This study tested a 'wise' intervention (quick prompt of a specific psychological mec) in acute care hospital units to improve nurses' hand hygiene compliance (HHC). A multiple baseline design in two medical-surgical teaching hospitals in the United States. Hand hygiene data was collected using an electronic compliance monitoring system with sensors placed in doorways and on corresponding soap and alcohol-based hand rub dispensers. The outcome measure was the proportion of opportunities in which HH was undertaken by staff per week in each unit. A quick-and-easy psychological prime to reinvigorate professional identity. Interrupted time series analysis using a quasi-Poisson regression model with statistical process control charts for each unit. A statistically significant increase in HHC rates that was sustained for months post-intervention. However, the patterns by unit were not statistically significant once temporal trends were considered. Other factors, such as the unit type and the use of incentives could have impacted the results. These analyses suggest that the aggregate impact should not be taken as evidence of intervention effectiveness. This study therefore cannot be considered to have provided a strong foundation for use of a 'wise' intervention, despite its relatively small financial, logistical and psychological cost.

In modern firms, conflicts may arise between the chief executive officer and board of directors due to the separation of ownership and operations. Such conflicts may weaken listed companies' performance in the short term or affect their development in the long term. Using data on Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies from 2013 to 2022, this study empirically examines the impact of internal control quality on boardroom backscratching. We find that internal control quality significantly mitigates boardroom backscratching by reducing agency costs and increasing analyst attention. This effect is more significant in firms where the management holds less power and the product market is highly competitive. Furthermore, the mitigating effects of internal control quality on boardroom backscratching effectively reduce the risk of the company's share price collapsing. Overall, this study enriches the literature on boardroom backscratching and internal control quality, and provides valuable references for stakeholders, including listed companies, to improve firm governance efficiency and, thus, maintain the stability of capital markets.

In the modern educational landscape, the integration of gamification into hybrid learning environments has emerged as a promising approach to enhance student outcomes. However, there remains a lack of comprehensive frameworks for designing gamified hybrid courses and validating their impact on student outcomes. This paper proposes a design science-based approach to gamified course design in hybrid learning contexts. Drawing on the principles of design science research, we developed a framework for designing a gamified hybrid course curriculum that incorporates course content, activities, and assessments based on four elements of gamification (achievement elements, utilitarian value, hedonic benefits, and competition). To validate the effectiveness of our approach, we conducted a study with 294 students enrolled in a hybrid business course that implemented the proposed gamification framework. Our findings indicate that all gamification elements of our proposed gamified hybrid courses positively enhance student engagement, achievement, and satisfaction. Ultimately, this paper not only contributes to the 'gamification in education' literature by providing a comprehensive framework for designing engaging and effective hybrid courses but also proposes a roadmap for the application of design science to embed gamification in business course curriculum design within the context of modern hybrid learning environments.

The frequency and richness of the theories developed, tested, and used by researchers in an academic discipline exemplify several pertinent factors, namely, the growth, the maturity, the independence, the legitimacy, and the influence of the discipline. Although organizations have been working on projects for centuries, Project Management (PM) is a considerably new academic discipline with emerging research themes, models, methodologies, frameworks, and paradigms. These PM concepts are anchored on or reinforced by new or existing theories. This exploratory study aims to add to the existing PM body of knowledge by investigating the prevalence of theory use in PM research. A systematic content analysis of 9200 PM research articles published from 2000 to 2019 (20 years) in the leading PM journals identified 248 unique theories. These results reveal that the PM discipline is increasingly embracing the use of theories with game theory, fuzzy theory, agency theory, contingency theory, and stakeholder theory emerging as the most dominant theories in the reviewed research articles. Also, although PM is developing its theories, the results revealed that PM researchers continue to heavily use theories borrowed from other academic disciplines such as psychology, sociology, mathematics, and economics.

Animal welfare is increasingly understood to be a key component of sustainable agricultural production. Southeast Asia and India are witnessing an emerging market for cage-free egg production. To evaluate the economic sustainability of cage-free policies in the region, it is critical to understand how this transition will affect farmers' costs and revenues. In this article, we provide an overview of the available information that can inform evaluations of cage-free egg production in Southeast Asia and India. Cage-free egg producers around the world tend to experience higher costs, but these costs are offset by higher revenues. As demand for cage-free eggs is stimulated in Southeast Asia and India by retailer or government policies, we expect that producers will be capable of meeting this demand. In Asia specifically, the dominant cost component is poultry feed. We conclude that the economic viability of egg production in the region is likely to be driven by feed prices and associated government policies, rather than production system .

