scholarly journals Multidimensional research on university engagement using a mixed method approach

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Helena Benito Mundet ◽  
Esther Llop Escorihuela ◽  
Marta Verdaguer Planas ◽  
Joaquim Comas Matas ◽  
Ariadna Lleonart Sitjar ◽  
...  

The commitment or academic implication (engagement) of universitystudents has become a fundamental element for their welfare and academicperformance and, furthermore, it is also related to their professional futureand social commitment. For this reason, the definition of the concept and theprovision of assessment strategies and tools are essential to know the learningexperiences that lead to enhancing the academic involvement of the students.To develop our research, we have used a mixed quantitative and qualitativemethodology: exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis on the one hand,and discussion groups using the nominal groups technique on the other hand.We have set three different objectives: first, to delve into the multidimensionalmodel of the construct; second, to validate a questionnaire that allows forevaluation of the students’ perception of the learning methodologies used inthe classroom; and third, to check the manageability of the nominal groupsas a qualitative method of analysis. The results demonstrate that our newproposal provides a statistically valid instrument aimed at determining theperceptions of own engagement and an effective, efficient and motivatingqualitative method for students. However, regarding the multidimensionalityof the construct, contrary to the more accepted theoretical point of view thatconsiders three dimensions of engagement (behaviour, cognition and emotion),our results only reveal two dimensions (cognitive-emotional and behavioural).In the discussion and comments section we give possible explanations for thiscontradiction.

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-122
Author(s):  
Aleksandar Bulajić ◽  
Miomir Despotović ◽  
Thomas Lachmann

Abstract. The article discusses the emergence of a functional literacy construct and the rediscovery of illiteracy in industrialized countries during the second half of the 20th century. It offers a short explanation of how the construct evolved over time. In addition, it explores how functional (il)literacy is conceived differently by research discourses of cognitive and neural studies, on the one hand, and by prescriptive and normative international policy documents and adult education, on the other hand. Furthermore, it analyses how literacy skills surveys such as the Level One Study (leo.) or the PIAAC may help to bridge the gap between cognitive and more practical and educational approaches to literacy, the goal being to place the functional illiteracy (FI) construct within its existing scale levels. It also sheds more light on the way in which FI can be perceived in terms of different cognitive processes and underlying components of reading. By building on the previous work of other authors and previous definitions, the article brings together different views of FI and offers a perspective for a needed operational definition of the concept, which would be an appropriate reference point for future educational, political, and scientific utilization.


2016 ◽  
Vol 371 (1686) ◽  
pp. 20150070 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heidi Keller

The definition of self and others can be regarded as embodying the two dimensions of autonomy and relatedness. Autonomy and relatedness are two basic human needs and cultural constructs at the same time. This implies that they may be differently defined yet remain equally important. The respective understanding of autonomy and relatedness is socialized during the everyday experiences of daily life routines from birth on. In this paper, two developmental pathways are portrayed that emphasize different conceptions of autonomy and relatedness that are adaptive in two different environmental contexts with very different affordances and constraints. Western middle-class children are socialized towards psychological autonomy, i.e. the primacy of own intentions, wishes, individual preferences and emotions affording a definition of relatedness as psychological negotiable construct. Non-Western subsistence farmer children are socialized towards hierarchical relatedness, i.e. positioning oneself into the hierarchical structure of a communal system affording a definition of autonomy as action oriented, based on responsibility and obligations. Infancy can be regarded as a cultural lens through which to study the different socialization agendas. Parenting strategies that aim at supporting these different socialization goals in German and Euro-American parents on the one hand and Nso farmers from North Western Cameroon on the other hand are described. It is concluded that different pathways need to be considered in order to understand human psychology from a global perspective.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Audrey Krings ◽  
Alexandre Heeren ◽  
Philippe Fontaine ◽  
Sylvie Blairy

Introduction: According to cognitive models of depression, selective attentional biases (ABs) for mood-congruent information are core vulnerability factors of depression maintenance. However, findings concerning the presence of these biases in depression are mixed. This study aims to clarify the presence of these ABs among individuals with clinical and subclinical depression. Method: We compared three groups based on a semi-structured diagnostic interview and a depressive symptoms scale (BDI-II): 34 individuals with major depressive disorder (clinically depressed); 35 with a dysphoric mood but without the criteria of major depressive disorder (i.e., subclinically depressed), and 26 never been depressed individuals. We examined AB for sad and happy materials in three modified versions of the exogenous cueing task using scenes, facial expressions, and words. Brooding, anhedonia, and anxiety were also evaluated. Results: In contrast to our hypotheses, there were no ABs for negative or positive information, regardless of the task and the groups. Neither the association between AB toward negative information and brooding nor the one between AB away from positive stimuli and anhedonia was significant. Bayes factors analyses revealed that the present pattern of findings does not result from a lack of statistical power.Discussion: Our results raise questions about how common AB is in depression. From a theoretical point of view, because individuals with depression did not exhibit AB, our results also seemingly challenge the claim that AB figures prominently in the maintenance of depression. We believe the present null results to be particularly useful for future meta-research in the field.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis Philipp

