247 research outputs found
Social Contexts in Ethnic Identity Development: How Does it Affect Bicultural Stress Between Generations?
Bicultural stress is the unique stress which occurs when a bicultural individual tries to navigate between two different cultures, namely their heritage culture and mainstream culture. This study investigated bicultural stress using Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological systems model. This study posits that family, peers, community, and media interact to influence feelings of bicultural stress. A sample of 147 undergraduate visible minority Canadians at the University of Windsor was recruited for this study. They completed an online survey comprising standardized self-report measures and open-ended questions. Results were analyzed using statistical analyses and a thematic analysis. Findings from this study provided a detailed and complex illustration of the bicultural experience. It was found that second-generation Canadians experienced more bicultural stress compared to their third-generation peers. Also, regression analysis indicated that ethnic identity, family cultural socialization towards heritage culture, perceived discrimination, and generational status contributed to feelings of bicultural stress. Results from the thematic analysis indicated that bicultural Canadians have a shared bicultural experience. Participants described when they first realized their bicultural identity, and their responses revealed the different ways they used to navigate their bicultural identity. Lastly, this study investigated the effects of first name on bicultural stress. Participants revealed their experiences of name-based microaggression and the solutions they developed to make things easier for other people. Findings from this study revealed personal and intimate experiences with which bicultural Canadians have struggled in different social environments of their lives. This study can open avenues of research on microaggressions experienced by bicultural Canadians in school and workplace settings
Associations of Perceived Overall Health, Psychological Distress, Functional Impairment, and Alcohol Use among Older Adults of Sexual Minority Status and Heterosexual Peers
Background: Lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) adults, 50 and older, are likely to have experienced mistreatment and discrimination, contributing to poor physical and mental health and risky behaviors, such as alcohol misuse. Few studies have examined the relationships between perceived health, psychological distress, functional impairment, and alcohol use of older LGB adults and heterosexuals.
Specific Aims: The specific aims were: (1) to determine if perceived overall health status is associated with psychological distress and functional impairment in sexual minority older adults compared to heterosexual older adults, and (2) to determine if sexual minority status moderates the relationship between psychological distress and alcohol misuse.
Methods: This study is a secondary analysis of a retrospective cross-sectional design using data from the 2017-2018 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH). Health outcomes among LGB older adults (n=462) 50 years or older were compared with heterosexual (n=16,855) peers using univariate analyses and logistic regressions. Interaction terms evaluated the influence of sexual orientation on psychological distress and alcohol consumption. Outcomes included perceived overall health, functional impairment, psychological distress, and alcohol misuse.
Results: There was no statistical difference in perceived health status between older LGB adults and older heterosexual adults. After adjusting for confounders, the findings support that older LGB adults are more likely to experience functional impairment than their heterosexual cohorts (B = -.125, SE = .038, p = .001, 95% CI [-.200, -.050]). The study did not show that older LGB adults had worse health status and psychological distress compared to older heterosexual adults. Older heterosexual adults were less likely to consume alcohol than older LGB adults. Sexual orientation did not moderate the relationship between psychological distress and the different alcohol use patterns.
Conclusion: Future research should examine the underlying causes of impaired health in the older LGB population and utilize those findings to conduct research to prevent and minimize psychological distress and functional impairment. Older LGB adults should be screened for functional impairment and mental health issues, including alcohol so that appropriate referrals and/or treatments can be initiated
Efficiency of the teaching-industry linkage in the Australian vocational education and training
The vocational education and training (VET) sector plays a crucial role in Australia’s education system. Associated closely between the VET provision and industry, VET training quality is continually at the heart of debates in the process of implementing the Australian VET reform agenda. In response of key themes of this reform process, investigating the training efficiency of VET through the linked efficiency between teaching and industry responsiveness is imperative. The paper aims to address this objective by using the dynamic network data envelopment analysis in a balanced panel data for 2008–2012. This advanced model allows to assess simultaneously the efficiency of two nodes, teaching and industry responsiveness, and the overall dynamic training efficiency of VET based on fields of education in a network structure. We found that the overall training efficiency of VET is, on average, 0.835 while the mean divisional efficiencies of the teaching efficiency and industry responsiveness are 0.763 and 0.908, respectively. Sensitivity analysis is conducted to examine dynamic changes of the efficiency of the teaching and industry linkage following various period weights. Policy implications are drawn for the Australian VET sector
Conserved upstream open reading frames in higher plants
