Perceived Importance (perceived + importance)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Academic Research Training for a Nonacademic Workplace: a Case Study of Graduate Student Alumni Who Work in Conservation

CONSERVATION BIOLOGY, Issue 6 2009
MATTHEW J. MUIR
educación en conservación; formación de graduados; habilidades para el trabajo; programas universitarios Abstract:,Graduate education in conservation biology has been assailed as ineffective and inadequate to train the professionals needed to solve conservation problems. To identify how graduate education might better fit the needs of the conservation workplace, we surveyed practitioners and academics about the importance of particular skills on the job and the perceived importance of teaching those same skills in graduate school. All survey participants (n = 189) were alumni from the University of California Davis Graduate Group in Ecology and received thesis-based degrees from 1973 to 2008. Academic and practitioner respondents clearly differed in workplace skills, although there was considerably more agreement in training recommendations. On the basis of participant responses, skill sets particularly at risk of underemphasis in graduate programs are decision making and implementation of policy, whereas research skills may be overemphasized. Practitioners in different job positions, however, require a variety of skill sets, and we suggest that ever-increasing calls to broaden training to fit this multitude of jobs will lead to a trade-off in the teaching of other skills. Some skills, such as program management, may be best developed in on-the-job training or collaborative projects. We argue that the problem of graduate education in conservation will not be solved by restructuring academia alone. Conservation employers need to communicate their specific needs to educators, universities need to be more flexible with their opportunities, and students need to be better consumers of the skills offered by universities and other institutions. Resumen:,La educación en biología de la conservación a nivel licenciatura ha sido calificada como ineficaz e inadecuada para formar a los profesionales que se requieren para resolver problemas de conservación. Para identificar cómo la educación a nivel licenciatura puede satisfacer las necesidades del ámbito laboral en conservación, sondeamos a profesionales y académicos sobre la importancia de habilidades particulares del trabajo y la percepción de la importancia de esas mismas habilidades en la universidad. Todos los participantes en el sondeo (n = 189) fueron alumnos del Grupo de Graduados en Ecología de la Universidad de California en Davis y obtuvieron el grado basado en tesis entre 1973 y 2008. Los académicos y profesionales encuestados difirieron claramente en sus habilidades, aunque hubo considerablemente mayor acuerdo en las recomendaciones de capacitación. Con base en las respuestas de los participantes, los conjuntos de habilidades en riesgo de no ser consideradas en los programas educativos son la toma de decisiones y la implementación de políticas, mientras que las habilidades de investigación tienden a ser sobre enfatizadas. Sin embargo, los profesionales en diferentes puestos de trabajo requieren una variedad de conjuntos de habilidades, y sugerimos que los constantes llamados a ampliar la capacitación para responder a esta multitud de labores conducirán a un desbalance en la enseñanza de otras habilidades. Algunas habilidades, como el manejo de programas, pueden desarrollarse en proyectos colaborativos o de capacitación en el trabajo. Argumentamos que el problema de la educación en biología de la conservación a nivel licenciatura no se resolverá solo con la reestructuración de la academia. Los empleadores deben comunicar sus requerimientos específicos a los educadores, las universidades deben ser más flexibles con sus oportunidades y los estudiantes necesitan ser mejores consumidores de las habilidades ofrecidas por las universidades y otras instituciones. [source]


Deliberate induction of alcohol tolerance: empirical introduction to a novel health risk

