Academic literature on the topic 'Question-asking preferences'

At no other time in the history of multiple sclerosis (MS) has the accurate measurement of health outcomes been so important. There are now many kinds of interventions of proven or potential efficacy available for people with MS and many other methods are under investigation. Not all outcomes that matter can be measured with a biological parameter. Many important outcomes of treatment can be assessed only by asking the patient directly. For clinical decision making, asking one good question, asking it consistently, and writing down the answer will produce historically accurate data to judge MS progression on life-altering constructs like fatigue, depression and pain. To get a total score from items in a questionnaire, Rasch Measurement Theory provides a way of estimating the extent to which the items form a linear continuum with mathematical properties. Preference-based measures, when the preferences are derived from patients, permit the impact of the multiple health dimensions associated with MS to be valued. The bottom line is, ask a good question and you will likely get a good answer, ask a poor question and assuredly, you will not.

In perception, humans typically prefer symmetrical over asymmetrical patterns. Yet, little is known about differences in symmetry preferences depending on individuals’ different past histories of actively reflecting upon pictures and patterns. To address this question, we tested the generality of the symmetry preference for different levels of individual art expertise. The preference for symmetrical versus asymmetrical abstract patterns was measured implicitly, by an Implicit Association Test (IAT), and explicitly, by a rating scale asking participants to evaluate pattern beauty. Participants were art history and psychology students. Art expertise was measured using a questionnaire. In the IAT, art expertise did not alter the preference for symmetrical over asymmetrical patterns. In contrast, the explicit rating scale showed that with higher art expertise, the ratings for the beauty of asymmetrical patterns significantly increased, but, again, participants preferred symmetrical over asymmetrical patterns. The results are discussed in light of different theories on the origins of symmetry preference. Evolutionary adaptation might play a role in symmetry preferences for art experts similarly to nonexperts, but experts tend to emphasize the beauty of asymmetrical depictions, eventually considering different criteria, when asked explicitly to indicate their preferences.

This article discussed the results of a survey of over thirteen hundred respondents. This survey was designed to establish the preferences of the viewers of instructional how-to videos, asking the question of whether length as well as the presence of a role-playing narrative enhances or detracts from the viewer experience.

Ethnicity and urbanisation have been the most studied predictors of electoral outcomes in Malaysian general elections. In this study, we examine life satisfaction in the political science literature that can also influence Malaysian electoral outcomes. Using data from the World Values Survey conducted in Malaysia shortly before the General Election in 2013, we leverage on responses to a survey question asking respondents to indicate the political party they would vote for if a national election were held the next day, and empirically investigate the relationship between life satisfaction and voting preferences. We find that respondents with higher levels of life satisfaction will have a higher probability of voting for the ruling party, with the magnitude of this effect relatively comparable to that of the ethnic effect. We also empirically show that this outcome is due to the preference for status quo, defined on two levels, in the Malaysian political scene.

ObjectivesTo quantify agreement between patients and their family members on their own values and preferences for use or non-use of life-sustaining treatments for the patient.MethodsHospitalised patients aged 55 years or older with advanced pulmonary, cardiac, liver disease or metastatic cancer or aged 80 years or older from medical wards at 16 Canadian hospitals and their family members completed a questionnaire including eight items about values related to life-sustaining treatment and a question about preferences for life-sustaining treatments.ResultsWe recruited a total of 313 patient-family member dyads. Crude agreement between patients and family members about values related to life-sustaining treatment was 42% across all eight items but varied widely: 20% when asking how important it was for the patient to respect the wishes of family members regarding their care; 72% when asking how important it was for the patient to be kept comfortable and suffer as little as possible. Crude agreement on preferences for life-sustaining treatment was 91% (kappa 0.60; 95%CI 0.45 to 0.75) when looking at preferences for cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) versus no CPR but fell to 56% when including all five response options with varying degrees of resuscitative, medical or comfort options (kappa 0.39; 95%CI 0.31 to 0.47).ConclusionsThere is appreciable disagreement between seriously ill hospitalised patients and family members in their values and preferences for life-sustaining treatment. Strategies are needed to improve the quality of advance care planning, so that surrogates are better able to honour patient’s wishes at the end of life.

