Motivations to Volunteer: Factors that promote longevity

Qualitative data was obtained to better understand the motivations and experiences of volunteer counselors. The procedural method of this study utilized exploratory interviews of six volunteer counselors. The participants are non-professionals who are actively engaged in individual counseling of members of the community who don’t have insurance. Participants reflected on their motivations, experiences, and level of satisfaction with their service as a volunteer counselor. Results indicated high levels of satisfaction due to intrinsic motivations of the individual participants as well as organizational competencies in regards to training and supervision. The study highlights both intrinsic and extrinsic factors that can contribute to increased longevity and higher retention rates amongst volunteer counselors. Implications and limitations associated with the research are considered

Motivations to Volunteer: Factors that promote longevity

Qualitative data was obtained to better understand the motivations and experiences of volunteer counselors. The procedural method of this study utilized exploratory interviews of six volunteer counselors. The participants are non-professionals who are actively engaged in individual counseling of members of the community who don’t have insurance. Participants reflected on their motivations, experiences, and level of satisfaction with their service as a volunteer counselor. Results indicated high levels of satisfaction due to intrinsic motivations of the individual participants as well as organizational competencies in regards to training and supervision. The study highlights both intrinsic and extrinsic factors that can contribute to increased longevity and higher retention rates amongst volunteer counselors. Implications and limitations associated with the research are considered

Australia\u27s Brand New Clean Energy Legislation Package - How Can it Reduce Emissions?

How does one effectively reduce greenhouse gases? Two ways of doing this is through either lowering the production of ghg’s through less activity, eg energy efficiency, or through the availability of substitutes that produce less ghg’s. Currently we have a high demand for greenhouse gas producing activities. In simple terms increasing the price, say, of carbon through either a tax or cap and trade scheme can decrease demand. However, lessening demand is a complex proposition, depending on the elasticity of the product, the purchasing power of the consumer and the availability of substitutes. Energy efficiency and technical innovation are two methods of reducing ghg’s. The question is how can these be most effectively achieved? This paper will argue that there needs to be a combination of both and that a successful mitigation strategy will have to include a way of effectively encouraging the availability of substitutes, through technological innovation. This paper will examine aspects of Australia’s clean energy legislation package and its Energy Efficiency Opportunites Act to see whether it has the potential to achieve this aim

Investigation into male apparel disposal

Textile and apparel disposal in U.S. landfills has grown over time creating environmental concerns. In an effort to reduce textile waste ending up in landfills, this research addresses how consumers currently dispose of unwanted apparel. Understanding attitudes and perceptions associated with disposal of textiles may provide insight on how to raise awareness regarding other options available. This study intends to provide insight into the disposal process by linking all stages of apparel consumption, acquisition, inventory and disposal. Utilizing a qualitative approach, men between the ages of 30-45 were interviewed. Observations were also utilized at a Goodwill donation site as well as a consignment store. Ten semi-structured interviews were arranged to take place at the participant's home, with most occurring in their bedrooms next to their closets. Prior to the interview, they were asked to select their ten newest acquisitions, and ten that had not been worn in at least two years. Results of this study focused on prompts regarding apparel disposal, identifying influences for selection of modes of disposal, and the modes of disposal used for six months after the interview. This study contributes to our understanding of current apparel disposal patterns and builds on previous disposal research. Future research could explore how to alter consumers' perceptions regarding the value of worn clothing. Limitations included only interviewing ten men, and could be expanded by including a broader age and demographic range

Prophet Inequality: Order selection beats random order

In the prophet inequality problem, a gambler faces a sequence of items arriving online with values drawn independently from known distributions. On seeing an item, the gambler must choose whether to accept its value as her reward and quit the game, or reject it and continue. The gambler's aim is to maximize her expected reward relative to the expected maximum of the values of all items. Since the seminal work of Krengel and Sucheston (1977,1978), a tight bound of 1/2 has been known for this competitive ratio in the setting where the items arrive in an adversarial order. However, the optimum ratio still remains unknown in the order selection setting, where the gambler selects the arrival order, as well as in prophet secretary, where the items arrive in a random order. Moreover, it is not even known whether a separation exists between the two settings. In this paper, we show that the power of order selection allows the gambler to guarantee a strictly better competitive ratio than if the items arrive randomly. For the order selection setting, we identify an instance for which Peng and Tang's (FOCS'22) state-of-the-art algorithm performs no better than their claimed competitive ratio of (approximately) 0.7251, thus illustrating the need for an improved approach. We therefore extend their design and provide a more general algorithm design framework which allows the use of a different time-dependent threshold function for each item, as opposed to the common threshold function employed by Peng and Tang's algorithm. We use this framework to show that Peng and Tang's ratio can be beaten, by designing a 0.7258-competitive algorithm. For the random order setting, we improve upon Correa, Saona and Ziliotto's (SODA'19) 0.732-hardness result to show a hardness of 0.7254 for general algorithms, thus establishing a separation between the order selection and random order settings

Management by Textbook: The Role of Textbooks in Developing Critical Thinking

© 2015, © The Author(s) 2015. Critical thinking is widely regarded as a crucial capability for competent management and also for any leadership role in society. In this article, we ask, “How do textbooks play a role in the weakness of many management graduates’ critical thinking skills?” Management teachers can find plentiful advice about best teaching practices, yet the critical skills gap remains. We argue that the nature and use of management textbooks intersect and interact with students’ epistemology to support a culture of surface learning, resulting in a failure to develop critical thinking skills. Textbooks reinforce underdeveloped student epistemology through limitations of content and position students as passive recipients of an authoritative version of oversimplified knowledge. In our survey of 30 successful management textbooks, we found the majority of popular management textbooks potentially inhibit, or only weakly support, the development of students’ capacity for critical thinking. The article concludes with suggestions for improving textbooks and textbook choice or considering alternatives

The Emergence of Secular Insight Practices in Australia

In recent years insight (vipassana) practice in Australia has diversified in content and spawned new institutions that present a more secular face. These changes exemplify the development of global Buddhism elsewhere rather than some local, sui generis divergence from international trends. Nonetheless, the unusual prominence of Buddhist migrants in the Australian population has influenced the interaction between traditional and western Buddhists, and thus the emergence of the new trends. In interpreting the transformations in question, we make heuristic use both of Martin Baumann s periodization of Buddhist history, with its characterization of the present stage as global, and Stephen Batchelor s distinction between religious Buddhism and dharma practice. The Australian experience highlights the value of the earlier interaction between migrant and locally-born Buddhists, and the formative effect their later separation has on lay practice. This experience also points to the salience of forms of association when secular Buddhist practice melds with the Western values of inclusiveness and equality, not least in gender relations