Narrow Results

We studied the attitudes and personal experiences with traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) use in Chinese medical students. Medical students at the Chinese University of Hong Kong were asked 13 questions according to an anonymous survey. Six hundred and eleven of 780 medical students (47% males, 52% females) returned the questionnaire; 199 (33%) of the participants used TCM at least once in the past year, and 85% had ever tried various TCM. The attitude was positive in 41%, neutral in 52% and negative in only 6%. The majority (70%) reported no change in attitudes towards TCM after studying Western medicine (WM). Of the 199 participants who had used TCM in the past year, upper respiratory infections were the most common circumstance leading to TCM usage, with 31% immediately using TCM without any TCM practitioner consultation. The most common modality of TCM used by 85% of participants was herbal decoction, and nearly one-quarter had used over-the-counter Chinese medicine. Although 78% reported they knew of the TCM practitioner or treatment from family members or friends, 14% stated they randomly selected the practitioner. "Effectiveness of TCM," "fewer side effects than WM," "illness not completely treated by WM" and "recommendation from family/friends" were common beliefs held by participants for TCM usage. Forty-five percent reported that they had not been told of any side effects of TCM. Pre-clinical students had more positive attitudes towards TCM and consulted TCM practitioners more often in the past 12 months (OR 9.1, CI 3.16–28.18; p<0.001) compared to students in clinical years, who tended to become more negative towards TCM after studying WM. TCM usage is common among medical students in Hong Kong. It is important to note that nearly half of the students were not aware of any possible side effects from TCM. Students appear to become more negative towards TCM after studying WM.

In this paper, a mental attribute called attitude is introduced and its importance in agent problem solving is discussed. It presents the various properties of agents describing how the attitudes of the agents affect the behavior of the agents. The paper also discusses how the attitudes could be described computationally in terms of various attributes. This paper formalizes the team as a collective abstract attitude of participating agents. This concept especially has been very useful in formalising the behaviour of complex teams. The team model grounds the team attitude as the individual attitude of its member agents, which in turn is further divided into the attitudes and behaviours towards the various team attributes. In this paper a team problem solving methodology is also presented, which has the notion attitude and team cycle as its core to allow robust and coherent team behavior. It also shows how these various attitudes ultimately result into various team behaviors in a fire world. The application and implementation of this methodology to a virtual fire-fighting domain has revealed a promising prospect in developing problem solving team agents.

This study examined various demographic characteristics, the attitudes toward partner abuse, and the relationship between the attitudes toward partner abuse and the incidence of partner abuse among first generation Korean-Americans. The study employed a correlational explanatory design using a cross-sectional survey technique utilising a total of 223 Korean immigrant adults currently residing in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA. A three-part instrument was used for data collection. The use of domestic violence among Korean immigrants was highly prevalent. Korean-Americans generally did not approve the use of interpersonal violence against spouses/partners. The relationship between the attitudes toward partner abuse and the incidence of partner abuse as perpetrator was significantly correlated.

Sophisticated models of human social behavior are fast becoming highly desirable in an increasingly complex and interrelated world. Here, we propose that rather than taking established theories from the physical sciences and naively mapping them into the social world, the advanced concepts and theories of social psychology should be taken as a starting point, and used to develop a new modeling methodology. In order to illustrate how such an approach might be carried out, we attempt to model the low elaboration attitude changes of a society of agents in an evolving social context. We propose a geometric model of an agent in context, where individual agent attitudes are seen to self-organize to form ideologies, which then serve to guide further agent-based attitude changes. A computational implementation of the model is shown to exhibit a number of interesting phenomena, including a tendency for a measure of the entropy in the system to decrease, and a potential for externally guiding a population of agents toward a new desired ideology.

Energy efficiency is an important element of Europe's Climate and Energy scheme to meet the target of a 20% reduction in energy demand by 2020. To achieve this goal, it is essential to transform to low-carbon economy and much of required transformations take place at the local and regional level, while regional authorities have the tools to influence and encourage this process.

The paper presents the results of a survey relating to the energy efficiency projects conducted among councilors at the regional level. The paper investigates local councilors' attitudes about the impact of energy efficiency projects, prerequisites for successful implementation of energy efficiency projects and preconditions for efficient public procurement in the field of energy efficiency. Survey results could provide some useful insights for policy recommendations in the field of energy efficiency.

