The effect of consumer risk perceptions and information search on willingness to buy GM food products: A cross cultural analysis

This paper seeks to address the widespread call in the literature for the cross-cultural examination ( and validation) of accepted concepts within consumer behaviour, such as consumer risk perceptions and information search. The findings of the study provide support for a number of accepted relationships, whilst identifying distinct cross cultural differences in external information search and willingness to buy genetically modified (GM) food products by consumers.

Causes of injuries resulting in hospitalisation in Australia : assessing coder agreement on external causes

Objective: To assess extent of coder agreement for external causes of injury using ICD-10-AM for injury-related hospitalisations in Australian public hospitals. Methods: A random sample of 4850 discharges from 2002 to 2004 was obtained from a stratified random sample of 50 hospitals across four states in Australia. On-site medical record reviews were conducted and external cause codes were assigned blinded to the original coded data. Code agreement levels were grouped into the following agreement categories: block level, 3-character level, 4-character level, 5th-character level, and complete code level. Results: At a broad block level, code agreement was found in over 90% of cases for most mechanisms (eg, transport, fall). Percentage disagreement was 26.0% at the 3-character level; agreement for the complete external cause code was 67.6%. For activity codes, the percentage of disagreement at the 3-character level was 7.3% and agreement for the complete activity code was 68.0%. For place of occurrence codes, the percentage of disagreement at the 4-character level was 22.0%; agreement for the complete place code was 75.4%. Conclusions: With 68% agreement for complete codes and 74% agreement for 3-character codes, as well as variability in agreement levels across different code blocks, place and activity codes, researchers need to be aware of the reliability of their specific data of interest when they wish to undertake trend analyses or case selection for specific causes of interest.

Report on the Development and Validation of the Best Practice Decision Matrix

The Co-operative Research Centre for Construction Innovation (CRC-CI) is funding a project known as Value Alignment Process for Project Delivery. The project consists of a study of best practice project delivery and the development of a suite of products, resources and services to guide project teams towards the best procurement approach for a specific project or group of projects. These resources will be focused on promoting the principles that underlie best practice project delivery rather than simply identifying an off-the-shelf procurement system. This project builds on earlier work by Sidwell, Kennedy and Chan (2002), on re-engineering the construction delivery process, which developed a procurement framework in the form of a Decision Matrix

Virtual design process : design validation tool schematic approach in car carrier

An important aspect of designing any product is validation. Virtual design process (VDP) is an alternative to hardware prototyping in which analysis of designs can be done without manufacturing physical samples. In recent years, VDP have been generated either for animation or filming applications. This paper proposes a virtual reality design process model on one of the applications when used as a validation tool. This technique is used to generate a complete design guideline and validation tool of product design. To support the design process of a product, a virtual environment and VDP method were developed that supports validation and an initial design cycle performed by a designer. The product model car carrier is used as illustration for which virtual design was generated. The loading and unloading sequence of the model for the prototype was generated using automated reasoning techniques and was completed by interactively animating the product in the virtual environment before complete design was built. By using the VDP process critical issues like loading, unloading, Australian Design rules (ADR) and clearance analysis were done. The process would save time, money in physical sampling and to large extent in complete math generation. Since only schematic models are required, it saves time in math modelling and handling of bigger size assemblies due to complexity of the models. This extension of VDP process for design evaluation is unique and was developed, implemented successfully. In this paper a Toll logistics and J Smith and Sons car carrier which is developed under author’s responsibility has been used to illustrate our approach of generating design validation via VDP.

Development of diagnostic and prognostic algorithms for SF6 puffer circuit breakers from transient waveforms : a validation proposal

- This paper presents a validation proposal for development of diagnostic and prognostic algorithms for SF6 puffer circuit-breakers reproduced from actual site waveforms. The re-ignition/restriking rates are duplicated in given circuits and the cumulative energy dissipated in interrupters by the restriking currents. The targeted objective is to provide a simulated database for diagnosis of re-ignition/restrikes relating to the phase to earth voltage and the number of re-ignition/restrikes as well as estimating the remaining life of SF6 circuit-breakers. The model-based diagnosis of a tool will be useful in monitoring re-ignition/restrikes as well as predicting a nozzle’s lifetime. This will help ATP users with practical study cases and component data compilation for shunt reactor switching and capacitor switching. This method can be easily applied with different data for the different dielectric curves of circuit breakers and networks. This paper presents modelling details and some of the available cases, required project support, the validation proposal, the specific plan for implementation and the propsed main contributions.

