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This paper reports on an intervention for improving the strategic decision making and strategic planning in a specific quasi-public organization: the Illinois Soybean Program Operating Board and on how decision support systems can alter perceptions of the decision making environment, which in turn affect strategic planning. The study hypothesis is that if the use of a sophisticated 3-D modeling tool, the Protein Consumption Dynamics (PCD) model, broadens perspectives to include a more global and long-term outlook, then the quality of planning should be enhanced. Before and after questionnaires are used to capture the changes in 121 soy industry decision- makers' perceptions of the decision making environment. The perceptions of soybean industry decision makers change to reflect more long-term thinking about the industry, indicating that the PCD model's visualized presentation of complex information did influence strategic behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to assess whether a gap exists in student perceptions of sexual harassment in the workplace as compared to the realities. Over 20 years following the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the US Supreme Court recognized sexual harassment as a cause of action under Title VII. However, despite the developing law and public awareness of the same, sexual harassment persists in today's workplace, and its presence and effects continue to be underestimated by relevant stakeholders, including university students.

College students (n = 1,373) provide perceptions on sexual harassment of self, sexual harassment of others, potential career impact of sexual harassment on self, and demographic information. Descriptive statistics are used to evaluate research questions, while t‐tests determine if differences exist by race and/or gender.

The paper's findings suggest that the majority of respondents believe sexual harassment is not a serious risk in the modern workplace, especially in relation to its impact on their own careers.

College students (and potentially members of the workforce) need ongoing training and education in order to minimize discrimination or harassment. This misalignment between perception and reality poses the risk of negative consequences to both business organizations as well as to individual employees and raises the issue of how education may be used to minimize these consequences.

This paper provides college students with a definition of sexual harassment, then inquires as to whether or not they believe it happens (to them or others), and if so, would it affect their careers. The findings suggest the rose colored lenses may adversely impact their ability to see realities of the workplace.

Reports on a conference held in 1989 in Wisconsin, which focused on the topic of providing better access to information for people with disabilities. According to the author, the conference concentrated mainly on those with vision‐related difficulties. Summarizes two of the speeches made at the conference and examines some of the technology on display. Stresses the need for adaptive technology to enable people with a disability to access the increasing amounts of computer technology in everyday life.

Social media have been associated with social benefits and enhanced psychological well-being among non-disabled individuals; the purpose of this study is to examine whether social media may have similar benefits for young neurodivergent adults with autism, anxiety, or attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorder who may experience communication differences. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this first-of-its kind study explores the nature of social media use and related psychological well-being among neurodivergent college undergraduates.

This qualitative study is part of a larger effort. The authors surveyed undergraduates with and without disabilities at U.S. higher education institutions on their social media use and psychological well-being. A total of 131 students responded, including 24 neurodivergent individuals, the results of which are reported elsewhere. Participants were 18–25 years old, of varied genders and racial/ethnic backgrounds; for neurodivergent adults, questions focused on social challenges. From the survey, a sample of five neurodivergent individuals was drawn for this small-scale, exploratory interview study.

This paper reports descriptive statistics from survey results to contextualize analysis of students’ social media use (e.g. purposes, practices, benefits and harms). Students used mainly Instagram, TikTok and YouTube to promote well-being primarily through engaging positive relationships and positive emotions. Students reported several benefits of using social media to develop their disability identity and few harms.

Understanding the impact of social media use on undergraduates with disabilities could help us not only improve services as teachers, counselors and other helping professionals who support young adults to leverage their everyday technologies-in-use but also address digital equity issues.

To effectively meet their social objectives, humanitarian organizations need to be more innovative and find novel ways to stay competitive. Yet there has been limited focus on innovation by humanitarian organizations. Part of the issue is the lack of new practices and novel approaches that can be used as benchmarks. This study focuses on food banks, a critical hub for the delivery of food in humanitarian supply chains and where the use of innovation seems to be more reported on.

Focusing on resource scarcity, a commonly referenced constraint by humanitarian organizations, the authors study how food and fund scarcity (versus abundance) influence the innovation efforts of twelve food banks in the United States. This study observes variations in behavior before and during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

The authors find that food banks operating in high resource scarcity (food-scarce and fund-scarce) settings focus on process innovations. Food banks operating in low resource scarcity (food-abundant and fund-abundant) settings focus on product innovations. Food banks operating in food-abundant and fund-scarce settings focus on marketing innovations. Food banks operating in food-scarce and fund-abundant settings show the most extensive focus on innovation by relying on imitative innovations. The innovation focus for most food banks switches to process innovation during the COVID pandemic.

