Search

This study analyzes the impact of the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) on information asymmetry from the perspective of mergers and acquisitions (M&A), which provides a convenient research setting for observing the market’s direct reaction to a takeover announcement. As M&A transactions come with waves that have different traits, the whole period of 1995–2005 is analyzed by considering the sixth merger wave, which took place in its entirety in this period, as the base wave. In other words, the whole period is divided into three (pre-sixth merger wave, sixth merger wave, and after sixth merger wave) subperiods. For each subperiod, we calculate excess cumulative abnormal returns (CAR), which are the proxy for information asymmetry. Target (acquired) firms, which are listed on stock exchanges in Australia, France, and the United Kingdom, are analyzed to reveal the effect of IFRS adoption on information asymmetry. Our outcomes robustly reveal that IFRS adoption does not have a statistically significant association with excess CAR figures. We further reperform analyses by only considering the period of the sixth merger wave in which IFRS adoption takes place, and this insignificant association remains the same. Overall, our outcomes do not provide evidence for the negative impact of IFRS adoption on information asymmetry.

The Balkans may very well be considered a criminological spacesui generis. As a whole, the region shares more common traits internally than it does externally towards its European context. Therefore, it is necessary to explain the region’s particularities, as relevant for understanding (lethal) violence and criminological research more generally speaking. The purpose of this chapter is to embed the BHS and its key findings in their Balkan-specific historical, religious, legal, and criminal justice context, while providing insights into the region’s criminological research setting. After having read through this chapter, one should be able to understand not only the challenges but also the benefits of conducting criminological research in the Balkans. One should thus be able to mentally explore the region as a kind of criminologically uncharted territory in order to map its full potential for the further study of crime and harmful behavior – both, with regard to homicide research and countless other criminological topics. Doing empirical researchinandonthe Balkans is in practice extremely challenging and exhausting, as we shall see, but at the same time proves to be tremendously rewarding, especially if one considers research to be an adventure and oneself a discoverer.

Despite the drastic change to school environments due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is still important that educational technology researchers conduct school-based research to understand the impact of technology in an authentic learning context, even remotely. However, the transition to remote research has made it challenging for researchers to collect classroom data, observe teacher-student-technology interactions, and facilitate study sessions. To explore how researchers can effectively plan and conduct technology-based educational studies in the new, evolving classroom research environment, we interviewed seven US teachers, investigating their perceptions of participating in remote classroom studies. Based on the findings and the authors’ experience of running classroom studies, we propose a framework that educational technology researchers can refer to when planning and conducting research in the evolving classroom research environment. Specifically, the framework informs researchers of several types of questions they can explore with teachers, students, and researchers themselves to be better prepared to address potential confusion, unexpected issues, and practical benefits in remote classroom research. Our work contributes by providing a practical guide for running technology-based research remotely, which may remain as a means of classroom research in the future. Some of the findings and the framework would also be applied to in-person classroom research setting.

A questionnaire is an instrument that consists of sets of open- and closed-ended questions with the aim to gather information from respondents. It can be used in clinical and research setting. In sleep medicine, as in other medical branches, questionnaires are used for different reasons. They give the sleep specialist an accurate and quick way to screen for different sleep problems which even the patient may not pay attention to. Questionnaires can also be used as a reference point to measure a patient’s progress. Furthermore, they can facilitate parents and caregiver’s verbalization of their child’s sleep difficulties. It is important to note that the number of pediatric sleep questionnaires is fewer compared to that available for adults. The limited number of pediatric sleep questionnaires might be due to difficulty in designing scales that can be used for a range of ages. This chapter reviews 19 sleep questionnaires in details that can be used to address a wide range of sleep difficulties. Those questionnaires are used widely in sleep clinics.