Damage propagation in reinforced concrete frames under external blast loading

Iconic and significant buildings are the common target of bombings by terrorists causing large numbers of casualties and extensive property damage. Recent incidents were external bomb attacks on multi-storey buildings with reinforced concrete frames. Under a blast load circumstance, crucial damage initiates at low level storeys in a building and may then lead to a progressive collapse of whole or part of the structure. It is therefore important to identify the critical initial influence regions along the height, width and depth of the building exposed to blast effects and the structure response in order to assess the vulnerability of the structure to disproportionate and progressive collapse. This paper discusses the blast response and the propagation of its effects on a two dimensional reinforced concrete (RC) frame, designed to withstand normal gravity loads. The explicit finite element code, LS DYNA is used for the analysis. A complete RC portal frame seven storeys by six bays is modelled with reinforcement details and appropriate materials to simulate strain rate effects. Explosion loads derived from standard manuals are applied as idealized triangular pressures on the column faces of the numerical models. The analysis reports the influence of blast propagation as displacements and material yielding of the structural elements in the RC frame. The effected regions are identified and classified according to the load cases. This information can be used to determine the vulnerability of multi-storey RC buildings to various external explosion scenarios and designing buildings to resist blast loads.

Validation of the Flinders decision : making questionnaire in course decision making by students

The Flinders Decision Making Questionnaire (DMQ; Mann, 1982) was designed to measure decision making coping patterns identified by Janis and Mann (1977). The validity of four DMQ Scales (vigilance, defensive avoidance, hypervigilance, and decision self-esteem) were tested as predictors of students' course and career decision making. Students administered the DMQ scales were also measured on independence of choice, satisfaction, and planfulness relating to their university course and on planfulness and options relating to their future employment. Two samples were studied. In study 1, 40 students residing in a university college were the subjects. In Study 2, 42 second-year students who completed the DMQ one year earlier constituted the subjects. Modest but significant correlations were found in both samples between DMQ scores and measures of course and career decision making. The findings lend support to the validity of the DMQ as an instrument for measuring decision making behaviour.

Formative and reflective measurement and validation mismatch in survey research : an archival analysis of information systems success constructs 1985-2007

The generic IS-success constructs first identified by DeLone and McLean (1992) continue to be widely employed in research. Yet, recent work by Petter et al (2007) has cast doubt on the validity of many mainstream constructs employed in IS research over the past 3 decades; critiquing the almost universal conceptualization and validation of these constructs as reflective when in many studies the measures appear to have been implicitly operationalized as formative. Cited examples of proper specification of the Delone and McLean constructs are few, particularly in light of their extensive employment in IS research. This paper introduces a four-stage formative construct development framework: Conceive > Operationalize > Respond > Validate (CORV). Employing the CORV framework in an archival analysis of research published in top outlets 1985-2007, the paper explores the extent of possible problems with past IS research due to potential misspecification of the four application-related success dimensions: Individual-Impact, Organizational-Impact, System-Quality and Information-Quality. Results suggest major concerns where there is a mismatch of the Respond and Validate stages. A general dearth of attention to the Operationalize and Respond stages in methodological writings is also observed.

The impact of internal and external market orientations on firm performance.

The role of internal marketing in developing organisational competencies is identified as a key area for continued research (Rafiq and Ahmed, 2003). One competence of particular interest to marketers is market orientation. This paper examines the impact of internal marketing, operationalised as a set of internal market orientated behaviours (IMO) on market orientation (MO), and consequently organisational performance, and provides the first quantitative evidence to support the long held assumption that internal marketing has an impact on marketing success. Data from UK retail managers were analysed using structural equations modelling employing LISREL software. These data indicate significant relationships between internal market orientation, employee motivation and external marketing success (market orientation, financial performance and customer satisfaction). Our results also support previous findings indicating a positive impact of external market orientation on customer satisfaction and financial performance. For marketing practitioners, the role of internal market orientation is developing marketing strategies is discussed.

Project team’s internal and external social networks and their influence on project performance

The research on project learning has recognised the significance of knowledge transfer in project based organisations (PBOs). Effective knowledge transfer across projects avoids reinventions, enhances knowledge creation and saves lots of time that is crucial in project environment. In order to facilitate knowledge transfer, many PBOs have invested lots of financial and human resources to implement IT-based knowledge repository. However, some empirical studies found that employees would rather turn for knowledge to colleagues despite their ready access to IT-based knowledge repository. Therefore, it is apparent that social networks play a pivotal role in the knowledge transfer across projects. Some scholars attempt to explore the effect of network structure on knowledge transfer and performance, however, focused only on egocentric networks and the groups’ internal social networks. It has been found that the project’s external social network is also critical, in that the team members can not handle critical situations and accomplish the projects on time without the assistance and knowledge from external sources. To date, the influence of the structure of a project team’s internal and external social networks on project performance, and the interrelation between both networks are barely known. In order to obtain such knowledge, this paper explores the interrelation between the structure of a project team’s internal and external social networks, and their effect on the project team’s performance. Data is gathered through survey questionnaire distributed online to respondents. Collected data is analysed applying social network analysis (SNA) tools and SPSS. The theoretical contribution of this paper is the knowledge of the interrelation between the structure of a project team’s internal and external social networks and their influence on the project team’s performance. The practical contribution lies in the guideline to be proposed for constructing the structure of project team’s internal and external social networks.