ADDICTION, Issue 10 2010
Julia A. Martinez
ABSTRACT Aims Alcohol tolerance is a hallmark indicator of alcohol dependence. Even so, the allure of peers' admiration for having the ability to drink heavily may lead some adolescents and young adults to practice, or ,train', to increase their tolerance (particularly at US colleges, where heavy drinking is highly prevalent and central to the social culture). This is a potential health hazard that has not been documented empirically. Thus, we initiated a study of tolerance ,training' and its association to risky and heavy drinking. Design, setting and participants A cross-sectional online survey of 990 college student life-time drinkers at a large Midwestern US university. Findings Of the sample, 9.9% (n = 97) reported deliberately ,training' to increase tolerance. On average, they reported increasing from approximately seven to 10 US standard drinks in a night prior to ,training' to 12,15 drinks at the end of ,training,' over approximately 2,3 weeks' duration. Although the proportion of frequent binge drinking among ,non-trainers' (34.4%) was similar to national rates, ,trainers' were much more likely to be frequent bingers (76.3%; OR = 6.15). Conclusions A number of students report deliberately inducing alcohol tolerance, probably directly increasing the risk for alcohol poisoning and other acute harms and/or dependence. This phenomenon might additionally be applicable to other populations, and deserves further study and attention as a potential personal and public health risk. Prevention efforts might aim to reduce the perceived importance of heavy-drinking abilities. [source]


The importance of traits and group memberships

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 1 2001
David Trafimow
Anglo-Americans and Mexican-Americans were asked to list five of their traits and five of their group memberships. They were also asked to rank (relative to each other) and rate (on an absolute scale) the importance of these traits and groups. Consistent with the distinction between individualist and collectivist cultures, Mexican-Americans ranked and rated their groups as being more important than did Anglo-Americans. In addition, although participants from both cultural groups gave greatly decreased ratings for less important groups, this decrease was more pronounced for Anglo-Americans than for Mexican-Americans. Finally, the data indicated that the perceived importance of group memberships is only weakly related to their cognitive accessibility. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Impacts of health and environmental consciousness on young female consumers' attitude towards and purchase of natural beauty products

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONSUMER STUDIES, Issue 6 2009
Soyoung Kim
Abstract This study investigated young female consumers' beauty product shopping behavioural patterns, their perceived importance of product attributes, and their attitude towards and purchase of natural beauty products. This study also examines whether consumers' product attitudes and shopping behaviours are influenced by their health and environmental consciousness. Data were collected from a convenience sample of 210 female college students enrolled at a south-eastern university in the US. In order to examine the impacts of both health and environmental consciousness on other selected variables, the respondents were divided into four groups based on their scores on the two variables, and a series of analysis of variance were conducted to compare characteristics of the four groups. The results showed that health and environmental consciousness significantly influenced the importance placed on beauty product attributes. Additionally, those with a high level of both health and environmental consciousness were significantly more positive in their evaluations than those with low scores on both variables in their perceptions of natural beauty products. Those with low scores on both variables were significantly less willing than the other groups to pay more for natural beauty products. Analysis of variance results also indicated that the two groups with a high level of environmental consciousness purchased natural beauty products more frequently than those with a low level of health and environmental consciousness, indicating a relatively stronger impact of environmental consciousness than health consciousness on frequency of natural beauty product purchases. Health and environmental consciousness were both significantly related to a respondent's perceived level of knowledge of beauty products and ability to distinguish natural from conventional beauty products. [source]


Support/services among family caregivers of persons with dementia,perceived importance and services received

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GERIATRIC PSYCHIATRY, Issue 3 2010
Jenny Alwin
Abstract Objective The aim of this study was to examine what family caregivers of persons with dementia perceive as important types of support/services in relation to experienced negative impact (NI) due to the caregiver situation, and to investigate if caregivers receive the support/services perceived as important. Method The study was based on the Swedish part of the EUROFAMCARE project and included 110 caregivers of persons with dementia. Data were collected primarily through structured telephone interviews. The caregivers were divided into two groups, a higher NI group and a lower NI group, based on the NI scale from the COPE index. Results Getting information and having someone to talk to were perceived as very important types of support/services by the highest proportion of caregivers in both groups. Data indicated only one significant difference; a higher proportion of caregivers in the higher NI group reported being able to participate in activities outside of caring as very important. There was also an indication that a higher proportion of caregivers in the lower NI group perceived information about the disease as very important. Support/services perceived as important by the caregivers were received both to a high and a low degree. Conclusion The results from this study suggest that there is almost no difference between groups of caregivers experiencing higher and lower NI regarding their perception of what are important types of support/services. The caregivers rated different types of support/services within the areas of information, relief and counselling as very important. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Pharmacists' role in smoking cessation: an examination of current practice and barriers to service provision

