What Are the Important Factors Influencing the Recruitment and Retention of Doctoral Students in a Public Health Setting? A Discrete Choice Experiment Survey in China

Objectives: This study aims to investigate the employment preferences of doctoral students majoring in social medicine and health care management (SMHCM), to inform policymakers and future employers on how to address recruitment and retention requirements at CDCs across China. Methods: An online discrete choice experiment (DCE) was conducted to elicit doctoral SMHCM students’ job preferences. The scenarios were described with seven attributes: monthly income, employment location, housing benefits, children’s education opportunities, working environment, career promotion speed, and bianzhi. A conditional logit model and a mixed logit model were used to evaluate the relative importance of the selected attributes. Results: A total of 167 doctoral SMHCM students from 24 universities completed the online survey. All seven attributes were statistically significant with the expected sign and demonstrated the existence of preference heterogeneity. Monthly income and employment location were of most concern for doctoral SMHCM students when deciding their future jobs. Among the presented attributes, working environment was of least concern. For the sub-group analysis, employment located in a first-tier city was more likely to lead to a higher utility value for doctoral students who were women, married, from an urban area, and had a high annual family income. Unsurprisingly, when compared to single students, married students were willing to forgo more for good educational opportunities for their children. Conclusions: Our study suggests that monthly income and employment location were valued most by doctoral SMHCM students when choosing a job. A more effective human resource policy intervention to attract doctoral SMHCM students to work in CDCs, especially CDCs in third-tier cities should consider both the incentives provided by the job characteristics and the background of students. Doctoral students are at the stages of career preparation, so the results of this study would be informative for policymakers and help them to design the recruitment and retention policies for CDCs.

The study of employment location and transportation accessibility in the Huntsville Metropolitan area

The main purpose of a transportation system is to connect people to their communities and specifically to connect employees to jobs. The Huntsville Metropolitan region’s transportation system is without a doubt almost exclusively automobile dependent due to the limited availability of public transportation along with the Regions’ 2000 and 2010 Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPOs). Journey to work report. In an automobile dependent region, the level of car ownership is crucial in determining accessibility as well as the ability to utilize employment opportunities. Increased job decentralization and suburban employment throughout various metropolitan areas across the United States decreases the level of employment accessibility resulting in the need for efficient accessibility to the existing transportation system and employment opportunities. Employment accessibility is an issue of great concern in urban areas across the United States significantly in major metropolitans, which is evident based on the continued study, evaluation, analysis, and scrutiny by numerous scholars. In evaluating employment accessibility, the concept of automobile dependency is a relevant factor for the presence of spatial and/or modal mismatch. The purpose of this paper therefore is to examine the relationship between transportation accessibility and employment location in the metropolitan area of Huntsville, Alabama. In doing this the author examines the attributes of residential location, car ownership, house value and other demographic factors of the Huntsville, Metropolitan region to answer the research question of “what, if any is the relationship between these attributes and factors?” Data was obtained from the US Census Bureau for the 2000 and 2010 periods and was extracted then exported and saved as an SPSS document where it was manipulated and analyzed. The Pearson Product Moment correlation coefficients (r) were calculated to give an indication of the suggested relationships between variables as the author assesses the employment accessibility in the Huntsville Metropolitan Region. The number of vehicles available which reflects the level of car ownership within the sample is positively related to the residential location indicating that one’s residential location is indeed related to owning a car. This paper concludes that spatial mismatch encompasses the economic restructuring of the Huntsville Metropolitan Region’s whereby employment opportunities are located far away from areas of residence. Modal mismatch is due to the challenges and/or inabilities faced by individuals in their travels between home and work or place of potential employment.

Anticipating employment location patterns in economic regions: modeling complex dynamics

Complex social-ecological systems—such as cities and regions—change in time whether or not we intervene through plans and policies. This is due in part to the numerous individual and organizational actors who make self-interested, unilateral decisions. Public decision makers are expected to act in the public interest and are accountable to constituents. They need the ability to explore alternatives, select ones that are likely to benefit the public, and avoid or mitigate negative outcomes. Predicting processes and outcomes in the context of complex systems is risky, however, and mistakes can be costly. Switching from prediction of specific future states to anticipation of possible ranges of futures may help contend with the uncertainties inherent in these systems. We propose here a dynamic network model for generating ranges of possible futures for employment location in an economic region. The model can be used to anticipate employment location effects of various policies. First, using historical (2002–2015) number and location of jobs in two rather different metropolitan areas, we calibrate the model for each and validate it against actual data. Having found that the model performs well, we show how policy makers can use it to ask what-if questions regarding proposed policies to either attract businesses to specific locations or discourage them from locating in parts of the region.

