'A light in a very dark place' : The role of a voluntary organisation providing support for those affected by encephalitis

Voluntary organisations are seen as contributing to the ‘democratisation’ of health and social care. Little, however, is written about their role and this paper, by focusing on the work of The Encephalitis Society, provides insights into the challenges facing voluntary organisations as they manage twin roles as service providers and advocates, of people with neurological disorders. Two studies are presented: a review conducted by the Society, focusing on patient’s experiences of neurological services; and an external evaluation of the Society’s current provision. The first, based on a postal survey of its members affected by encephalitis (n = 339), illustrates the Society’s advocacy role. The survey provided support for the Association of British Neurologists’ recommendation for nationally agreed standards of care. The second study, a postal survey of recent contacts (n = 76) and in-depth telephone interviews (n = 22), illustrates the Society’s value role as a service provider and supports its role in helping rehabilitate affected individuals and their families. These studies provided the Society with information for policy and service development. Importantly, providing the basis of informed action and partnership with stakeholders and informing the organisation’s sense of purpose, in the changing context of welfare provision in the UK

How do People Evaluate Electronic Word-Of-Mouth? Informational and Normative Based Determinants of Perceived Credibility of Online Consumer Recommendations in China

This study empirically examined the informational and normative based determinants of perceived credibility of online consumer recommendations in China. Past literature demonstrated that informational influence is important in affecting reader’s evaluation of incoming information and the effectiveness of a communication. This study extends from the previous Word-of-Mouth studies by including the normative factors. Since online consumer discussion is characterized by its social aggregation, we argue that several normative cues could be salient and play significant roles in shaping a reader’s credibility evaluation towards the eWOM recommendation. The informational determinants (argument strength, source credibility and confirmation with receiver’s prior belief) and the normative determinants (recommendation consistency and rating) are investigated via an online survey to users of a famous online consumer discussion site in China (myetone.com). Results supported our proposed research model which substantiates the effects of perceived eWOM review credibility from both informational-based and normative-based determinants. This research provides researcher and practitioners with insights on receiver’s eWOM evaluation

Role of Stakeholders at Cape Coast PPAG Youth Centre: Deficiencies and Implications.

The study investigated whether the activities or the roles performed by the various stakeholders at the Cape Coast Planned Parenthood Association of Ghana (PPAG) youth centre impacted positively on the youth behaviour and performance at the centre. The sample comprised 22 teachers, 50 parents and 3 social welfare workers who were supposed to work with the centre. Data was collected with questionnaire and analysed with percentages. The results indicated that apart from the seemingly impressive recommendation role of stakeholders, all the other roles, namely, information, visitation, referral and follow-ups were found to be weak and ineffective and seemed to have little impact on the youth and the programme in general. It is recommended among others that long term educational campaign programmes should be mounted for all stakeholders on a regular and sustainable basis to achieve this desired goal. Key Words: stakeholders, youth, deficiency, quality care delivery, education

StakeNet: using social networks to analyse the stakeholders of large-scale software projects

Many software projects fail because they overlook stakeholders or involve the wrong representatives of significant groups. Unfortunately, existing methods in stakeholder analysis are likely to omit stakeholders, and consider all stakeholders as equally influential. To identify and prioritise stakeholders, we have developed StakeNet, which consists of three main steps: identify stakeholders and ask them to recommend other stakeholders and stakeholder roles, build a social network whose nodes are stakeholders and links are recommendations, and prioritise stakeholders using a variety of social network measures. To evaluate StakeNet, we conducted one of the first empirical studies of requirements stakeholders on a software project for a 30,000-user system. Using the data collected from surveying and interviewing 68 stakeholders, we show that StakeNet identifies stakeholders and their roles with high recall, and accurately prioritises them. StakeNet uncovers a critical stakeholder role overlooked in the project, whose omission significantly impacted project success

Testing public health intervention guidance on increasing the uptake of HIV testing among men who have sex with men. Final fieldwork report

This guidance is for NHS and other commissioners, managers and practitioners who have a direct or indirect role in, and responsibility for, increasing the uptake of HIV testing among men who have sex with men. This includes those working in local authorities and the wider public, private, voluntary and community sectors. It will also be of interest to members of the public, in particular men who have sex with men. The focus of the guidance is on increasing the uptake of HIV testing to reduce undiagnosed infection and prevent transmission. The recommendations include advice on: planning services, including assessing local need and developing a strategy promoting HIV testing among men who have sex with men, including outreach schemes and providing rapid point-of-care tests offering and recommending an HIV test in primary care, secondary care and specialist sexual health services repeat testing HIV referral pathways

Activity in the brain's valuation and mentalizing networks is associated with propagation of online recommendations

Word of mouth recommendations influence a wide range of choices and behaviors. What takes place in the mind of recommendation receivers that determines whether they will be successfully influenced? Prior work suggests that brain systems implicated in assessing the value of stimuli (i.e., subjective valuation) and understanding others' mental states (i.e., mentalizing) play key roles. The current study used neuroimaging and natural language classifiers to extend these findings in a naturalistic context and tested the extent to which the two systems work together or independently in responding to social influence. First, we show that in response to text-based social media recommendations, activity in both the brain's valuation system and mentalizing system was associated with greater likelihood of opinion change. Second, participants were more likely to update their opinions in response to negative, compared to positive, recommendations, with activity in the mentalizing system scaling with the negativity of the recommendations. Third, decreased functional connectivity between valuation and mentalizing systems was associated with opinion change. Results highlight the role of brain regions involved in mentalizing and positive valuation in recommendation propagation, and further show that mentalizing may be particularly key in processing negative recommendations, whereas the valuation system is relevant in evaluating both positive and negative recommendations