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHARMACY PRACTICE, Issue 4 2006
David Edwards PhD student
Objective This study addressed the potential role of pharmacists in helping their patients to quit smoking by providing a summary of their self-reported levels of current activities, confidence, and readiness to change around the provision of brief advice and support for patients who smoke. In addition to investigating which barriers are perceived to be most important, this study also examined the relative importance of confidence, barriers and practice factors in relation to pharmacists' smoking cessation practices. Method A 58-item questionnaire was mailed to 720 pharmacists. The questionnaire measured demographic and background variables, level of smoking cessation activity (asking, advising, assessing, assisting and arranging including follow-up), confidence in undertaking smoking-cessation activities, readiness to change, perceived importance of barriers to providing smoking-cessation services, and further education or training in relation to smoking cessation. Setting Community pharmacists in South Australia. Key findings Respondents indicated high rates of activity in relation to assessing and assisting patients to quit smoking, with lower rates of advising and arranging including following up. Recording of smoking status was very low. Confidence emerged as the most important predictor of smoking-cessation activities, with pharmacist barriers including fear of alienating patients approaching significance. Reported levels of smoking-specific education and training were low. Conclusions South Australian pharmacists are contributing to the prevention of tobacco-related harms. With additional support there is a greater scope for involvement. Results indicate a need for a team-based, systematic and multifaceted approach to address barriers and enhance pharmacists' confidence. Further implementation research is required to assess the effectiveness of multifaceted pharmacy support programmes on the uptake and sustainability of smoking-cessation services. [source]


Perspectives of fathers and mothers of children in early intervention programmes in assessing family quality of life

JOURNAL OF INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY RESEARCH, Issue 12 2006
M. Wang
Abstract Background Family quality of life (FQOL), as a family outcome measure of early intervention and other services, has increasingly drawn attention of researchers, policymakers and service providers. Developing an index of family QOL requires a measure suitable for use with multiple family members. The purpose of this study was to test whether mothers and fathers similarly view the conceptual model of FQOL embodied in one measure. Method This study involved fathers and mothers of 107 families who have a young child (birth to five) with a disability enrolled in an early intervention programme. Data from couples completing the Beach Center FQOL measure were analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM) to determine similarities or differences between fathers and mothers with respect to their assessment of FQOL. Results The analysis of measurement invariance of the FQOL construct across the father and mother groups indicates that the Beach Center FQOL Scale measures equally the underlying FQOL construct across fathers and mothers in this sample. Fathers do not differ from mothers in perceived importance of factors related to FQOL items, nor did they differ in their overall satisfaction with FQOL. Conclusion These results suggest that fathers and mothers respond similarly to the latent constructs within the Beach Center FQOL Scale; therefore, it holds promise for use with both fathers and mothers in assessing FQOL across multiple family members. Further implications for research and practice are discussed. [source]


Shaping Self-Concept: The Elusive Importance Effect

JOURNAL OF PERSONALITY, Issue 2 2006
Lew Hardy
ABSTRACT This study examined the hypothesis that the contributions of specific domains of self-concept to global self-concept are dependent upon their perceived importance. The Self Description Questionnaire III was administered to a sample of 506 male and female participants. Analysis of the data using Marsh's original individually weighted multiple regression model confirmed previous findings of no support for the importance hypothesis. In contrast, the results from alternative individually weighted regression models provided strong support for the importance hypothesis. These alternative models utilized idiographically determined as opposed to nomothetically determined relative importance. The data also showed evidence of strong discounting for certain domains, moderate discounting for other domains, and no discounting for still others. The findings challenge previous thinking on the limited role of the importance hypothesis. [source]


