Evaluating Sustainable Development from a Child's Perspective - A Proposal of Sustainable Child Development Index (SCDI)

In Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA), the UNEP guideline proposes the five stakeholder groups to investigate the corresponding social issues from a whole-population perspective. Despite the relevance of children in inheriting and forming the society in the context of sustainable development, children are neglected as a relevant stakeholder group. To consider children's interests and influence in SLCA from a top-down perspective, a literature review is conducted to identify relevant topics and gaps related to the assessment of child development. The results categorize the main aspects of child development into six themes: health, education, safety, material condition, relationship, participation, and a newly proposed theme environmental aspect. Furthermore, to address the existing gaps, the Sustainable Child Development Index (SCDI) is proposed to consider relevant aspects of children development on an outcome and a context level, with regard to newly-proposed environmental aspects

Screening indicators for the Sustainable Child Development Index (SCDI)

Since children are the key stakeholders supporting and being affected by sustainable development, the framework for the Sustainable Child Development Index (SCDI) was proposed. It addresses social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainable development by considering seven relevant themes of child development, i.e., health, education, safety, economic status, relationship, environmental aspects and participation. However, an indicator set for initiating the SCDI is still missing. In this study, indicators for the themes, subthemes and criteria of SCDI are identified from literature and then analyzed regarding data availability. Sixty-six indicators with statistical data covering at least 100 countries are selected as the indicator set for the SCDI. The results indicate that data availability is best for indicators describing the themes of health and education, and worst for indicators addressing the themes of relationship and participation. Furthermore, 21 subthemes and 50 criteria described by indicators with limited data availability are identified for future indicator and data development. By providing an initial indicator set and screening the indicators with regard to data availability, the practicality of the SCDI framework is expected. Furthermore, the indicator set can serve as a potential indicator pool for other child and sustainable development related studies.DFG, 325093850, Open Access Publizieren 2017 - 2018 / Technische Universität Berli

Assessing Child Development: A Critical Review and the Sustainable Child Development Index (SCDI)

Children are an important stakeholder group for sustainable development, as they represent the interface between current and future generations. A comprehensive assessment of child development (CD) in the context of sustainable development is still missing. In this paper, as a first step, a literature review is conducted to identify relevant aspects and gaps related to the assessment of CD. The main issues of CD are categorized into seven themes: health, education, safety, economic status, relationships, participation, and newly proposed environmental aspects. The corresponding subthemes and criteria are classified accordingly (e.g., nutrition, child mortality, immunization, etc., are assigned to the theme health). However, gaps in current studies, such as the heterogeneous classification of relevant aspects, regional and societal bias in addressing certain aspects, the limited number of subthemes, and criteria and the missing inclusion of environmental aspects impede the assessment of sustainable child development. To address the existing gaps, a comprehensive framework, the Sustainable Child Development Index (SCDI), is proposed. The SCDI is based on sustainable development as the core value, considers relevant aspects of CD with regard to newly-proposed environmental aspects and includes 26 aspects on an outcome and 37 indicators on a context level to tackle the heterogeneous classifications and interdependencies of relevant aspects. The proposed index intends to strengthen the stakeholder perspective of children in sustainability assessment.DFG, 148092160, Methodische Nachhaltigkeitsbewertung von Maschinenkomponenten im EntwicklungsprozessDFG, 199828953, SFB1026: Sustainable Manufacturing - Globale Wertschöpfung nachhaltig gestalte

The Sustainable Child Development Index (SCDI) for countries

Despite the relevance of children in inheriting and shaping society, an index assessing sustainable development with a focus on children is missing. To tackle this gap, this study established the Sustainable Child Development Index (SCDI) by considering child development topics in the context of inter-generational equity and applying indicators with available statistical data on country level. The SCDI at present addresses health, education, safety, economic status and environmental aspects described by 25 indicators. By taking reference points derived from the targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the SCDI scores for the year 2015 were calculated for 138 countries and then classified into four sustainable child development levels (very high, high, medium and low). The results showed great regional inequality on the status of sustainable child development. European countries generally have better status of sustainable child development. By contrast, 90% of African and 76% of Asian countries were classified as countries with medium and low levels. Moreover, the comparison of the SCDI, the Human Development Index (HDI) and the Child Development Index (CDI) based on correlation analysis and 10-year (2006–2015) country rankings demonstrated that the SCDI can complement existing development indices to provide a more comprehensive evaluation of sustainable development.DFG, 325093850, Open Access Publizieren 2017 - 2018 / Technische Universität Berli

