Birmingham City University Open Access Repository
Not a member yet
8823 research outputs found
Sort by
Administrator Reflections on Youth Sport Programming: Moving Forward After the COVID-19 Pandemic
No full textAbstractYouth sport has been a context where positive youth development (PYD) can be promoted (Fraser-Thomas et al., 2005). However, for youth sport to effectively foster PYD, all adult leaders need to understand and invest in the approach. The youth sport context is a large system that encompasses multiple stakeholders across the developmental lifespan of athletes (Dorsch et al., 2022). Much of PYD research reflects the contributions of parents and coaches (e.g., Harwood et al., 2019; Vella et al., 2011), yet often overlooked is the administrator role in PYD. Administrators are tasked with communicating and reinforcing organizational missions across stakeholders for the duration of the season (Schwab et al., 2010). Despite the essential responsibilities administrators hold within the organization, little research has examined how well missions are enacted in youth sport. Within PYD research, studies have found the importance of structuring programs to reach desired outcomes (e.g., life skills; Bean & Forneris, 2016). Thus, it would be beneficial to understand how administrators perceive the missions of, along with the implementation within, youth sport organizations
Documenting the Midland Youth Jazz Orchestra 1968 to 1980 through radio-style production
No full textThis practice-based doctoral research project uses a series of radio-style documentary productions to explore the ways in which we investigate, mediate, and interpret the music cultural practices of the past. By focusing on the development of a youth jazz orchestra in the English West Midlands in the 1960s and 1970s, and more generally exploring how we can make the practice of radio documentary a developed and sophisticated research method in itself, I contribute to a number of issues of debate within media and cultural studies about local jazz culture and history. I contend that the radio documentary form can be seen as qualitative research in its own right and use this approach to explore an original way to tackle questions of research that have emerged in what has been called ‘The New Jazz Studies’. In particular, I have sought to utilise approaches from oral history and ideas of ethnography from cultural studies and ethnomusicology, combined with ideas from the musicologist, Christopher Small, in the development of a core concept of ‘ethnomusicking’.
In surveying the field, I looked at literature from radio and podcast studies, jazz studies and ethnomusicology as well as extant jazz history radio and television documentaries and jazz oral histories. My historical study is researched through archives and interviews. I explore my central proposition through an iterative process of documentary-making and auto-ethnographic reflection, here drawing upon my background as a producer and presenter in community radio. The products of this process are submitted as three radio-style ‘drop-ins’ or features intended for broadcast on community radio and three podcast-style episodes with a supporting written component to form an integrated thesis.
I found rich detail on the youth jazz orchestra movement in the West Midlands as well as key insights for radio producers on using ideas of oral history, ethnomusicking and story-telling as frames for documentary production
A four-decade of abrasive waterjet processing technology (1980-2023): a scientometric analysis
No full textThe field of abrasive waterjet (AWJ) machining has seen growing interest over the past decade, reflected in the increasing number of related research publications. Despite significant progress, uncertainties remain regarding the future direction and performance of AWJ technology. This paper aims to deliver a structured, in-depth, dynamic, quantitative, and objective analysis of research in the abrasive waterjet field. By examining the existing body of knowledge and identifying emerging trends, this review seeks to enhance and refine research within the domain of manufacturing. This study employs bibliometric and text mining analyses using R-tool Biblioshiny and VOSviewer to quantitatively assess and visualize key concepts, themes, and research dynamics in AWJ. The dataset, sourced from the Scopus database (1980–2023) following PRISMA guidelines, includes 1,666 articles from 504 sources, involving 3,062 authors across 80 countries and 2,776 affiliations. Findings reveal a significant growth rate of 228.57% in AWJ-related publications in 1993, marking a pivotal increase in scientific output. India and China emerged as the most productive countries in AWJ research. The results provide valuable insights for academics and policymakers, offering a benchmark for evaluating research efforts and guiding future developments in AWJ technology
WaveCORAL-DCCA: A Scalable Solution for Rotor Fault Diagnosis Across Operational Variabilities
No full textThis paper presents WaveCORAL-DCCA, an unsupervised domain adaptation (UDA) framework specifically developed to address data distribution shifts and operational variabilities (OVs) in rotor fault diagnosis. The framework introduces the novel integration of discrete wavelet transformation for robust time–frequency feature extraction and an enhanced deep canonical correlation analysis (DCCA) network with correlation alignment (CORAL) loss for superior domain-invariant representation learning. This combination enables more effective alignment of source and target feature distributions without requiring any labelled data from the target domain. Comprehensive validation on both experimental and numerically simulated rotor datasets across three health conditions—i.e., normal, unbalanced, and misaligned—demonstrates that WaveCORAL-DCCA achieves an average diagnostic accuracy of 95%. Notably, it outperforms established UDA benchmarks by at least 5–17% in cross-domain scenarios. These results confirm that WaveCORAL-DCCA provides robust generalisation across machines, fault severities, and operational conditions, even with scarce target domain samples, offering a scalable and practical solution for industrial rotor fault diagnosis
Two-Level Feature Selection for Enhanced Accuracy and Reduced Computational Overhead in Intrusion Detection Systems Using Rough Set Theory and Binary Particle Swarm Optimization
No full textIntrusion Detection Systems (IDS) are essential for safeguarding network infrastructures by detecting and mitigating malicious activities. This study introduces a two-level feature selection approach (TLFSA) designed to enhance classification accuracy and reduce computational overhead. The first phase employs Rough Set Theory (RST) to filter out irrelevant features, while the second phase uses Binary Particle Swarm Optimization (BPSO) to refine the feature subset based on their discriminative power. Experiments conducted on the NSL-KDD dataset show that the TLFSA approach outperforms traditional algorithms such as Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Gravitational Search Algorithm (GSA), achieving a notable improvement of 0.99% in classification accuracy. Furthermore, class-specific feature subsets produced by the method demonstrate superior detection rates across all network traffic classes, with an average accuracy of 97.22%, compared to 91.11% for alternative methods. The proposed method effectively reduces the feature set to approximately 15% of the original features, streamlining the IDS model and improving both operational efficiency and real-time applicability
Barriers and drivers of treatment intensification in metastatic castration-sensitive prostate cancer
No full textImportance: Despite evidence of clinical benefits and guidelines recommending first-line treatment intensification for metastatic castration-sensitive prostate cancer, the majority of patients do not receive it.
