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Knowledge Items (knowledge + item)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	50%

Selected Abstracts

Similarities and Differences Between African Americans' and European Americans' Attitudes, Knowledge, and Willingness to Communicate About Organ Donation,

JOURNAL OF APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 4 2003
Susan E. Morgan
While little is known about African Americans' attitudes and knowledge about organ donation, even less is known about how African Americans' attitudes, values, and beliefs affect their behavior and behavioral intentions regarding organ donation; or how African Americans' views are similar to or different from those of European Americans. Adults working 2 sites of a national corporation were randomly selected to complete a survey about organ donation willingness, intention to sign an organ donor card, knowledge and attitudes toward organ donation, and level of altruism. Results indicate that African Americans differ significantly from Whites on several individual attitude and knowledge items. However, the basic relationship between knowledge, attitudes, values, and behaviors regarding organ donation between the 2 groups appears the same. Furthermore, these results indicate that future organ donation promotion campaigns must focus on increasing basic knowledge and countering myths about organ donation for both populations. [source]

Elucidation and decisional risk in a multi-criteria decision based on a Choquet integral aggregation,a cybernetic framework

JOURNAL OF MULTI CRITERIA DECISION ANALYSIS, Issue 5-6 2005
J. Montmain
Abstract The authors are developing multi-criteria Decision-making support systems (DMSS) for project teams in charge of selecting a technical solution among alternatives. They propose a cybernetic framework to emphasize the link between decision-making (DM) and knowledge management processes in such projects. These DMSSs rely on the tracking of the accompanying knowledge production of long-term decisional processes by a collective with many actors. Based on knowledge-production management, this paper explains how to design decisional risk evaluation, monitoring and control aids and traceability functions for strategic choices and logical argumentation. The DMSS is seen as a recommender system for the project manager. Each possible solution involved in the decision-making process (DMP) is evaluated by means of a set of criteria. The evaluation results from an interpretation of the knowledge items in terms of satisfaction scores of the solutions according to the considered criteria. Aggregating these partial scores provides a ranking of all the possible solutions by order of preference. As criteria are sometimes interacting, the aggregation has to be based on adapted operators, i.e. Choquet integrals. Evaluating possible solutions by the knowledge contained in the knowledge base (KB) opens the way to automating the argumentation of the project team's decisions: the argumentation principle underlying this approach is based naturally on coupling a knowledge dynamical management system (KDMS) with the DMSS. The DMSS also evaluates the decisional risk that reflects the eventuality of a wrong selection due to the insufficiency of available knowledge at a given time in order to adopt a reliable solution. Decisional risk assessment corresponds to sensitivity analyses. These analyses are then exploited to control the decisional risk in time: they enable to identify the crucial information points for which additional and deeper investigations would be of great interest to improve the stability of the selection in the future. The knowledge management of a collective project is represented as a control loop: the KDMS is the actuator, the risk accompanying the decision is the controlled variable and is strongly linked to the entropy of the KB managed by the KDMS. Each of the three phases,intelligence, design, choice,of the DMP is identified to a function of the control loop: actuator, process and regulator. This cybernetic framework for decision has its origin in knowledge management activities for a great-scale project,the EtLD project of the French Atomic Commission (CEA) that concerns the management of high-level long-life radioactive waste in France. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Psychometric evaluation of the acute coronary syndrome (ACS) response index

RESEARCH IN NURSING & HEALTH, Issue 6 2007
Barbara Riegel
Abstract Knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs of persons with ischemic heart disease are important predictors of delay in seeking treatment. We tested the psychometric profile of the Acute Coronary Syndrome (ACS) Response Index, a measure assessing patient knowledge, attitudes and beliefs about ACS symptoms and response, in 3,522 patients. On factor analysis, 21 dichotomous knowledge items loaded onto four factors (alpha .82). In a separate factor analysis, another five items loaded on two attitude factors, and seven items loaded on two belief factors (alpha .76). The scales discriminated between patients previously exposed to medical experts. Scale scores were significantly correlated but without evidence of multicolinearity. Initial tests of reliability and validity support further testing of this new instrument. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Res Nurs Health 30:584,594, 2007 [source]

The Development of Specialist Industry Knowledge in Government Auditing

AUSTRALIAN ACCOUNTING REVIEW, Issue 20 2000
ROGER SIMNETT
Government auditors play an important role in overseeing public agencies, yet there is little understanding of the types of knowledge that specialist industry auditors require in this environment and how this knowledge is acquired. This study develops a portfolio of knowledge items that various sources have suggested are important for industry-specialist auditors. It was found that the items perceived to be of greatest importance to government auditors were contained under the broad knowledge categories of "accounting", "auditing", and "entity-specific factors". Most of the specialised knowledge is acquired on the job, although some of this knowledge may be better acquired through formal training. [source]