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The purpose of this paper is to report the results of an industry-funded qualitative interdisciplinary research project that has produced a new approach to motorway noise management called “noise transformation”.

Four iterative design tests guided by listening as methodology. These included field recordings, laboratory tests and two field tests. Field tests were conducted in combination with ethnographers, who verified community responses to field-based transformations.

Transformation requires an audible perception of both background and introduced sounds in all instances. Transformation creates a 1–2 dB increase in background sound levels, making it counterintuitive to traditional noise attenuation approaches. Noise transformation is an electroacoustic soundscape design method that treats noise as a “design material”. When listening to motorway noise transformations, participants were actually experiencing another rendering of a sound that they had already acquired a degree of attunement to. Thus, they experienced transformations as somehow familiar or normal and easy to feel comfortable with.

Noise transformation is a new approach to noise management. Typically, noise management focusses on reduction in dB levels. Noise transformation focusses on changing the perceptual impact of noise to make it less annoying. It brings together urban design, composition and ethnography as a means to think about the future design of outdoor environments affected by motorway traffic noise, and should be of interests to planners, designers and artists. The authors have structured the paper around listening as methodology, through which both design and ethnography outcomes were achieved.

It is now common for finance textbooks to discuss the concepts of the CAPM, diversification benefit, and systematic risk, as measured by beta. The purpose of this paper is to clarify aspects of these concepts and make the textbooks readers aware of them. In particular, this paper seeks to: (1) clarify the notion that “diversification reduces risk,” (2) provide geometric expositions and algebraic expressions of portfolio benefits in the context of both total risk and market risk, and (3) improve the interpretation of beta.

This study aims to examine the predictive power of childhood adversity and severity of positive symptoms on suicidality, controlling for selected sociodemographics factors, among hospitalized patients diagnosed with schizophrenia in Jordan.

This study used a descriptive-explorative design. The study was conducted at two major psychiatric hospitals in Jordan. The targeted sample was 66 patients diagnosed with schizophrenia. Data was collected using a structured format in the period February–April 2024.

A two-step multiple hierarchical regression analysis was conducted. In the first model, childhood adversity and the severity of positive symptoms were entered. In the second model, sociodemographic variables were entered. The analysis revealed that the first model (F = 5.35, p = 0.007) was statistically significant. The second model (F = 717, p < 0.001) was statistically significant. Furthermore, the analysis revealed that childhood adversity was not a significant predictor for suicidality. However, positive symptoms and patients’ demographics (age, number of hospitalizations and length of being diagnosed with schizophrenia) were significant predictors of suicidality. The analysis revealed that childhood adversity was not a significant predictor of suicidality. However, positive symptoms and patients’ demographics (age, number of hospitalizations and length of being diagnosed with schizophrenia) were significant predictors of suicidality.

One limitation of this study is related to the sample and the setting where there were only 66 patients recruited from governmental hospitals within inpatient wards. Thus, the upcoming studies should include more participants from private hospitals and different hospital settings including outpatient and emergency departments.

The research provides empirical insights that positive symptoms, age hospitalization and schizophrenia diagnosis length were significant predictors of suicidality. At the same time, childhood adversity was not a significant predictor of suicidality.

The current research contributes to expanding mental health studies. Moreover, this study enlarges the body of knowledge in the academic world and clinical settings. It supports the disciplines of psychology, mental health and social sciences by increasing knowledge of the complicated relationships among childhood adversity, positive symptoms and suicidality.

This paper fulfills an identified need to study childhood adversity with comorbid psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, as well as psychiatric mental health covariates.

Prior studies have not yet made sufficient effort to examine the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and customer citizenship behavior (CCB) in the hospitality context. The purpose of this study is to explore the role of CSR in fostering CCB in the hospitality context, as well as the mechanisms underlying the relationship.

This study obtained its empirical evidence from 422 hotel customers in North Cyprus and applied a structural equation modeling analysis.

The findings reveal that CSR significantly contributes to customer help, customer feedback and customer tolerance. Surprisingly, the results do not support the existence of a significant relationship between CSR and customer advocacy. Evidence indicates that perceived service quality plays a partial mediating role.