The recognition that unsafe behavior is a factor in the majority of workplace accidents has led to considerable research effort in the behavioral aspects of occupational health and safety (OHS). Much of this research has focused on the effect of external stimuli, such as feedback and rewards, on workers' actions. The role of internal cues, such as workers' beliefs and attitudes towards OHS, on their actual behavior has been less thoroughly investigated. This paper presents the findings of a study in which a sample of Australian construction workers' attitudes towards OHS were explored in indepth interviews and their OHS behavior was directly observed. Measurements were taken before and after the workers attended a first aid training course. The results of the study suggest that the first aid training changed the workers' attitudes towards OHS. In particular, the first aid training appeared to make participants more aware that their own behavior is an important factor in the avoidance of occupational injury and increase participants' perceived probability that they would suffer an accident at work. The training also appeared to reduce participants' willingness to accept prevailing levels of OHS risk and participants' expressed a greater concern about taking risks and a stronger intention to avoid occupational injuries after undergoing first aid training. This change in behavioral intention was reflected in improvements in safety behavior observed in the categories of housekeeping, use of tools, personal protective equipment and access to heights. However, no improvements in manual handling were observed. The results of the study are presented and discussed in terms of Ajzen's theory of planned behavior.

This paper studies the electricity consumers attitudes, knowledge and behaviour towards the use of energy saving bulbs in Warri, Nigeria using the survey method. The survey randomly selected 400 respondents for the study, and information on their energy consumption and willingness to use energy saving bulbs were solicited using a well structured questionnaire. Results indicate a large majority (77%) of respondents agree that they do not practice any energy saving behaviour in their homes whilst 23% agreed that they practice energy saving in their homes. With respect to their willingness to use energy saving bulbs, 51% of the respondents are extremely willing to consume the product, and 49% were extremely unwilling to use energy saving bulbs. If energy saving bulbs costs consumers 10% more than candescent bulbs, 91% of respondents indicated they are extremely unwilling to consume it, while 53% were willing to consume same. Thus, it appears that respondents will respond to a price differential between energy saving bulbs and non-energy saving bulbs. The findings of this paper spells out the implications for governmental policy and action.

Background: Fertility physicians are gatekeepers of assisted reproductive technology (ART) and have immediate control over access to fertility care. However, little is understood about their attitudes and willingness to provide and support different procedures. Therefore, we examined fertility physicians’ perspectives on support of public funding and willingness to provide care in various scenarios.

Methods: We invited fertility physicians attending the 8th Congress of the Asia Pacific Initiative on Reproduction (ASPIRE 2018) to participate in a 10-minute survey. Participants completed the survey anonymously and in private.

Results: 78 out of 105 fertility physicians from 12 countries completed the survey (response rate = 74.3%). Mean age was 44.9 years (SD = 11.1). A majority of respondents supported public funding for ART: 76.3% for intrauterine insemination and 80.5% for in vitro fertilization. For controversial procedures, a majority agreed to provide social egg freezing (88.5%) compared to sex selection (25.6%) and gene editing for nonmedical reasons (19.2%), p < 0.001 for both comparisons. Support for public funding was also significantly higher for social egg freezing (51.3%) compared to sex selection (23.1%) and gene editing for nonmedical reasons (20.5%), p < 0.001 for both comparisons. For eligibility criteria, willingness to provide treatment to single women (50.0%) was significantly higher compared to other nontraditional family structures — single men (33.3%), p < 0.001, male homosexual couples (33.3%), p = 0.002, female homosexual couples (32.1%), p = 0.001 and unmarried heterosexual couples (32.1%), p = 0.004. Consistently, support for public finding was significantly higher for single women (32.1%) compared to single men (23.1%), p = 0.013, male homosexual couples (20.5%), p = 0.020, and unmarried heterosexual couples (20.5%), p = 0.006.

Conclusions: These results show support for public funding and conservative opinions toward ART for nontraditional family structures among physicians in the Asia-Pacific region.

The similarity-attraction link has received largely consistent support across decades, with prior research on organizational leadership demonstrating how similarity positively influences employees' appraisals of their supervisors and facilitates leader-member exchanges (LMX). However, little research has applied this similarity-attraction link in understanding how similarity impacts perceptions of student leaders within a college context, where student body elections are common practice. Drawing on Construal Level Theory (CLT), this research explored how attitude similarity influenced undergraduates' likeability and mental representations of their student leaders. 124 undergraduates were presented with a hypothetical student leader who held either similar or dissimilar attitudes from them on a number of pertinent school issues. Additionally, information about the leader was framed either in terms of general character traits (high-level construal condition), or contextualized behaviours (low-level construal condition). Participants then completed a Leader Evaluation Scale (LES), which was an overall measure of likeability towards the leader. While analyses revealed significant effects of attitude similarity and construal level on likeability of student leaders, CLT was unsupported in this context. Results obtained support previous research conducted in this direction, and reinforce the integral role of attitude similarity in promoting positive first impressions towards student leaders in college.