<p>A height definition in terms of geopotential numbers offers a variety of advantages. Moreover, from the theoretical point of view, such a definition is considered more fundamental. </p><p>We know, however, that relativistic gravity (here General Relativity) requires to reformulate the basic geodetic notions and to develop a consistent theoretical framework, relativistic geodesy, to yield an undoubtedly correct interpretation of measurement results.</p><p>The new framework of chronometric geodesy that builds on the comparison of clocks offers fundamental insight into the spacetime geometry if a solid theoretical formulation of observables is underlying modern high-precision measurements. Here we approach a genuine relativistic definition of the concept of height. Based on the relativistic generalization of geopotential numbers, a definition of chronometric height is suggested, which reduces to the well-known notions in the weak-field limit.</p>


2019 ◽  
Vol 91 ◽  
pp. 08071 ◽  
Author(s):  
Uliana Filatova ◽  
Nina Semeryanova ◽  
Svetlana Suslova ◽  
Alena Gabudina ◽  
Anna Kopytova

The article discusses the main issues of definition of social entrepreneurship, both from economic and legal point of view. Since Russian legislature is only at the beginning of the way to create legal framework for activities, legislation on social entrepreneurship seems fragmentary and inconsistent. All of that adversely affects development of social entrepreneurship. Official city statistics (Nizhnevartovsk) show that less than a third of all entrepreneurs are interested in this type of activity; entrepreneurs who already have business in the field of social entrepreneurship mostly do not plan to expand current activities in this area. Analysis can contribute to creation of developed socio-economic relations in Russia. It can be achieved by building effective relations between social entrepreneurs and beneficiaries on the one hand, and also between social entrepreneurs and the state on the other.


Geophysics ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 83 (2) ◽  
pp. U9-U22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jide Nosakare Ogunbo ◽  
Guy Marquis ◽  
Jie Zhang ◽  
Weizhong Wang

Geophysical joint inversion requires the setting of a few parameters for optimum performance of the process. However, there are yet no known detailed procedures for selecting the various parameters for performing the joint inversion. Previous works on the joint inversion of electromagnetic (EM) and seismic data have reported parameter applications for data sets acquired from the same dimensional geometry (either in two dimensions or three dimensions) and few on variant geometry. But none has discussed the parameter selections for the joint inversion of methods from variant geometry (for example, a 2D seismic travel and pseudo-2D frequency-domain EM data). With the advantage of affordable computational cost and the sufficient approximation of a 1D EM model in a horizontally layered sedimentary environment, we are able to set optimum joint inversion parameters to perform structurally constrained joint 2D seismic traveltime and pseudo-2D EM data for hydrocarbon exploration. From the synthetic experiments, even in the presence of noise, we are able to prescribe the rules for optimum parameter setting for the joint inversion, including the choice of initial model and the cross-gradient weighting. We apply these rules on field data to reconstruct a more reliable subsurface velocity model than the one obtained by the traveltime inversions alone. We expect that this approach will be useful for performing joint inversion of the seismic traveltime and frequency-domain EM data for the production of hydrocarbon.


2012 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimi Akita,

AbstractThis article presents empirical evidence of the high referential specificity of sound-symbolic words, based on a FrameNet-aided analysis of collocational data of Japanese mimetics. The definition of mimetics, particularly their semantic definition, has been crosslinguistically the most challenging problem in the literature, and different researchers have used different adjectives (most notably, “vivid,” since Doke 1935) to describe their semantic peculiarity. The present study approaches this longstanding issue from a frame-semantic point of view combined with a quantitative method. It was found that mimetic manner adverbials generally form a frame-semantically restricted range of verbal/nominal collocations than non-mimetic ones. Each mimetic can thus be considered to evoke a highly specific frame, which elaborates the general frame evoked by its typical host predicate and contains a highly limited set of frame elements, which correlate and constrain one another. This conclusion serves as a unified account of previously reported phenomena concerning mimetics, including the lack of hyponymy, the one-mimetic-per-clause restriction, and unparaphrasability. This study can be also viewed as a methodological proposal for the measurement of frame specificity, which supplements bottom-up linguistic tests.


