Determinants Affecting the Use of the Internet by Older People

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to detect and analyze some factors which hinder or contribute to the positive use of the Internet by older people living in Central Europe, specifically in one region of the Czech Republic. Methods: The key method is a questionnaire whose results were processed by using a model of logistic regression. The research sample includes 432 seniors from senior houses, municipal ICT courses and the University of the Third Age, all coming from the region of Hradec Kralove in the Czech Republic. Findings: The findings of the proposed model confirmed that the key determinants in the Internet use by older people were age, previous experience with IT in their past occupation and active use of IT enhanced by some kind of training, in this case attending IT courses of the University of the Third Age. Education and gender have not proved to be significant determinants in this study. Novelty/ improvement: The introduced model of logistic regression enriches current literature on the subject by emphasizing the possible factors that influence the use of the Internet by seniors in the region. The survey also investigates which factors in comparison with each other act more and which less, and which factors are significant within the model and which are not. Doi: 10.28991/esj-2021-01317 Full Text: PD

Imagerie du cartilage

In baza lotului de 115 pacienţi au fost studiate avantajele şi disavantajele metodei de diagnostic al corpilor străini cu sondă şi prin ultrasonografie orbitară. Metoda de diagnostic cu sondă a furnizat informaţii valoroase privind localizarea precisă, nefiind influenţată de starea, statusul local şi particularirăţile vârstnice ale pacientului, de localizarea intraorbitară extraoculară. Ultrasonografia oculară este mai utilă în corpii străini segmentului ocular anterior şi în depistarea celor radionegativi (neincluşi în studiul actual)

Digital Storytelling in Economics Subjects and its Effectiveness on Student Learning Outcomes by Gender and Different Economic Knowledge

Digital storytelling (DST) is one of the alternative teaching methods and previous research shows its positive impact on students’ motivation and learning outcomes, especially in humanities subjects. In vocational subjects such as economics, the effectiveness of this method is questionable. 856 respondents aged 15 to 19 from six business academies in the Czech Republic took part in the testing, which focused on the effectiveness of digital storytelling in economics. This paper presents other possible factors that may have influenced students' performance in the post-test. A comparison of the results from the pre-tests and post-tests of the experimental and control groups showed that the students from the experimental group reached higher mean values in the post-test than the students from the control group. It was also found that in the group that used digital storytelling, the year of study and the initial knowledge of the students assessed in the pre-test influenced the mean post-test scores. On the other hand, the factor of students' gender was not demonstrated. At the end of the testing, a questionnaire survey was conducted to investigate students' views on digital storytelling and their preferences for teaching methods

Borderless Education: InterUniversity Study – Tutors’ Feedback

AbstractThe paper introduces the project of interuniversity study running within eight universities (United Kingdom, Ireland, Finland, Latvia, Italy and in the Czech Republic – three institutions). The paper (1) briefly describes the project and (2) presents the feedback collected from teachers/tutors engaged in the project

Tutor as an important e-learning support

AbstractTeachers are all the time looking for different ways of increasing the quality of their teaching. At present the use of computers and new technologies has become an important aspect of education. They have enabled the teaching community to redefine some of the strategies and concepts of teaching and learning. In this climate computer-based distance learning courses have emerged. One of the supports of the distance learning is e-learning, which is widely used at the University of Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic. The article attempts to examine how the traditional role of a teacher in the e-courses changes and what preconditions are pivotal for the tutoring of such courses. In addition to that, it describes a creation of e-learning courses from the pedagogical point of view. Finally, a few problems of practical e-tutoring run at a university level in the Czech Republic are depicted

Do ESG Endeavors Assist Firms in Achieving Superior Financial Performance? A Case of 100 Best Corporate Citizens

Increasing interest in sustainability performance (environmental, social, and governance pillar performance [ESGP]) and corporate financial performance (CFP) is noteworthy. However, we do not find any all-inclusive study that employs both individual components of environmental, social, and governance pillars (ESG) as well as the cumulative ESG score on both the accounting and market performance of firms. Furthermore, we do not find any study that puts forth “best practices” in the ESGP-CFP nexus. Therefore, our study intends to provide additional empirical evidence in this debate by including all three pillars of ESG as well as the overall ESG score by employing a unique sample of “100 best corporate citizens” in the United States declared by 3BL Media during 2009 to 2018. For this purpose, we employ panel vector auto regression (PVAR) that allows us to overcome the methodological challenges faced by some earlier empirical studies. The core findings are: (a) for market-based financial performance (market-to-book ratio [MTB] and Tobin’s Q), our results only confirm ESGP– CFP relationship and suggest that sustained higher commitment to the environmental pillar, consistent socially responsible conduct, and rationalized governance mechanism of the sampled firms are perceived value additive by the market players. (b) For accounting-based financial performance (return on equity [ROE] and return on assets [ROA]), we find a mix of ESGP–CFP and CFP–ESGP relationship for ROE only. Furthermore, factor error variance decomposition (FEVD) analysis reveals that environmental, social, and overall ESG performances of the sampled firms are quite good predictors of future CFP in the market. These findings assert that actively pursuing ESG endeavors can assist firms in achieving superior financial performance

Unveiling the International Students’ Perspective of Service Quality in Chinese Higher Education Institutions

Foreign students’ satisfaction with the service quality of Chinese universities is essential for the sustainable internationalization of China’s higher education system. The present study employs a survey research method to bring in the foreign students’ perspective of the various aspects of service quality in seven key Chinese universities. Accordingly, 618 valid questionnaires were analyzed using descriptive statistics, principal component analysis (PCA), and analysis of variance (ANOVA). The study findings posit that, although foreign students affirm that teachers are supportive and well qualified, they have concerns about the English proficiency of instructors. Likewise, foreign students were not satisfied with the frequency of formal research meetings with their advisers and the assistance with research techniques and relevant literature sources. Overall, female foreign students were less satisfied than their male counterparts. Moreover, foreign students reported higher satisfaction from teaching services and learning resources, moderate satisfaction from advisory services, and meager satisfaction from the administrative and support services of their respective Chinese institutions. Besides, we found significant differences between sample Chinese universities on various constructs of service quality. Likewise, arts and social sciences students were less satisfied with the service quality of the institution as compared to their natural sciences and engineering counterparts. The policy implications of this research for various stakeholders are discussed

Right person for the right job: the impact of top management’s occupational background on Chinese enterprises’ R&D efficiency

AbstractThe research on the influence of personal attributes of top management on a firm’s innovative behavior has recently gained much traction in the corporate finance literature. However little is known about the role of professional background of top management in influencing corporate R&D efficiency. The present research employs data of China’s A-share listed firms during the period of 2008–2016 to explore this association. Empirical outcomes reveal that top management with an R&D background significantly enhance Chinese firms’ R&D efficiency. Moreover, equity incentives for the core R&D team, lesser pay disparity between senior management and employees, and the appointment of directors with R&D background play a mediating role between R&D-savvy top management and firm’s innovation capacity. The study findings establish a link between top management’s human capital and an enterprise’s technological capability and show that adopting appropriate innovation strategies and R&D management practices is conducive to achieving the R&D efficiency in Chinese enterprises. Our results are robust to alternate econometric specifications and alternate variable specifications