The Quest for Creative Industries: A Multilevel National Study of the Impacts of Urban Form on the Geography of Creative Industries

Creative industries have gained increasing attention in light of the cultural economy as viable magnets for local and regional economic development. Policy makers thus would benefit from attracting creative industries as potential economic boosters. However, it is hard to target such catalyst industries without better knowledge of the urban form conditions that may influence the location preference of these industries; do creative industries favor compact, pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods with transit accessibility to employment? This paper, as one of the first national studies, answers this question using a multilevel modeling approach to control for the socioeconomic and built environment characteristics at both local and regional levels. Factor analysis is used to define a Creative Score, which captures the geography of creative industries using the number of creative firms, employment, the percentage of creative firms, and a creative employment location quotient. The compactness/sprawl index is used at both census tract and metropolitan levels as a proxy for urban form. Accounting for the socioeconomic factors, the findings suggest that, at the neighborhood level, the compactness index is significantly and positively associated with the Creative Score. Every 10% increase in compactness score results in a 0.3% increase in Creative Score at the census tract level. This is partly because compact neighborhoods provide creative industries with a stronger consumer base as a reliable source of development. Compact urban form also serves agglomeration economies by facilitating knowledge exchange, reducing travel time and costs, and giving greater accessibility to destinations by transit.

Deciding Where to Live in The Suburb: Linking Utility-Maximization and Residential Mobility in Polycentric Urban Region Context

In a polycentric urban structure, the commuting pattern which was traditionally directed from the suburban to CBD, is becoming more complex with increasing reverse- and cross-commuting activities. This paper is aimed to provide empirical evidence which validating the importance of utility-maximizing parameters, derived from the monocentric model, in the context of post-suburbanized polycentric urban region. It questioning to which extent of different residential mobility between municipalities could be linked to the variation of such parameters. Focusing on the frontier areas of Jakarta Metropolitan Area (JMA), Indonesia, each municipality within the region is treated as a Decision-Making Unit which intend to maximizing co-location between residential and employment uses. Using the data from the 2017 National Socio-Economic Survey (SUSENAS), the analysis was simply taken by comparing the aggregative-mean of income, housing-cost and transportation cost data from each municipal in JMAs periphery. The Data Envelope Analysis (DEA) was used for measure how these utility-maximizing parameters related with inter-suburban migration flows. The results show that housing cost is the only utility which still has significant impact in polycentric setting. Moreover, the area with lowest utility value tends to be the most efficient in attracting in-migrant. It implies that residential mobility within suburban areas does not motivated by lower housing or transportation cost, nor to get near to major employment location. Thus, workers heterogeneity and behavioral aspect may have played bigger role in residential mobility of polycentric urban setting.

Building Bridges and Growing Wings through Doctoral Education: A Literary Meta-Analysis

Doctoral education evolves amidst changing international social and educational pressures. New programs emerge, while current programs re-evaluate educational processes. This literary meta-analysis reviewed national and international literature in order to understand what issues are currently debated within higher education. Results indicate three main categories: Connection with Non-Doctoral Education Groups; Re-visioning the Doctoral Education Process; and Aligning Dissertation/Capstone Projects with Type of Doctoral Program. Within the categories, eleven themes also emerged. Implications of the study include emphasis for new and revised doctoral programs to remain aware of the increasing influence of industry, the main employment location for most doctoral graduates.

Geospatial analyses of local economic structures in the rangeland areas of the Northern Territory, South Australia and Western Australia

We examine the economic structure of Australian local government areas in the Northern Territory, South Australia and Western Australia using economic base theory and location quotients. Whereas the economic base approach is long established, in this paper we extend the three-staged geospatial visualisation method of Blackwell et al. (2017) to two additional state jurisdictions. Focusing on the economic structure of rangeland local government areas, we find that these vary significantly, implying that no single generic development policy is likely to be effective, but rather these need to be crafted individually. We demonstrate that geospatial visualisations of employment location quotients can identify local economic vulnerability as well as opportunity.