Building a Better Description

Universally practiced across the disciplines, description is also consistently devalued or overlooked. In this introduction to the special issue "Description Across Disciplines," Sharon Marcus, Heather Love, and Stephen Best propose that description is a critical practice more complex (and less contradictory) than its detractors have taken it to be. They argue that turning critical attention toward description’s nuances gives us access to the ways that scholars conventionally assign and withhold value and prestige. The authors set forth a number of principles (using their contributors’ essays as a guide) toward the end of "building a better description.

Strategies Retail Managers Use to Reduce Employee Turnover

Retailers lost 5.1 million employees in 2016, which resulted in a loss of profitability. The purpose of this single case study was to explore strategies retail managers used to reduce turnover at one retail company in the southeastern United States. The conceptual framework for the study was transformational leadership. The target population consisted of 6 store managers who reduced employee turnover in the retail industry. Data collection methods included face-to-face, semistructured interviews and a review of the company documents. Yin\u27s 5-step analysis was used to analyze data. Three themes emerged from data analysis: supportive management leadership style, competitive compensations, and provision of efficient and effective communications to employees. The results of the study indicated store managers\u27 strategies that are essential to reducing employee turnover. The implications of this study for social change include the potential to generate new opportunities for employment and encourage prosperity for local families and the community by improving profitability and sustainability and promoting organizational growth in retail companies

Illicit sexual behaviors: A test of self-control theory.

This study proposes a test of self-control theory using illicit sexual behaviors. Specifically this research tests the correlation of illicit sexual behaviors with crime/delinquency as they relate to measures of self-control, and opportunity. This research explores both the possibility of an interaction between self-control and opportunity as well as examines the concept of a displacement effect between crime/delinquency and illicit sexual behaviors. In addition, the relationship between crime/delinquency and illicit sexual behaviors with self-control, opportunity, age, gender and race are analyzed.Data for this project were gathered in two survey periods conducted during the 1999--2000 academic year. Data used to test the theory as discussed above are drawn from a survey of 708 college students, age 18 and above, attending three southwestern universities, one rural, one commuter, and one Carnegie I research institution. Participation in the survey was voluntary.These analyses report illicit sexual behaviors are positively correlated with criminal/delinquent behaviors providing support for self-control theory. No displacement effect was found to exist further supporting self-control theory. However, for the interaction term of self-control and opportunity results are mixed in their support for the General Theory. Finally, when crime/delinquency and illicit sexual behaviors are regressed by race on self-control and opportunity there is a failure of self-control theory to account for the findings

Cultural Preservation of Ethnomedicine in Peru

In conjunction with the Minority Health & Health Disparities International Research Training program at San Diego State University, three Linfield students contributed to the ongoing Peru Ethnomedical Project in Trujillo, Peru by: Conducting surveys in two neighborhoods on the edge of the city; Creating a medicinal plant garden in the Chan Chan archaeological site museum. Surveys conducted in Moche, Trujillo were part of a larger study supervised by anthropologists Douglas Sharon and Thomas Love. The research aims to evaluate the usage of medicinal plants in rural and urban Peruvian communities. Linfield’s contribution focused on the creation of the medicinal garden to serve as a community model and educational program. The overall purpose of the 2015 summer faculty collaborative project was to: Preserve the knowledge of these practices; Analyze the plant properties; Publish the information; Provide the community with a garden that reflects the commonly used plants; Educate new generations; Bring back and apply this knowledge in the Linfield community

Elastic theory of unconstrained non-Euclidean plates

Non-Euclidean plates are a subset of the class of elastic bodies having no stress-free configuration. Such bodies exhibit residual stress when relaxed from all external constraints, and may assume complicated equilibrium shapes even in the absence of external forces. In this work we present a mathematical framework for such bodies in terms of a covariant theory of linear elasticity, valid for large displacements. We propose the concept of non-Euclidean plates to approximate many naturally formed thin elastic structures. We derive a thin plate theory, which is a generalization of existing linear plate theories, valid for large displacements but small strains, and arbitrary intrinsic geometry. We study a particular example of a hemispherical plate. We show the occurrence of a spontaneous buckling transition from a stretching dominated configuration to bending dominated configurations, under variation of the plate thickness

Monitoring metrics over time: Why clinical trialists need to systematically collect site performance metrics

