitlements to social protection will be diluted if social insurance coverage is extended to include new populations. Accordingly, state agencies and the media have sought to promote acceptance of a more positive view of migrant workers than has traditionally prevailed within towns and cities. We find that younger urban residents, urban residents who already have social insurance and urban residents working in the state-owned sector are more likely to agree that migrants have the same right to social insurance as the urban population. © 2007 Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Prosecutors’ perceptions of the utility of video-evidence for adult complainants of sexual assault

Playing an adult sexual complainant’s video-recorded police interview as the basis for his or her evidence-in-chief is a reform Australia could adopt to help improve criminal justice responses to these cases. This article presents a qualitative evaluation of prosecutor’s support for this reform and their views about what conditions would determine its utility. Focus groups were held with 13 prosecutors from across New Zealand (which already has this reform) and Australia. Collectively, prosecutors supported the availability of video-evidence for adult complainants. They perceived the utility of this reform depends on the following conditions: (1) the quality of the police interview; (2) how credibly the complainant presents on video; (3) contextual factors that influence the complainant’s ability to give live evidence; and (4) the degree of stakeholder support. These findings suggest that Australia should extend video-evidence to adult complainants of sexual assault guided by careful planning aroundthese four areas.