The study breaks down resource scarcity specific to food banks by differentiating food and funds, a novel approach to studying scarcity. Findings are novel as they suggest that operating context has a highly differentiating effect on what food banks focus on in terms of innovation. Operating context can lead to focus on process, product, imitative of market-related innovations. Finally, the study is novel because it explores how change in the environmental context due to disruptions can drastically modify the innovation focus of food banks.

This paper aims to explore 15 UK adult social care workers’ experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper’s 15 open-ended interviews with adult social care workers are complemented by digital ethnography in COVID-19 social media forums. This data set is taken from a global mixed-methods study, involving over 2,000 participants from 59 different countries.

Workers reported a lack of planning, guidance and basic provisions including personal protective equipment. Work intensification brought stress, workload pressure and mental health problems. Family difficulties and challenges of living through the pandemic, often related to government restrictions, intensified these working conditions with precarious living arrangements. The workers also relayed a myriad of challenges for their residents in which, the circumstances appear to have exacerbated dementia and general health problems including dehydration, delirium and loneliness. Whilst COVID-19 was seen as partially responsible for resident deaths, the sudden disruptions to daily life and prohibitions on family visits were identified as additional contributing factors in rapid and sudden decline.

Whilst the paper’s sample cohort is small, given the significance of COVID-19 at this present time the findings shed important light on the care home experience as well as act as a baseline for future study.

Care homes bore the brunt of illness and death during the first and second COVID-19 waves in the UK, and many of the problems identified here have still yet to be actioned by the government. As people approach the summer months, an urgent review is required of what happened in care homes and this paper could act as some part of that evidence gathering.

This paper offers revealing insights from frontline care home workers and thus provides an empirical snapshot during this unique phase in recent history. It also builds upon the preliminary/emerging qualitative research evidence on how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted care homes, care workers and the residents.

In the 1980s, as the United States encountered international economic and technological challenges, the very ability of the American educational system to produce a competitive labor force, able to learn and solve problems, was questioned. During this past decade, renewed concern about educational quality in the United States motivated over one hundred reports analyzing the shortcomings in our system of education and endorsing reform. All of the principal curriculum areas have been reviewed in this process; moreover, science education has been deemed particularly deficient. Major reports sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) recommend both content revision of science courses and methodological changes in the way science is presented throughout the elementary and secondary grades.

A persona describes a group of library patrons as a single person to better identify and describe user patterns and needs. Identifying personas in academic libraries can assist in library planning by focusing on patrons. Initially, personas were thought to be unique to each library; additional insights led the researchers to rethink this assertion. The purpose of this paper is to determine if personas, developed in one library, are unique or more universal than previously thought.

In this study, 903 surveys were completed across two institutions asking library patrons to identify use patterns within each library. Mean score responses were analyzed using an ANOVA, principal component analysis and RapidMiner technology. All analyses were used to identify personas with common interests and places personas in groups or neighborhoods.

The findings provide evidence for the universality of academic library personas. However, differences occur in how the personas are grouped and use different library services and resources.

Personas allow librarians to view patrons in a more personal way as they connect personas to specific library spaces. While the personas appear to be universal, their interactions with each other depend on specific library amenities.

This paper relayed an important line of Mark Hepworth’s work, which engages with information technologies and development. The purpose of this paper is to suggest a subfield of library and information science (LIS) for development to reclaim the role of information services and systems for social change in rural areas. The paper looked at the extent of development gained with the advent of mobile phones.

Rather than undertaking traditional large-scale, quantitative, context-independent and survey-type research, the paper employed capability approach and semi-structured interviews to ascertain the experiences that mobile phone kiosk vendors in the rural Congo had of mobile phones.

It was found that mobile phones should be geared towards the liberation, and not utilization or commodification of humans and their needs and that mobile phones were not a catalyst of human basic capabilities.

Since the method employed is an in-depth qualitative analysis of mobile phone kiosk vendors, obtained results can be used to enrich or inform mobile phone experiences in other settings and groups.

This paper provided empirical evidence as to how an important group of mobile phone users could harness development with their mobiles.

Most LIS literature has presented mobile phones along the lines of information freedom or access, mass subscription, adoption rates, technological and entrepreneurial innovation, micro-credits, etc. However, the paper placed the topic development at the heart of LIS debates.

This article summarises the preliminary findings of a qualitative exploratory study conducted through a series of eight group interviews with statutory sector social work care managers (SW/CMs). While managers may have moved on to the implementation of partnership, SW/CMs are still struggling with the implications of the purchaser/provider split. The article highlights issues that are problematic for SW/CMs and makes tentative suggestions to their line managers.