Background: Over the last decade, there has been an increasing interest in risk-based monitoring (RBM) in clinical trials, resulting in a number of guidelines from regulators and its inclusion in ICH GCP. However, there is a lack of detail on how to approach RBM from a practical perspective, and insufficient understanding of best practice. Purpose: We present a method for clinical trials units to track their metrics within clinical trials using descriptive statistics and visualisations. Research Design: We suggest descriptive statistics and visualisations within a SWAT methodology. Study Sample: We illustrate this method using the metrics from TEMPER, a monitoring study carried out in three trials at the MRC Clinical Trials Unit at UCL. Data Collection: The data collection for TEMPER is described in DOI: 10.1177/1740774518793379. Results: We show the results and discuss a protocol for a Study-Within-A-Trial (SWAT 167) for those wishing to use the method. Conclusions: The potential benefits metric tracking brings to clinical trials include enhanced assessment of sites for potential corrective action, improved evaluation and contextualisation of the influence of metrics and their thresholds, and the establishment of best practice in RBM. The standardisation of the collection of such monitoring data would benefit both individual trials and the clinical trials community

Using a Socio-Technical Approach to Explore Perceptions of the Graffiti Culture

The effectiveness of socio-technical approaches, such as the Soft Systems Methodology (SSM), to structure problematic situations is dependent on the candid communication of participants. This paper reports a pilot study using SSM to explore the challenges of establishing the Ideal Speech Situation in order to gain an understanding of the contradictory perceptions of graffiti. Through exploring this social phenomenon from the views of both graffiti writers and the general public, power and ego were identified as challenges to establishing an Ideal Speech Situation. Analysing these challenges in the context of graffiti provides insight into how these barriers may hinder the effective application of socio-technical approaches

Uptake of the multi-arm multi-stage (MAMS) adaptive platform approach: a trial-registry review of late-phase randomised clinical trials

BACKGROUND: For medical conditions with numerous interventions worthy of investigation, there are many advantages of a multi-arm multi-stage (MAMS) platform trial approach. However, there is currently limited knowledge on uptake of the MAMS design, especially in the late-phase setting. We sought to examine uptake and characteristics of late-phase MAMS platform trials, to enable better planning for teams considering future use of this approach. DESIGN: We examined uptake of registered, late-phase MAMS platforms in the EU clinical trials register, Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry, International Standard Randomised Controlled Trial Number registry, Pan African Clinical Trials Registry, WHO International Clinical Trial Registry Platform and databases: PubMed, Medline, Cochrane Library, Global Health Library and EMBASE. Searching was performed and review data frozen on 1 April 2021. MAMS platforms were defined as requiring two or more comparison arms, with two or more trial stages, with an interim analysis allowing for stopping of recruitment to arms and typically the ability to add new intervention arms. RESULTS: 62 late-phase clinical trials using an MAMS approach were included. Overall, the number of late-phase trials using the MAMS design has been increasing since 2001 and been accelerated by COVID-19. The majority of current MAMS platforms were either targeting infectious diseases (52%) or cancers (29%) and all identified trials were for treatment interventions. 89% (55/62) of MAMS platforms were evaluating medications, with 45% (28/62) of the MAMS platforms having at least one or more repurposed medication as a comparison arm. CONCLUSIONS: Historically, late-phase trials have adhered to long-established standard (two-arm) designs. However, the number of late-phase MAMS platform trials is increasing, across a range of different disease areas. This study highlights the potential scope of MAMS platform trials and may assist research teams considering use of this approach in the late-phase randomised clinical trial setting. PROSPERO REGISTRATION NUMBER: CRD42019153910

Lack of transparent reporting of trial monitoring approaches in randomised controlled trials: A systematic review of contemporary protocol papers

Background: Monitoring is essential to ensure patient safety and data integrity in clinical trials as per Good Clinical Practice. The Standard Protocol Items: Recommendations for Interventional Trials Statement and its checklist guides authors to include monitoring in their protocols. We investigated how well monitoring was reported in published ‘protocol papers’ for contemporary randomised controlled trials. Methods: A systematic search was conducted in PubMed to identify eligible protocol papers published in selected journals between 1 January 2020 and 31 May 2020. Protocol papers were classified by whether they reported monitoring and, if so, by the details of monitoring. Data were summarised descriptively. Results: Of 811 protocol papers for randomised controlled trials, 386 (48%; 95% CI: 44%–51%) explicitly reported some monitoring information. Of these, 20% (77/386) reported monitoring information consistent with an on-site monitoring approach, and 39% (152/386) with central monitoring, 26% (101/386) with a mixed approach, while 14% (54/386) did not provide sufficient information to specify an approach. Only 8% (30/386) of randomised controlled trials reported complete details about all of scope, frequency and organisation of monitoring; frequency of monitoring was the least reported. However, 6% (25/386) of papers used the term ‘audit’ to describe ‘monitoring’. Discussion: Monitoring information was reported in only approximately half of the protocol papers. Suboptimal reporting of monitoring hinders the clinical community from having the full information on which to judge the validity of a trial and jeopardises the value of protocol papers and the credibility of the trial itself. Greater efforts are needed to promote the transparent reporting of monitoring to journal editors and authors