Banks' risk assessment of Swedish SMEs

Building on the literatures on asymmetric information and risk taking, this paper applies conjoint experiments to investigate lending officers' probabilities of supporting credit to established or existing SMEs. Using a sample of 114 Swedish lending officers, we test hypotheses concerning how information on the borrower's ability to repay the loan; alignment of risk preferences; and risk sharing affect their willingness to grant credit. Results suggest that features that reduce the risk to the bank and shift the risk to the borrower have the largest impact. The paper highlights the interaction between factors that influence the credit decision. Implications for SMEs, banks and research are discussed

A novel use of honey's aggregation approach to the analysis of repertory grids

This paper examines and appraises a novel approach to generating shared group constructs through aggregative analysis: the application of Honey’s aggregation procedure to repertory grid technique (RGT) data. Revisiting Personal Construct Theory’s underlying premises and adopting a social constructivist epistemology, we argue that, whilst “implicit theories” of the world, elicited via RGT, are unique to individuals, the constructs on which they are founded may be shared collectively. Drawing on a study of workplace performance, we outline a protocol for this novel use of Honey’s (1979a; 1979b) approach demonstrating how it can be utilized to generate shared constructs inductively to facilitate theory building. We argue that, unlike other grid aggregation processes, the approach does not compromise data granularity, offering a useful augmentation to traditional idiographic approaches examining individual-level constructs only. This approach appears especially suited to addressing complex and implicit topics, where individuals struggle to convey thoughts and ideas

Viewing Cognitive Conflicts as Dilemmas: Implications for Mental Health

The idea that internal conflicts play a significant role in mental health has been extensively addressed in various psychological traditions, including personal construct theory. In the context of the latter, several measures of conflict have been operationalized using the Repertory Grid Technique (RGT). All of them capture the notion that change, although desirable from the viewpoint of a given set of constructs, becomes undesirable from the perspective of other constructs. The goal of this study is to explore the presence of cognitive conflicts in a clinical sample (n = 284) and compare it to a control sample (n = 322). It is also meant to clarify which among the different types of conflict studied provides a greater clinical value and to investigate its relationship to symptom severity (SCL-90-R). Of the types of cognitive conflict studied, implicative dilemmas were the only ones to discriminate between clinical and nonclinical samples. These dilemmas were found in 34% of the nonclinical sample and in 53% of the clinical sample. Participants with implicative dilemmas showed higher symptom severity, and those from the clinical sample displayed a higher frequency of dilemmas than those from the nonclinical sample

Co-creation of a virtual interactive teaching package for auditors of healthcare placements - towards assurance of quality of health care traineeships

To provide medical and allied health professionals students with the best clinical learning environments, quality processes must be in place, and these require innovation to assure audit material resources that are fit for purpose, can work well within the situation and provide the correct teaching and learning to train auditors. HEALINT4ALL ERASMUS+ Strategic partnership provides medical education and allied health professionals with an audit system to facilitate quality assurance of EU clinical learning environments by mapping and innovatively adapting a newly established audit protocol and support tools to suit the Higher Education needs for wider application to medicine and professionals allied to medicine. The project conducted a literature scoping review followed by interviews and focus groups across all 6 European partners of clinicians, students and educators of service needs and best practice, resulting to map standards and requirements for clinical learning environments and develop a protocol to assess the quality of placements. Next, it developed a digital interactive platform for European and national placements appraisal following user-centred design to allow the collaboration between Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), and HEIs and placements. In order the application of the HEALINT4ALL protocol within the digital interactive tool to be beneficial, the auditors of the healthcare placements should have the necessary competences to perform the audits utilising the HEALINT4ALL a digital interactive platform. An online or blended learning approach is preferred to fit with the clinical academics' needs that will undertake the role of auditor. Thus, HEALINT4ALL co-created a Virtual Interactive Teaching Package for Training the Auditors of Healthcare Placements. It followed a modified ASPIRE framework to develop the package. The ASPIRE framework stands for Aims, Storyboarding, Population, Implementation, Release and Evaluation. This work describes the co-creation journey that engaged stakeholders in 6 different countries in order to co-design the resources, experts in the field that reviewed the content to ensure its high quality, the development that followed and the first pilot's evaluation from experts. While some efforts have been made towards the standardisation of auditing clinical placements, to the best of our knowledge this is the first attempt to develop a short curriculum to training the auditors of healthcare placements and implemented as a virtual interactive teaching package

The application of the repertory grid in forensic practice

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the utility of the repertory grid method with forensic populations. Three case studies are presented, each using an adapted variation of the repertory grid method with a different forensic clients: an individual maintaining their innocence, an individual convicted of sexual offenses, and an individual convicted of stalking. An analysis of the repertory grid findings is presented for each case study, including a Principal Component Analysis and a Self-Identity Plot. This analysis of subjective meaning and idiosyncratic belief systems proves invaluable ordinarily, but particularly when working with populations who present as suspicious and guarded in research or clinical settings. Relationship and offending-related psychological vulnerabilities are explored, with small psychological changes documented and the use of the repertory grid approach as a clinical tool is highlighted. The findings provide a significant contribution to the field of forensic practice, by demonstrating the utility of the repertory grid method when working with forensic populations. This may, in turn, contribute to researchers’ and practitioners’ consideration of its use within future forensic practice

“It’s not something I chose you know”: making sense of pedophiles’ sexual interest in children and the impact on their psychosexual identity

Sexual interest in children is one of the most strongly predictive of the known risk factors for sexual reconviction. It is an important aspect of risk assessment to identify the presence of such interest, and an important task for treatment providers to address such a sexual interest where it is present. It has been argued that understanding pedophiles’ deviant sexual interest in children can enhance risk assessment, management, and treatment planning. This research study aims to explore the phenomenology of deviant sexual interest in children, the impact it has on pedophilic offenders’ identities, and their views on the treatability of that interest. The study used semistructured interviews and repertory grids to make sense of participants’ experiences. The results revealed three superordinate themes: “‘living’ with a deviant sexual interest,” “relational sexual self,” and “possible and feared sexual self.” The analysis unpacks these themes and repertory grid analysis is used to explore a subset of participants’ identities in more detail. The results reveal that there needs to be an acceptance from both client and therapist that their sexual interest in children may never go away. Through this acceptance, clients could work on enhancing sexual self-regulation, recognizing their triggers, and so managing their sexual thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Implications for treatment are also discussed

National culture and tourist destination choice in the UK and Venezuela: an exploratory and preliminary study

National culture determines consumer attitudes and behaviour. While this holds true for tourism consumption, little research has sought to better understand the effect of culture on tourist destination choice. The geographical scope of analysis has also been restricted. This study employs the Hofstede’s cultural dimensions framework to conduct an exploratory, qualitative evaluation of the influence of the tourist cultural background on destination choice. It focuses on the UK and Venezuela, the two countries with significant cultural differences and forecast growth in outbound tourism. The study shows the distinct role of culture in tourist preferences for destination choice and structure of travel groups. The effect of culture is also recorded in how tourists research destinations prior to visit and perceive travel risks, thus ultimately influencing their motivation to travel. Recommendations are developed on how to integrate knowledge on the cultural background of tourists into tourism management and policy-making practices