The scope of this chapter is to shed further light on the impact of CER performance and its components on the level of conservative financial reporting by utilizing a multi-country research setting and incorporating various sub-categories of environmental performance and conservatism metrics including the verification of negative earnings, negative cash flows and a firm-specific measure of conservatism (the C-score proposed by Khan and Watts (J Account Econ 48:132–150, 2009)), thus providing more thorough evidence in the existing literature regarding the impact of CER on the conservatism of accounting numbers with the EU. The empirical analysis in this chapter corroborates previous arguments in the literature on the negative association between CER and conservatism.

This chapter will situate the research study within a tradition of American prison ethnography. Violence will be introduced as an elusive concept, and its potentially agentic qualities in prison will be considered. This chapter provides rich detail about the research setting, methodology, and methods of research. Witnessing violence is the primary method through which it is documented, as well as lived. Therefore, the author will describe their immersion into an environment of everyday violence and considerations made when writing about violence.

In the shifting environments common to peace and conflict research, methodological approach must include adaptability to the shifting roles and change processes undertaken by the researcher through time and space as he/she seeks a worldview that is experienced in the research setting. With a focus on spaces of encounter in contemporary Belfast, this chapter highlights research undertaken in the ice hockey arena as a site where cross-community interaction has been normalised. As a means adapting to my research environment, I happened into a side-by-side methodology, which came to represent the logistical, the theoretical, as well as the researcher worldview. The seating arrangement of being to the left or the right of the interviewee while sharing an experience offered an opportunity to make connection that was not scripted; perhaps aided by informality, a great opportunity was found for opening a door to discussion that would not occur otherwise.

An individual was once quoted as stating “It is harder to perform research in animals than it is in humans.” This is probably the same thought that many of us have also had at least at one time or another. What he was referring to were the multiple and varied requirements, rules, and regulations that had to be put in place and closely followed when setting up an animal care and use program. And these efforts all had to be completed prior to actually procuring and then using animals in research projects. Many countries have a specific doctrine on the use of animals in research, some of which involve a plethora of rules and regulations that require a great deal of administrative time and effort, while others have very basic requirements. The requirements for the use of animals in research range from laws that must be followed and are enforced. If these laws are not followed, there are serious repercussions ranging from significant monetary fines to incarceration. However, some guidelines are voluntary. These voluntary guidelines provide facilities with the standards and information necessary on how to attain what is considered to be the “gold standard of animal care and use.” This chapter will provide the reader with an overview of the laws, regulations, and guidelines for the care and use of animals in a research setting as well as resources that will provide more in-depth information to the reader.

This chapter examines potential opportunities and challenges associated with giving teachers the opportunity to edit the textbooks they use in class. It draws on a set of studies for which the M-TET (Mathematics Teachers Edit Textbooks) project served as research setting. The unique aspects that characterize the work environment offered to teachers include the following: producing a textbook by making changes in a textbook designed by expert curriculum developers, designing a textbook for a broad student population, collaborating with other teachers in order to produce an agreed-upon textbook, and consulting with professionals that are not part of the teachers’ usual milieu (textbook authors and mathematicians). This chapter demonstrates first the potential of the M-TET work environment to reveal teachers’ wishes and desires regarding textbooks, and it attends to possible implications of teachers’ editing of textbooks with respect to the ways in which mathematics is portrayed and offered. It then focuses on the potential of the M-TET work environment to transform the conventional connections of teachers with textbook authors and with mathematicians.

In research, contextualization is a way of approaching our research project, or linking it to the relevant research and to the setting of the study. Contextualization gives credibility and support to our research project as a whole. Research contextualizing takes various shapes and forms. The two main ways in which research is contextualized will be illustrated and discussed in this chapter. First, we contextualize our research in relation to the established literature and prior studies. Second, we contextualize our research by linking it to (a) the specific context in which it was conducted like institution and workplace (micro-level); and (b) the location or general setting of the study like geographic territory and location (macro-level). Based on these two main ways of contextualizing research, a further two-fold wider contextualization of our research project will be identified too, namely, linking our research to other disciplines (domains of study) and other contexts (locations). In all cases, our research must be contextualized and grounded in theory and/or practice. This chapter, consolidated by abundant illustrative examples, takes the reader along these paths of contextualizing research.