This study has shown that customers are rewarding firms involved in CSR initiatives in the form of CCB – directly and indirectly – through perceived service quality. This finding can advance managers’ understanding, enabling them to better manage their CSR initiatives to achieve the most effective outcomes.

The study advances a convergence between the research streams of CSR and CCB, which has been under-explored in the tourism context. The study also extends the CSR and customer citizenship literature through a novel mediation mechanism of perceived service quality.

This study builds on existing research to explore how transgender and non-binary people navigate complex terrain when it comes to strained and ambiguous relationships with families of origin. This chapter draws on 23 in-depth interviews with trans and non-binary adults (ages 19–41) to examine the ways that respondents navigated ambiguous and complex family relationships marked by mixed messages and contradictory behaviors from parents regarding their sexual and gender identities. I find that respondents engage in a range of strategies – correcting, conforming, and concealing – to bargain for belonging within families of origin through their work to preserve family ties. Beyond experiencing the emotional costs of ambiguous parental support, I find that some respondents also experience financial strain and inadequate housing, stemming from unstable, distressing relationships with their parents. This chapter demonstrates that ambiguous support from family and complex familial relationships may contribute to a cycle of precarity for trans and non-binary adults. Finally, I show that for respondents, connections to local queer and trans communities and supportive partnerships buffered the negative impacts of familial ambiguity. However, not all respondents had access to community support, intensifying their experiences of marginalization. This chapter contributes to the literature working to destabilize the support versus rejection binary used to characterize LGBTQ experiences and has implications for better understanding the pathways into poverty that trans and non-binary people experience.

Facilitation payments (petty corruption) are small payments to an officer or employee, public or private, who is responsible for a nondiscretionary service, in order to facilitate, accelerate, or cheapen a procedure, for example, issuing a passport or connecting a house to a power distribution network. They are widespread in some countries, and are often considered irrelevant, but they have very large negative impacts in generating a culture of corruption, affecting the functioning of public offices or private companies and on costs for citizens. This chapter explains what facilitation payments are, why they are an ethical problem for people who pay and receive them, for companies and for society, and the positioning of the fight against those payments within the overall strategy against corruption.

Traces the history of OCLC’s development as an international organization, reviews current activities around the world and describes evolving strategies for globalization of the OCLC co‐operative.

Sexuality is complex, concerning concepts such as power relations, sensuality, personal integrity, capacity to consent, decision making, identity and self‐awareness, intimacy and relationships. Despite this complexity, it is an integral part of every human being, affected by race, socio‐economic status and intellectual ability. However, the expression of the sexuality of people with learning disabilities is denied and rarely facilitated. Often the importance of gender identity is ignored and this is reflected, for example, in how women with learning disabilities see their own bodies. Explanations include historical beliefs like eugenics, service principles such as normalisation, economics and an over‐riding concern to protect women and men with learning disabilities from abuse. Acknowledging that such factors play an important role in preventing the facilitation or expression of sexuality by men and women with learning disabilities, this paper focuses on the development of the criminal law, the role and potential of current sexual offences and the Home Office Report Setting the Boundaries.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on customer relationship quality (RQ) based on three main aspects of RQ, namely, satisfaction, trust and commitment.

A quantitative meta-analysis of 80 unique effect sizes reported in 60 articles (n = 27,805) was conducted to determine effect sizes of the relationship between CSR and the aspects of RQ of the customer. Furthermore, the economic development has been examined as potential moderators between CSR and RQ.

Meta-analysis suggests that a positive relationship between CSR and the three studied aspects of RQ is well established; however, the strength of studied relationships has revealed variations in magnitude. Customer commitment was affected by CSR (r = 56) the most, closely followed by customer trust (r = 0.52), while customer satisfaction (r = 0.44) was affected the least. Moreover, the result of meta-regression shows that the economic development moderates only one relationship, CSR and trust.

Presenting a summary of the direction of primary research on the relationship between CSR and RQ, as no prior meta-analysis on the primary relationship has been conducted till date (to the best of the authors’ knowledge).