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A football scout’s inward quest for meaning: Interpreting auto-phenomenographic data through a creative turn
No full textThis article explores the lived experiences of professional football scouts through a deeply reflexive and highly creative analytical inquiry. Drawing on phenomenological and auto-ethnographic traditions, specifically auto-phenomenography, this research challenges the conventional norms of data handling in qualitative research i.e. the processes of data collection, analysis and data presentation. This is achieved by privileging depth and richness of personal experience in the field; a 'reaching inwards', over breadth and often tangential missions of data collection that typically 'reach outwards' from the researcher at the centre of operations. In this study the researcher is seen as his own 'data-site' and looks for opportunities within the sphere of his lived experience to inform his thinking. By delving inwards to the topic and the person-represented by our 'Russian doll' concept-the invitation to tell richer stories in ever more creative but also revealing ways about the scouting world in football is fully embraced. While this research involved semi-structured interviews at the start, it was the reflexivity from immersive ethnographic fieldwork that has really informed this research. Thus, the data has been analysed not by generating codes and themes, but through a process of revisiting, refining and rethinking in a quest for meaning. This has led to the data being transformed into creative episodes, artistic offerings and performances that tell vividly the emotional and existential textures of being in the life-worlds of football scouting. The study employs storytelling, poetry, imagery and songwriting as interpretive tools, revealing nuanced insights into identity, marginality and professional ambiguity within the scouting profession. Characters such as Eamon The Eel and Clairvoyant Cliff serve as composite figures that anonymise participants while enriching narrative clarity. The use of the Voice-Centred Relational Method (VCRM) invites readers to connect with the scouting underworld, offering participatory engagement (please visit the QR codes), and deeper understanding. The paper concludes with the '10 Commandments', which are a set of edicts born from experience and shaped in this research, closing with a final song, Ode to the Scout, which reminds us of the existential angst of the scout, as overlooked and lacking a defined essence, but is, paradoxically, essential to success
Acute stress is associated with increased auditory distraction: evidence from a cross-modal oddball task
No full textAttentional Control Theory suggests that acute stress reduces the efficiency of working memory and top-down control, increasing susceptibility to distraction. In contrast, Cognitive Reallocation accounts suggest that acute stress narrows attentional focus and potentially reduces distraction. We tested these competing predictions using a cross-modal oddball task, comparing participants exposed to an acute stressor, via a realistic firefighter training exercise, with an unstressed control group. Participants categorised visual targets preceded by either a standard sound or a rare deviant (a noise burst or a semantically congruent or incongruent word). Both groups were distracted by the deviant sounds, but the effect was larger in those exposed to the stressor, particularly early in the session. Over time, this difference diminished—consistent with recovery from stress exposure and stronger habituation in controls. These results indicate that acute stress is associated with heightened vulnerability to auditory distraction in a pattern resembling reduced working memory availability
Scylla and Charybdis in the Natuna Sea: All Eyes on the Future Course Set by Prabowo
No full textIndonesia has long been adept at charting a delicate course between two regional giants, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the United States. A staunch security ally of Washington, participating in several joint military exchanges, Jakarta is simultaneously the largest Southeast Asian recipient of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This delicate balancing act has been described as a “double hedging strategy”. The results of the nation’s recent election, however, raise questions as to whether that precarious strategic balance will undergo a shift. Since the electoral victory of General (Ret.) Prabowo Subianto, analysts have been speculating as to how the new leader’s strong personality will be reflected in his strategic policy. This paper examines several factors that demand attention as we move forward, including Prabowo’s well-established realist approach to international relations; his record of boosting cooperation with the United States to counter the PRC’s expanding influence; his almost Nixonesque first visit to China; a focus on restoring Indonesia’s stature through military strength; and a shift of balance in the country’s civil-military relations. The ship of state has a new captain, and how deftly he navigates its continued sovereignty between the Scylla and Charybdis of regional and global superpowers promises to redefine Indonesia’s role on the world stage and impact the extent of its regional influence
Perceiving China Across Continents: Comparative Attitudes in Indonesia and Hungary toward China’s Global Role
No full textIndonesia and Hungary are influential in their respective regions— Indonesia in Southeast Asia and Hungary within the Visegrad Group. Both maintain close relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and have signed onto the Belt and Road Initiative, making Chinese presence increasingly visible. Yet, little research examines how local citizens perceive this presence. This paper compares perceptions of Indonesian and Hungarian university students regarding China’s role. Building on Xi and Primiano’s analysis on China’s influence in Asia using secondary data, this study surveyed students in both countries that considers historical, political, and social factors. Findings show Indonesians feel closer to China, while Hungarians lean toward the United States. However, generally, both Indonesians and Hungarians acknowledge China’s developmental contributions positively