As ecological globalization intensifies, rural waste recycling and management has become a global concern. China's proactive efforts are significant for revitalizing domestic rural ecosystems, offering valuable insights into global environmental governance. The rampant dumping and informal processing of hazardous waste in rural China pose severe threats to local ecological balance and public safety. Thus, efficiently recycling hazardous rural and agricultural waste is pivotal for China's rural ecological and environmental governance. This study adopts a participatory governance perspective and establishes a theoretical framework for dual principal-agent relationships. This framework examined 22 cases of rural governance spanning Eastern, Central, and Western China. This study evaluated governance mechanisms in four dimensions: policy, material, human, and social capital, using the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis method. The key findings include: (1) The adverse orientation and behavior of hazardous waste recycling governance in rural areas stem from the combined impacts of multiple complex factors. (2) The synergistic interplay between policy, human, and social capital is crucial for advancing hazardous waste recycling governance in rural settings. (3) Three pathway mechanisms--socially driven, market-oriented, and system participation--facilitate the effective governance of hazardous waste recycling. Innovative practices in hazardous waste recycling and management within rural China yielded positive domestic impacts and profoundly influenced global environmental governance. China's experiences and approaches motivate other nations and regions, showcasing responsibility and dedication to international environmental governance and bolstering Chinese contributions to creating a cleaner, beautiful world.

This study examined the impact of ITV intervention on reduction in the propensity to abuse substances and engage in drug trafficking. The researcher conducted this study using an experiment of 517 vulnerable adolescents aged 10-19 years. The participants were randomly assigned to control ( = 258) and treatment ( = 259) groups. The researchers found a significant main effect of treatment conditions on reduction in the propensity to engage in substance abuse and drug trafficking among vulnerable adolescents. That is, before the intervention, there was no significant statistical difference between the control and treatment groups on the propensity to engage in substance abuse and drug trafficking. However, vulnerable children who received the intervention reported a significant reduction in propensity after the intervention. The results highlight the usefulness of ITV as a behaviour change strategy for vulnerable children.

This study focuses on the second round of Taiwanese teacher preparation program (TPP) evaluation (2012-2017) to analyze how evaluation policy shapes TPPs. In-depth interviews were conducted with 13 stakeholders, which included professors, administrators, researchers, and staff involved in TPP evaluation. First, the findings revealed that neoliberalism influences evaluation policy and restricts the diversity of TPP development. Second, different evaluation approaches may be used to bring more inclusiveness and flexibility to evaluation standards. Third, evaluation plays an important role in TPP development, and a professional organization responsible for evaluation should be established in Taiwan in the future. To conclude, it is significant for TPP evaluation policy to consider policy ideology, evaluation standards, and program diversity to aid in improving the quality of teacher education not only in Taiwan but also internationally.

As found in behavioral decision theory, venture capitalists (VCs) rely on heuristics and bias, owing to their bounded rationality, either by limited alternatives or information and resources. India's booming startup scene challenges VCs in decision-making owing to information overload from numerous evolving ventures, which hinders informed judgment. VC investment behavior, due diligence, and cognitive factors related to decision-making have always drawn the attention of researchers. We provide an alternative approach for an optimal decision by VCs by identifying the attributes that influence investment or funding decisions at an early stage of a venture in tech-based industries. Through a literature review, we identify eight attributes, both on internal and external criteria, that venture investors consider when making investment decisions. Based on interviews with 20 experts, we further identify eight key tech-based sectors. Using grey system theory, we then determine the rankings of eight tech startups for investors' early-stage investment decisions. This study presents a linguistic variable-based approach of grey numbers to decide weights and ratings, the grey possibility degree to compare and rank different tech startups, and based on the results, suggests the ideal tech startup. We find that agritech ranks first; thus, investors should prefer venturing into such startups for early-stage investment. E-commerce and edutech ranked second and third, respectively, followed by electric vehicle infrastructure, insurtech, fintech, space tech, and software as a service.

Maternal, neonatal, and child health play crucial roles in achieving the objectives of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2030, particularly in promoting health and wellbeing. However, maternal, neonatal, and child services in Moroccan public hospitals face challenges, particularly concerning mortality rates and inefficient resource allocation, which hinder optimal outcomes. This study aimed to evaluate the operational effectiveness of 76 neonatal and child health services networks (MNCSN) within Moroccan public hospitals. Using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), we assessed technical efficiency (TE) employing both Variable Returns to Scale for inputs (VRS-I) and outputs (VRS-O) orientation. Additionally, the Tobit method (TM) was utilized to explore factors influencing inefficiency, with hospital, doctor, and paramedical staff considered as inputs, and admissions, cesarean interventions, functional capacity, and hospitalization days as outputs. Our findings revealed that VRS-I exhibited a higher average TE score of 0.76 compared to VRS-O (0.23). Notably, the Casablanca-Anfa MNCSN received the highest referrals (30) under VRS-I, followed by the Khemisset MNCSN (24). In contrast, under VRS-O, Ben Msick, Rabat, and Mediouna MNCSN each had three peers, with 71, 22, and 17 references, respectively. Moreover, the average Malmquist Index under VRS-I indicated a 7.7% increase in productivity over the 9-year study period, while under VRS-O, the average Malmquist Index decreased by 8.7%. Furthermore, doctors and functional bed capacity received the highest Tobit model score of 0.01, followed by hospitalization days and cesarean sections. This study underscores the imperative for policymakers to strategically prioritize input factors to enhance efficiency and ensure optimal maternal, neonatal, and child healthcare outcomes.