Background Upstream open reading frames (uORFs) can down-regulate the translation of the main open reading frame (mORF) through two broad mechanisms: ribosomal stalling and reducing reinitiation efficiency. In distantly related plants, such as rice and Arabidopsis, it has been found that conserved uORFs are rare in these transcriptomes with approximately 100 loci. It is unclear how prevalent conserved uORFs are in closely related plants. Results We used a homology-based approach to identify conserved uORFs in five cereals (monocots) that could potentially regulate translation. Our approach used a modified reciprocal best hit method to identify putative orthologous sequences that were then analysed by a comparative R-nomics program called uORFSCAN to find conserved uORFs. Conclusion This research identified new genes that may be controlled at the level of translation by conserved uORFs. We report that conserved uORFs are rare (<150 loci contain them) in cereal transcriptomes, are generally short (less than 100 nt), highly conserved (50% median amino acid sequence similarity), position independent in their 5'-UTRs, and their start codon context and the usage of rare codons for translation does not appear to be important.Michael K Tran, Carolyn J Schultz and Ute Bauman
Ensuring Rights: Improving Access to Sexual and Reproductive Health Services for Female International Students in Australia
Drawing on the research and advocacy work being conducted by the Multicultural Centre for Women’s Health (MCWH), a national community-based organization in Victoria, Australia, the paper analyzes female international students’ experiences with accessing sexual and reproductive health information and services. Accessibility of sexual and reproductive health services is one of a number of areas identified by MCWH in which international students experience unequal treatment. The limitations of international students’ mandatory health insurance is of particular concern because it appears to conflict with Australia’s human rights obligations to take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination and to ensure appropriate services in connection with pregnancy. Given the social, cultural and economic benefits international students bring to the country in which they choose to study, state action on equitable health access for international students is urgently called for
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Artificial Intelligence and Medical Trainees - Valuable Tool or Learning Impediment?
Background
â—Ź Artificial intelligence (AI) assisted clinical documentation tools are becoming increasingly available across outpatient clinical settings
â—Ź Voice to text recognition programs collect audio from patient-provider interactions and use AI to automatically generate notes documenting the encounter
â—Ź These notes can then be made available in the electronic health record within minutes
â—Ź Though these tools are available to attending physicians, there has been no research on attitudes regarding when such tools should be made available to medical trainees, such as medical students and residents
â—Ź We surveyed US medical students, residents, and attending physicians regarding when such tools should be introduced to learners, if at all, and concerns around such tools
Study Design
â—Ź Cross-sectional survey
â—Ź Setting: Single institution in the Pacific region
â—Ź Study population: Medical students, resident
physicians, fellows, and attending physicians (179
respondents)
â—Ź Study timeline: Survey available 5/9/24-6/10/24
â—Ź Data collection:
â—‹ Administered 15 question RedCap survey
â—‹ Assessed respondents demographic and
professional characteristics, including gender, highest level of training, percent of time spent in outpatient practice, time spent on patient interactions, and time spent on clinical documentation
â—Ź Study outcomes:
○ Relationship between respondents’ demographic and professional characteristics and what level of training they felt that AI-assisted clinical documentation tools should be available to trainees, should enter the medical record, and specific concerns with regard to their use (not meeting documentation milestones, detriment to patient-provider experience, accuracy, bias, violation of patient privacy, detriment to forming differential diagnoses, detriment to forming plans, and concerns about using personal devices)
â—Ź Statistical analysis:
â—‹ Chi-squared analysis to determine association between demographic/professional characteristics and outcomes with significance level set at p < 0.05
○ Cramer’s values calculated to determine strength of association
â—‹ Descriptive characterisation of respondents
Results
40% of female attending physicians believed that AI tools should not be available to trainees at all, compared to 25% of attending physicians overall and 17% of respondents in general
Female respondents were far more likely to agree with the statement “I am concerned about AI-assisted clinical documentation violating patient privacy” and far less likely to agree with running the software on a personal device
Summary
â—Ź Attending physicians, particularly female attending physicians, felt that AI assisted clinical documentation tools should be introduced to trainees later on and were more likely to believe that trainees should not be able to generate notes using such tools
â—Ź Female respondents were far more likely to have concerns about these tools adversely affecting trainees in achieving clinical documentation milestones and were far more likely to have concerns about privacy and use of personal devices surrounding these tools
● Respondents who spent more time with patients (P = 0.01, Cramer’s value = 0.19) and more time writing notes (P = 0.03, Cramer’s value = 0.20) were less likely to believe that that AI-assisted clinical documentation tools should be available to trainees
Limitations
â—Ź Single institution survey
â—Ź Responses restricted to provided survey options
â—Ź Data not collected on experience with ambient clinical
documentation tools within cohort
Discussion
â—Ź Previous research has shown that physicians and medical students have positive attitudes and a willingness to learn about AI tools in healthcare