A Contrastive Pragmatics Study of Invitations in British English and Japanese
Get PDFThis study offers a cross-cultural pragmatics perspective on invitations. It explores invitation sequences in a symmetrical invitation-refusal situation, performed by 20 female native speakers of British English and 20 female native speakers of Japanese, from a discursive approach using role plays. The qualitative analysis of the data obtained from the adapted version of conversation analysis revealed some similarities and differences in turn designs of the English and the Japanese invitations. Although pre-sequences were highly frequent in the English data, they were more so in the Japanese data. The analysis of the linguistic formats of the invitations in the two sets of data revealed that an approach to handle uncertainty seen in the cases where the invitation was initiated with a preface differed - the English speakers used a syntactic solution whereas the Japanese speakers used a sequential solution. These findings highlight the importance of analysing speech acts in situated interactions
Oral tradition, ancient history and religious tourism knowledge
No full textReligious tourism is one of the most longstanding forms of leisure related travel in the world with a history dating back to antiquity. However, there has been a hesitation amongst many tourism scholars to critically assess the role of ancient religious texts to understand the attitudes and behaviours of religious tourists and tourism destinations. With reference to literature on oral traditions, the aim of this exploratory paper is to critically consider the insights that can be derived from the Christian Bible for the management and scholarly understanding of contemporary religious tourism. This paper suggests that Christianity’s oral traditions and their ensuing written representation in the Bible provide an important means of understanding religion ‘as lived’ in the ancient world. Religious tourists are often driven by a pilgrim’s mentality to tread in the footsteps of the first apostles and other religious leaders. From a historical perspective, the oral formulation of the New Testament and its subsequent influence on the formation of the Bible as a religious text offers religious tourists an insight into such people and the places/ experiences that were important in the faith of the early church
Effects of irrelevant speech on semantic and phonological judgments of Chinese characters
Get PDFThis study employed two decision tasks to investigate whether background speech impairs lexical processing and whether particular characteristics of the background speech differentially contribute to any such impairment. The same set of Chinese character pairs was displayed to two randomly-assigned groups of native-reader Chinese participants with an auditory background of normal Chinese speech, phonotactically-legal meaningless speech, spectrally-rotated speech (i.e., a meaningless sound with no accessible phonological form) or silence. In one task, participants were instructed to decide whether the presented character pair shared the same meaning, and in the other task, whether they shared the same initial phoneme (semantic and phonological judgment task respectively). Participants in the semantic judgment task attained higher accuracy rates and shorter reaction times than those in the phonological judgment task. Phonological properties of meaningless speech produced an increase in participants' reaction times in the phonological judgment task but not the semantic task, whilst the semantic properties of speech produced an increase in participants' reaction times exclusively in the semantic judgment task. The results indicate that background speech is disruptive to lexical processing. Furthermore, primary task demands associated with lexical processing modulate the extent to which participants experience phonological and semantic disruption due to background speech
Stochastic orders and shape properties for a new distorted proportional odds model
No full textBuilding on recent developments in models focused on the shape properties of odds ratios, this paper introduces two new models that expand the class of available distributions while preserving specific shape characteristics of an underlying baseline distribution. The first model offers enhanced control over odds and logodds functions, facilitating adjustments to skewness, tail behavior, and hazard rates. The second model, with even greater flexibility, describes odds ratios as quantile distortions. This approach leads to an enlarged log-logistic family capable of capturing these quantile transformations and diverse hazard behaviors, including non-monotonic and bathtub-shaped rates. Central to our study are the shape relations described through stochastic orders; we establish conditions that ensure stochastic ordering both within each family and across models under various ordering concepts, such as hazard rate, likelihood ratio, and convex transform orders
Primary author contact for systematic reviews of RCTs: A systematic review
Get PDFBACKGROUND
Systematic reviews (SRs) synthesise and evaluate data, mainly from randomised trials, which then guides the development of clinical recommendations in evidence-based medicine. However, the data and methodological information in the included papers can often be lacking or unclear, and reviewers usually need to contact the authors of included studies for clarifications. Contacting authors is recommended, but it is unclear how often SR teams do it, or what the level of response is.
