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Effect of a Stress-Management Intervention Based on Self-efficacy Theory for Enriching Marital Relations and Sleep Quality in Primigravida Women
Full text linkBackground A woman’s first pregnancy is a significant life event, and anxieties associated with the pregnancy and childbirth are common. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of a stress management intervention based on self-efficacy theory in primigravida women, as indicated by sleep quality, relationship quality and marital satisfaction.
Methods A quasi-experimental longitudinal design with a control group was used. Inclusion criteria included being 14-18 weeks of gestation, having no concomitant illness, and attending one of the four healthcare centers in South Iran in 2022. Two centers were randomly allocated as the intervention group and the other two to the control group. Of the 128 eligible pregnant women who consented to participate, 39 were randomly asssigned to each condition. The intervention group completed eight weekly one-hour stress-management training sessions delivered using a blended learning approach. Data were collected using a survey before and immediately after the intervention. The survey included demographic information and validated questionnaires measuring self-efficacy, marital satisfaction, relationship quality, and sleep quality. Data were analyzed using independent and paired t-tests to determine the efficacy of the intervention by comparing changes in mean scores between the two groups pre- and post-intervention.
Results There were no confounding differences between participants in the two groups at the pre-test. Self-efficacy, sleep quality, marital satisfaction, and relationship quality were significantly improved at post-test in the intervention group (P<0.01). No meaningful changes were observed in the control group.
Conclusion The results suggest that integrating stress-management workshops into routine prenatal care may be beneficial. Providing facilities and support for such interventions could enhance maternal well-being during pregnancy
The unspoken experiences of ethnography: overcoming boundaries of (un)accepted behaviours
Full text linkQualitative methods generally, and ethnography in particular, have emerged as the most immersive research methodology within the everyday life of research participants. However, the relationships established in the field may impinge on levels of intimacy that are perceived to be inappropriate by the ethnographer. Based on the ethnographic fieldwork conducted as a Doctoral researcher with older Italians in Newcastle upon Tyne, this paper foregrounds the position of the ethnographer when interactions with participants involve experiencing of sexual harassment. Within a discussion of the safety of the researcher, this work firstly deliberates on issues that oscillate between the ‘field’ and the ‘self’. Secondly, this article discusses issues of access, positionality and challenges of conducting research through ethnographic fieldwork. Finally, it elaborates on the emotional, psychological and social dimensions of the harassment, bringing the ‘body’ and its varying perceptions to the fore. This work constitutes an original contribution to the discussion on the precarity of working in a community setting in close contact with research participants, and how that shapes the idea of research fieldwork. The author highlights the varying nature of the ethnographic field and suggests the growing need to reflect on the ‘unspoken risks’ of fieldwor
Herding Katz: Rewilding, paradox, and domination
Full text linkEric Katz has recently claimed not only that rewilding is inherently paradoxical, but also that its paradoxes reveal rewilding’s implication in the very mindset of anthropocentric domination against which it is floated as a partial solution. In this paper, I argue that rewilding need not in principle be committed to a pernicious anthropocentrism. With the assistance of an important distinction between ‘synchronic’ and ‘diachronic’ wildness, I firstly argue that rewilding need not be viciously paradoxical in any unequivocal sense. I then suggest, with the aid of Henry David Thoreau’s account of synchronic wildness, that rewilding might rather be geared to inculcate
hypersensitivity to nonhuman otherness particularly conducive to an anti-domination mindset. Hence rewilding may remain a live tool in responding to the challenges which characterise our shared world
Proposing a nonhuman animal victimology
No full textBuilding on the small body of existing literature, this chapter sets out a framework for nonhuman animal victimology, discusses priorities for activity within this field, and considers the benefits such endeavors might bring. In doing so, the chapter explores ways in which a nonhuman animal victimology might inform policy and practice. It is important to note that this chapter does not seek to summarize all of the valuable work already carried out on nonhuman animal maltreatment, or to suggest that research and advocacy is not taking place. Instead, its purpose is to establish what a nonhuman victimology might look like as a coherent body of work, and some of the potential impacts of this
Efficient 3D path planning for drone swarm using improved Sine Cosine Algorithm
Full text linkPath planning is one of the most important steps in the navigation and control of swarm of drones. It is primarily concerned with avoiding collision among the drones and environmental obstacles while determining the most efficient flight path to the region of interest. Whenever there is a high density and complex mission, path planning becomes the most challenging and indispensable task. The problem of path planning is not only relevant to finding the optimum path from the start point to the destination point, but also to provide a mechanism for preventing collisions on the path. Hence, an appropriate algorithm is needed to plan the optimal path for the swarm of drones. This paper proposes an efficient
methodology for drone swarm path planning problems in 3D environments. An improved population based meta-heuristic algorithm, Sine Cosine Algorithm (SCA), has been proposed to solve this problem. As part of the improvements, the population of SCA is initialized using a chaotic map, and a non-linearly decreasing step size is used to balance the local and global search. In addition, a convergence factor is employed to increase the convergence rate of the original SCA. The performance of the proposed improved SCA (iSCA) is tested over the drone swarm path planning problem, and the results are compared with those of the original SCA, and other state-of-the-art meta-heuristic algorithms.
