The impact of knowledge and attitudes on access to eye-care services in Cambodia

Purpose: To investigate how knowledge and attitudes influence the access to eye-care services in Takeo Province, Cambodia.

Design: A cross-sectional survey (n=600).

Methods: 30 villages were randomly selected. Groups included: >50 years, 30–49 years, and parents with children <5 years. A newly developed Knowledge, Attitude and Practice in Eye Health (KAP-EH) questionnaire about knowledge and treatment of eye diseases, practices and attitudes to accessing services was used to interview respondents. Descriptive analysis, including Chi square and logistic regression tested for associations with sub-groups of gender, age group, education and self-reported type of disability.

Results: The proportion of respondents who reported having knowledge of specific eye conditions ranged from 97% for eye injury, to 8% for diabetic eye disease. While 509 (85%) people reported knowledge of cataract, 47% did not know how cataract was treated and only 19% listed surgery. The older group (66.5%) were least informed about cataract (p= 0.001) compared to other groups, and were least likely to believe that some blindness could be prevented (p < 0.001). Women (55%) were more likely than men (46%) (p=0 .003) to report that a child with blindness could attend school, as did people without a disability compared to those with a disability (58% vs 34%) (p < 0.001).

Conclusions: The knowledge about cataract and refractive error and what to do to resolve the problems was low among this population and this study suggests that poor knowledge of eye diseases might contribute to the occurrence of un-operated cataract and uncorrected refractive error.

An order-based theory of morality

The thesis argues that morality has a non-religious basis in the human need for order. Our need for order explains why we are the moral beings that we are. It also explains the kind of morality that people variously advocate and practice.

Resolving the theory of planned behaviour's ‘expectancy-value muddle’ using dimensional salience

The theory of planned behaviour is one of the most widely used models of decision-making in the health literature. Unfortunately, the primary method for assessing the theory's belief-based expectancy-value models results in statistically uninterpretable findings, giving rise to what has become known as the ‘expectancy-value muddle’. Moreover, existing methods for resolving this muddle are associated with various conceptual or practical limitations. This study addresses these issues by identifying and evaluating a parsimonious method for resolving the expectancy-value muddle. Three hundred and nine Australian residents aged 18–24 years rated the expectancy and value of 18 beliefs about posthumous organ donation. Participants also nominated their five most salient beliefs using a dimensional salience approach. Salient beliefs were perceived as being more likely to eventuate than non-salient beliefs, indicating that salient beliefs could be used to signify the expectancy component. The expectancy-value term was therefore represented by summing the value ratings of salient beliefs, an approach that predicted attitude (adjusted R 2 = 0.21) and intention (adjusted R 2 = 0.21). These findings suggest that the dimensional salience approach is a useful method for overcoming the expectancy-value muddle in applied research settings.

Conceptual overlap between moral norms and anticipated regret in the prediction of intention: implications for theory of planned behaviour research

Moral norms and anticipated regret are widely used extensions to the theory of planned behaviour, yet there is some evidence to suggest that these constructs may conceptually overlap as predictors of intention. Two health-related behaviours with distinct moral implications (Study 1: organ donation registration, N = 352 and Study 2: condom usage, N = 1815) were therefore examined to ascertain whether moral norms and anticipated regret are indeed conceptually distinct. While evidence consistent with conceptual overlap was identified in Study 1, the evidence for such overlap in Study 2 was more ambiguous. In Study 3, a meta-analysis of existing literature revealed that the relationship between moral norms and anticipated regret was moderated by the extent of the moral implications arising from the behaviour under examination. Taken together, these findings suggest that conceptual overlap between moral norms and anticipated regret is more likely to occur among behaviours with obvious moral implications. Researchers wishing to examine the predictive utility of moral norms and anticipated regret among such behaviours would therefore be advised to aggregate these measures to form a composite variable (personal norms).