2016 ◽  
Vol 38 (6) ◽  
pp. 590-597 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Furley ◽  
Geoffrey Schweizer

The goal of the present paper was to investigate whether soccer referees’ nonverbal behavior (NVB) differed based on the difficulty of their decisions and whether perceivers could detect these systematic variations. On the one hand, communicating confidence via NVB is emphasized in referee training. On the other hand, it seems feasible from a theoretical point of view that particularly following relatively difficult decisions referees have problems controlling their NVB. We conducted three experiments to investigate this question. Experiment 1 (N = 40) and Experiment 2 (N = 60) provided evidence that perceivers regard referees’ NVB as less confident following ambiguous decisions as compared with following unambiguous decisions. Experiment 3 (N = 58) suggested that perceivers were more likely to debate with the referee when referees nonverbally communicated less confidence. We discuss consequences for referee training.


2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 527-546
Author(s):  
Olga V Pankova

The article reveals the essential characteristics of justice as a specific type of state activity; identifies the main features of justice that distinguish it, on the one hand, from other types of state activity, and on the other - from other types of judicial activity. The purpose of this article is to identify and analyze the features of justice in its modern sense. The versatility of this legal category as an ambivalent definition is reflected in its various characteristics, through the consideration of which the most general definition of justice is formulated in the work. The methodological basis of the article is the modern achievements of the theory of knowledge. In the course of research theoretical, General philosophical (dialectics, system method, analysis, synthesis, deduction), traditional legal methods (formal-logical) were applied. Turning to the question of the characteristics of justice, the author touches upon the problem of its broad and narrow understanding due to the increasing role of mediation, conciliation and arbitration as alternative forms of resolution of legal conflicts, as well as in connection with the empowerment of certain state bodies of jurisdictional powers, and concludes that, unlike a number of foreign countries, justice in Russia can be carried out only by state courts. Of considerable interest is also the study of the subject area of justice, which is related to the situation of legal conflict. In this context, the author's analysis of the concept of "legal conflict" and his proposed differentiation of such conflicts into types with subsequent consideration of each of them is quite legitimate. In the context of the formation of the new Russian statehood, the arbitration sign of justice acquired a different sound, which is considered in the work from the standpoint of the special jurisdictional procedural activity of the court and the situational nature of justice. Since the beginning of the modern judicial reform, objective changes in the activities of the courts associated with the emergence of simplified and writ proceedings that have simplified the procedure for the consideration and resolution of certain categories of administrative and civil cases, as well as the allocation of jurisdictional powers to other state bodies that are not part of the judiciary, but use quasi-judicial procedures, i.e. almost judicial procedures as close as possible to them, have significantly changed the attitude to the procedural form of justice, which has lost its former importance. In this regard, the author substantiates the point of view that nowadays in order to determine the qualitative nature of the jurisdictional bodies, it is necessary to identify, in particular, the distinctive features in each of the procedural forms. Revealing in more detail the content of methods and means of justice, the author touches upon the problem of correlation of this legal category with justice and on the basis of the analysis of different points of view comes to the conclusion that these concepts can not be considered as legal phenomena that coincide in whole or in part. Justice is rather an intrinsic property of justice, contributing to its perception as a social and legal value. As one of the most important signs of justice in the work is considered the state-power nature and reliability of judicial decisions, the execution of which involves the suppression of the will (freedom) or material deprivation of one of the parties with the use in certain cases of power and force of the state. In this regard, some attention is paid to the characterization of the binding nature of the judgment as one of its essential properties. Examining justice as categories which help to reveal the contents and legal merits of this form of state activity, in the definition of the given concept into a single, unified definition.


Author(s):  
E.A. Zhdanova

The article is devoted to the analysis of semantic features that are noted in the verb жить in Russian dialects of Udmurtia. As the analysis of the material of the corpus of Russian dialects of Udmurtia showed, this verb is found in contexts indicating values different from those known in the literary language. In connection with the need to clarify the layout of the corpus and create a dictionary of Russian dialects in Udmurtia, a definition of the semantics of this verb is required. The semantic features of a dialect word can be established both by linguistic factors: the syntactic role and lexical compatibility, as well as extralinguistic factors: the range of specific uses of the verb, historical information about the settlement of this territory, religious and ideological features of dialect speakers. For analysis, material from various lexicographic sources, as well as etymological information, was used. As a result of the study, an idea about the possibility of double interpretation of the semantics of the analyzed dialect word was formed: on the one hand, from the point of view of its implementation in dialect, as a syncretic unit, on the other hand, from the point of view of its lexicographic representation, as a set of lexical-semantic variants.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document