The purpose of this study was to identify how older Korean people seek information and their desire to participate in decision making about their health care. A total of 165 elderly people living in Seoul, South Korea, participated in the study. Data were collected during individual interviews using the Autonomy Preference Index. The mean information-seeking score was high. The mean score for their desire to participate with a physician in decision making was lower, but this was higher when family members (...) were involved. The study indicates that many older people want to receive information about their health care. Families (or guardians), as well as older people themselves, should be included in the decision-making process. Nurses can encourage older people to express their wishes, while treating each individual with respect. (shrink)

CONTINUOUS MODEL THEORY CHAPTER I TOPOLOGICAL PRELIMINARIES. Notation Throughout the monograph our mathematical notation does not differ drastically from ...

This study proposed and examined a conceptual framework on the influence of real estate brokers’ personalities, psychological empowerment, social capital, and knowledge sharing on their innovation performance, and used moral hazard as a moderating variable. We used structural equation modeling for data analysis and estimation. The participants were real estate brokers in Kaohsiung City. A total of 1,000 questionnaires were administered to 100 branch offices of real estate companies, 571 of which were later recovered from 80 branch offices. After removing (...) 52 for being invalid, we were left with 519 valid questionnaires, indicating a 51.9% recovery rate. The empirical results suggest that the real estate brokers’ personalities and psychological empowerment positively and significantly influence social capital; personality and psychological empowerment also positively and significantly influence their innovation performance; and social capital significantly influences knowledge sharing, which in turn positively and significantly influences the brokers’ innovation performance. In environments with higher levels of moral hazard, the influence of social capital on the brokers’ knowledge sharing is significantly diminished. (shrink)

Background: Healthcare workers in the front line of diagnosis, treatment, and care of patients with coronavirus disease 2019 are at great risk of both infection and developing mental health symptoms. This study aimed to investigate the following: whether healthcare workers in general hospitals experience higher mental distress than those in psychiatric hospitals; the role played by religion and alexithymic trait in influencing the mental health condition and perceived level of happiness of healthcare workers amidst the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic; (...) and factors that influence the resilience of healthcare workers at 6 weeks' follow-up.Methods: Four-hundred and fifty-eight healthcare workers were recruited from general and psychiatric hospitals, and 419 were followed-up after 6 weeks. All participants filled out the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale, five-item Brief-Symptom Rating Scale, and the Chinese Oxford Happiness Questionnaire.Results: Under the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic, 12.3% of frontline healthcare workers in general hospitals reported having mental distress and perceived lower social adaptation status compared with those working in psychiatric hospitals. Christians/Catholics perceived better psychological well-being, and Buddhists/Taoists were less likely to experience mental distress. The results at 6 weeks of follow-up showed that the perceived lower social adaptation status of general hospital healthcare workers was temporary and improved with time. Christian/Catholic religion and time had independent positive effects on psychological well-being; however, the interaction of Christian/Catholic religion and time had a negative effect.Conclusions: Collectivism and individualism in the cultural context are discussed with regard to alexithymic trait and Buddhist/Taoist and Christian/Catholic religious faiths. Early identification of mental distress and interventions should be implemented to ensure a healthy and robust clinical workforce for the treatment and control of the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

Given the current popularization of computer programming and the trends of informatization and digitization, colleges have actively responded by making programming lessons compulsory for students of all disciplines. However, students from different ethnic groups often have different learning responses to such lessons due to their respective cultural backgrounds, the environment in which they grew up, and their consideration for future employment. In this study, an AI-assisted programming module was developed and used to compare the differences between multi-ethnic college students in (...) terms of their theoretical and actual learning expectancy, motivation, and effectiveness. The module conducted analysis through the deep learning network and examined the relevant processes that the students underwent during programming lessons, as well as the types of errors they had committed. Their learning motivation for and actual learning performance in programming were then examined based on the cognitive learning theory. The results of the experiment, which involved 96 multi-ethnic college students, indicated that the two groups had dissimilar theoretical performance in terms of their expectancy and motivation for learning programming. The indigenous students’ main concern was whether programming would affect their families or tribes, and this concern affected and was reflected in their learning outcomes. In contrast, the learning motivation and goals of Han Chinese students were driven by the cognition of the value of programming to themselves. The research findings can contribute toward the cognition and understanding of multi-ethnic students when learning computer programming and development of the appropriate teaching methods, and serve as a reference for subsequent research on integrating multiculturalism into computer programming lessons. (shrink)