The experimental results show that the drone swarm 3D path planning problem can be efficiently handled with the proposed improved SCA
Development and Validation of a Resilience Skills Questionnaire for Health Sector Professionals Based on Social Cognitive Theory
Full text linkGood resilience skills support effective and timely adjustment to demanding situations in the workplace. Existing tools are insufficient to develop and evaluate workplace interventions to improve employee’s resilience skills. The aim of this study was to develop and validate a Resilience Skills Questionnaire (RSQ) using the key constructs of social cognitive theory—self- efficacy, self-regulation, and social support—as a theoretical framework. Following DeVellis’ guidelines for scale development, first an expert panel of thirteen professors was recruited to support the item development stages and determine content validity. At this stage, the initial pool of 38 items was reduced to 25 items and CVR and CVI were calculated as 0.92 and 0.93, respectively, indicating good content validity. A second panel of ten health professionals confirmed face validity. An online survey comprised of the 25 developed items was then completed by 336 health professionals working in urban healthcare centers in Shiraz, Iran, in November 2021. The data were used to assess the psychometrics of the questionnaire according to its hypothesized three-dimensional structure. Confirmatory factor analysis yielded a final model of seventeen items in three dimensions, self-efficacy (six items), social support (six items), and self-regulation (five items), with good psychometric properties (χ2/df =2 44 (p<0 001), RMSEA=0 06, GFI=0 92, AGFI=0 90, IFI=0 93, CFI=0 93). All standardized factor loadings were significant (p < 0 001). Internal consistency, as measured by Cronbach’s alpha, was very good: RSQ (0.90), self- efficacy (0.86), social support (0.83), and self-regulation (0.86). Based on these results, the RSQ can be used as a standard and valid measure to develop and evaluate the effect of educational intervention programs to improve resilience skills and reduce job stress
Interpersonal affect worsening scale (IAWS): Development and validation of a new questionnaire to assess motives and strategies
Full text linkInterpersonal emotion regulation, or managing others’ emotions, does not always entail directing others’ feelings to positive states, but also inflicting or upregulating negative emotions. The process of causing others to experience unpleasant emotions is called interpersonal affect worsening. Although research in interpersonal emotion regulation has progressed, interpersonal affect worsening has only received limited attention. The relative lack of research on interpersonal affect worsening can partly be due to the limited assessment tool that can delineate between the motives for interpersonal affect worsening and the regulation strategies to achieve it. Therefore, this thesis focused on the development of the interpersonal affect worsening scale (IAWS), a tool that aimed to measure motives and strategies in interpersonal affect worsening.
Drawing upon theoretical models by Tamir (2016) and Niven (2016), items were designed to assess motives, namely instrumental (i.e., wanting another person to perform well
so as to achieve a goal), altruistic (i.e., looking after what will benefit the person), and conformity (i.e., maintaining social norms and harmony). For the development of items to assess regulation strategies, the Interpersonal Affect Classification (Niven et al., 2009) was considered as it is the only model that explicitly discusses regulation strategies in relation to affect worsening. Specifically, items were created to evaluate the strategies of affective engagement (i.e., altering how others think about the situation or the consequences of their actions), putting own feelings first (i.e., openly showing annoyance or anger towards others), and rejecting others’ emotions (i.e., being overtly mean towards others). Importantly, instead of a general or context-free questionnaire (e.g., Classical Test Theory, Fan 1998), the items and scenarios were generated based on the examples of real-life experiences within family, peers, or work provided by 41 people. After going through readability testing by another 12 IV people, and interrater reliability of two researchers, only six scenarios with three items for motives and three for strategies were included in the final version of the IAWS.
The first study (Chapter 2) conducted with 355 participants recruited from a University in the Northwest of England aimed to study the factor structure of the IAWS and the reliability of the scales. The exploratory factor analysis for motives yielded factors based on scenarios not according to the suggested factors (i.e., instrumental, altruistic, and conformity). Meanwhile, the strategies resulted in a two-factor structure model separating Engagement (i.e., affective engagement) and Rejection (i.e., putting own feelings first).