Using Mead's Theory of Emergence as a framework for sociological inquiry into pre-service teacher education

In this paper we take up Chang's (2004) challenge to apply Mead's theory of emergence in sociological inquiry. Largely overlooked by scholars, this theory is shown to prove explanatory in one field where limited solutions have been found to date. Specifically, the theory sheds light on how the theory-practice gap is created and sustained in pre-service teacher education. The argument is that under current institutional arrangements the trainee/beginning teacher encounters different and oft-times conflicting environmental, social and cultural conditions in the two 'fields of interaction' (Mead, 1934: 249) of their training program, namely, the on-campus pre-service program and the school. The argument draws on interview and focus group data collected via a study of first-year graduate teachers of an Australian pre-service teacher education program. We conclude that the Meadian mechanisms of role taking and self-regulated behaviour within the two environmental fields of interaction inhibit the trainee/beginning teacher from exercising the power of agency to implement theory learned at university in practice in the classroom. In this sense Mead's theory of emergence predicts the obduracy of the gap between theory and practice in teacher education.

Applying the theory of resource curse to disadvantaged migrant communities and criminal offending: Vietnamese Australians and the heroin trade as a case study

Australia has a substantial Vietnamese community, a consequence of the refugee exodus from Southeast Asia which followed the Communist victory in Vietnam in 1975. While Vietnamese Australians have contributed greatly to their host society, they are also stigmatised because of an association with the trade in illicit drugs, particularly heroin. Drug-related offending remains very high in Vietnamese Australian communities, with resultant high rates of incarceration and social exclusion. In its formative years the Vietnamese Australian community was faced with exclusion from economic and social opportunity, but was uniquely well-positioned as an ethnic enclave economy to take advantage of the growing demand for illicit drugs, especially heroin. I argue that the heroin trade had an effect analogous to ‘resource curse’, and has been a major source of continuing disadvantage and social harm to the Vietnamese Australian community.

Greater cognitive effort for better learning : tailoring an instructional design for learners with different levels of knowledge and motivation

The capacity limitation of working memory is a widely recognised determinant of human learning. A cognitive load exceeding the capacity hampers learning. Cognitive load can be controlled by tailoring an instructional design to levels of learner prior knowledge. However, such as design does not necessarily motivate to use the available capacity for better learning. The present review examines literatures on the effects of instructional design, motivation, emotional state, and expertise level on cognitive load and cognitive effort, which ultimately affect working memory performance and learning. This examination suggests further studies on the effects of motivation and negative emotional states on the use of working memory. Prospective findings would help better explain and predict individual differences in the use of working memory for cognitive learning and task performance.

Generating repudiable, memorizable and privacy preserving security questions using the Propp Theory of Narrative

 Security questions are often based on personal information that is limited in variety, available in the public record and very difficult to change if compromised. A personalized folktale shared only by the communicating parties provides memorizable basis for individualized security questions that can be readily replaced in the event of a security breach. We utilize the Propp theory of narrative to provide a basis of abstraction for story generation systems. We develop a proof-of-concept system based on placeholder replacement to demonstrate the generation of repudiate and memorizable questions and answers suitable for online security questions. A 3-component protocol is presented that demonstrates the use of this process to derive a shared secret key through privacy amplification. This combination of story generation and communication security provides the basis for improvements in current security question practice.

A meta-analysis of the effects of measuring theory of planned behaviour constructs on behaviour within prospective studies

Measurement reactivity effects, such as the mere measurement effect, have been proposed as a reason for behavioural changes in a number of theory of planned behaviour intervention studies. However, it is unclear whether such changes are the result of the mere measurement effect or of other artefacts of intervention study design. The aim of this study is to determine the size and direction of changes in health behaviours from baseline to follow-up in prospective studies using the theory of planned behaviour. Electronic databases were searched for the theory of planned behaviour studies which measured health behaviours at two or more time points. Change in behaviour was calculated for all studies. Sixty-six studies were included. Mean effect sizes across all studies were small and negative (d = -.03). Effect size was moderated by behaviour, behaviour type and follow-up length. Subgroup analyses showed significant decreases in socially undesirable behaviour (d = -.28), binge drinking (d = -.17), risk driving (d = -.20), sugar snack consumption (d = -.43) and sun-protective behaviour (d = -.18). Measurement of intention at baseline resulted in significant decreases in undesirable behaviour. Changes in undesirable behaviours reported in other studies may be the result of the mere measurement effect.