Suchergebnisse

Purpose
The purpose of this study is to examine how the process of creating and implementing sustainability competencies across a university illuminate dynamics of organizational change. The push to advance education for sustainable development in higher education will likely require transformation of existing policies and practices. A set of shared sustainability competencies could guide the integration of sustainability throughout an institution.


Design/methodology/approach
This paper reports on a case study of one US university, the University of New Hampshire (UNH) that developed institutional-level sustainability competencies. The process used to create and implement sustainability competencies is outlined, and key factors that influenced the associated organizational change are identified.


Findings
Very few US universities have institutional-level sustainability competencies. At UNH, drivers of organizational change such as overcoming disciplinary boundaries, developing a common vision and working from the bottom-up enabled the creation of institutional sustainability competencies, but the same processes were not enough to drive deeper implementation of the competencies.


Originality/value
This paper not only identifies the context-specific drivers of the development of institutional sustainability competencies, but also identifies universal themes that can be applied to other institutions embarking on a similar process. Additionally, this paper serves as a foundation for future research exploring how the process of creating institutional sustainability competencies may be linked to how effective they are in shaping subsequent sustainability education.

Many studies rely on traditional web survey methods in which all contacts with sample members are through email and the questionnaire is administered exclusively online. Because it is difficult to effectively administer prepaid incentives via email, researchers frequently employ lotteries or prize draws as incentives even though their influence on survey participation is small. The current study examines whether a prize draw is more effective if it is divided into a few larger amounts versus several smaller amounts and compares prize draws to a small but guaranteed postpaid incentive. Data are from the 2019 Campus Climate Survey on Sexual Assault and Sexual Misconduct. Sample members include 38,434 undergraduate and graduate students at a large Midwestern university who were randomly assigned to receive: a guaranteed $5 Amazon gift card; entry into a high-payout drawing for one of four $500 prizes; or entry into a low-payout drawing for one of twenty $100 prizes. Results indicate the guaranteed incentive increased response rates, with no difference between the prize draws. While results from various data quality outcomes show the guaranteed incentive reduced break-off rates and the high-payout drawing increased item nonresponse, there were no differences across incentive conditions in rates of speeding, reporting of sensitive data, straightlining, or sample representativeness. As expected, the prize draws had much lower overall and per complete costs.

Daily covariation of three sleep indicators (quantity, quality, postsleep restedness), anxiety symptoms, and caffeine and alcohol consumption was observed in 283 emerging adults ( Mage = 19.9). Participants completed web-based sleep diary surveys every morning and evening for 7 consecutive days. Cross-lagged models suggested that sleep quality and restedness (reported each morning) predicted students' anxiety levels (reported each evening) and that anxiety levels predicted all three sleep indicators. Furthermore, pre-bedtime caffeine consumption predicted worse sleep that night. Controlling for the effects of weekdays versus weekends produced virtually identical effects to the 7-day models, although weekend alcohol consumption emerged as a predictor of postsleep restedness. These data support bidirectionality between sleep and anxiety symptoms in emerging adults attending college/university and highlight potential avenues for intervention.

Research has led to broad agreement among scientists that anthropogenic climate change is happening now and likely to worsen. In contrast to scientific agreement, US public views remain deeply divided, largely along ideological lines. Science communication has been neutralised in some arenas by intense counter-messaging, but as adverse climate impacts become manifest they might intervene more persuasively in local perceptions. We look for evidence of this occurring with regard to realities and perceptions of flooding in the northeastern US state of New Hampshire. Although precipitation and flood damage have increased, with ample news coverage, most residents do not see a trend. Nor do perceptions about past and future local flooding correlate with regional impacts or vulnerability. Instead, such perceptions follow ideological patterns resembling those of global climate change. That information about the physical world can be substantially filtered by ideology is a common finding from sociological environment/society research.

Abstract
Interviewers' postinterview evaluations of respondents' performance (IEPs) are paradata, used to describe the quality of the data obtained from respondents. IEPs are driven by a combination of factors, including respondents' and interviewers' sociodemographic characteristics and what actually transpires during the interview. However, relatively few studies examine how IEPs are associated with features of the response process, including facets of the interviewer-respondent interaction and patterns of responding that index data quality. We examine whether features of the response process—various respondents' behaviors and response quality indicators—are associated with IEPs in a survey with a diverse set of respondents focused on barriers and facilitators to participating in medical research. We also examine whether there are differences in IEPs across respondents' and interviewers' sociodemographic characteristics. Our results show that both respondents' behaviors and response quality indicators predict IEPs, indicating that IEPs reflect what transpires in the interview. In addition, interviewers appear to approach the task of evaluating respondents with differing frameworks, as evidenced by the variation in IEPs attributable to interviewers and associations between IEPs and interviewers' gender. Further, IEPs were associated with respondents' education and ethnoracial identity, net of respondents' behaviors, response quality indicators, and sociodemographic characteristics of respondents and interviewers. Future research should continue to build on studies that examine the correlates of IEPs to better inform whether, when, and how to use IEPs as paradata about the quality of the data obtained.

The periphery of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) can unlock important information regarding galaxy formation and evolution in interacting systems. Here, we present a detailed study of the extended stellar structure of the SMC using deep colour-magnitude diagrams, obtained as part of the Survey of the MAgellanic Stellar History (SMASH). Special care was taken in the decontamination of our data from Milky Way (MW) foreground stars, including from foreground globular clusters NGC 362 and 47 Tuc. We derived the SMC surface brightness using a `conservative' approach from which we calculated the general parameters of the SMC, finding a staggered surface brightness profile. We also traced the fainter outskirts by constructing a stellar density profile. This approach, based on stellar counts of the oldest main-sequence turn-off stars, uncovered a tidally disrupted stellar feature that reaches as far out as 12 deg from the SMC centre. We also serendipitously found a faint feature of unknown origin located at similar to 14 deg from the centre of the SMC and that we tentatively associated with a more distant structure. We compared our results to in-house simulations of a 1 x 10(9) M-circle dot SMC, finding that its elliptical shape can be explained by its tidal disruption under the combined presence of the MW and the Large Magellanic Cloud. Finally, we found that the older stellar populations show a smooth profile while the younger component presents a jump in the density followed by a flat profile, confirming the heavily disturbed nature of the SMC. ; National Science Foundation (NSF) AST-1909497 Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Cientifico y Tecnologico (FONDECYT) Regular grant 1181797 Max Planck Society Foundation CELLEX French National Research Agency (ANR) ANR-18-CE31-0017 INSU,CNRS through the Programme National Galaxies et Cosmologie European Research Council (ERC) 682115 Comision Nacional de Investigacion Cientifica y Tecnologica (CONICYT) CONICYT PIA/BASAL AFB-170002 Comision Nacional de Investigacion Cientifica y Tecnologica (CONICYT) CONICYT FONDECYT 1170364 AEI/FEDER, UE AYA2017-89076-P AYA2015-63810-P Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades (MCIU) Consejeria de Economia, Industria, Comercio y Conocimiento of the Canary Islands Autonomous Community, through the Regional Budget (IAC project, TRACES) RAVET project AYA2016-77237-C3-1-P MCIU Juan de la Cierva - Formacion grant FJCI-2016-30342 State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the 'Centre of Excellence Severo Ochoa' award SEV-2017-0709 United States Department of Energy (DOE) National Science Foundation (NSF) Spanish Government UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC) Higher Education Funding Council for England National Center for Supercomputing Applications Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics Ciencia Tecnologia e Inovacao (FINEP) Fundacao Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo a Pesquisa Ministerio da Ciencia e Tecnologia (Brazil) German Research Foundation (DFG) National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq)