Preliminary Development and Validation of the Concern for Improvement Survey

The Concern for Improvement Survey was developed to serve as a measuring device for organizations, corporate and educational alike. It can be used as a benchmark as well as to measure an organization\u27s progress in their journey towards quality. It was developed from W. Edwards Deming\u27s Fourteen Points for the Transformation of Management. Initial indications of reliability were obtained by a test of internal consistency of the scales. The resulting alpha levels ranged from .7979 to .8274. Construct validity was supported by consistent factor analyses, and correlations that imply appropriate relationships between the CIS and LABS surveys, without indicating that they are measuring the same constructs. Interesting differences were obtained in regards to gender and year in school. Women significantly reported less barriers to quality while men reported more involvement in the quality effort. Based on year in school, first-year students reported the most involvement in quality and this progressively decreased each year. Also, sophomores report the most barriers to quality, followed by first-year, juniors, and seniors. This survey is by no means an attempt to mark the end of an organizations journey towards total quality. It is only to serve as a tool in an organizations journey toward quality

Career Preperation Capstone

A capstone submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education in the Ernst and Sara Lane Volgenau College of Education at Morehead State University on April 14, 2021

Short-term rentals in Canada: Uneven growth, uneven impacts

In the last several years, Airbnb and other short-term rental services have grown precipitously across Canada, but very little is known about the scale and character of this activity or its impact on housing. Relying on spatial analysis of big data, this study presents the first comprehensive analysis of Airbnb in Canada, with an emphasis on the interaction between the short-term rental market and long-term housing. Airbnb activity is highly concentrated geographically—nearly half of all active listings are located in the Toronto, Montréal and Vancouver metropolitan areas—and highly concentrated among hosts, the top 10% of whom earn a majority of all revenue. Contrary to the rhetoric of “home sharing”, almost 50% of all Airbnb revenue last year was generated by commercial operators who manage multiple listings. Moreover, between 17,000 to 43,000 entire homes were rented frequently enough last year that they are unlikely to house a permanent resident. This housing pressure disproportionately affects West Coast cities: between 10% and 70% of Vancouver, Victoria, Kelowna, and Abbotsford-Mission residents live in neighbourhoods whose rental vacancy rate is exceeded by the proportion of housing units that are frequently rented on Airbnb. While current Airbnb activity is concentrated in major cities, active listings, total revenue, hosts with multiple listings, and frequently rented entire-home listings are all growing at substantially higher rates in small towns and rural areas.Au cours des dernières années, Airbnb et d’autres services de location à court terme ont connu une croissance fulgurante à travers le Canada, mais on en sait très peu sur l’ampleur et le caractère de cette activité ou de son impact sur le logement. S’appuyant sur l’analyse spatiale du big data, cette étude présente la première analyse complète d’Airbnb au Canada, en mettant l’accent sur l’interaction entre les marchés locatif à court terme et logement à long terme. L’activité Airbnb est très concentrée géographiquement - près de la moitié de toutes les inscriptions actives sont situées dans les régions métropolitaines de Toronto, Montréal et Vancouver - et fortement concentrées parmi les hôtes, dont 10% des plus riches gagnent la majorité de tous les revenus. Contrairement à la rhétorique du « partage à domicile », près de 50% de tous les revenus d’Airbnb l’année dernière ont été générés par des opérateurs commerciaux qui gèrent plusieurs inscriptions location à court terme. De plus, 31 000 logements en entiers ont été loués de façon si fréquemment l’an dernier que l’on doute qu’ils sont habité par un résident permanent. Cette pression immobilière affecte de façon disproportionnée les villes de la Colombie-Britannique. Alors que l’activité Airbnb actuelle est concentrée dans les grandes villes, les listes actives, le total les revenus, les hôtes avec plusieurs inscriptions et les annonces de maisons entières souvent louées augmentent tous à des taux sensiblement plus élevés dans les petites villes et les zones rurales

Social work students’ perspective on environmental justice: gaps and challenges for preparing students

The integration of environmental justice into social work education, research, and practice has grown substantially in the past decade. However, social workers still report feeling unprepared to address these challenges with their clients and communities. To understand the disconnect between education about and application of environmental justice principles, semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with graduate social work students (n = 14). Findings suggest this disconnect is catalyzed, in part, by the environment’s meta nature and a lack of facilitated education on the dynamic feedbacks between the physical environment and social justice issues. Implications for social work educators are discussed

Introducing SoNHR-reporting guidelines for Social Networks In Health Research

OBJECTIVE: The overall goal of this work is to produce a set of recommendations (SoNHR-Social Networks in Health Research) that will improve the reporting and dissemination of social network concepts, methods, data, and analytic results within health sciences research. METHODS: This study used a modified-Delphi approach for recommendation development consistent with best practices suggested by the EQUATOR health sciences reporting guidelines network. An initial set of 28 reporting recommendations was developed by the author team. A group of 67 (of 147 surveyed) experienced network and health scientists participated in an online feedback survey. They rated the clarity and importance of the individual recommendations, and provided qualitative feedback on the coverage, usability, and dissemination opportunities of the full set of recommendations. After examining the feedback, a final set of 18 recommendations was produced. RESULTS: The final SoNHR reporting guidelines are comprised of 18 recommendations organized within five domains: conceptualization (how study research questions are linked to network conceptions or theories), operationalization (how network science portions of the study are defined and operationalized), data collection & management (how network data are collected and managed), analyses & results (how network results are analyzed, visualized, and reported), and ethics & equity (how network-specific human subjects, equity, and social justice concerns are reported). We also present a set of exemplar published network studies which can be helpful for seeing how to apply the SoNHR recommendations in research papers. Finally, we discuss how different audiences can use these reporting guidelines. CONCLUSIONS: These are the first set of formal reporting recommendations of network methods in the health sciences. Consistent with EQUATOR goals, these network reporting recommendations may in time improve the quality, consistency, and replicability of network science across a wide variety of important health research areas

Physiological and Cognitive Performance in F-22 Pilots During Day and Night Flying

The article of record as published may be found at https://doi.org/10.3357/AMHP.5508.2021Many workers routinely transition between day and night shifts—including pilots, where night flights are commonly considered more stressful. The physiological toll from this transition is not fully understood, though fatigue is a factor in many aviation accidents. This research investigated the changes in physiological markers of stress and cognitive performance as F-22 pilots transitioned from day flying to night flying

Discourage Smoking by Minimizing Access to Cigarettes

Produced as a component of the Tobacco Town project, this report demonstrates the role of policy in reducing access to cigarettes, and includes key takeaways for policy makers.https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cphss/1101/thumbnail.jp

The impact of tumor metabolic activity assessed by 18^{18}F-FET amino acid PET imaging in particle radiotherapy of high-grade glioma patients

Selective uptake of (18)F-fluoro-ethyl-tyrosine ($^{18}$F-FET) is used in high-grade glioma (HGG) to assess tumor metabolic activity via positron emission tomography (PET). We aim to investigate its value for target volume definition, as a prognosticator, and associations with whole-blood transcriptome liquid biopsy (WBT lbx) for which we recently reported feasibility to mirror tumor characteristics and response to particle irradiation in recurrent HGG (rHGG)