Search Results (11)

Non-terminal and terminal events in semi-competing risks data are typically associated and may be influenced by covariates. We employed regression modeling for semi-competing risks data under a copula-based framework to evaluate the effects of covariates on the two events and the association between them. Due to the complexity of the copula structure, we propose a new method that integrates a novel two-step algorithm with the Bound Optimization by Quadratic Approximation (BOBYQA) method. This approach effectively mitigates the influence of initial values and demonstrates greater robustness. The simulations validate the performance of the proposed method. We further applied our proposed method to the Amsterdam Cohort Study (ACS) real data, where some improvements could be found. Full article

Good nutrition promotes a healthy population and mitigates the risk of disease. Integrating nutrition care in the primary healthcare system is considered an essential plan of action to manage poor nutritional status in the population. The role of primary healthcare professionals (HCPs) in the delivery of nutrition care is especially crucial due to a current lack of dietitians and dietary support in the primary care setting in Ireland. This qualitative research explored the current practice, barriers, facilitators, and feasible solutions proposed to optimize the provision of nutrition care by primary HCPs. Twenty semi-structured interviews (pharmacists (n = 14), dietitians (n = 3), a physiotherapist (n = 1), a speech and language therapist (n = 1), and a healthcare assistant (n = 1) were conducted. Six themes were derived from the data: current practice of nutrition care in primary care, perceived role, barriers and facilitators, the importance of a multidisciplinary patient-centred approach, training needs and preferences, and addressing barriers. Participants acknowledged the importance of nutrition care in clinical practice, the principal role of the dietitian as part of the multidisciplinary team, and the essential clinical competencies and nutrition training models that may facilitate the provision of nutrition care in primary practice. A paradigm shift to a multidisciplinary care model that prioritises the integration of nutrition care into primary care practice to ensure optimal dietary counselling is afforded to patients is essential. Full article

With the growth of the equestrian industry, risk exposure and the obligation to maintain the health, safety, and welfare of humans and horses remain front and centre. As there has been no apparent reduction in non-fatal human horse-related injuries, we asked industry stakeholders to discuss their current management and risk mitigation practices and highlight potential barriers to improving these processes. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 stakeholders from Australian equestrian work- (n = 9) and non-work- (n = 11) related organisations to determine the potential benefits and feasibility of adopting an industry-specific health, safety, and welfare (HSW) management system. The International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) 45001:2018 Occupational Health and Safety Management framework, often used by high-risk industries, guided deductive data coding. Most participants preferred formal HSW management systems and supported improvements in their current HSW practices. Industry gaps included (1) lack of training, education material, and competency; (2) social licence to operate (SLO) regarding horse welfare; and (3) management of and resistance to change. Industry barriers included (1) lack of good governance and (2) poor safety culture related to tradition and human behaviours. Most stakeholders sought further collaboration, HSW guidance materials, and national industry representation opportunities, with supporting the concept of an adaptable industry-specific HSW management system. Further multi-sector equestrian stakeholder engagement is recommended to determine the feasibility of adopting and modifying (ISO) 45001:2018 as a suitable equestrian industry-specific HSW management system. Full article

Social media have become increasingly embedded in adolescents’ daily lives. Although these contexts have been widely studied, how trust in online relationships is built among adolescents is still an unexplored issue. By adopting the theoretical socio-cognitive model of trust, this study aims to explore the components of online trust as far as today’s teenagers are concerned. The study involved 10 adolescents aged between 12 and 18 (M = 15.5). The data were collected using individual semi-structured, audio-recorded, and faithfully transcribed interviews. A deductive-inductive content analysis carried out with the NVivo10 software was performed on the textual material. Results show that adolescents seem to be aware of online trust value in “selecting” peers to be trusted. To protect themselves from the risks they are exposed to, they choose to interact with peers/friends who are already known in real life or are similar to them in terms of interests, ways of thinking, passions, and age. Additionally, others’ competencies and willingness play an important role in adolescents’ evaluations and decisions to rely on others online. The results of this study could be useful for developing awareness-raising interventions on the risks that adolescents are exposed to in order to promote “safe” relationships of trust and emphasize the possible positive use of technologies (e.g., by building online trust relationships using peer “safe” models). Full article