The question, ‘which kind of democratic governance people prefer’, has moved to the forefront in current democracy research. This article uses existing hypotheses on democratic preferences as an input and employs an advanced research design to find out what citizens want if they had engaged in deliberation and reflection. We conducted an online-experiment with a deliberative treatment asking 256 German citizens in 2016. Our findings show that deliberation does not lead to more informed or differential preferences for governance models compared with getting informed or ‘thinking twice’. One reason are high levels of consistency between basic democratic values and governance choices already before the experiment, contradicting our initial assumption that preferences about democracy are generally ill-formed. Overall, our experiment shows that post-deliberative democratic preferences are mainly driven by issue salience and disenchantment with the actual shape of representative democracy. We detect a sort of a ‘populist’ impulse where disenchantment conduces to calls for a stronger voice of the ‘people’ and participatory governance models, irrespective of their concrete design.

9049 Background: Code status discussions are important in cancer care. The best modality for such discussions has not been established. Our objective was to determine the impact of a physician ending a code status discussion with a question (autonomy approach) versus a recommendation (beneficence approach) on patients’ do-not-resuscitate (DNR) preference. Methods: Patients in a supportive care clinic watched two videos showing a physician-patient discussion regarding code status. Both videos were identical except for the ending: one ended with the physician asking for the patient’s code status preference and the other with the physician recommending DNR. Patients were randomly assigned to watch the videos in different sequences. The main outcome was the proportion of patients choosing DNR for the video patient. Results: 78 patients completed the study. 74% chose DNR after the question video, 73% after the recommendation video (p=NS). Median physician compassion score was very high and not different for both videos (p=0.73). 30/30 patients who had chosen DNR for themselves and 30/48 patients who had not chosen DNR for themselves chose DNR for the video patient (100% v/s 62%, p<0.001). Age (OR=1.1/year, p=0.01) and white ethnicity (OR=9.43, p=0.004) predicted DNR choice for the video patient. Conclusions: Ending DNR discussions with a question or a recommendation did not impact DNR choice or perception of physician compassion. Therefore, both approaches are clinically appropriate. All patients who chose DNR for themselves and most patients who did not choose DNR for themselves chose DNR for the video patient. Age and race predicted DNR choice.

Abstract The aim of this work was to determine preferences and satisfaction of tourists visiting the Polesie National Park (PPN). Preferences were defined in terms of the motives for visiting, ways of spending leisure time, the length and frequency of visits, knowledge of tourist attractions and awareness of the Park’s financing. A survey was conducted in July–August 2019 gathering responses from 125 adults visiting the PPN tourist and bicycle paths. 100 correctly completed questionnaires were analysed using the CART method to determine the respondents’satisfaction with spending leisure time in the Park. The most frequently mentioned reasons for visiting were the beautiful landscape (28%) and the species richness (27%) of the PPN. 39% of respondents visited the area for the first time and 47% came for one day. Most visitors (65%) had very good knowledge of the tourist attractions in the PPN. Walking was the most common way (37%) for visitors to spend theirleisure time in the Park. More than half of the respondents (58%) would be willing to accept additional fees in order to help maintain and protect the PPN. The vast majority of the respondents indicated that they are satisfied (42%) or very satisfied (48%) with their visit to this area. Our statistical analysis indicated that asking the question about financing the Park greatly impacted the responses to the question about visitor satisfaction, but was also correlated with the respondent’s place of residence as well as their knowledge of tourist attractions. The unique character, landscape as well as the natural, historical and cultural richness of the PPN combined with the well-maintained infrastructure are crucial to ensure a high level of visitor satisfaction.

Background The past few decades have seen a rapid expansion of mHealth programs among people with serious mental illness, yet mHealth for schizophrenia is in a much earlier stage of development. This study examined the intention of WeChat-based mHealth programs among people living with schizophrenia (PLS) and evaluated correlates of the intention. Methods A total of 400 PLS aged 18–77 completed a cross-sectional survey by face-to-face interviews. The survey included a general question asking about participants’ willingness to attend WeChat-based mHealth programs, followed by preferences of three specific WeChat-based programs: psychoeducation, peer support, and professional support. PLS symptoms, functioning and disability were measured using the 18-item Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS-18), the Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF), and the 12-item World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule 2.0 (WHODAS 2.0), respectively. A multivariate logistic regression was used to determine correlates of program participation intention. Results Over forty percent (43%, n = 172) of participants were willing to participate in WeChat-based mHealth programs, among whom preferences for each specific program were shown in descending order: psychoeducation (68.60%), professional support (60.47%), and peer support (52.33%). A multivariate analysis revealed that younger age (OR: 0.13–0.20, 95% CI [0.05–0.43]), higher education (OR: 3.48–6.84, 95% CI [1.69–18.21]), and lower disability (OR: 0.97, 95% CI [0.94–0.99]) were all independently associated with WeChat-based mHealth program participation intention. Conclusion The findings provide guidance for further development of WeChat-based mHealth programs among PLS in China, and targeted at those who are younger, well-educated and with lower disability.