â—Ź However, our data suggests that attending physicians and female respondents in general have more concerns about privacy with regard to AI for clinical documentation tools and favor later introduction of such tools to trainees
â—Ź While trainees are amenable to learning about AI tools, faculty may recommended delaying the introduction of these tools to residency or later
â—Ź More research is needed to better understand why female physicians are more concerned about privacy with regard to AI tools and how these tools should be introduced to medical trainees
â—Ź Next steps: conducting interviews with respondents for more nuanced recommendations/understanding of concerns
References
AlZaabi A, AlMaskari S, AalAbdulsalam A. Are physicians and medical students ready for artificial intelligence applications in healthcare? DIGITAL HEALTH. 2023;9. doi:10.1177/20552076231152167
Giavina-Bianchi M, Amaro Jr E, Machado BS, Medical Expectations of Physicians on AI Solutions in Daily Practice: Cross-Sectional Survey Study, JMIRx Med 2024;5:e50803, doi: 10.2196/50803
Waheed MA, Liu L, Perceptions of Family Physicians About Applying AI in Primary Health Care: Case Study From a Premier Health Care Organization, JMIR AI 2024;3:e40781, doi: 10.2196/4078
Technical efficiency heterogeneity of tertiary institutions in Viet Nam: A metafrontier directional technology approach
The higher education system of Viet Nam has been undergoing reform process with the aim of seeking a position in the world's education market. However, recent changes in the system have made the operational efficiency of the system less stable, thus making it more challenging to improve the country's universities world rankings. In this paper, we investigate the performance of tertiary education institutions in Viet Nam and evaluate the efficiency gap between colleges and universities. Using the metafrontier directional technology approach, we estimate both the group frontier and metafrontier efficiencies for 112 universities and 141 colleges using data for 2011-2013 and compute their differences imposed by the technology associated with different levels of ownership and locations. The findings showed that the performance of universities were better than that of colleges, at 0.837 0.774, respectively. However, under an unrestricted metafrontier framework, the metatechnology ratios suggest that universities and colleges were operated comparatively well by potentially increasing their performance by 7.8 and 5.0 per cent, respectively. Both urban universities and colleges are found to be more efficient than their rural counterparts, but the effects of ownerships showed mixed results on the performance of universities and colleges. Our results highlight the need for appropriate policies and enabling environment that will enhance the performance of each institution. It is imperative to re-evaluate the specific role and individual contributions of colleges and universities in the national education system and assist rural universities and colleges to explore their full potential to enhance their performance
Technical efficiency heterogeneity of tertiary institutions in Viet Nam: a metafrontier directional technology approach
The higher education system of Viet Nam has been undergoing reform process with the aim of seeking a position in the world’s education market. However, recent changes in the system have made the operational efficiency of the system less stable, thus making it more challenging to improve the country’s universities world rankings. In this paper, we investigate the performance of tertiary education institutions in Viet Nam and evaluate the efficiency gap between colleges and universities. Using the metafrontier directional technology approach, we estimate both the group frontier and metafrontier efficiencies for 112 universities and 141 colleges using data for 2011–2013 and compute their differences imposed by the technology associated with different levels of ownership and locations. The findings showed that the performance of universities were better than that of colleges, at 0.837 0.774, respectively. However, under an unrestricted metafrontier framework, the metatechnology ratios suggest that universities and colleges were operated comparatively well by potentially increasing their performance by 7.8 and 5.0 per cent, respectively. Both urban universities and colleges are found to be more efficient than their rural counterparts, but the effects of ownerships showed mixed results on the performance of universities and colleges. Our results highlight the need for appropriate policies and enabling environment that will enhance the performance of each institution. It is imperative to re-evaluate the specific role and individual contributions of colleges and universities in the national education system and assist rural universities and colleges to explore their full potential to enhance their performance.
First published online 17 September 201
The Influence of Administrative Intensity on Efficiency: An Empirical Analysis of Australian Universities
While a voluminous empirical literature has investigated university efficiency, much less attention has focused on the impact of administrative intensity on university performance. In this article, we seek to contribute to the empirical literature by examining the relationship between operational efficiency and administrative intensity in the Australian higher education sector over the period 2009/10–2018/19 using a second stage boots trapping Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) fractional regression model. We find that administrative intensity positively affects the performance of universities for both the standard and bias-corrected efficiency models. Moreover, administrative intensity exhibits an inverted U-shaped relationship with university efficiency. We also find that administrative intensity has a differential impact on the efficiency of the different types of university. Various public policy implications are considered
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