Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Follow the foreign leader? Why following foreign incumbents is an effective electoral strategy

Previous research suggests that political parties respond to left–right policy positions of successful foreign political parties (“foreign leaders”). We evaluate whether this is an effective electoral strategy: specifically, do political parties gain votes in elections when they respond to successful foreign parties? We argue that parties that follow foreign leaders will arrive at policy positions closer to their own (domestic) median voter, which increases their electoral support. The analysis is based on a two-stage model specification of parties’ vote shares and suggests that following foreign leaders is a beneficial election strategy in national election because it allows them to better identify the position of their own median voter. These findings have important implications for our understanding of political representation, parties’ election strategies, and for policy diffusion.
Home-based parental involvement amongst Pakistani families in Hong Kong

ABSTRACT Ethnic minority parents often appear to be less involved in school functions and activities than their culturally dominant counterparts. Their invisibility is usually assumed due to a lack of either interest or parental capacity to oversee their children’s education. However, the simplistic equation between parental involvement in children’s education and their participation in school is largely informed by middle-class cultural norms that ignore diversity. Data drawn from home visits and in-depth, semi-structured interviews amongst Pakistani parents and children in Hong Kong reveals that the involvement of these parents only seems less visible because it is largely based at home rather than in schools. The parental involvement of this ethnic minority is influenced by socio-economic and cultural factors that separate school from home, divide parental responsibilities by gender, and set expectations for children with primary reference to the parents’ own experiences. These research findings on how such characteristics shape the outcomes of parental involvement can inform school practices to build more effective home-school collaboration and enhance children’s academic achievement.
Cleaning public education: the privatisation of school maintenance work

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on an area of privatisation that has not to date received significant attention in educational research: the privatisation of infrastructure, facilities and maintenance, and in particular the labour of cleaning. Analysing the case of Victoria, Australia, we demonstrate how successive governments have defended the privatisation of cleaning labour on the basis that it allows schools to concentrate on the ‘core’ business of teaching and learning. Tracing the evolution of private contracts and public–private partnerships, we argue that the bracketing of cleaning work divides the types of labour carried out in the school, and thus the meaning and practice of public education. Thus, we suggest that controversies regarding the underpayment of cleaning staff, for instance, signal a deep problematic for public education as a whole.
The utility of internal cognitive states as discriminative cues affecting behavioral adaptation in humans and animals

In the last decade, metacognitive research on nonhuman animals has yielded results suggesting that metacognition was present at least in Old World monkeys. Experimental results are inconsistent on whether other species such as New World monkeys, rats, and birds possess metacognition. It is, therefore, difficult to accurately evaluate metacognition in these animal species. To solve this problem, it is crucial to determine the factors that predict the inconsistency of results. We found that even human adults did not necessarily behave metacognitively without a direct instruction to do so, and participants with poor memory retrieval performance tended to behave metacognitively. This is consistent with results from previous animal experiments and suggests the importance of the utility of an internal cue in predicting the emergence of behavior that can be interpreted as metacognition. Nevertheless, it is also suggested that if rats once perform the task wherein their cognitive state, such as memory confidence, was designed to be an effective cue, they would preserve their behavior adaptation on the basis of their cognitive state after its utility was decreased. Thus, the high utility of an internal cue would cause animals to rely on it, but such utility is not involved in the maintaining of the strategy. These results can help clarify the cause of inconsistent experimental results on whether animals show behavior that can be interpreted as metacognition and explain how metacognition is preserved in the evolutionary process.
Step-Grandparent–Step-Grandchild Relationships: Is There a “Grand Step-Gap” in Emotional Closeness and Contact?

High divorce and remarriage rates have expanded nontraditional family forms, as some family members leave and others join during the process of repartnering. A less explored consequence of the growth in step-families is the proliferation of step-grandparenthood. This paper focuses on emotional closeness and frequency of contact between step-grandparents and their step-grandchildren in childhood and adulthood. Based on 4,992 biological grandparents and step-grandparents participating in the 2014 wave of the German Ageing Survey, we compared 7,710 biological grandparent–grandchild relations to 465 step-grandparent–step-grandchild relations. Step-relations were differentiated by whether repartnering occurred in the grandparent or parent generation. Hierarchical linear regression results provided support for the hypothesis that step-grandparents feel less emotionally close to their step-grandchildren than biological grandparents feel to their biological grandchildren. In contrast, the observed lower frequency of contact in step-grandparent–step-grandchild relations was mostly explained by their weaker emotional ties.
Early-life circumstances and the risk of function-limiting long-term conditions in later life

