Many challenges that confront today’s society are complex and dynamic and require new perspectives to arrive at solutions that could not be found before. Finding such new perspectives is part of a process called reframing and one of its key stages is theme investigation. Understanding a problem thoroughly is crucial for creating effective solutions and theme investigation offers insight into human and social themes that underlie complex challenges. This article discusses how to investigate such themes, to deepen our understanding, to find a starting point for reframing and creating innovative solutions. This work explicitly experiments with variation (conceptual, personal, and methodological) as a guiding principle for investigating human themes in real life cases. A process, best practices, instruments and tools for theme investigation are presented and discussed.
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Finding purchase activity patterns in Small & Medium Enterprises in a research program to enable SMEs to improve their purchase and company performance. Posterpresentatie KCO conferentie, 16 november 2015.
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In current nature valuation efforts, sociocultural values are often overlooked. Calls for the importance of including these values often advise to use a mixed-method approach; however, restrictions concerning budget and time often prevent researchers from doing so. In this study we offer a compromise—a questionnaire that aims to capture sociocultural values of nature as closely as possible. It was created as part of the Dutch National Monitoring Programme Food Forests (Nationaal Monitoringsprogramma Voedselbossen [NMVB]), hence pertaining to food forestry (FF) in the Netherlands. We used three strategies. First, we reviewed literature on nature valuation frameworks to establish the constructs for the questionnaire, finding that the survey needs to be sensitive to a plurality of worldviews. Second, we consulted survey methodology to accommodate for this plurality and to minimize nonresponse and measurement error. Third, we tested the questionnaire extensively. Our final questionnaire combines closed- and open-ended questions to examine sociocultural values from different angles to allow participants to elaborate on previously given answers in their own words and to captivate participants, prompting continued attentiveness. We believe that the questionnaire-creation process can be inspiring to other researchers. Moreover, we call upon them to use our questionnaire and to continuously evaluate and revise it in the process.
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IntroductionInternational placements challenge students to find the right level of participation, as local practices, language and time pressure may affect their engagement in patient-related tasks or team activities. This study sought to unpack the initiation process during international clinical placements with the ultimate aim to achieve active student participation.MethodsFollowing a constructivist grounded theory approach, we conducted two individual interviews with 15 undergraduate healthcare students (before departure and whilst on placement). To identify emerging themes, we applied an iterative process of data collection and constant comparative analysis. Several team discussions informed further analysis, allowing us to reach a more conceptual level of theory.ResultsFrom our findings we constructed a four-phase model of healthcare students’ initiation of international clinical placements, which brings into focus how the phases of ‘orientation’, ‘adjustment’ and ‘contribution to patient care’ build up towards a ‘sense of belonging’. We identified several factors that induced active student participation in practice, such as a favourable workplace setting, opportunities for learning and a local support network.DiscussionActive student participation is aimed at different goals, depending on the four phases of initiation that eventually lead to a sense of belonging and support workplace learning.
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Many coastal communities worldwide are facing challenges caused by increasing sea levels. However, urban development, population growth and industrialisation in low-lying delta regions persist. This includes the Netherlands and British Columbia, Canada. Both regions explore new and innovative flood risk and adaptation strategies by initiating nature-based solutions (NBS) pilot projects and integrating research and community initiatives. The aim of this paper is to learn from the experiences with these NBS pilots and support practitioners with insights and knowledge about the prospectives and implementation process of NBS. Our study takes a bird's eye view by diving into four NBS case study projects that try to enhance flood defence and quality of life while considering ecosystems and community values simultaneously. To better understand current initiatives on NBS, we first describe the historical trajectories of flood risk management and climate adaptation policy in both countries. Then we analyse two urban and two suburban case studies to identify and compare enablers and barriers that surround the implementation of NBS. We use the Pilot Paradox as a framework to reflect on the enablers and barriers, and to formulate recommendations for barriers that are common ground. We found that upscaling of the pilots forms an important challenge in both countries. We also found that Canada is interested in exchanging technical knowledge, experiences, and insights with other countries through the involvement of international researchers, consultants, and students in projects. Such collaboration between countries, communities, practitioners, and academics could accelerate the development of innovative climate adaptation strategies worldwide.