Discovering EFL learners' perception of prior knowledge and its roles in reading comprehension

JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN READING, Issue 2 2002
Zheng Lin
This paper investigates EFL learners' perception of prior knowledge and its roles in reading comprehension. It is based on a survey conducted among 400 EFL students studying at secondary and tertiary levels in China. Through the analysis of the ranked multiple responses to the questions posed in the questionnaire, the paper shows that EFL students in mainland China believe that their command of English vocabulary plays a crucial role in their reading comprehension. However as their linguistic knowledge increases, they tend to attach less importance to their linguistic knowledge, especially the knowledge of English syntax and formal structures. At the same time, conceptual and sociocultural knowledge seems to gain greater importance. Furthermore, the perceived importance of linguistic knowledge seems to start diminishing around the end of secondary education, when EFL students have acquired a vocabulary of about 3000 words and the basic knowledge of English syntax and formal structures. The final replacement of linguistic knowledge by conceptual or sociocultural knowledge as the top factor that affects their reading comprehension seems to take place one year after the beginning of the tertiary EFL course. This may well be considered as an indication of the EFL threshold level for EFL students in China. [source]


Manufacturing Site Location Preferences of Small Agribusiness Firms

JOURNAL OF SMALL BUSINESS MANAGEMENT, Issue 3 2002
Kim Jensen
This study examined the perceived importance of site location characteristics identified in a 1999 survey of 198 small Tennessee agribusinesses. Responding firms ranked proximity to buyers/customers, labor, and raw materials above other factors. However, the relative importance of all factors varied by industry subsector. For example, compared to food processing firms, textile milling and lumber/wood products firms perceived community incentives as less important. Projected firm growth and current location also affected the perceived importance of site location factors. The diversity of perceived factor importance across agribusiness subsectors supports the idea that incentives and promotion of site location factors to attract small agribusiness may need to be tailored to meet specific firms' needs. [source]


Instructional Design and Powerful Learning

PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2001
Gordon Rowland
ABSTRACT Skillfully executed, instructional design can result in effective and efficient means to meet learning goals. However, more powerful learning experiences seem to go beyond effectiveness, efficiency, appeal, and even predetermined goals. This study sought to identify the key features of instructional design, to determine the nature of powerful learning experiences, and to explore how the two might relate. A survey of experts and a series of interviews with adult learners revealed overlap in some areas, for example, in the perceived importance of active engagement in authentic situations, and clear differences in others, most significantly the importance placed by learners on continual face-to-face personal interaction with a mentor/expert teacher. Speculations are offered on what similar results from additional studies might imply with regard to design actions and choices, and questions for further research are posed. [source]


When the glass is half-empty: Framing effects and evaluations of a romantic partner's attributes

PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS, Issue 3 2001
C. RAYMOND KNEE
Two studies examined how the framing of information influences evaluations of hypothetical relationships. Studies 1 (n= 183) and 2 (n= 247) examined how the framing of a hypothetical partner's attributes in gains or loss terms influences (a) impressions of the future success of the relationship and (b) the perceived importance of the partner's attributes. Generally, participants were less pessimistic about a relationship's future success when the partner's attributes were framed in gains terms than when framed in loss terms, even though the attributes were objectively identical in each case. Participants also attached significantly more importance to intelligence when it was missing among a partner's strengths than when it was present, particularly when the attribute was presented in a loss frame. This research has important implications for the integration of the decision-making and relationship cognition literatures. [source]


Perspectives on research evidence and clinical practice: a survey of Australian physiotherapists