Over the last decades, many scar assessment scales have been developed, not only to evaluate the effectiveness of new and existing treatments in the research setting but also to monitor scars in individual patients. Clinician-reported scar scales allow for the evaluation of observable aspects of the scar, while patient-reported scar scales enable the evaluation of additional health domains that cannot be observed by clinicians, such as scar symptoms or sensations and quality of life. The quality of scar assessment scales is determined by several measurement properties (i.e., validity, reliability, and responsiveness). This chapter provides an overview of the content and development of the most frequently used scar assessment scales.

In this chapter, we try to help the reader find the necessary balance between openness and preparedness. Therefore, we offer practical tips for constructing interview protocols and topic lists as well as probing. Moreover, in interviewing the powerful, the interviewer is expected to be up to date and acquainted with different institutional, national or local realities, different practices and jargon. Hence, in addition to preparation for the interviews in terms of constructing topic lists, this chapter sheds light on exploring the setting.

This chapter examines the manner in which using recorded Neo-shamanic journeys as part of a formal research setting could provide a relatively clean phenomenological and replicable data-gathering device for psychologists studying consciousness and anomalous phenomena. The unique neuropsychology of the shamanic journey enables someone in the journey state to perceive anomalous phenomena while simultaneously retaining focus and relative control of the journey and narrate the journey out loud into a recording device as the journey unfolds. The recording provides a phenomenological account of journey phenomena and experiences usually imperceptible in normal waking consciousness prior to the data being compromised by the interpretative and meaning-making processes of the participants. This chapter presents a possible research protocol that utilizes recorded shamanic journeys in a research environment.

In this chapter, the choice of a phenomenological approach to explore the students’ views and to gain new understanding about empathy is justified. The medical school setting, curriculum, participants and study design are described. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was the innovative approach used to carry out the data analysis.

Frailty is a condition of extreme vulnerability to poor resolution of homeostasis after endogenous or exogenous stressors, which causes an increased risk of adverse health-related outcomes. Different models have been developed to operationalize frailty and standardize its diagnosis in research setting and clinical practice, but at present there is no agreed gold standard. Frailty is a common condition among older adults. Interestingly, frailty is not a static condition, but rather is a process, and as such it is dynamic and potentially reversible. In its early stages, frailty may be considered a pre-disability condition to target to prevent its progression. An effective intervention against frailty at a population level should consider a life-course approach, including also young and adult individuals with modifiable risk factors. Currently, the gold standard for the management of frailty in clinical practice is the Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment (CGA). Multiple approaches targeting frailty have been investigated. Strong evidence supports the efficacy of exercise interventions in frail older people to slow down frailty and prevent its negative consequences.

Although it has been argued that understandings of dynamic linkage between individuals (micro) and organizations (macro) is critical for explaining organizational phenomena, the traditional methods, such as survey and interview are limited in their ability to examine research questions to describe bottom-up effect by aggregating data. Here we propose agent-based modeling as a tool to elaborate theoretical and practical implications to understand organizational dynamics. Agent-based modeling is a computer simulation method that allows researchers to examine dynamic processes in which heterogeneous micro-level actors interact with other agents and environmental conditions, thereby giving rise to macro-level phenomena. This capability enables us to simulate coordination processes within organizations. In the current study, we show an example of such dynamics by applying the research setting of the evolution of cooperation to the organizational contexts. The results showed that the heterogeneity in capability is critical for the organizational effectiveness (or, high organizational performance). Further, a certain structural arrangement plays an important role to the coordination process to withdraw a high organizational performance. Implications for management research and practices are discussed.