Older adults are particularly prone to function-limiting health issues that adversely affect their well-being. Previous work has identified factors from across the life course –childhood socio-economic status, childhood cognitive ability and education – that predict later-life functional outcomes. However, the independence of these contributions is unclear as later-in-the-life-course predictors are themselves affected by earlier ones. The present study capitalised on the recent linkage of the Scottish Mental Survey 1947 with the Scottish Longitudinal Study, using path analyses to examine the direct and indirect associations between life-course predictors and the risk of functional limitation at ages 55 (N = 2,374), 65 (N = 1,971) and 75 (N = 1,534). The odds of reporting a function-limiting long-term condition increased across later life. At age 55, reporting a functional limitation was significantly less likely in those with higher childhood socio-economic status, higher childhood cognitive ability and higher educational attainment; these associations were only partly mediated by other predictors. At age 65, adult socio-economic status emerged as a mediator of several associations, although direct associations with childhood socio-economic status and childhood cognitive ability were still observed. At age 75, only childhood socio-economic status and adult socio-economic status directly predicted the risk of a functional limitation, particularly those associated with disease or illness. A consistent pattern and direction of associations was observed with self-rated health more generally. These results demonstrate that early-life and adult circumstances are associated with functional limitations later in life, but that these associations are partly a product of complex mediation between life-course factors.
Basic psychological needs, emotional regulation and academic stress in university students: a structural model according to branch of knowledge

ABSTRACT The present study which is descriptive and cross-sectional in nature, pursues the objective of developing a structural equation model which integrates basic psychological needs, emotional regulation and academic stress in a sample composed of 2736 university students [♂ = 33.8% (n = 924); ♀ = 66.2% (n = 1812)] with a mean age of 23.33 ± 5.77 years. The main instruments used were the basic psychological needs scale, the emotional regulation scale and the academic stress questionnaire. Results show a positive relationship between the need of autonomy and the two dimensions of emotional regulation – cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression-. Cognitive reappraisal did not exhibit any relationship within the social science students examined. Further, the needs of autonomy and competence were positively related with cognitive reappraisal, and negatively related with expressive suppression. The greatest correlation strength was revealed in students studying health sciences. Finally, it was revealed that health science students made better use of emotional regulation in order to control academic stress. This highlights the importance of developing emotional regulation and satisfying basic psychological needs within higher education.
Business Research Methods

PART 1 1. Business research strategies 2. Research designs 3. Planning a research project and formulating research questions 4. Getting Started: reviewing the literature 5. Ethics in business research PART 2 6. The nature of quantitative research 7. Sampling 8. Structured interviewing 9. Self-completion questionnaires 10. Asking questions 11. Structured observation 12. Content analysis 13. Secondary analysis and official statistics 14. Quantitative data analysis 15. Using SPSS for Windows PART 3 16. The nature of qualitative research 17. Ethnography and participant observation 18. Interviewing in qualitative research 19. Focus groups 20. Language in qualitative research 21. Documents as sources of data 22. Qualitative data analysis 23. Computer-assisted qualitative data analysis: Using NVivo PART 4 24. Breaking down the quantitative/qualitative divide 25. Combining quantitative and qualitative research 26. Internet research methods 27. Writing up business research
Links Between Peer Victimization, Perceived School Safety, and Internalizing Symptoms in Middle Childhood

Abstract Extant research indicates that peer victimization is an important factor in the development of internalizing symptoms for youth. However, few studies have examined contextual factors that may impact how peer victimization contributes to these symptoms in middle childhood, especially in the form of victimization. The current study evaluated associations between relational and physical victimization and symptoms of depression and anxiety in a sample of third through fifth graders. In addition, the influence of perceived school safety as a moderator of these associations was examined. Findings indicated that relational victimization was more strongly associated with symptoms of both depression and anxiety than physical victimization. Further, low levels of perceived school safety contributed to symptoms of depression and anxiety and exacerbated the associations between relational victimization and these symptoms, particularly for anxiety. Implications for findings are discussed.
Dynamics of Momentary Perceived Self-Regulation Abilities as Novel Predictors of Overeating in Daily Life