External pressure in the hardening of phosphate in tribofilm on iron surfaces

Purpose: In the present work we consider our (in progress) spectroscopy study of zinc and iron phosphates under the influence external high pressure to determine zinc ion change coordination from tetrahedral to octahedral (or hexahedral) structure.----- Design/methodology/approach: The standard equipment is the optical high pressure cell with diamond (DAC). The DAC is assembled and then vibrational or electronic spectra are collected by mounting the cell in an infrared, Raman, EXAFS or UV-visible spectrometer.----- Findings: Mechanism by which zinc and iron methaphosphate material is transformed to glassy meta-phosphate is enhancing mechanical properties of tribofilm. The two decades of intensive study demonstrates that Zn (II) and Fe (III) ions participate to cross-link network under friction, hardening the phosphate.----- Research limitations/implications: Transition metal atoms with d orbital have flexible coordination numbers, for example zinc acts as a cross-linking agent increasing hardness, by changing coordination from tetrahedral to octahedral. Perhaps the external pressure effect on the [Zn–(O-P-)4 ] complex causes a transformation to an [Zn –(O-P-)6] grouping.----- Originality/value: This paper analyses high-pressure spectroscopy which has been applied for the investigation of 3D transition metal ions in solids. When studying pressure effects on coordination compounds structure, we can expect changes in ground electronic state (spin-crossovers), electronic spectra due to structural distortions (piezochromism), and changes in the ligand field causing shifts in the electronic transitions.

Cues to starting CPAP in obstructive sleep apnoea : development and validation of the cues to CPAP Use Questionnaire (CCUQ)

Background: The reasons that a patient has to start treatment, their “Cues to Action”, are important for determining subsequent health behaviours. Cues to action are an explicit component of the Health Belief Model of CPAP acceptance adherence. At present there is no scale available to measure this construct for individuals with Obstructive Sleep Apnoea (OSA). This paper aims to develop, validate and describe responding patterns within an OSA patient sample to the Cues to CPAP Use Questionnaire (CCUQ).----- Method: Participants were 63 adult patients diagnosed with OSA who had never tried CPAP when initially recruited. The CCUQ was completed at one month after being prescribed CPAP.----- Results: Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) showed a three factor structure of the 9-item CCUQ, with “Health Cues”, “Partner Cues” and “Health Professional Cues” subscales accounting for 59.91% of the total variance. The CCUQ demonstrated modest internal consistency and split-half reliability. The questionnaire is brief and user-friendly, with readability at a 7th grade level. The most frequently endorsed cues for starting CPAP were Health Professional Cues (prompting by the sleep physician) and Health Cues such as tiredness and concern about health outcomes.----- Conclusions: This study validates a measure of an important motivational component of the Health Belief Model. Health Professional Cues and internal Health Cues were reported to be the most important prompts to commence CPAP by this patient sample.

Development and validation of 3-Minute Nutrition Screening (3-MinNS) tool for acute hospital patients in Singapore

It is important to detect and treat malnutrition in hospital patients so as to improve clinical outcome and reduce hospital stay. The aim of this study was to develop and validate a nutrition screening tool with a simple and quick scoring system for acute hospital patients in Singapore. In this study, 818 newly admitted patients aged above 18 years old were screened using five parameters that contribute to the risk of malnutrition. A dietitian blinded to the nutrition screening score assessed the same patients using the reference standard, Subjective Global Assessment (SGA) within 48 hours. The sensitivity and specificity were established using the Receiver Operator Characteristics (ROC) curve and the best cutoff scores determined. The nutrition parameter with the largest Area Under the ROC Curve (AUC) was chosen as the final screening tool, which was named 3-Minute Nutrition Screening (3-MinNS). The combination of the parameters weight loss, intake and muscle wastage (3-MinNS), gave the largest AUC when compared with SGA. Using 3-MinNS, the best cutoff point to identify malnourished patients is three (sensitivity 86%, specificity 83%). The cutoff score to identify subjects at risk of severe malnutrition is five (sensitivity 93%, specificity 86%). 3-Minute Nutrition Screening is a valid, simple and rapid tool to identify patients at risk of malnutrition in Singapore acute hospital patients. It is able to differentiate patients at risk of moderate malnutrition and severe malnutrition for prioritization and management purposes.