PHYSIOTHERAPY RESEARCH INTERNATIONAL, Issue 3 2007
Karen Grimmer-Somers
Abstract Background and Purpose.,Physiotherapists' use of research evidence with clinical decision-making has interested researchers world-wide since 1980; however, little is known about such practices in Australia. The present survey sought information on Australian physiotherapists' perceptions of the importance of research, and barriers to uptake of evidence in clinical practice, when compared with an international cohort from 2001.,Method.,An Australian-relevant version of an English (UK) National Health Service (NHS) survey instrument was used to canvass 453 physiotherapists, randomly selected from the South Australian Physiotherapy Registration Board 2004,2005 records. The first survey was mailed in August 2005, a reminder was sent two weeks later to non-responders and a follow-up survey was sent in April 2006 to non-responders whose addresses had changed since 2005.,Results.,There was a 51% response rate. Of the non-responders, 12% were not contactable at their listed address, highlighting the mobility of Australian physiotherapists. Most respondents had undertaken research as students (59.5%) or as students and clinicians (11.5%). Of these, 37.1% were encouraged to embark on more research, and 20.5% were discouraged. The significant predictors of positive perceived importance of research were: previous research experience; being positive about undertaking further research; working in hospitals and holding a postgraduate degree. Clinicians working privately were significantly less likely than managers to be positive about research importance. The only significant predictor for not perceiving barriers to uptake of evidence was being positive about undertaking future research.,Conclusions.,The study identified constraints on uptake of evidence into practice that were related to accessing, reading and interpreting published research, and implementing findings. Found consistently across employment categories were barriers relating to lack of time, uncertainty about what the research reported, scepticism about the value of research and being isolated from peer support and literature sources. The responses indicated a positive shift towards evidence uptake since the 2001 NHS survey, suggesting an influence of increased exposure to information on evidence-based practice. A greater focus on research whilst training, the application of educational strategies for empowerment, better knowledge transfer and upskilling within the workplace, and ensuring dedicated time and organizational support for research activities are indicated. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Life values before versus after a breast cancer diagnosis,

RESEARCH IN NURSING & HEALTH, Issue 2 2002
Claudia Lampic
Abstract The main aim of this study was to investigate whether women's life values change with a breast cancer diagnosis. In addition, associations between life values and anxiety/depression ratings were investigated. Life value changes were prospectively studied in 517 women recalled for further examination after attending mammographic screening, 38 of whom were diagnosed with primary breast cancer. Life values were assessed by a study-specific version of a life value questionnaire, including ratings of the perceived attainment and importance of seven life value dimensions. Three months after being recalled, women diagnosed with primary breast cancer reported a reduction of the attainment and the importance of Health. In addition, these women reported changes in the perceived importance of Responsibility and Involvement. High levels of anxiety and depression in particular were associated with large discrepancies between attainment and importance for some life values. This suggests that changes in the perceived importance of some life values may constitute one part of women's psychological adaptation to a breast cancer diagnosis. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Res Nurs Health 25:89,98, 2002 [source]


Gender and agrobiodiversity: a case study from Bangladesh

THE GEOGRAPHICAL JOURNAL, Issue 3 2005
EMILY OAKLEY
Local geography and gender are two major factors determining which crop varieties are cultivated in a case study of two rural villages in Bangladesh. This paper explores the interrelationships between gender, agrobiodiversity, and the use of, and preferences for, improved and local crop varieties. These are examined in relation to rice, minor field crops, and home garden fruits and vegetables. Reasons for both the displacement and the persistence of local varieties (LVs) are analysed in comparison to improved variety (IV) diffusion. The research evaluates agrobiodiversity through the number, types, and varieties of crops grown in fields and home gardens. The desired agroecological, economic, and cultural characteristics of crops grown document how respondents rank their variety preferences. Variety preferences and the perceived importance of LV preservation are compared with what is actually grown. The study indicates that there was little variation between villages in their approach towards the use of IV and LV rice; IVs were cultivated for their high yields and LV rice for taste and culinary uses. However, there were significant differences in relative agricultural dependence between the two villages which led to unique variety preferences. In both villages, women's preferences for IVs or LVs play a major role in crop choices, particularly as they manifest themselves in gendered domains of authority. [source]