In a 1987 article, Peter R. Rossi promulgated "The Iron Law of Evaluation and Other Metallic Rules." The Metallic Laws were meant as an informal (and humorous) overstatement of the weakness of contemporary evaluations of social programs. Rossi' s underlying worry was not so much about the state of evaluation technology in the abstract, but, rather, in its inability to advance our broad understanding of social problems and what to do about them---in other words, to make evaluation policy relevant. Rossi attributed the continuing failure to develop successful "large-scale social programs" to the failure to build a strong knowledge base for this kind of "social engineering." The qualities of studies that enable such accumulated learning are variously labeled "external validity," "generalizability," "applicability," or "transferability." This Special Issue includes five papers that seek to explore and apply this understanding.

Cooperation between employees in a company is an important input to firm performance. This study examines how a manager's cooperative behavior and the visibility of this behavior affect the cooperation amongst employees, and subsequently firm performance. To do so, we conducted a field experiment with managers and their employees from 320 Vietnamese small and micro firms to determine the impact of a manager's leading by example (LBE) on employees' behavior, corporate culture, and firm performance. Both managers and employees participated in a Public Good experiment which aimed to elicit an individual cooperative behavior. Noteworthy is that the decision made by a manager in the experiment was given as an example to employees before they made decision in that same experiment. We considered that the example of cooperation by managers in the Public Good experiment communicated a powerful signal to the employees regarding the importance of fostering cooperation in the workplace. Such a signal by the manager, who is at the top in the organizational hierarchy, would impact their employees' behavior in the workplace and firm's outcomes beyond the experiment. Interestingly, we found that concealing a manager's identity from their employees enhances the impacts of LBE.

We consider estimating the effect of a treatment on a given outcome measured on subjects tested both before and after treatment assignment in observational studies. A vast literature compares the competing approaches of modelling the post-test score conditionally on the pre-test score versus modelling the difference, namely, the gain score. Our contribution lies in analyzing the merits and drawbacks of two approaches in a multilevel setting. This is relevant in many fields, such as education, where students are nested within schools. The multilevel structure raises peculiar issues related to contextual effects and the distinction between individual-level and cluster-level treatments. We compare the two approaches through a simulation study. For individual-level treatments, our findings align with existing literature. However, for cluster-level treatments, the scenario is more complex, as the cluster mean of the pre-test score plays a key role. Its reliability crucially depends on the cluster size, leading to potentially unsatisfactory estimators with small clusters.

Maternal mortality, largely stemming from complications during pregnancy and childbirth, impacts poor expecting women with limited healthcare access in rural Pakistan. Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs), commonly implemented in developing nations, are designed to improve the well-being of vulnerable populations by focusing on health and education. A CCT initiative named Chief Minister's Special Initiative for Mother and Child Health (CM-SIMCH) was launched in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), one of the less-developed provinces of Pakistan, to empower expecting women to access quality healthcare. This study investigates the factors influencing CM-SIMCH program participation and assesses its impact on the health of expecting women by analyzing health-seeking hospital visits in KP, Pakistan. The study utilizes the Propensity Score Matching (PSM) technique to analyze cross-sectional data obtained from 303 expecting women residing in the Nowshera district of KP. The PSM allows for a balanced comparison of participants who received the CM-SIMCH transfers with those who did not, assessing its impact on maternal healthcare access and outcomes. Empirical results show that factors such as education and family system positively influence the participation of expecting women in the CM-SIMCH program, whereas travel costs exert a negative effect. The intervention leads to a notable increase in hospital visits among these women, contributing to improved health outcomes in KP. This underscores the program's potential effectiveness in addressing maternal healthcare challenges and enhancing healthcare access for vulnerable women in less-developed areas. Therefore, empirical evidence supports the CM-SIMCH program's potential to promote maternal health and improve healthcare access in KP. The study recommends government intervention in health sector as a strategic imperative to empower women and enhance infant health.