Olive orchard intensification has transformed an originally drought-resilient tree crop into a competing water user in semi-arid regions. In our study, we used remote sensing to evaluate whether intensive olive plantations have increased between 2010 and 2020, contributing to the current risk of aquifer depletion in the Saïss plain in Morocco. We developed an unsupervised approach based on the principles of hierarchical clustering and used for each year of analysis two images (5 m pixel size) from the PlanetLabs archive. We first calculated area-based accuracy metrics for 2020 with reference data, reaching a user’s accuracy of 0.95 and a producer’s accuracy of 0.89. For 2010, we verified results among different plot size ranges using available 2010 Google Earth Imagery, reaching high accuracy among the 50 largest plots (correct classification rate, CCR, of 0.94 in 2010 and 0.92 in 2020) and lower accuracies among smaller plot sizes. This study allowed us to map super-intensive olive plantations, thereby addressing an important factor in the groundwater economy of many semi-arid regions. Besides the expected increase in plantation size and the emergence of new plantations, our study revealed that some plantations were also given up, despite the political framework encouraging the opposite. Full article

For analyzing multiple events data, the illness death model is often used to investigate the covariate–response association for its easy and direct interpretation as well as the flexibility to accommodate the within-subject dependence. The resulting estimation and inferential procedures often depend on the subjective specification of the parametric frailty distribution. For certain frailty distributions, the computation can be challenging as the estimation involves both the nonparametric component and the parametric component. In this paper, we develop efficient computational methods for analyzing semi-competing risks data in the illness death model with the general frailty, where the Minorization–Maximization (MM) principle is employed for yielding accurate estimation and inferential procedures. Simulation studies are conducted to assess the finite-sample performance of the proposed method. An application to a real data is also provided for illustration. Full article

The intense, physical contact nature of rugby union often encourages the normalization of risk-taking behaviour resulting in a relatively high acceptance of risk. This study aims to explore safety culture in rugby union from an OSH perspective, with the purpose of assisting coaches and management in their decision-making processes to improve players’ health, welfare, and long-term well-being. In terms of data collection, this study involved semi-structured interviews with senior support staff (n = 15) in elite rugby union. Interview transcripts underwent inductive analysis prior to an abductive analysis that was guided by an established occupational-safety-and-health (OSH) framework. Rugby union players’ safety can be considered from two dimensions: management’s commitment to safety (i.e., safety prioritization, safety empowerment, and safety justice), players’ involvement in safety (i.e., safety prioritization, and trust in other players’ safety competence, and players’ safety concern for the opposition players). Within the themes identified, players’ attitude towards their opponents’ safety which has been rarely considered as a factor for injury prevention is also discussed in this study. If sport support staff (i.e., managers/coaches/medical) can become more involved in players’ performance-orientated training using OSH management processes to aid in their decision-making, their exists the capacity to benefit players’ safe return to play after injury rehabilitation. Meanwhile, directing the development of appropriate behavioural educational interventions to raise safety-awareness amongst players can improve their long-term health and well-being and provide them with the necessary safety and health information to support their own decision-making processes. As a multidisciplinary design, this study contributes new multidisciplinary insights that have the potential to advance managerial practices utilizing an OSH perspective, including decision-making supporting risk alleviation for safety and long-term health and wellbeing initiatives in competitive team sports. Full article

In biomedical studies involving time-to-event data, a subject may experience distinct types of events. We consider the problem of estimating the transition functions for a semi-competing risks model under illness-death model framework. We propose to estimate the intensity functions by maximizing a B-spline based sieve likelihood. The method yields smooth estimates without parametric assumptions. Our proposed approach facilitates easy computation of the covariance of the model parameters and yields direct interpretation. Compared with existing approaches, our proposed method requires neither the subjective specification of the frailty distribution nor the Markov or semi-Markov assumption which may be unmet in real applications. We establish the consistency, the convergence rate, and the asymptotic normality of the proposed estimators under some regularity conditions. We also provide simulation studies to assess the finite-sample performance of the proposed modeling and estimation strategy. A real data application is further used to illustrate the proposed methodology. Full article

