Social media in the healthcare context: Ethical challenges and recommendations

The popularity of social media has grown rapidly and healthcare practitioners and students commonly use sites such as Facebook. The ethical and professional implications and their benefits and hazards must be considered. Concerns include blurring of boundaries between an individual’s public and professional lives, maintaining privacy and confidentiality of patient information, damaging the public image of the profession and inter-professional relationships. The same laws that apply to conduct in the real world also apply in cyberspace. Harmful or derogatory posts may result in a defamation lawsuit. The internet may also provide opportunities for patient education through peerreviewed websites and to build professional networks. Institutions should have policies on the uses of social media. Emerging technology will continue to change the landscape of social media and social networking and the way patients and practitioners use websites will continue to evolve. Practitioners should proactively manage digital identity by reviewing publicly available material and maintaining strict privacy settings about their information

Conceptualisation of an ethical risk assessment for higher education institutions

This article examines an ethical risk assessment conducted in one of South African largest higher education institutions. A statistical analysis of 1 687 respondents participating in the original ethical risk assessment survey was conducted. Confirmatory factor analyses supported a higher order, multidimensional model of three main factors, namely institutional ethical leadership orientation, individual/employee ethical orientation and institutional student-centeredness/orientation. Based on this examination and analysis this three-factor structure provides sufficient evidence of a conceptual ethical framework to be further tested empirically and used within higher education institutions

Religiousness: An Inter-Disciplinary, Multi-Demographical and Multi-Regional Study

This study was based on an interdisciplinary paradigm for religious research, with the manifestation of inter-disciplinarity in terms of content (the specific field being the psychology of religion which traditionally coincide within two separate disciplines), as well as the methodology (embracing a true positivistic approach). Although 40 624 individuals from a large public service institution in South Africa participated in the study, only 32 413 datasets were usable for this study. Religiousness, comprising of two factors, namely Salience and Participation was measured. The instrument reported an acceptable internal consistency in terms of the Cronbach alpha coefficient and inter-item correlation. High reliability scores were reported on the eight Salience and three Participation items. Overall, religion was seen as an important aspect in the lives of all the participants. All the participants had a positive attitude towards religion and all agreed that religion played an important part in their family life, their wellness, their work performance and in their relationships with others. The overall participation in religious activities, including the involvement in Religious leadership roles, the frequency of Religious participation, as well as the extent of Religious expression, measured high. Religiousness (expressed as the aggregate score of the two factors) measured high, which is an indication that the participants generally believed in a higher power and had positive attitudes towards institutional/religion-specific practices. The participants also indicated that they valued religion as an important aspect of their lives. No meaningful inferences could be made in terms of the impact of race, gender, age and the specific religion on Religiousness

Die gesinsdinamika van pastoriegesinne in die drie Afrikaanse kerke

The divorce rate among white South Africans is disturbing. There are indications of a growing divorce rate also among families of ministers of religion. Little scientific research seems to be available on the marital and family life of ministers, especially in the RSA. The aim of the research on which this article is based was to determine whether significant differences occur between the marital and family dynamics of ministers' families and the families of parishioners. Thirty clerical couples and some of their children (N=96) and thirty parish couples and some of their children (N=95) were involved in the research. Six measuring instruments were applied in evaluating the families. The results seem to indicate that the clerical couples experience their marital dynamics significantly better than the other married couples on 12 o f the 19 dimensions which were evaluated. With regard to family functioning the ministers’ families performed significantly better than the parish fa milies on six of the 14 dimensions. There are indications, however, that the clerical couples represented their marital and family functioning in a more positive light than was the case in reality. Therefore no really valid interpretations can be made from the results