Objective: The goal of IMPLEMENT was to investigate why first-line treatment intensification is underutilized.
Design: IMPLEMENT was conducted from March 2022–August 2024. The study comprised three phases and used a mixed-methods approach.
Setting: United States
Participants: United States-based urologists and oncologists who were primary treaters for ≥1 patient with metastatic castration-sensitive prostate cancer in the past 6 months, had been practicing for 2–35 years, spent ≥50% of their time in direct patient care, and were able to provide informed consent. Recruited using purposive sampling.
Interventions: Phase 1: semi-structured interviews based on the Theoretical Domains Framework. Thematic analysis was used to identify barriers and facilitators to treatment intensification. Phase 2: discrete choice experiment to identify priority barriers and helpful resources. Phase 3: co-creation sessions to ideate potential solutions to underutilization based on the findings of the previous phases.
Main Outcomes and Measures: Phase 1: barriers to and facilitators of first-line treatment intensification. Phase 2: perceived helpfulness of potential resources for first-line treatment intensification decisions. Phase 3: potential solutions co-created by urologists and oncologists to increase treatment intensification uptake.
Results: Phases 1–3 of IMPLEMENT included 36, 302, and 14 participants, respectively. In each phase, half of participants were oncologists and half were urologists. In phase 1, five domains had the greatest influence on intensification: Memory, Attention, and Decision Processes; Environmental Context and Resources; Knowledge; Beliefs About Consequences; and Social/Professional Role. Urologists more commonly reported barriers to intensification, while oncologists more commonly reported facilitators. In phase 2, urologists found decision-support tools most helpful, while oncologists preferred post-treatment databases and clinical trial summaries. In phase 3, cross-specialty tumor boards were ranked by both specialties as the best solution to address treatment intensification underutilization.
Conclusions and Relevance: In this qualitative study, the issues underlying treatment intensification underutilization were numerous and multifactorial. The results of IMPLEMENT suggested that the barriers encountered by physicians, and the resources that could help to address them, varied by specialty. All these findings offer insights into physician-supported strategies that could help improve rates of first-line treatment intensification for mCSPC
How Do Disabled Visual Artists Use GenAI Tools for Business Administration Tasks?
No full textThis paper investigates how disabled visual artists use GenAI tools to manage administrative and business tasks essential to sustaining creative careers. Whilst previous research has focused on GenAI's emerging role in artistic work, our study highlights its potential in supporting non-creative aspects of artistic practice, which are often overlooked yet critical for workload management of disabled artists. Through in-depth semi-structured interviews with 5 disabled visual artists, we explore the perceived benefits and barriers of using GenAI, particularly in terms of accessibility, cognitive demands, ethical concerns, and financial constraints. Our findings suggest that whilst GenAI can increase productivity, reduce cognitive load, and promote equity, it also presents challenges related to transparency, bias, interface complexity, and job displacement fears. We conclude by calling for more inclusive and affordable GenAI tools, improved accessible interfaces, ethical governance, and personalised support to enable disabled creatives in their professional practices
Reconfiguring Our Data: A Duoethnography on Chronic Health and Physical Activity through the Lens of Fitness Trackers
No full textDoes a run count if it is not logged and datafied? What about intentionally or unintentionally missing a run? Does missing a scheduled run count if it is not logged and datafied? In this paper, we grapple with these and other questions as we reflect on, discuss, and critique our interactions with our physical activity data as individuals with a chronic health condition. We describe the preliminary results of a six-week duoethnography study where we use our Garmin wearable devices – and the data collected and generated by them – as our object of study. We draw from critical and feminist perspectives on data to interrogate what is and is not captured by the data and reflect on the temporality of physical activity, data, and our chronic health conditions. We conclude by discussing three considerations on how data could be reconfigured to meaningfully account for our chronic health conditions
The Governance Role of Independent Directors' Cash Compensation in Suspect Firms? Evidence From Real Earnings Management
No full textThis study examines the relationship between independent directors' cash compensation and real earnings management. Using the data of Chinese suspect firms over the period 2009–2023, we show that independent directors' cash compensation helps suspect firms reduce the magnitude of real earnings management, suggesting that cash‐based compensation to independent directors enhances board independence and the effectiveness of its monitoring role over real earnings management. Further analysis shows that this relationship is significantly influenced by the ownership structure. Specifically, we find that non‐state and foreign ownership strengthen the negative association between independent directors' cash compensation and real earnings management, implying that these investors enhance the governance role of independent directors' cash compensation in monitoring the opportunistic behaviour of managers. Our main findings are robust to alternate proxies of earnings management, sample composition, and endogeneity concerns using several econometric techniques. The study contributes to the related literature by providing empirical evidence on the association between non‐equity compensation for independent directors and real earnings management in suspect firms. Our study also offers significant implications for international investors, firms, and regulators, especially after the inclusion of Chinese stocks in the MSCI indices