Nursing research for a multi-ethnic society

Summary points • Conducting research that appropriately and sensitively pays attention to ethnicity presents an important challenge to nursing researchers and demands particular competencies. • Nursing research must recognise the multifaceted nature of ethnicity and the varied ways in which health-related experiences and outcomes may be associated with ethnicity. • Ethnic identities are complex and fluid so that using fixed ethnic categories in research requires careful consideration. • Describing and explaining differences between ethnic 'groups' demands careful attention to sampling, data generation and analysis so that partial or misleading interpretations are avoided. • Researchers should be alert to the potential for research on minority ethnic groups to do more harm than good and should seek to ensure that their research focus and approach is informed by the experiences and priorities of these groups

An Evolution of Writer\u27s Notebooks: Authenticity and the Power of Writing in a Pandemic

This article narrates how one assignment, the writer’s notebook, evolved when a writing methods course shifted online in response to COVID-19. In offering their early observations and selected reflections from course colleagues on the use of the notebooks, the authors emphasize the power of writing and echo the necessity of authentic writing assignments, especially when the commitment to these always-important values is disrupted

Enhancing the quality of published research on ethnicity and health: is journal guidance feasible and useful?

Researching ethnicity and health presents significant ethical, conceptual and methodological challenges. While the potential contribution of research evidence to tackling ethnic inequalities in health is recognised, there are widespread concerns regarding the ethical and scientific rigour of much of this research and its potential to do more harm than good. The introduction of guidance documents at critical points in the research cycle - including within the peer-review publication process - might be one way to enhance the quality of such research. This article reports the findings from the piloting of a guidance checklist within an international journal. The checklist was positively received by authors and reviewers, the majority of whom reported it to be comprehensible, relevant and potentially useful in improving the quality of published research. However, participation in the pilot was poor, suggesting that the impact of such a checklist would be very limited unless it was perceived to be an aid to authors and reviewers, rather than an additional burden, and was strongly promoted by journal editors

Step Change : an evaluation

Action For Children and three local authorities delivered a one year programme for adolescents on the edge of care or custody. The partnership aimed to improve long-term outcomes for young people and reduce the need for care or custody by: decreasing risk-taking behaviours increasing engagement in education, employment and training (EET) improving relationships between young people and their families to avoid family breakdow

Undergraduate Nontraditional Adult Students’ and University Administrator Perceptions of Supports for Program Completion

The problem investigated by this study is the low completion rates of nontraditional undergraduate adult students attending a 4-year university located in the West coast region of the United States. In 2020, the program completion rate was less than 44% at the study site and 45.8% for nontraditional undergraduate adult students nationally. The purpose of this qualitative instrumental case study was to explore undergraduate nontraditional adult students’ and university administrators’ perceptions and experiences of supports needed for success as it relates to retention, persistence, and program completion. Using Knowles’s andragogy and Tinto’s persistence theories as the conceptual framework, research questions focused on the perceptions and experiences of nontraditional adult students and university administrators. Interviews were conducted with five undergraduate nontraditional adult students who were 21 years of age or older at the time of enrollment and six university administrators responsible for overseeing student success programming within the academic colleges. Qualitative analysis was conducted using a priori and open coding. Perceptions were synthesized into four themes. Students perceived the campus structure and interaction with university support services professionals were critical and university resources were beneficial and necessary to their success. Administrators perceived that university culture changes and flexible services were needed to support successful program completion, retention, and persistence for undergraduate nontraditional adult students. Findings may contribute to positive social change by informing stakeholders of university culture and support systems for nontraditional students, leading to improved success in retention, persistence, and program completion

Influences on History

Panel Chair: Angela Payne Papers Presented: The Humble Essense of America (A Research Paper on Ben Carson) by Caleb Robb The Passing of Hettie Jones: Transition of the Harlem Renaissance into the Beat Generation by Emily Ellison Defying the Odds: A Brief Overview of the Life of Alexander Hamilton by Sarah Hornstein To What Extent was Lawrence of Arabia responsible for the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire (1870-1923)? by Mays Salama MIA in Vietnam: The Life and Death of Lt. Col. Richard Castillo by Clare Hamilto

Using Physiology to Predict the Responses of Ants to Climatic Warming

Physiological intolerance of high temperatures places limits on organismal responses to the temperature increases associated with global climatic change. Because ants are geographically widespread, ecologically diverse, and thermophilic, they are an ideal system for exploring the extent to which physiological tolerance can predict responses to environmental change. Here we expand on simple models that use thermal tolerance to predict the responses of ants to climatic warming. We investigated the degree to which changes in the abundance of ants under warming reflect reductions in the thermal niche space for their foraging. In an eastern deciduous forest system in the United States with ~40 ant species, we found that for some species, the loss of thermal niche space for foraging was related to decreases in abundance with increasing experimental climatic warming. However, many ant species exhibited no loss of thermal niche space. For one well-studied species, Temnothorax curvispinosus, we examined both survival of workers and growth of colonies (a correlate of reproductive output) as functions of temperature in the laboratory, and found that the range of thermal tolerances for colony growth was much narrower than for survival of workers. We evaluated these functions in the context of experimental climatic warming and found that the difference in the responses of these two attributes to temperature generates differences in the means and especially the variances of expected fitness under warming. The expected mean growth of colonies was optimized at intermediate levels of warming (2 – 4 °C above ambient), yet the expected variance monotonically increased with warming. In contrast, the expected mean and variance of the survival of workers decreased when warming exceeded 4°C above ambient. Together, these results for T. curvispinosus emphasize the importance of measuring reproduction (colony growth) in context of climatic change: indeed, our examination of the loss of thermal niche space with the larger species pool could be missing much of the warming impact due to these analyses being based on survival rather than reproduction. We suggest that while physiological tolerance of temperature can be a useful predictive tool for modeling responses to climatic change, future efforts should be devoted to understanding the causes and consequences of variability in models of tolerance calibrated with different metrics of performance and fitness.Organismic and Evolutionary BiologyOther Research Uni

The impact of the internet of things on mobile workers

Ongoing developments in digital, computer, and communication technologies are likely to have profound long-term consequences for the nature of work and employment (Brynjolfsson & McAfee 2016). One significant area of development concerns the Internet of Things (IoT). The IoT can be described as everyday objects, such as cars, fridges or watches, having internet connectivity allowing them to send and receive data. The IoT is predicted to be a major IT-enabled business trend over the next 10 years. Peppet (2014) suggests the potential for 200 billion connected devices by 2020 and a trillion by 2025, and Mishra et al. (2016) note that according to McKinsey (2013), IoT has a potential global economic impact of $36 trillion. A recent Computing (2016) report indicates that in the UK, applications of the IoT in work settings are most likely to involve the use of tracking devices for internal deployment to achieve cost optimization. For example, an English county police force are deploying an IoT platform to create connected vehicles and 4G streaming cameras that are lightweight and wearable and can stream high definition video. Internet-connected police cars allow police officers to use laptops, mobile phones and tablet computers in their vehicles giving them access to important information while working remotely (Palmer, 2015). Thus, the IoT has the potential to have significant impacts on the organization and management of mobile workers. This study will examine the impact of IoT technologies on mobile work in UK organizations. The main emphasis of the project is to develop user-centric considerations of digital technologies to counterbalance techno-centric research on this topic: the users in this study are defined as both organizations and individual workers. This is partly because various concerns have been raised regarding surveillance implications of these technologies for workers (O’Connor, 2015). This exploratory study has two aims: 1) to understand organizational drivers for the adoption of IoT for mobile work; 2) to explore how IoT technologies impact on mobile workers