1,626 research outputs found

    Choosing party leaders: Anglophone democracies, British parties and the limits of comparative politics

    Get PDF
    Since 1965, Britain’s major political parties have radically, and repeatedly, changed the ways in which they choose their leaders. Building on a recent comparative study of party leadership selection in the five principal Anglophone (‘Westminster’) parliamentary democracies (Cross and Blais, 2012a), this article first outlines a theoretical framework that purports to explain why the major parties in three of those countries, including Britain, have adopted such reform. It then examines why five major British parties have done so since 1965. It argues that, while Cross and Blais’ study makes a significant contribution to our knowledge and understanding of processes of party leadership selection reform in Anglophone parliamentary democracies, it has limited explanatory power when applied to changes enacted by the major parties in modern and contemporary Britain. Instead, the adoption of such reform in the British context is ultimately best understood and explained by examining both the internal politics and external circumstances of individual parties

    Cognition in Stroke Rehabilitation and Recovery Research: Consensus-Based Core Recommendations From the Second Stroke Recovery and Rehabilitation Roundtable

    Get PDF
    Cognitive impairment is an important target for rehabilitation as it is common following stroke, is associated with reduced quality of life and interferes with motor and other types of recovery interventions. Cognitive function following stroke was identified as an important, but relatively neglected area during the first Stroke Recovery and Rehabilitation Roundtable (SRRR I), leading to a Cognition Working Group being convened as part of SRRR II. There is currently insufficient evidence to build consensus on specific approaches to cognitive rehabilitation. However, we present recommendations on the integration of cognitive assessments into stroke recovery studies generally and define priorities for ongoing and future research for stroke recovery and rehabilitation. A number of promising interventions are ready to be taken forward to trials to tackle the gap in evidence for cognitive rehabilitation. However, to accelerate progress requires that we coordinate efforts to tackle multiple gaps along the whole translational pathway

    Cognition in stroke rehabilitation and recovery research: Consensus-based core recommendations from the second Stroke Recovery and Rehabilitation Roundtable

    Get PDF
    Cognitive impairment is an important target for rehabilitation as it is common following stroke, is associated with reduced quality of life and interferes with motor and other types of recovery interventions. Cognitive function following stroke was identified as an important, but relatively neglected area during the first Stroke Recovery and Rehabilitation Roundtable (SRRR I), leading to a Cognition Working Group being convened as part of SRRR II. There is currently insufficient evidence to build consensus on specific approaches to cognitive rehabilitation. However, we present recommendations on the integration of cognitive assessments into stroke recovery studies generally and define priorities for ongoing and future research for stroke recovery and rehabilitation. A number of promising interventions are ready to be taken forward to trials to tackle the gap in evidence for cognitive rehabilitation. However, to accelerate progress requires that we coordinate efforts to tackle multiple gaps along the whole translational pathway

    Do self-reported intentions predict clinicians behaviour: a systematic review.

    Get PDF
    Background: Implementation research is the scientific study of methods to promote the systematic uptake of clinical research findings into routine clinical practice. Several interventions have been shown to be effective in changing health care professionals' behaviour, but heterogeneity within interventions, targeted behaviours, and study settings make generalisation difficult. Therefore, it is necessary to identify the 'active ingredients' in professional behaviour change strategies. Theories of human behaviour that feature an individual's "intention" to do something as the most immediate predictor of their behaviour have proved to be useful in non-clinical populations. As clinical practice is a form of human behaviour such theories may offer a basis for developing a scientific rationale for the choice of intervention to use in the implementation of new practice. The aim of this review was to explore the relationship between intention and behaviour in clinicians and how this compares to the intention-behaviour relationship in studies of non-clinicians. Methods: We searched: PsycINFO, MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Science/Social science citation index, Current contents (social & behavioural med/clinical med), ISI conference proceedings, and Index to Theses. The reference lists of all included papers were checked manually. Studies were eligible for inclusion if they had: examined a clinical behaviour within a clinical context, included measures of both intention and behaviour, measured behaviour after intention, and explored this relationship quantitatively. All titles and abstracts retrieved by electronic searching were screened independently by two reviewers, with disagreements resolved by discussion. Discussion: Ten studies were found that examined the relationship between intention and clinical behaviours in 1623 health professionals. The proportion of variance in behaviour explained by intention was of a similar magnitude to that found in the literature relating to non-health professionals. This was more consistently the case for studies in which intention-behaviour correspondence was good and behaviour was self-reported. Though firm conclusions are limited by a smaller literature, our findings are consistent with that of the non-health professional literature. This review, viewed in the context of the larger populations of studies, provides encouragement for the contention that there is a predictable relationship between the intentions of a health professional and their subsequent behaviour. However, there remain significant methodological challenges

    Stochastic population growth in spatially heterogeneous environments

    Full text link
    Classical ecological theory predicts that environmental stochasticity increases extinction risk by reducing the average per-capita growth rate of populations. To understand the interactive effects of environmental stochasticity, spatial heterogeneity, and dispersal on population growth, we study the following model for population abundances in nn patches: the conditional law of Xt+dtX_{t+dt} given Xt=xX_t=x is such that when dtdt is small the conditional mean of Xt+dtiXtiX_{t+dt}^i-X_t^i is approximately [xiμi+j(xjDjixiDij)]dt[x^i\mu_i+\sum_j(x^j D_{ji}-x^i D_{ij})]dt, where XtiX_t^i and μi\mu_i are the abundance and per capita growth rate in the ii-th patch respectivly, and DijD_{ij} is the dispersal rate from the ii-th to the jj-th patch, and the conditional covariance of Xt+dtiXtiX_{t+dt}^i-X_t^i and Xt+dtjXtjX_{t+dt}^j-X_t^j is approximately xixjσijdtx^i x^j \sigma_{ij}dt. We show for such a spatially extended population that if St=(Xt1+...+Xtn)S_t=(X_t^1+...+X_t^n) is the total population abundance, then Yt=Xt/StY_t=X_t/S_t, the vector of patch proportions, converges in law to a random vector YY_\infty as tt\to\infty, and the stochastic growth rate limtt1logSt\lim_{t\to\infty}t^{-1}\log S_t equals the space-time average per-capita growth rate \sum_i\mu_i\E[Y_\infty^i] experienced by the population minus half of the space-time average temporal variation \E[\sum_{i,j}\sigma_{ij}Y_\infty^i Y_\infty^j] experienced by the population. We derive analytic results for the law of YY_\infty, find which choice of the dispersal mechanism DD produces an optimal stochastic growth rate for a freely dispersing population, and investigate the effect on the stochastic growth rate of constraints on dispersal rates. Our results provide fundamental insights into "ideal free" movement in the face of uncertainty, the persistence of coupled sink populations, the evolution of dispersal rates, and the single large or several small (SLOSS) debate in conservation biology.Comment: 47 pages, 4 figure
    corecore