This chapter weighs the challenges posed by ethics codes for those fields where critical research is a fundamental aspect of research, with a focus on sociology. The norms of contemporary research ethics review highlight objectivity and neutrality, making it difficult to engage in critical research. Using the 2010 Canadian Tri-Council Policy Statement as an illustration, the chapter explores notions such as “high scientific standards” and “rigorous analysis,” socially “legitimate” research, and the emphasis on knowing in advance the full impact of proposed research virtually precludes doing critical enquiry. If critical enquiry involves more than one research setting and numerous research participants at different levels of authority, the problem becomes exacerbated. Fortunately, research ethics committees are diverse in their interpretations of their mandate and vary in their views about critical enquiry. The chapter concludes by considering the need for critical researchers to maintain the dignity of the readers of their research.

Research in the utilization of laminar flow technologies on aircraft to improve fuel efficiency (and hence be more environmentally friendly) has been ongoing since the conclusion of World War II. A persistent issue with regard to the maintenance of laminar flow, however, is insect residue accretion. The residues are recurrent, distributed randomly across the surface, and have the potential to exceed heights that can result in a premature transition to turbulent flow. Numerous approaches have been explored over the decades, with success being seen in a research setting. In general, implementation of these approaches in the commercial sector has not been realized. These approaches are briefly discussed herein, along with a general description of the relevant insect characteristics and a discussion of why the reduction of insect accretion on aircraft is such a challenging problem.

Data is the first step in process of any statistical analysis. Since MDS has a bit different terms associated with data concepts and it can be confusing, I try to discuss the data used for MDS with terms that are more understandable or relevant to the common research setting.

Mindful walking is an effective way to make what is unfamiliar familiar and what is familiar unfamiliar, allowing the researcher to critically examine moments of research environment. This method was used to conduct an ethnographic case study of an art museum in the Midwestern United States in 2011, and further developed when returning to the same museum and community to conduct a follow-up study in 2015. The method will be further theorized using the concept of curious spectator or flâneur. By negotiating and renegotiating a researcher’s position in a real research setting, this chapter also demonstrates the nuanced, vulnerable, and subjective contemporary flâneuse, who strives to make an entangled research web a bit clearer and more visible to those who are not present in the research setting.

Chapter 1 stands as the introduction to the book. It gives an overview of the content of the book, introducing core concepts and contexts related to the research. The author provides an overview of the research setting, a support group for African migrant women in Cape Town, South Africa, and discusses her motivations for engaging in such a project. She provides an overview of the methodology, methods, and processes on which the research is based. She sets the scene for opening up critical questions about the hegemonic language of trauma and argues for a broadening of the concepts ‘victim’ and ‘trauma’. This discussion provides intellectual scaffolding for making sense of the collective narratives which follow in the rest of the book. The author concludes with a brief summary of the chapters to follow.

This chapter deals with modified natural cycle IVF, in which treatment is aimed at the use of the one oocyte that naturally develops to dominance. Modified natural cycle IVF is a low-risk and patient-friendly treatment modality. The per cycle success rate is rather low, but thanks to the short duration of a treatment cycle and easy repeatability in consecutive cycles, cumulative success rates per patient and time to pregnancy are quite reasonable. In our centre, modified natural cycle IVF has been applied since 2001, first in a research setting and later as standard treatment. In this chapter, a study is described in which patients were offered a maximum of nine cycles of modified natural cycle IVF. Cumulative pregnancy rates and dropout behaviour of patients were analysed. We found that dropout rates rose sharply after three cycles, and furthermore that dropout seems selective in the sense that patients with poor chance for success tend to drop out. Subsequently, an extended series of 7097 cycles in 1744 patients is described, with analysis of success rates according to female patient age, indication for ART, BMI, and result of the first treatment cycle. We found that results are not different according to indication, success rates decline with rising age and BMI and that cancellation of oocyte retrieval in the first cycle seems to predict relatively poor overall outcome.