Despite an increase of research in the realm of overeating a well-known contributor to obesity the psychological mechanisms that maintain overeating behaviors across time and context are still poorly understood. It may be that people’s perceptions of their self-regulation abilities fluctuate over time, and overeating results from momentary increases in negative mood eliciting negative perceptions of their self-efficacy and current willpower, stronger beliefs that cravings can be controlled and a greater ability to tolerate distress. The current study examined the dynamics of and momentary predictors of overeating using a 7-day EMA protocol to study unsuccessful restrained eaters (n = 94, Mage = 28.01, 83.2% female) in their natural environments. Participants (1) were randomly prompted 7 times per day to assess mood, momentary perceived self-regulation abilities, and situational context and (2) initiated an eventbased prompt when consuming food. Results indicated perceived self-regulation abilities varied across time and context, and mediated the relation between negative affect and overeating, such that lower levels of negative affect predicted severity of overeating via lower levels of perceived self-regulation abilities (e.g., perceptions of willpower, craving uncontrollability, distress tolerance). Craving uncontrollability and willpower emerged as distinct predictors of overeating severity among this sample. These findings provide important implications for the treatment of overeating, suggesting that treatments may be improved by addressing the role of fluctuations in perceived self-regulation abilities in predicting overeating. ©2019 by Kayla Dawn Skinner All Rights Reserved
The Effect of Flipped Classroom Instruction on Developing Emirati EFL Learners’ Pragmatic Competence

This study investigates the effect of flipped classroom instruction on developing Emirati EFL learners’ pragmatic competence. It compares flipped classroom instruction with the conventional method of developing learners’ request speech acts. To this end, the participants were randomly divided into two groups: experimental and control. A Discourse Completion Task (DCT) was conducted as pre- and post-test to determine whether flipped classroom instruction is more effective than the conventional method in providing learners with pragmatic knowledge needed to produce request speech acts successfully. Data were analysed using a paired sample t-test. The results showed that flipped classroom instruction was more effective than the other method in raising the level of pragmatic competence among the participants. The study results also revealed that the participants’ performance on request speech acts in the treatment group remarkably improved in the post-test. This is because they had a more flexible and accessible e-learning environment, which in turn, enhanced their pragmatic competence after the treatment. The study concludes with recommendations for further research. https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.18. 10.6
Accountable Care Organizations: Updates and Issues

Abstract The implementation of health care reform includes the development of Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). Although the precise forms these entities will ultimately take are not known, the Department of Health and Human Services has recently published final regulations that may help define the ACO construct. As ACOs are implemented, physicians of all specialties will be influenced by these new entities, their new markets, and the financial performance incentives created under these rules. However, questions and concerns remain that will need further elucidation in the future.
'Wow, it's at the University'! Experiences of people with mental illness of an educational arts programme

Abstract This study gathered the experiences and perceptions of participants of a university-based programme of free arts education for people who use mental health services, known as Converge. A total of 70 per cent of the authors have lived experience of mental health difficulties and attend Converge courses. A Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach was taken, using Photo Elicitation to facilitate interviews with relatively new Converge participants. An inductive thematic analysis of the data identified four themes: establishing community; purpose; student not patient; and accessing valued, inclusive spaces. These reflected findings in the existing literature about the mental health benefits of the arts and factors important to the process of recovery. A major finding was the clear indication that locating courses in socially valued and inclusive venues is of very high importance to participants, and that this seems to amplify benefits they experience from attending. This suggests that forming partnerships between socially valued spaces and mental health services is worth energetically pursuing.
STEM outcomes of second-generation immigrant students with high-skilled parental backgrounds

ABSTRACT This large-scale study (N=173,636) examines between-group differences in Israeli high school STEM enrolment and average grades between five groups of Israeli-born Jews. Four of them comprise second-generation immigrant students with high-skilled parents, from North America (NA), South America (SA), France, and the Former Soviet Union (FSU). The fifth group comprises non-immigrant students. The study's conceptual framework combines expanded Segmented Assimilation Theory and Bourdieu's concepts of habitus and cultural capital. NA students had the highest family educational and economic levels, while the FSU students had the highest percentage of high-skilled parents, albeit with the lowest economic background. We found that the non-immigrant students did not have an advantage in STEM enrolment in high school as compared to the second-generation immigrants. The FSU students had the highest STEM enrolment. The average STEM grades among the NA, SA, and French students were similar compared to the non-immigrant students, while the FSU students' average STEM grades were the lowest. Our findings suggest that both Segmented Assimilation Theory and Bourdieusian concepts of habitus and cultural capital should be considered to account for the educational STEM outcomes of immigrant children. These findings may inform educational policy and intervention programmes aimed at increasing high school STEM enrolment.
Cooperative leadership in hyperscanning. Brain and body synchrony during manager-employee interactions