Calibration artefacts in radio interferometry. I. Ghost sources in WSRT data

This work investigates a particular class of artefacts, or ghost sources, in radio interferometric images. Earlier observations with (and simulations of) the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT) suggested that these were due to calibration with incomplete sky models. A theoretical framework is derived that validates this suggestion, and provides predictions of ghost formation in a two-source scenario. The predictions are found to accurately match the result of simulations, and qualitatively reproduce the ghosts previously seen in observational data. The theory also provides explanations for many previously puzzling features of these artefacts (regular geometry, PSF-like sidelobes, seeming independence on model flux), and shows that the observed phenomenon of flux suppression affecting unmodelled sources is due to the same mechanism. We demonstrate that this ghost formation mechanism is a fundamental feature of calibration, and exhibits a particularly strong and localized signature due to array redundancy. To some extent this mechanism will affect all observations (including those with non-redundant arrays), though in most cases the ghosts remain hidden below the noise or masked by other instrumental artefacts. The implications of such errors on future deep observations are discussed.Comment: 19 pages, 15 figures, submitted to MNRA

Repeated retention or dropout? Disputing Hobson’s choice in South African township schools

South Africa, like many developing countries, is heavily burdened by high dropout and unemployment rates and an undersupply of skilled workers. Grade retention is a common practice when learners do not meet the specific requirements – especially in countries with limited socio-economic resources. In South Africa, 52% of the learners are retained at least once before they reach Grade 10. However, the results of this study clearly suggest that the policy of repeated scholastic retention does not contribute positively to the academic achievement or to career maturity of Grade 11 and Grade 12 learners in township schools in South Africa. This study emphasises the importance of improving learner performance, starting in the Foundation Phase (Grade 0/R to Grade Three) and the need for accessible career guidance and counselling for all learners. By guiding these at-risk learners into vocation-oriented or technically oriented directions before the career maturity and academic achievement decline emerges, a decrease in dropout and an increase in the outflow of skilled people in the short term and unemployment in the long term may be addressed. The latter can be regarded as the cornerstone of socio-economic development and enhanced social capital in all developing countries.Keywords: academic achievement; career maturity; drop-out; grade retention; township schools; unemploymen

Workplace alternatives – confront, conform, capitulate

The purpose of the paper is to review, critique and contextualise the theories, models and frameworks on value congruence, person-organisation (P-O) fit and theories on person choices/alternatives in the workplace. The paper is based on social learning theory, the attraction-selection-attrition model, theory of work adjustment, cognitive dissonance theory, and theory of self-determination as well as other social psychological theories. These theories are applied and discussed within the domain of P-O fit, with the focus on supplementary fit, with particular reference to climate (culture)/ethical climate (EC) and antecedents of EC (specifically leadership behaviour). It is also the intention to conceptualise, contextualise and operationalise the constructs in terms of individual reactions to the P-O fit phenomena (conform, confront and/or capitulate), and lastly to identify areas for future research

Comparative growth and static allometry in the genus Chlorocebus

Characterizing variation in growth across populations is critical to understanding multiple aspects of development in primates, including within-taxon developmental plasticity and the evolution of life history patterns. Growth in wild primates has often been reported and directly compared across larger taxonomic groups and within social groups, but comparisons are rarely investigated across widely dispersed populations of a single taxon. With the Vervet Phenome-Genome Project and the International Vervet Research Consortium, we trapped 936 vervet monkeys of all ages representing three populations (Kenyan pygerythrus, South African pygerythrus, and sabaeus from St. Kitts & Nevis). We gathered 10 different body measurements from each including mass, body breadth and length, segmental limb lengths, and chest circumference. To gain a better understanding of how ontogenetic patterns vary in these populations, we calculated bivariate allometry coefficients, derived using PCA on log-transformed and z-standardized trait values, and compared them to isometric vector coefficients. Within all population samples, around weaning age most traits showed a negative allometric relationship to body length. As each population ages, however, distinct patterns emerge, showing population differences in onset and intensity of growth among traits. In concordance with other analyses on growth in these populations, our results suggest that there exist relative differences in patterns of growth between Chlorocebus populations, further suggesting selection for unique developmental pathways in each