The field of proteogenomics has been driven by combined advances in next-generation sequencing (NGS) and proteomic methods. NGS technologies are now both rapid and affordable, making it feasible to include sequencing in the clinic and academic research setting. Alongside the improvements in sequencing technologies, methods in high throughput proteomics have increased the depth of coverage and the speed of analysis. The integration of these data types using continuously evolving bioinformatics methods allows for improvements in gene and protein annotation, and a more comprehensive understanding of biological systems.

The widespread application of modern MRI techniques to the live fetus in utero is an evolving endeavor, contingent on ongoing improvement in hardware and software. At present, all major MRI techniques, including structural MRI imaging, diffusion weighted imaging (DWI), magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), and functional MRI, have been adapted for studies of the maternal–fetal unit with varying degrees of success. Issues affecting adaptation of MRI techniques to fetal imaging include safety, fetal motion, and the small but changing size, anatomy, and composition of the fetal organs. Consequently, clinical and research studies employing MRI techniques of the maternal–fetal unit are performed during the second and third trimester, eschewing the use of contrast (gadolinium) agents. Fetal movement is currently addressed by using multiple acquisitions with ultrafast sequences, to which T2-weighted imaging is most amenable. The changing landscape of fetal size and tissue compositions requires adaptation of the field of view and sequence parameters to the age of the fetus for best contrast and resolution in anatomical as well as physiological (DWI) and biochemical (MRS) imaging techniques. Techniques requiring longer acquisition times and thus more sensitive to fetal motion, such as MRS, DTI, and fMRI, are used mostly in the research setting. Future expansion of fetal MRI applications relies on the adaptation of 3D acquisition, automated motion correction, and volumetry as well as the establishment of multiple normative databases of fetal development parameters for each gestational week.

How does consumer-brand relationship quality (CBRQ) influence behaviors attributed to personal values? We answer this question by proposing a model that links customer voluntary performance and propensity to leave with CBRQ that stems from customer-brand value congruence. We collected data from an online survey of 371 consumers of restaurants and hospitals in Egypt. Irrespective of the service context, we find that, (1) value congruence is positively related to CBRQ, (2) there is a negative relationship between CBRQ and propensity to leave, and (3) a positive relationship with customer voluntary performance. However, the positive relationship between value congruence and customer voluntary performance was only observed in the hospital context. Furthermore, CBRQ partially mediates the effects of value congruence on customer voluntary performance and fully mediates the effects of value congruence on propensity to leave. Our findings suggest that, by focusing on the notion that brands have similar values to those of consumers, brand managers could achieve some important and desired consequences, most notably consumers voluntary behaviors such as cooperation, participation, and loyalty. In addition, invest in building customers relationships pays dividends as high quality customer-brand relationship acts as a deterrent to customers' willingness to leave. By synthesizing the literature from relationship marketing and branding research streams, the current study represents a new endeavor to specify the direct association between value congruence and propensity to leave and customer voluntary performance and the indirect associations through CBRQ in the services context. This opens the door for future conceptual and empirical evaluations. Given that a considerable bulk of research on value congruence and CBRQ has been developed in Western contexts, our contribution is salient in that we test hypothesized associations in an emerging market. Overall, our study takes relationship marketing and branding literature one step further by identifying the role of value congruence might play in enhancing the relationship quality with the service brand as well as projecting the outcomes of both constructs in a new research setting. 2016, Academy of Marketing Science. Scopus

Multimodal neuroimaging studies are of major interest in the clinical and research setting, enabling the combined study of the structure and function of the human brain. However, the amount of procedures applied, associated with the production of large volumes of data creates obstacles to the organization, maintenance and sharing of neuroimaging data. Taking this into account, we developed a NoSQL based solution that automates the process of organizing and sharing neuroimaging data. This system is composed by an application, which recognizes the files to be stored through the use of a standardized nomenclature of the files generated in the processing workflows. Additionally, the system is distributed in order to store data as documents enabling users to upload and retrieve files to/from the system in different locations. The prototype enhances the research process, through the simplification and reduction of the time spent organizing and sharing information.