As evidence-based interventions are scaled, fidelity of implementation, and thus effectiveness, often wanes. Validated fidelity measures can improve researchers' ability to attribute outcomes to the intervention and help practitioners feel more confident in implementing the intervention as intended. We aim to provide a model for the validation of fidelity observation protocols to guide future research studying evidence-based interventions scaled-up under real-world conditions. We describe a process to build evidence of validity for items within the Session Review Form, an observational tool measuring fidelity to interactive drug prevention programs such as the Botvin LifeSkills Training program. Following Kane's (2006) assumptions framework requiring that validity evidence be built across four areas (scoring, generalizability, extrapolation, and decision), confirmatory factor analysis supported the hypothesized two-factor structure measuring quality of delivery (seven items assessing how well the material is implemented) and participant responsiveness (three items evaluating how well the intervention is received), and measurement invariance tests suggested the structure held across grade level and schools serving different student populations. These findings provide some evidence supporting the extrapolation assumption, though additional research is warranted since a more complete overall depiction of the validity argument is needed to evaluate fidelity measures.

In this paper, based on the established Vitae Researcher Development Framework (RDF), we introduce a new framework, tailor-made specifically for Vietnamese educational researchers, namely, Vietnam's Framework for Educational Researchers (VFER). VFER is expected to serve as a tool for Vietnamese educational researchers to self-evaluate their skills and support them in developing their career qualities from junior to senior career ladders. The framework includes four domains with ten subdomains and 28 indicators. To date, VFER has been implemented in some Vietnamese universities of pedagogical education. We expect that other research fields will look to VFER as a reference to build their own research capacity framework.

Randomized experiments involving education interventions are typically implemented as cluster randomized trials, with schools serving as clusters. To design such a study, it is critical to understand the degree to which learning outcomes vary between versus within clusters (schools), specifically the intraclass correlation coefficient. It is also helpful to anticipate the benefits, in terms of statistical power, of collecting household data, testing students at baseline, or relying on administrative data on previous cohorts from the same school. We use data from multiple cluster-randomized trials in four Latin American countries to provide information on the intraclass correlations in early grade literacy outcomes. We also describe the proportion of variance explained by different types of covariates. These parameters will help future researchers conduct statistical power analysis, estimate the required sample size, and determine the necessity of collecting different types of baseline data such as child assessments, administrative data at the school level, or household surveys.

This article describes a conceptual and empirical approach for estimating a human capital production function of child development that incorporates mother- or child-fixed effects. The use of mother- or child-fixed effects is common in this applied economics literature, but its application is often inconsistent with human capital theory. We outline the problem and demonstrate its empirical importance with an analysis of the effect of Head Start and preschool on child and adult outcomes. The empirical specification we develop has broad implications for a variety of applied microeconomic analyses beyond our specific application. Results of our analysis indicate that attending Head Start or preschool had no economically or statistically significant effect on child or adult outcomes.

When individuals are released from prison, they typically enter a period of post confinement community supervision. While under community supervision, their behaviors are subject to special conditions requiring them to report to supervisors and prohibiting certain behaviors such as drug and alcohol use. Many supervisees are returned to prison because they violate those special conditions, or because they commit minor crimes that would not result in prison were they not being supervised. But others are returned to prison for serious new crimes. We distinguish the two as nuisance behaviors (the former) and pernicious behaviors (the latter). Our research applies competing events survival analysis to distinguish a structural model that accounts for nuisance behaviors from a structural model that accounts for pernicious behaviors. We demonstrate that returning offenders to prison for technical violations and minor crimes may reduce the incidence of major crimes because the occurrence of nuisance behaviors and pernicious behaviors are highly correlated. Our findings support the theory that nuisance behaviors signal the likelihood of pernicious behaviors.

After the 2008 World Crisis, there is a view that the economic recovery has not been adequate. In this context, the debate on hysteresis and especially investment hysteresis has increased in the last decade. The aim of this study is to analyze the investment hysteresis and the basic dynamics of hysteresis in the Turkish economy. Structural break tests are used to identify hysteresis. Traditional and asymmetric causality tests are used to identify the fundamental dynamics of hysteresis. Investment, GDP, interest rate, and productivity variables are used to analyze investment hysteresis. Structural break tests were applied to the variables, while conventional and asymmetric causality tests were applied between investments and their determinants. Structural break tests prove the existence of hysteresis. According to the Granger causality test, there is no causality from interest rates, GDP and productivity to investments. The fact that interest rates have no effect on investments proves hysteresis. According to the asymmetric causality test, there is no relationship between interest rates and investments. There is an inverse relationship between GDP and investments. There is an asymmetric relationship between productivity and investments. The fact that productivity shocks cause asymmetric effects on investments makes productivity shocks the main dynamic of hysteresis. In addition, there is considerable evidence that the strong hysteresis and high uncertainty of TFP exacerbate investment hysteresis. Therefore, productivity shocks should be taken into account in policymaking for hysteresis.