Application options of the Sustainable Child Development Index (SCDI) – assessing the status of sustainable development and establishing social impact pathways

The needs of children and their vulnerability to diseases, violence and poverty are different from those of adults. The Sustainable Child Development Index (SCDI) was thus developed in previous work to evaluate the status of sustainable development for countries with a focus on children and triple-bottom-line thinking. This study proposes application options to put the SCDI into practice. The SCDI can be performed similarly to existing development indices, for comparing and tracing the performance of sustainable development on different geographic levels and between population groups. In addition, the SCDI can be integrated into existing social sustainability assessment approaches (e.g., Social Life Cycle Assessment and Social Organizational Life Cycle Assessment) and databases (e.g., The Social Hotspots Database) to take children into account and enhance impact assessment of social sustainability assessment approaches. As an exemplification, this study demonstrates the application of the SCDI framework to support the development of social impact pathways. Due to the importance of tertiary education in reducing poverty, a preliminary social impact pathway addressing completion of tertiary education was established. By putting the SCDI into practice, the SCDI can support decision making in child as well as sustainable development policies.DFG, 325093850, Open Access Publizieren 2017 - 2018 / Technische Universität Berli

An Investigation Of GEPT Test Anxiety For Medical University Students In Taiwan

This study examines whether or not different medical university students experience different levels of anxiety in taking the General English Proficiency Test (GEPT), and whether or not there are differences in GEPT test anxiety levels among medical university students with different genders and from different departments. This study uses a GEPT test anxiety scale (GEPT-TAS) to explore the GEPT test anxiety levels of the students. The final questionnaire included 36 questions, covering the cognitive, emotional, and affective dimensions of test anxiety. Several conclusions can be made from the findings of this study. First, medical university students experience certain levels of GEPT test anxiety. Second, females experience more emotional anxiety than males. Third, nursing students experience more cognitive anxiety than students from other departments

NERVE CONDUCTION VELOCITY INVESTIGATION IN ATHLETES WITH TRAINED LOWER EXTRAMITY FOR WELL·CONTROLLlNG MOVEMENT

Reaction, coordination and speed ability are essential for success in a variety of sports. Nerve conduction velocity (NCV) is related to all of these abilities. Previous studies had investigated power and endurance type athletes, but there is less research in athletes who are skilled in coordinated lower extremity movements requiring more neural adaptation for nerve conduction velocity after specific exercise training. The purpose of this study is to investigate nerve conduction velocity of soccer, sanshou players and untrained subjects. Results show that NCV was significantly different among the 3 groups (p < .05) for the femoral and tibal nerves. For both femoral and tibial nerve.§, results showed that the soccer players had significantly faster NCV than the other groups (p < .05). According to the results, faster NCV adaptation from long term training in soccer players may be relate to their movement requirement of changing their movement direction quickly and skillfully

Adapting Ergonomic Assessments to Social Life Cycle Assessment

In Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA), the health and safety aspect of workers is usually evaluated by considering the numbers of injuries and accidents; however, the work related musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs), which dominate occupational diseases, are often neglected in SLCA since the effects do not occur immediately. Thus, the MSDs lead to increased working absences and compensation costs, and also reduced productivity of workers. To address the gap, applying ergonomic assessment is proposed since it identifies and quantifies the health risks at work based on a set of pre-defined criteria e.g. force, posture, repetition and duration, and provides the numeric results analyzing the physical load and their sources. In the study, the application of ergonomic assessment and its indicators in SLCA is displayed to screen risks and to further improve working place design

Life cycle sustainability assessment approaches for manufacturing

Sustainability assessments considering the three dimensions environment, economy, and society are needed to evaluate manufacturing processes and products with regard to their sustainability performance. This chapter focuses on Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA), which considers all three sustainability dimensions by combining the three methods life cycle assessmentLCA, life cycle costingLCC, and Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA). Existing LCSA approaches as well as selected ongoing work are introduced, both regarding the individual approaches as well as the combined LCSA approach. This includes, for instance, the Tiered Approach. This approach facilitates the implementation of LCSA, for instance, within the manufacturing sector, by providing a category hierarchy and guiding practitioners through the various impact and cost categories proposed for the three methods. Furthermore, ongoing developments in LCC and SLCA are presented, such as the definition of first economic and social impact pathways (linking fair wage and level of education to social damage levels) for addressing the current challenges of missing impact pathways for economic and social aspects. In addition, the Sustainability Safeguard Star suggests a new scheme for addressing the inter-linkages between the three sustainability dimensions. These approaches foster the application and implementation of LCSA and thus contribute to developing sustainable processes and products