AIM
To investigate how often reviewers undertake contact with the authors of included RCTs for clarification on data and risk of bias concerns, to explore the factors that influence whether SR authors contact or do not contact the authors, and the content and level of responses.
METHODS
We conducted a systematic electronic database search in MEDLINE using the search string '(systematic review) AND (RCT OR randomised OR trial)' for articles published between 1 January 2024 and 19 February 2024, without language restrictions. . Screening and data extraction was done independently by two reviewers, and conflicts resolved by a senior author. Contact authors of included SRs were contacted for clarifications.
RESULTS
Of the 329 included SRs, 38% (n=125) explicitly mentioned contact with the authors of included studies. The remaining 62% (n=204) did not. We attempted contact with all SR teams for clarifications and received 90 responses (19.4%). Of the 50 respondents who did not explicitly mention contact in their SRs, 25 (50%) replied that they did make contact. We received a total of 64 responses on the level and content of information sought. The mean(SD) contacts SR teams made were 10(10), replies received 5(6.7), and response waiting time 10.1(28.3) weeks. Resources, time, poor previous experience, perceived likelihood of poor response and bias concerns were reported as barriers to attempting contact.
CONCLUSION
The majority of SRs published in 2024 did not confirm seeking clarifying or missing information from primary study authors. However, SR teams reported that 50% of contacted primary authors respond. Additional research can clarify this rate of response and establish methods to increase the integration of this core methodological element in SRs
Do dental nurses and trainee dental nurses suffer from job-related stress and could mentorship help them to cope with that stress?
Get PDFBackground
Stress in dentistry is widely researched and the evidence is that it is a stressful profession. Research has mainly focused on dentists and oftentimes the rest of the team has not been considered. Working in dentistry relies on teamwork and the multidisciplinary team therefore it is of paramount importance that all members of the team are researched.
Aim
To investigate current perceptions of stress and its triggers in dental nurses (DN) (including trainee dental nurse (TDN)) and explore if mentoring could help.
Methodology
Case study design with a phenomenological aspect. Perceptions of DN/TDN around stress in dentistry, its triggers and perceptions of mentoring were collected using on online questionnaire. The questionnaire was posted on Facebook using closed professional groups. The questionnaire invited interested participants to opt-in to take part in semi structured interviews to gather more detailed insights into stress in dentistry relating to their own experiences, the triggers, and coping mechanisms. The semi structured interviews were conducted and recorded on Microsoft Teams. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis (RTA).
Results
Sixty-one DN/TDN with various amounts of professional experience, backgrounds and working environments completed the questionnaire and five chose to take part in semi-structured interviews. In answering the questionnaire, all participants reported that working in dentistry is stressful, 92% said that they are suffering or have suffered from burnout and, 95% thought that having a mentor would be beneficial. The analysis of the semi structured interviews resulted in six themes: Nature of the problem: - emotions, team, burnout and money, Triggers: - regulation/complaints, patients, time and communication, Coping mechanisms: -time off, reducing hours and talking, Support: - peers, management and friends, Self-doubt: - training, confidence and imposter syndrome, and Mentoring: - seen as a positive, unknown and mentees choice of mentor.
Conclusions
DN/TDN face job related stress. Since they are hired members of the team, they frequently have no influence over their working environment, which fosters multiple triggers of stress. Mentoring could be a support system and coping technique. Implementation of mentorship in the early phases of DN/TDN training/career may assist to lessen the negative effects of stress, such as burnout, and thus lower the number of registered employees quitting the field