The procedures people adopt in order to seek out and use information have been the focus of empirical research since long in psychology, especially so from the late 50s. This dissertation addresses some key questions left unanswered by a series of seminal studies which date back to the 80s and the 90s on information-gathering and information-use strategies. We first dealt with the question-asking preferences that people exhibit in an abstract task of hypothesis testing. Specifically, we pitted against one another the tendencies to ask positive questions, wherein the confirming answer is expected given the truth of the working hypothesis, and to pose asymmetric queries, wherein the anticipated outcomes of a dichotomous question (i.e., “yes” and “no” answers) convey different amounts of information. Finally, we investigated whether or not people prefer either asymmetrically confirming queries (i.e., questions for which the confirming answer weights more than the disconfirming answer) or asymmetrically disconfirming queries (i.e., questions for which the disconfirming answer conveys more information than the confirming answer). We found a robust tendency to ask positive testing, in keeping with the literature, but neither a preference for asymmetric questions, nor a predominant use of symmetric testing. Furthermore, we showed, correlationally, that people are sensitive to the diagnosticity of questions, as some previous studies in the literature pointed out. Finally, it emerged an interaction between the positivity of questions and the confirming valence of asymmetric queries. A close analysis of the latter finding allowed us to undermine the possibility that people would try to maximize the probability of occurrence of the tested feature, while suggesting a less sophisticated strategy based on the consideration of an easily accessible feature, that is, the probability of a feature under the working hypothesis. After further deepening the study of strategies adopted in the testing phase of hypothesis development, we turned to the evaluation stage. Specifically, we addressed the finding emerged in previous studies of the relative insensitivity of people to the different diagnosticity conveyed by different answers (i.e., “yes” and “no”) to the same question in an abstract task. We showed that not only people might exhibit insensitivity but also oversensitivity to differentially informative answers, indicating a more general failure in information use than previously thought. We also addressed the issue of why people are either insensitive or oversensitive to answer diagnosticity. We provided evidence that an explanation based on the use of the feature-difference heuristic, which has been proposed previously in the literature and wherein people’s estimates are influenced by the difference between the likelihoods, seems unable to explain people’s behavior. By contrast, we found that people prefer to rely on an averaging strategies, in particular on the average between the prior probability and the likelihood. Finally, we investigated an aspect emerged but not directly investigated by previous studies on hypothesis evaluation, that is the feature-positive effect, wherein people tend to overestimate the presence of a feature as opposed to its absence. The results of three experiments with abstract tasks strongly confirmed that the hypothesized effect influences both frequency and accuracy of participants’ responses. We also found that participants exhibited some sensitivity to the formal amount of information, although only with respect to the present clues. Overall, the series of experiments presented in this dissertation contributes to better clarify how people search for information, by showing that they might rely both on formally relevant and formally irrelevant properties of the information they have at hand and by putting into question the alleged tendency to hypothesis confirmation, defined as a maximization of the probability of a confirming datum. Furthermore, these experiments help understand how people treat information, by specifying how people misweigh differentially diagnostic answers and showing that a psychologically compelling tendency, namely the feature-positive effect, might, at least in part, account for people’s information use.

Normative discussions of temporary labour migration have focused mostly on what social and political rights, if any, temporary migrant workers should have. This chapter focuses on a different set of potential entitlements: cultural rights. The question I am interested in is whether the cultural needs and preferences of temporary migrant workers should be accommodated or even supported by receiving states (note that ‘culture’ is construed broadly here so as to include religious needs and preferences). Specifically, I ask when, if ever, temporary migrant workers should have access to three kinds of cultural rights from a liberal perspective: (i) cultural exemptions from laws and working regulations; (ii) cultural subsidies; and (iii) cultural recognition. Asking this question is important not just to fill a lacuna in the literature on multiculturalism (most of which is concerned with the cultural entitlements of citizens), but also from a practical point of view, as many countries harbour large numbers of temporary migrant workers.

