1,720,962 research outputs found
The effect of institutional characteristics and social norms on corruption in healthcare
No full textCorruption in healthcare is widespread and consequential. Informal payments (IPs) are a common form of petty corruption, especially in low- and middle-income countries. Using data from the Life in Transition Survey encompassing 33 countries across Europe and Central Asia, I analyze the prevalence and reasons behind IPs made to public health providers. In addition to individual- and system-level factors often used in literature, I also introduce a latent measure of social norms related to high levels of corruption. These are associated with a significantly higher prevalence of paying informally. This paper also bridges a gap between the corruption literature and health-related research by introducing a typology of IPs based on why they were made. I find that the association between health system characteristics and IPs prevalence differs based on the reason for payment. This difference is further exacerbated by the existence of corruption-related social norms. The results of this analysis highlight the need to revisit existing anti-corruption policies and align them to the underlying social norms
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Essays on corruption in healthcare
No full textCorruption in healthcare is a widespread and costly phenomenon. A common form of petty corruption in the doctor-patient relationship is informal payments. These include exchanges such as bribery or gift-giving and exacerbate existing inequalities in treatment access and outcomes. In this thesis, I study issues related to the measurement and drivers of informal payments in health systems, with a particular focus on the role played by social norms. The first paper (Parvanova, 2024) explores the association between health system institutional characteristics, social norms and informal payments. I use nationally representative survey data from 33 countries in Europe and Central Asia to study the prevalence and drivers of these payments. Besides usual factors, I consider how hidden social norms make informal payments more likely and moderate the different types of informal payments. The study suggests updating anti-corruption policies to consider these underlying social norms. The second study explores the effect of framing questions about informal payments on respondents’ willingness to share their experiences. It compares two question wordings previously used in the Eurobarometer Survey – one using loaded words like “bribe” and the other - neutral terms, such as “additional payments and gifts”. Evidence from the Eurobarometer survey suggests that a neutral framing yields a significantly higher estimates of the prevalence of informal payments compared to a loaded framing, although this magnitude and significance of this gap varies between countries. To further explore this result, I design and implement a survey experiment in Bulgaria and the UK. Results confirm the positive effect of neutral framing on self-reported informal payments’ prevalence. Additional evidence suggests that this effect is driven by reported descriptive social norms about informal payments. In the third study I examine how bribery affects the allocation of scarce resources and explore the influence of fairness preferences and social norms. I design a novel allocation vignette experiment and implement it in online surveys fielded with representative samples in the UK and Bulgaria. Respondents are asked to act as a (public) service provider who decides how to distribute resources between a briber and a non-briber. I find that bribers get preferential treatment. This is not affected by inequalities between service recipients (mimicking inequalities in access to treatment) or inequalities between service providers (mimicking inequalities in remuneration). However, being in either of these treatment groups significantly increases the prevalence of briber punishment, i.e. allocating less resources to these recipients. I also use an incentivized elicitation method to understand participants’ descriptive norms about reciprocating bribery and favoritism, i.e. beliefs about the behavior of others in this situation. I find that exposing participants to inequality-related information leads to significant differences in the prevalence of such beliefs
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
Industry funding of patient organisations in the United Kingdom: A retrospective study of commercial determinants, funding concentration and disease prevalence
No full text<p><strong>Objectives</strong> – To assess the relationship between UK-based patient organisation funding and companies' commercial interests in rare and non-rare diseases in 2020.</p>
<p><strong>Design</strong> – Retrospective analysis of the value and volume of payments from pharmaceutical companies to patient organisations in the UK matched with data on the conditions supported by patient organisations and drugs in companies' approved portfolios and research and development pipelines.</p>
<p><strong>Setting</strong> – UK.</p>
<p><strong>Participants</strong> – 74 pharmaceutical companies making payments to 341 UK-based patient organisations.</p>
<p><strong>Main outcome measures</strong> – Alignment between the commercial interests of pharmaceutical companies and the disease area focus of patient organisations; difference in the volume and value of payments to patient organisations broken down by prevalence of conditions; industry funding concentration, measured as the number of companies funding each patient organisations, the share of overall industry funding coming from each contributing company and the share of industry funding of each organisation comprised by the single highest payments.</p>
<p><strong>Results</strong> – 1,422 payments were made by 74 companies to 341 patient organisations. Almost all funds (90%) from pharmaceutical companies were directed to patient organisations that are aligned with companies' approved drug portfolios and research and development pipelines. Despite rare diseases affecting less than 5% of the UK population, more than 20% of all payments were directed to patient organisations which target such conditions. Patient organisations focusing on rare diseases relied on payments from fewer companies (p-value = 0.0031) compared to organisations focusing on non-rare diseases.</p>
<p><strong>Conclusions</strong> – Companies predominantly funded patient organisations operating in therapeutic areas relevant to companies' portfolio or drug development pipeline. Patient organisations focusing on rare diseases received more funding relative to the number of patients affected by these conditions and relied more heavily on payments from fewer companies compared to organisations targeting non-rare diseases. Increased independence of patient organisations could help avoiding conflicts of interest.</p><p>Funding provided by: UK Research and Innovation<br>Crossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100014013<br>Award Number: </p>
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
- …