Molecular pathology is based on the principles, techniques, and tools of molecular biology as they are applied to diagnostic medicine in the clinical laboratory. These tools were developed in the research setting and perfected throughout the second half of the 20th century, long before the Human Genome Project was conceived. Molecular biology methods were used to elucidate the genetic and molecular basis of many diseases, and these discoveries ultimately led to the field of molecular diagnostics. Eventually the insights these tools provided for laboratory medicine were so valuable to the armamentarium of the pathologist that they were incorporated into pathology practice. Today, molecular diagnostics continues to grow rapidly as in vitro diagnostic companies develop new kits for the marketplace and as the insights into disease gained by the progress of the Human Genome Project develop into laboratory tests.

Most algorithms for user profile inference in online social networks assume that the full social graph is available for training. This assumption is convenient in a research setting. However, in real-life, the full social graph is generally unavailable or may be very costly to obtain or update. Thus, several of these algorithms may be inapplicable or provide poor accuracy. Moreover, current approaches often do not exploit all the rich information that is available in social networks. In this paper, we address these challenges by proposing an algorithm named PGPI (Partial Graph Profile Inference) to accurately infer user profiles under the constraint of a partial social graph and without training. It is to our knowledge, the first algorithm that let the user control the trade-off between the amount of information accessed from the social graph and the accuracy of predictions. Moreover, it is also designed to use rich information about users such as group memberships, views and likes. An experimental evaluation with 11,247 Facebook user profiles shows that PGPI predicts user profiles more accurately and by accessing a smaller part of the social graph than four state-of-the-art algorithms. Moreover, an interesting result is that profile attributes such as status (student/professor) and gender can be predicted with more than 90% accuracy using PGPI.

In this paper, a set of research propositions is suggested, using transaction cost analysis, relational norms in exchange dyads, and power-dependence theory as a theoretical basis for understanding the effect of relational norms on governance structure in a small buyer - monopolist wholesaler research setting. This has already received attention in the distribution channels literature; however, the major study so far has considered this empirically form the perspective of the single large buyer facing a large number of relatively dependent small suppliers.

Innovations in information systems, including the adoption of new information technologies and the creation of new flows of knowledge and information beyond traditional boundaries, represent an emerging form of intangibles relevant for firms from a wide range of industries. We examine firms’ incentives to invest in the production of this intangible and provide evidence on the role of this innovation in the value creation of firms’ intangibles. Our research setting involves firms using internet to create a continuous stream of new knowledge about the firm’s performance and share it with external stakeholders. We find that firms with more investment in other intangibles, such as R&D and advertising, are more likely to undertake this type of information systems innovation. We also find that this innovation enhances the value of firms’ other intangibles, including investor trust in the firm and firms’ investment in R&D and advertising. Thus, our study demonstrates that innovation in information systems creates a distinct and valuable intangible asset and complements firms’ other intangibles.

This chapter is written for dermatologists who want to learn about practical aspects of clinical trials. It is a practical overview of the clinical trials setup and conduct process in the academic research setting. Given the complexity and scope of clinical trials, this chapter is not comprehensive but provides an initial framework for further reading.

This paper describes how one marketing department developed and implemented a core concepts exam as one means to assess student learning. Different teaching and administration methods were examined, and results support no difference in teaching in this research setting, but do suggest that the most effective administration is requiring the exam as a final exam in the Principles of Marketing course.

The paper provides insights into the operations strategy definition process. While literature seeks the concept of manufacturing strategy content with competitive priorities, decision categories and manufacturing capabilities to explain strategy definition ambitions, practice shows difficulty in applying this high level concept in practical terms. Sustainability and the wide array of incorporation opportunities and policies make it difficult for companies to leap the gap towards a truly sustainably firm. Based on the methodology of axiomatic design, the study develops in a prescriptive research setting a meta-framework for supporting strategy definition in manufacturing firms.