Drawing on data gathered through semi-structured interviews, participant observation and document analysis at five-star hotels in UK and Germany, this paper examines the competing pressures driving waste generation and prevention at different stages in the food production and service cycle. Primary data indicated that senior managers recognised the potential savings that could be achieved by preventing food waste. Despite this, many wasteful practices were normalised within routine operations. This was partly attributed to the corporatised business model and brand strategy in which premium pricing and luxury experiential propositions potentially transformed food waste reduction strategies into sources of risk. Past research generally categorised food as being edible or inedible. In contrast, the terms usable/unusable are proposed and this paper discusses how corporatised practices and value propositions rendered usable foods unusable. It considers how this type of corporate system frames waste problems and thus solutions, leading to various consequences. The discussion also explores how those systems shaped the organisational culture and the agency of staff who engaged with the service cycle at and across multiple points. The findings of this paper are based on primary data collected from a small number of corporately governed luxury hotels. Consequently, the closing parts of this paper outline how the insights generated here could be applied to the study of alternative organisational arrangements and operational types. Full article

Ewe wastage is the combination of on-farm mortality and premature culling. Internationally, there is limited research on actual wastage incidence and causes in commercial sheep flocks. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that reports both lifetime wastage and detailed annual wastage in a sample of commercial New Zealand flocks. This study utilized data collected from 13,142 ewes from four cohorts on three commercial New Zealand farms (Farm A 2010-born, Farm A 2011-born, Farm B, Farm C), during the period 2011–2017, as they aged from replacement hoggets to 6-year-old ewes (Farm A and Farm B) or 3-year-old ewes (Farm C). Data collection visits occurred at three or four key management times each year, namely pre-mating, pregnancy diagnosis, pre-lambing and weaning. At each visit, body condition score (BCS) was assessed and any ewes that were culled or had died on farm were recorded. As this was a lifetime study, each ewe was assigned an outcome and corresponding ‘exit age’. By the end of the study, all ewes that had exited their respective flocks, were classified as either prematurely culled, or dead/missing, or if still in the flock, as censored, and either the exact date or interval in which they exited the flock was recorded. Semi-parametric competing risk (premature culling vs. dead/missing), interval-censored survival models were developed to: 1. describe the association between hogget reproductive outcomes and risk of subsequent wastage, and 2. assess pre-mating BCS as a predictor of wastage in that production year. Of the 13,142 enrolled ewes, 50.4% exited their respective flocks due to premature culling and 40.0% due to on-farm dead/missing, giving a total of 90.4% that exited due to wastage. Annual mortality incidence ranged from 3.5 to 40.2%. As a hogget, wastage incidence ranged from 7.6 to 45.4%. Pregnancy or rearing a lamb as a hogget did not increase risk of subsequent wastage. In all years, pre-mating BCS was a predictor of ewe wastage, with odds of wastage lower with increasing BCS. Therefore, farmers should focus on improving pre-mating BCS to 3.5/5.0 by assessing ewe BCS at weaning, allowing poorer-BCS ewes to be managed to gain BCS before re-breeding. Full article

Authors in previous studies pointed out that the professional competences of managers overlap with the competences and skills that are attributed to entrepreneurs. The goal of this study is to analyze the correlation between the actual market demand for competences to develop new businesses and the competence of training and development by higher education institutions (HEIs) and business supporting institutions (BSIs). The research question is “Are the entrepreneurial competences demanded by the domestic markets in Finland, Latvia and The Netherlands aligned with the entrepreneurship educational and business supporting policies?” As a research methodology, we chose focus groups and semi-structured interviews conducted for start-up entrepreneurs, HEIs, and BSIs as methods for data gathering. An importance–performance analysis (IPA) was applied as the method for data analysis. As the main research results, the authors identified that ethical and sustainable thinking as well financial and economic literacy were considered to be the least important competences, while motivation and perseverance were commonly ranked as highly important by entrepreneurs in all the countries studied. Entrepreneurship education policy in The Netherlands is fully harmonized with market demand. Entrepreneurship development activities in Finland also meet the market’s needs, however HEIs and BSIs could develop self-awareness and self-efficacy as well as cope with uncertainty, ambiguity and risk competences. The major disagreement was detected between entrepreneurs’ expectations and entrepreneurship education activities conducted by HEIs and BSIs in Latvia. This research implication fills the gap in knowledge about the entrepreneurial competences developed by HEIs and BSIs and were demanded (considered as important) by the market in the researched countries. Further, we developed the entrepreneurship training methodology for transdisciplinary students to enhance entrepreneurial competence dissemination and development across education programs and beyond. Full article