Validation of the Thai version of the family reported outcome measure (FROM-16)© to assess the impact of disease on the partner or family members of patients with cancer

© The Author(s). 2019Background: Cancer not only impairs a patient's physical and psychosocial functional behaviour, but also contributes to negative impact on family members' health related quality of life. Currently, there is an absence of a relevant tool in Thai with which to measure such impact. The aim of this study was to translate and validate the Family Reported Outcome Measure (FROM-16) in Thai cancer patients' family members. Methods: Thai version of FROM-16 was generated by interactive forward-backward translation process following standard guidelines. This was tested for psychometric properties including reliability and validity, namely content validity, concurrent validity, known group validity, internal consistency, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Construct validity was examined by comparing the Thai FROM-16 version with the WHOQOL-BREF-THAI. Results: The internal consistency reliability was strong (Cronbach's alpha = 0.86). A Negative moderate correlation between the Thai FROM-16 and WHOQOL-BREF-THAI was observed (r = - 0.4545, p < 0.00), and known group validity was proved by a statistically significant higher score in family members with high burden of care and insufficient income. The factor analysis supported both 3-factor and 2-factor loading model with slight difference when compared with the original version. Conclusions: The Thai FROM-16 showed good reliability and validity in Thai family members of patients with cancer. A slight difference in factor analysis results compared to the original version could be due to cross-culture application.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Multiple segmentations of Thai sentences for neural machine translation

Thai is a low-resource language, so it is often the case that data is not available in sufficient quantities to train an Neural Machine Translation (NMT) model which perform to a high level of quality. In addition, the Thai script does not use white spaces to delimit the boundaries between words, which adds more complexity when building sequence to sequence models. In this work, we explore how to augment a set of English–Thai parallel data by replicating sentence-pairs with different word segmentation methods on Thai, as training data for NMT model training. Using different merge operations of Byte Pair Encoding, different segmentations of Thai sentences can be obtained. The experiments show that combining these datasets, performance is improved for NMT models trained with a dataset that has been split using a supervised splitting tool

Self-Compassion, Psychological Resilience, and Social Media Use among Thai and British University Students

Previous research has suggested that self-compassion and psychological resilience are likely to be protective factors for young people’s psychological wellbeing during their time at university. However, no research has focused on self-compassion and psychological resilience among Thai and British students. The aims of this study were to explore the factors that affected self-compassion and psychological resilience among Thai and British university students and to explore the role that social media use has on these constructs. A total of 767 university students (482 Thai and 285 British undergraduate students) took part in a questionnaire-based study and 42 students (21 Thai and 21 British undergraduate students) participated in the in-depth interviews. The quantitative data show that gender, year of study as well as social media factors were predictors of self-compassion, while social support and perceived success influenced psychological resilience among Thai and British students. In addition, the qualitative data indicate that Thai and British students encountered similar problems and highlight the role that family and friends had on students’ strategies to deal with their problems compared to teachers and social media. The comparison between the two groups is discussed in relation to social media and cultural factors and the implications for higher education are considered

WRC Assessment re Thai Garment Export (Thailand): Findings, Recommendations and Status Report

WRC report on its assessment of a layoff at a Thai Garment factory in Thailand. Describes WRC’s work with Thai Garment to change its practices so to provide for workers’ appeals to layoffs, which resulted in an improvement of labor relations at the factory

Adding spaces to Thai and English: Effects on reading

Most research on reading has used Western languages, which have the property of being spaced. This paper examines how spacing and meaning affect reading in Thai, a modern, alphabetic and unspaced language. Results show that subjects were faster in reading and made less errors when spaces were added. Meaning facilitates reading as well, and does not interact with spacing. Finally, ability to read unspaced texts in Thai does not transfer to English. The results support the hypothesis that spaces, when present at all, offer perceptual cues that facilitate reading. Efficiency considerations raise the question of whether Thai should follow the example of Western languages and incorporate spaces and punctuation

Improving English education in Thailand by modeling classroom behavior

English classroom behavior across Thailand is highly influenced by long-held traditions, culture and values. By comparing Thai secondary education classroom behavior with that of Chinese classes working at the same level, we have constructed a model of Thai students’ English classroom behavior. Comparison is made from surveys conducted by schools with students demonstrating similarly wide range of performance and ability in English. We also suggest effective ways to improve English teaching in Thailand for both Thai and foreign teachers of English by incorporating this model with the theories of J. Kunin, so as to help avoid culture conflict, motivate students’ interest and make better use of existing standards and practices

Towards a New Theory of Entrepreneurship in Culture and Gender: A Grounded Study of Thailand's Most Successful Female Entrepreneurs

This paper explores the phenomenon of Thailand's female entrepreneurs and account for some of the cultural drivers in the way in which Thai women operate to be the leading country in the world for female entrepreneurship in terms of entrepreneurial activity. Based on interviews, media reporting, event attendance, and presentations collected during the annual conference for Leading Women Entrepreneurs of the World (LWEW) in Bangkok, Thailand. We report the ways in which the leading Thai female entrepreneurs and male senior government officials explain the role of culture in legitimatising entrepreneurial activity. We develop a picture of the female entrepreneurship is harmonious with Thai cultural and religious models of appropriate female behaviour and so provides some insights into the cultural reasons for prevalence of female entrepreneurial activity