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Facilitaire regie betreft sturing op de ondersteunende bedrijfsvoering binnen organisaties. Vijf deskundigen bespraken tijdens de F-mex bijeenkomst "Finding the next practice in regie" op de Haagse Hogeschool hoe regie het organisatiebelang optimaal kan dienen.
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This report is the result of a research interest stemming from the case presented by the City of Budapest on the misalignment between EU funding opportunities and the interdependence of the national government. The main research question was “Which channels exist for a local or regional government to access EU funding directly, without the need for interference of the national government?”. Recent political developments in Hungary have led to an increasing amount of budgetary challenges for the City of Budapest. Besides domestic factors, the European Commission’s decision to suggest to withhold cohesion and RRF funds to Hungary raises the question of what different avenues of direct EU funding instruments might be at the city’s disposal. Therefore, the aim of this research is to provide recommendations on what avenues the City of Budapest might want to invest in in terms of advocacy activities on the EU level. We first conducted a desk research, mapping the current landscape of EU funding instruments under the direct management of the EU (the overview can be found in the appendix). Secondly, ten interviews were conducted in October and November 2022 with several multi-level stakeholders from the European Parliament, the European Commission, the umbrella organisation of cities in the European Union ‘Eurocities’, a Hungarian journalist and a regional representation in Central-Eastern Europe. Based on these conversations, we identified five main findings with corresponding recommendations for action.
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The search for existing non-animal alternative methods for use in experiments is currently challenging because of the lack of both comprehensive structured databases and balanced keyword-based search strategies to mine unstructured textual databases. In this paper we describe 3Ranker, which is a fast, keyword-independent algorithm for finding non-animal alternative methods for use in biomedical research. The 3Ranker algorithm was created by using a machine learning approach, consisting of a Random Forest model built on a dataset of 35 million abstracts and constructed with weak supervision, followed by iterative model improvement with expert curated data. We found a satisfactory trade-off between sensitivity and specificity, with Area Under the Curve (AUC) values ranging from 0.85-0.95. Trials showed that the AI-based classifier was able to identify articles that describe potential alternatives to animal use, among the thousands of articles returned by generic PubMed queries on dermatitis and Parkinson's disease. Application of the classification models on time series data showed the earlier implementation and acceptance of Three Rs principles in the area of cosmetics and skin research, as compared to the area of neurodegenerative disease research. The 3Ranker algorithm is freely available at www.open3r.org; the future goal is to expand this framework to cover multiple research domains and to enable its broad use by researchers, policymakers, funders and ethical review boards, in order to promote the replacement of animal use in research wherever possible.
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BACKGROUND: Multimorbidity, the co-occurrence of two or more chronic medical conditions within a single individual, is increasingly becoming part of daily care of general medical practice. Literature-based discovery may help to investigate the patterns of multimorbidity and to integrate medical knowledge for improving healthcare delivery for individuals with co-occurring chronic conditions. OBJECTIVE: To explore the usefulness of literature-based discovery in primary care research through the key-case of finding associations between psychiatric and somatic diseases relevant to general practice in a large biomedical literature database (Medline). METHODS: By using literature based discovery for matching disease profiles as vectors in a high-dimensional associative concept space, co-occurrences of a broad spectrum of chronic medical conditions were matched for their potential in biomedicine. An experimental setting was chosen in parallel with expert evaluations and expert meetings to assess performance and to generate targets for integrating literature-based discovery in multidisciplinary medical research of psychiatric and somatic disease associations. RESULTS: Through stepwise reductions a reference set of 21,945 disease combinations was generated, from which a set of 166 combinations between psychiatric and somatic diseases was selected and assessed by text mining and expert evaluation. CONCLUSIONS: Literature-based discovery tools generate specific patterns of associations between psychiatric and somatic diseases: one subset was appraised as promising for further research; the other subset surprised the experts, leading to intricate discussions and further eliciting of frameworks of biomedical knowledge. These frameworks enable us to specify targets for further developing and integrating literature-based discovery in multidisciplinary research of general practice, psychology and psychiatry, and epidemiology.
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