1,721,021 research outputs found
Fear of crime experienced by older Chinese in urban China
No full textFear of crime has been a major social and political issue in Western societies. Previous studies have established that older people are disturbed disproportionately by fear of crime, which can accelerate their loss of physical and social functioning. Despite the rapidly ageing population and the sharp rise of crime in urban China, there is a paucity of research on the fear of crime in older Chinese, not to mention the lack of sound psychometric instruments or any established theoretical model.
This study systematically investigated the fear of crime in older Chinese living in urban China. It involves two phases. In Phase One of the study, existing measures on fear of crime, perceived risk of crime and constrained behaviors were culturally adapted through a series of consultation with expert panels and pilot testing. Results indicated that all adapted scales exhibited satisfactory internal reliability with Cronbach’s alphas ranging from .81 to .94.
In Phase Two of this study, an integrated theoretical model incorporating the vulnerability, environment perception, victimization and risk interpretation models was tested. The model takes into account relevant Chinese cultural values, while simultaneously addressing the impacts of fear of crime on mental health and constrained behaviors. A representative sample of 453 older adults aged 60 years or above was recruited from urban communities in Kunming, Yunnan using multistage sampling methods. Participants were individually interviewed. Results show that fear of crime was prevalent in this sample with 258 participants (57.0%) reporting fear of one or more types of depicted crimes. Path analyses show that the proposed integrated theoretical framework effectively captures the relationship between fear of crime and various hypothesized factors. The model accounted for 22.1% of the variance in perceived risk of crime, 35.8% in fear of crime, 31.2% in poor mental health and 21.4% in constrained behaviors. Perceived risk of crime played a central role in inducing fear of crime and mediated the associations between fear of crime and various hypothesized risk factors, including female gender, a younger age, higher perceived social instability, lower adherence to the Chinese cultural value of Harmony and more direct victimization by crime. In regard to impact, being fearful of crime predisposes participants to more constrained behaviors, while a high level of perceived risk impaired their mental health.
This study is among the first empirical endeavors to investigate fear of crime experienced by older Chinese. It provides preliminary support for the applicability of various prominent theoretical models in the Chinese setting. Results also established a novel association between fear of crime and the Chinese cultural value of Harmony. The integrated model provides a comprehensive framework for understanding the underlying genesis mechanism of fear of crime experienced by older Chinese.published_or_final_versionSocial Work and Social AdministrationDoctoralDoctor of Philosoph
Resilience and vulnerability of parent caregivers with a child suffering from early-stage schizophrenia in urban China: an exploratory study
No full textpublished_or_final_versionSocial Work and Social AdministrationMasterMaster of Philosoph
Modeling family caregivers' willingness to continue care in community for older persons with dementia
No full textThis study aimed to model the process and its relevant variables in predicting the willingness in home care and actual institutionalization of older persons with dementia in a Hong Kong context.
This was a secondary data analysis of a previous research study which collected 122 sample of Chinese caregivers and their older care recipients with clinical diagnosis of dementia, all of whom recruited from a local NGO. Participants were assessed on a battery of instruments that collected both caregivers and patients' characteristics, including demographic details, patients “physical states affected by dementia, caregivers” perceived burden. The period of study was 12 months, with follow up phone calls on state of care every 6 months.
Only a very weak relation was shown between expressed intention to care and actual placement at 12M. Higher odds in intention for home care was significantly predicted by male gender in caregiver gender and lower caregiver burden (ZBI score); ZBI was a total mediator between patients' agitation (CMAI score) and willingness. Higher odds of actual institutionalization was related to the use of day care centre.
Results called for a need to carefully distinguish the genuinely effective services in helping to delay nursing home placement; rather than assuming all to be useful. While caregivers training was not popular among current sample, current model showed the importance of caregivers' perceived burden in altering objective environmental stress' effect on caregiving outcomes. While more than half of the current sample was using day care centre, model suggested day care centre could have encouraged placement. More resources should be allocated in programmes that aimed to manage caregivers' stress and cognition. There should also be more promotions to heighten awareness and participation of such programmes amongst caregivers of HKG.published_or_final_versionSocial Work and Social AdministrationMasterMaster of Philosoph
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
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
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
- …