This opening chapter sets the stage for the book by sketching a brief history of evidence-based practice (EBP), explicating the definition and goal of EBPs, outlining controversies about EBP, and introducing three composite patients who will reappear as examples throughout the book. It introduces the sequential core skills of EBP, summarized by the mnemonic AAA TIE or triple A TIE: Asking a specific, clinical question; Accessing the best available research; Appraising that research evidence critically; Translating that research into practice with a particular patient; Integrating the clinician’s expertise and the patient’s characteristics, culture, and preferences with the research; and Evaluating the effectiveness of the entire process. Subsequent chapters take up each of these skills in turn.

Student engagement can encompass many different levels of interaction. Whether it be between student and instructor, among students themselves, with the actual subject matter, or with the various resources and departments on campus, getting and keeping students engaged is a challenging proposition. Frequently, students say they fear speaking in public, being called upon in class, going to the whiteboard, and being singled out by an instructor. Collectively, these fears could be conceptualized as a wish or need for anonymity. Faculty have cited student actions such as participation, question asking, volunteering, office hour visits, and favorable body language as preferred behaviors. These preferences could be conceptualized as a wish or need for engagement.

Abstract This chapter presents some findings from work on the social reading site and Amazon subsidiary, Goodreads. It aims to connect the reception-oriented strains of literary studies to positive psychology and well-being studies by way of three questions. The first is methodological and concerns a basic challenge in the empirical social sciences that has made its way into literary studies via digital humanities: how to build datasets adequately representative of such a vast and varied field of practice as reading. The second is a sociological question, arising out of work that began in the 1990s: whether there has been a general shift of cultural values such that readers are encouraged to adopt open and tolerant habits of reading, replacing the ideal of narrowly “good taste” with that of eclecticism, and establishing creative curation as the basis of a genuinely happy and healthy relationship to books. The third question links the other two by asking whether digital platforms such as Goodreads, besides being rich sources of data about readers and reading, might themselves, through their ever more comprehensive algorithmic mediations, be affecting this entire scheme of values, preferences, and readerly well-being.

With the ever-increasing and ever-changing flow of information available on the Web, information analysis has never been more important. Web text mining, which includes text categorization, text clustering, association analysis and prediction of trends, can assist us in discovering useful information in an effective and efficient manner. In this chapter, we have proposed a Web mining system that incorporates both online efficiency and off-line effectiveness to provide the “right” information based on users’ preferences. A Bi- Objective Fuzzy c-Means algorithm and information retrieval technique, for text categorization, clustering and integration, was employed for analysis. The proposed system is illustrated via a case involving the Web site marketing of mobile phones. A variety of Web sites exist on the Internet and a common type involves the trading of goods. In this type of Web site, the question to ask is: If we want to establish a Web site that provides information about products, how can we respond quickly and accurately to queries? This is equivalent to asking: How can we design a flexible search engine according to users’ preferences? In this study, we have applied data mining techniques to cope with such problems, by proposing, as an example, a Web site providing information on mobile phones in Taiwan. In order to efficiently provide useful information, two tasks were considered during the Web design phase. One related to off-line analysis: this was done by first carrying out a survey of frequent Web users, students between 15 and 40 years of age, regarding their preferences, so that Web customers’ behavior could be characterized. Then the survey data, as well as the products offered, were classified into different demand and preference groups. The other task was related to online query: this was done through the application of an information retrieval technique that responded to users’ queries. Based on the ideas above the remainder of the chapter is organized as follows: first, we present a literature review, introduce some concepts and review existing methods relevant to our study, then, the proposed Web mining system is presented, a case study of a mobile-phone marketing Web site is illustrated and finally, a summary and conclusions are offered.

This chapter provides a guide to the first core skill of evidence-based practice (EBP): formulating a specific, answerable question. This skill lies at the heart of accessing the best available research. To practice EBP clinicians must first form an answerable clinical question; otherwise they will likely incur frustration and waste time once they embark on their literature search. The chapter introduces several types of questions, including background and foreground questions. The chapter also provides step-by-step instructions for formulating clinical questions using the PICO format, which encourages clinicians to identify the patient, intervention, comparison, and outcomes relevant to the patient. It concludes with a discussion of how to ensure that questions reflect the patient’s preferences and how to prioritize questions.