In this article, we examine the effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on firms' financial performance (CSR-effect). Two competing hypotheses, social impact hypothesis and shift of focus hypothesis, are proposed to investigate this issue, where the former suggests that CSR has a positive relation with performance and the latter are opposite. In order to ensure the CSR-effect is not contaminated by other faeton or samples are randomly drawn, we employ four matching methods, Nearest, Caliper, Mahala and Mahala Caliper to match (...) the samples of CSR (CSR-firms) and without CSR (NonCSR-firms) with similar characteristics. Although four methods yield slightly different results, firms engaging in CSR activities tend to obtain significantly higher values on pretax income to net sales and profit margin, and adopting CSR at the very least not deteriorate the performance of firms, making our con clusion favors the social impact hypothesis and against shift of focus hypothesis in Taiwan. Thus, ambition and conscience are not conflicting with each other. (shrink)

I am a worker. Not long ago I began to study Marxism-Leninism and Chairman Mao's works. In order to meet my needs in study and to follow lectures, I read several articles carried in Philosophical Research. I think I have been somewhat enlightened with regard to philosophy. Several articles on the identity between thinking and existence were carried in the latest issues of this journal. Issues Nos. 4 and 5 carried Comrade Chiang Li-ch'ün's article "Is There Identity Between Erroneous Thinking (...) and Existence?" After reading this article, I remembered many past events in work and production activity and then formed my views on this subject. Now I place my views before my comrades. As my cultural level is low, my views may be erroneous. I hope that they will spare no criticism of my views. In the following paragraphs I will take issue with Comrade Chiang Li-ch'ün primarily on the question of whether there is identity between erroneous thinking and existence. (shrink)

The relationship between gender and ethics has been extensively researched. However, previous studies have assumed that the gender–ethics association is constant; hence, scholars have seldom investigated factors potentially affecting the gender–ethics association. Thus, using managers as the research target, this study examined the relationship between gender and ethics and analyzed the moderating effect of cultural values on the gender–ethics association. The results showed that, compared with female managers, their male counterparts are more willing to justify business-related unethical behaviors such as (...) bribery and tax evasion, and that the gender difference in ethics becomes more pronounced under the cultural dimensions of collectivism, humane orientation, performance orientation, and gender egalitarianism. This study used data obtained through surveying 2,754 managers in 27 nations. (shrink)

In this study, we used the framework of institutional anomie theory The future of anomie theory, Northeastern University Press, Boston, 1997) to examine the relationship between supervisors’ ethics and their personal value orientation, including achievement and pecuniary materialism. We further investigated whether these individual-level associations were moderated by societal factors consisting of income inequality, government efficiency, foreign competition, and technological advancement. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to analyze data of 16,464 supervisors from 42 nations obtained from the 2010–2014 wave of (...) the World Values Survey. Results showed that strong achievement value orientation was positively related to willingness to justify ethically suspect behaviors; government efficiency and technological advancement, respectively, had negative and positive moderating effects on this relationship. On the other hand, foreign competition had a positive moderating effect on the association between pecuniary materialism and ethicality. (shrink)

Background and aimDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, an Internet-Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program was delivered and may be better than an in-person approach. Our study evaluated the effects of iMBSR intervention on mental health, self-efficacy, and body image in women with breast cancer in Taiwan.Materials and methodsSixty-seven women with breast cancer were allocated to a 6-week iMBSR program or a waitlist control group, without heterogeneity between group characteristics. Patients from both groups were measured at baseline and postintervention using three scales: Depression, Anxiety, (...) and Stress Scale, General self-efficacy scale, and Body Image Scale. Descriptive dataset analysis, paired t-test, and Student’s t-test were used to evaluate the data.ResultsAlthough iMBSR did not significantly improve depression and stress between groups, iMBSR could improve anxiety with medium effect sizes. Significant benefits were found for body image and self-efficacy, with large effect sizes.ConclusionOur preliminary study supports iMBSR as a program that can improve mental health, body image, and self-efficacy in women with breast cancer. During the COVID-19 pandemic, medical professionals can use Internet-based clinical health education. (shrink)

While the traditional economic wisdom believes that an individual will become better off by being given a larger opportunity set to choose from, in this paper we question this belief and build a formal theoretical model that introduces decision costs into the rational decision process. We show, under some reasonable conditions, that a larger feasible set may actually lower an individual’s level of satisfaction. This provides a solid economic underpinning for the Simon prediction.