Recent advances in neurosciences permitted to extend the knowledge about brain functioning to the organizational field with a specific interest to leadership, with the extent to explore more proficient ways of managing. In the present research, through a hyperscanning paradigm, EEG and autonomic synchrony was explored during performance reviews to investigate if different leadership styles (partecipative vs. authoritative), could be associated with different dyadic engagement. Analysis involved coherence computation assessing the strenght of inter-brain and body synchrony, which revealed the presence of a higher emotional synchronization for both neural and bodily reactions mainly for partecipative style.
Breaking the rules: Schumpeterian entrepreneurship and legal institutional change in the case of ‘Blue Laws’, 1950s-1980s

ABSTRACT How do laws change? The paper argues that under certain historical conditions ‘Schumpeterian rule-breaking’ has played a crucial role for understanding such change. If legal change is welcomed by large parts of society but the political system produces a stalemate, individual actors breaking the rules are able to change them at least in the long run. The paper explores the case study of ‘Blue Laws’ in the United States to discuss relevant factors for why these laws were abolished between the 1950s and 1980s. In contrast to established historical narratives it stresses the role of individual retailers. By doing so, the paper more generally proposes an alternative perspective to entrepreneurship and theories of institutional change. First, it departs from the concept of ‘evasive entrepreneurship’ by stressing contingent factors rather than calculative behavior on the part of entrepreneurs thus showing the possibility of legal rule-breaking being less instrumental than assumed. Second, it argues that entrepreneurial actions are an important supplement to ‘framing strategies’ and ‘collective action’ which figure prominently in the literature on institutional change.
State-of-the-art review of athletic wearable technology: What 113 strength and conditioning coaches and athletic trainers from the USA said about technology in sports

Wearables are a multi-billion-dollar business with more growth expected. Wearable technology is fully entrenched at multiple levels of athletic competition, especially at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and professional levels where these solutions are used to gain competitive advantages by assessing health and performance of elite athletes. However, through the National Science Foundation (NSF) Innovation Corps (I-Corps) training experience, a different story emerged based on pilot interviews from coaches and trainers regarding the lack of trust in wearables, and how the technology falls short of measuring what practitioners need. An NSF I-Corps project was funded to interview over 100 strength and conditioning coaches (S&CCs) and athletic trainers (ATs) regarding the current state of wearables at the NCAA and professional levels. Through 113 unstructured interviews, a conceptual map of relationships amongst themes and sub-themes regarding wearable technology emerged through the grouping of responses into meaning units (MUs). Interview findings revealed that discussions by S&CCs and ATs regarding wearables could be grouped into themes tied to (a) the organizational environment, (b) the athlete, and (c) the analyst or data scientist. Through this project, key findings and lessons learned were aggregated into sub-themes including: the sports ecosystem and organizational structure, brand development, recruiting, compliance and gamification of athletes, baselining movement and injury mitigation, internal and external loads, “return tos,” and quantifying performance. These findings can be used by practitioners to understand general technology practices and where to close the gap between what is available versus what is needed.
Senior Meets Junior Digital Natives: TESLians Integrating Technology in their Teaching Practice

The younger generations of students called Digital Natives learn via technology. The Malaysia Education Blueprint 2013-2025 has taken the initiatives to implement Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in learning in bid to cater to their learning styles. However, the implementation has not been smooth-sailing as most teachers have not been integrating ICT in their lessons seamlessly. Goldberg’s (1981) Big Five Model of Personality can explain various usage of ICT based on their respective trait but TESL (Teaching English as Second Language) undergraduates in the Malaysian context had not been studied before. The researcher purposively selected 72 TESL undergraduates from the Faculty of Educational Studies in a public university in Malaysia for the study using a questionnaire and semi-structured interview. The findings reported high levels of ICT integration and motivation in integrating it. Next, they scored the highest in Openness to experience towards ICT integration in L2 teaching while low in Neuroticism. There was also a statistically significant, moderate, positive relationship between their level of motivation, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion and Openness traits and their ICT integration in L2 teaching. These findings present vital implications for TESL program and course coordinators to facilitate their pre-service teachers to leverage ICT in their teaching practice.