The second study conducted (Chapter 3) aimed to evaluate the fit of the model obtained for the regulation strategies through confirmatory factor analysis, consturct and
criteria validity, and test for measurement invariance. Participants were recruited in the United Kingdom (n = 325) and the Philippines (n = 221 individuals). Confirmatory factor analysis showed good model fit indices, confirming the two-factor structure (i.e., Engagement, Rejection). Correlation with established measures supported construct and criterion validity for the IAWS. Furthermore, the IAWS reached measurement invariance showing its applicability to two different countries. The findings also showed the differences between the strategy use, where participants from the Philippines reported a higher use of Engagement compared to the participants from the United Kingdom.
Lastly, a third study (Chapter 4) was carried out to assess measurement invariance between younger (n = 231) and older adults (n = 203) from the United Kingdom, given that
previous studies in emotion regulation highlighted important differences between these age groups in terms of emotionality and regulation skills. Results showed measurement invariance, for both Engagement and Rejection subscales of the IAWS, thus, allowing comparisons between younger and older adults. In addition, results showed that while young V and older adults did not differ in their mean scores for Rejection, older adults reported a higher tendency to use Engagement.
The results obtained in the thesis are discussed (Chapter 5) in relation to existing findings and theories regarding affect worsening motives and strategies. The findings
contribute to the limited empirical evidence on the process of affect worsening, particularly the strategies that people use to induce negative emotions on others, as the strategies suggested so far had not received any empirical support. Based on the outcomes of the studies, the strategies that individuals employ to worsen others’ affect seem to include in their definition the motives that drive people to use them (i.e., while Engagement seems to entail altruistic/instrumental motives, Rejection involves counter-hedonic motives in their definition). This opens an interesting debate as to whether motives and strategies can be separated in the process of interpersonal affect worsening. In addition, the thesis found that strategy use in affect worsening could be potentially different depending on the culture, and in different developmental stages. Therefore, this opens the door to further studies to better understand what social contexts may make certain regulation strategies more prevalent and what variables in the lifespan may account for changes in strategy use
Community of Practice Training and Research: Event Summary
Full text linkWhile the Best Interests Assessor is responsible for assessing mental capacity for issue-specific decision-making, related to implementing the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards, knowledge of how to assess the best interests of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller adults has not been advanced in equal depth. A ground-breaking community of practice training and research event held on the 25th of April 2024 started the process of developing this knowledge. This report provides a summary
of that event
A Comparison of In-person Versus Video-recorded Player Assessment by English Category One Football Academy Scouts
Full text linkTalent identification is undertaken by football academies via scouts who traditionally attend football matches in-person. However, no previous study has compared in-person against video-recorded modalities for scouting. In the present study, a total of 30 scouts working for an English category one football academy observed the same U14 and U15 inter-academy matches either in-person (n = 13) or video-recorded (n = 17). Non-parametric analyses compared modalities (in-person vs video-recorded) in relation to the following: player performance ratings; subjective perception of modality accuracy; observation report submission time; and attentional/affectual factors including scout fatigue, joyality, attentiveness, self-control, and mental effort during observations. Results revealed no significant difference in player performance ratings when comparing in-person and video-recorded observation modalities (p > .05), despite scouts subjectively rating in-person as being the more accurate modality (p .05). No significant differences emerged between the modalities for joyality (p > .05), attentiveness (p > .05), self-control (p > .05), nor mental effort (p > .05). The present findings suggest that using video-recordings for the scouting of academy-level football players offers an adequately accurate and possibly more efficient alternative to in-person scouting
Path to achieving SDG 8: do worker remittances reduce vulnerable employment?
Full text linkPurpose
The prevalence of high levels of vulnerable employment in developing countries poses a formidable obstacle to their progress towards achieving SDG 8. While worker remittances (remittances) are widely recognised as a potential source of improving the welfare of people experiencing poverty, their effectiveness in alleviating vulnerable employment from a macro perspective remains unclear. Consequently, the study examines the impact of remittances on reducing vulnerable employment.
Design/methodology/approach
The study uses macro-level data from 73 developing countries covering 1990–2021. Vulnerable employment is measured in three forms: total, male, and female. Remittances are measured as a percentage of the gross domestic product. The findings are empirically analysed using dynamic panel data estimation techniques. A two-stage least squares (IV 2SLS) approach addresses remittance endogeneity.
Findings
Two key findings emerge from the study. First, increased remittances are associated with a decline in the total share of workers resorting to vulnerable employment, albeit a modest decline. Second, the remittance surge is associated with more males than females leaving vulnerable employment, indicating its gender-specific effects. These findings remain robust to several checks.
Practical implications
The study's findings underscore the potential of leveraging remittances to reduce vulnerable employment. To this end, selective and targeted policy interventions that promote financial literacy and inclusion, which serve as the cornerstones for effectively utilising remittances, are advised.
Originality/value
To the best of my knowledge, this study is the first to examine the impact of remittances on vulnerable employment on a macro scale. As such, the study makes a novel contribution to understanding how remittances serve as an enabler for SDG 8