National vs. international journals: views of medical professionals in Croatia

Scholarly journals, especially in non‐English‐speaking countries, may perform very different functions depending on whether they are published for national or international audiences. Four hundred and sixty‐six academic physicians and non‐academic general practitioners in Croatia were surveyed on their knowledge about two Croatian medical journals: Lije?ni?ki vjesnik (published in Croatian) and Croatian Medical Journal (published in English). The physicians were also surveyed about the importance of all national and international journals published in Croatia, and the types of articles they thought should be published in these journals. More respondents rated national (n = 329, 72.6%) than international journals (n = 275, 63.5%, P < 0.001, Wilcoxon test) as very important for the medical profession. On the other hand, publishing in international journals was more often rated as important than publishing in national journals (n = 184, 42.5% vs. n = 125, 27.8%; P < 0.001, Wilcoxon test). Guidelines for clinical practice were rated as the most important publication item in national journals, and original scientific articles in international journals.     

Experimental micro-histories,private speech and a study of children’s learning and cognitive development / Microhistorias experimentales,habla privada y un estudio del aprendizaje y el desarrollo cognitivo en los niños

Abstract

In this paper, we present the recent development of a methodological approach originally devised by Perret-Clermont and Schubauer-Leoni called ‘experimental micro-histories’. This approach allows us to investigate processes of change that often seem to be underestimated in the typical experiments used in developmental psychology that focus on the average impact of certain factors. Two dyads were studied in-depth to understand how, for better or for worse, children use elements learned from previous conversations in their subsequent self-regulatory processes. Different trajectories of private-social speech were studied through different phases (child-adult scaffolding phase and a subsequent child-child interaction phase) and will be discussed in order to reconsider the necessity of adopting a micro-historical focus on developmental processes of change.     

Solfeggio learning and the influence of a mobile application based on visual,auditory and tactile modalities

Traditional methods of learning solfeggio (music theory) generally do not take advantage of computer-based support, meaning that, when learning individually, students cannot receive instantaneous feedback on their activities. The aim of this study is to examine the effectiveness of an interactive mobile application, mySolfeggio, for learning solfeggio. Using a mobile device, students can take advantage of visual, auditory and tactile modalities to recognise musical notes. Students can also practice and learn notation, rhythm and melody, for which the mobile application provides corrective feedback. To evaluate students’ perceptions of the mobile application and its effect on knowledge, we conducted an experiment with 42 students, from 9 to 13 years old. After learning a particular song during a regular lesson, one group of students practiced it individually with only the musical notation, while the other group used both the musical notation and the mobile application. The results of the experiment illustrated only a small effect on students’ performance in singing and tapping when using the mobile application. However, they demonstrated higher scores in terms of musical intervals and rhythmic accuracy when compared to students in the control group. The students did not find the use of the application difficult, thus allowing it to be used as a tool for improvement of their homework practice.     

Dialogical PISA: correct answers are all alike,every incorrect answer is incorrect in its own way

Why do students give incorrect answers in PISA? What are the reasons for giving incorrect answers? Do all incorrect answers reflect only the lack of competence or might even a competent child make a mistake? The aim of this article is to contribute to a better understanding of these issues. In the current investigation, we selected six students who responded incorrectly to one PISA question in mathematics or science when they solved it individually. Then, we analyzed their understanding of the PISA task and their reasoning about it through a dialogical problem solving in triads to identify why they made an incorrect answer. Moreover, we tried to determine how the shared peer interaction might change the understanding and reasoning of the child and enable her/him to solve the task. The results of this study illustrate the differences between incorrect answers reflecting lack of competence and those incorrect answers, which appear for some other reasons. Based on the dialogical problem solving approach, we analyzed these two types of incorrect answers and the reasoning trajectories behind them.     

Burnout among university faculty: the central role of work–family conflict

This study examined both direct and indirect associations of faculty burnout with psychosocial work environments, using the job resources-demands framework. A sample of 2,229 faculty members (57.1% male) throughout public universities in the Czech Republic completed a questionnaire comprising measures of burnout and psychosocial work environment characteristics from the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire II. We formulated a structural model that hypothesised a positive effect of job demands (quantitative demands, work-family conflict (WFC), job insecurity) and a negative effect of job resources (influence, social community, role clarity) on burnout. Results showed that the strongest predictor of burnout was WFC, which had a direct positive effect on burnout and mediated the positive effect of quantitative demands on burnout. Further, a small direct negative effect of age and an indirect positive effect of involvement in research grants and administrative paperwork on burnout were observed. The findings indicate that university management can most effectively address burnout in academic staff not only by implementing policies that reduce WFC, workload and administrative paperwork, but also by providing more job resources to younger faculty and faculty involved in grant-based projects.     

The use of ICT devices by older people with a special focus on their type and respondents’ age: A Czech case study

The recent demographic trends show a rapid increase of aging population, especially in developed countries. Therefore, there is an urgent need to look for the opportunities of maintaining the quality of life of this aging population. One of the solutions seems to be the use of information and communication technology (ICT) devices, which can promote autonomy of older people by facilitating the execution of many routine activities such as shopping or communication. The purpose of this study is to explore the use of ICT devices among older people in the Czech Republic with respect to their type and respondents’ age. The methods include a questionnaire survey, as well as statistical processing of data collection. The results indicate that present seniors are becoming more digitally literate, especially in the use of mobile phones. However, the use of the technological devices then dramatically drops at the age of 75 years. In addition, the results indicate that future research should focus on the use of mobile phones, respectively smartphones, and its effectiveness on the improvement of quality of life of older generation groups.     

Convexity in scientific collaboration networks

Convexity in a network (graph) has been recently defined as a property of each of its subgraphs to include all shortest paths between the nodes of that subgraph. It can be measured on the scale [0, 1] with 1 being assigned to fully convex networks. The largest convex component of a graph that emerges after the removal of the least number of edges is called a convex skeleton. It is basically a tree of cliques, which has been shown to have many interesting features. In this article the notions of convexity and convex skeletons in the context of scientific collaboration networks are discussed. More specifically, we analyze the co-authorship networks of Slovenian researchers in computer science, physics, sociology, mathematics, and economics and extract convex skeletons from them. We then compare these convex skeletons with the residual graphs (remainders) in terms of collaboration frequency distributions by various parameters such as the publication year and type, co-authors’ birth year, status, gender, discipline, etc. We also show the top-ranked scientists by four basic centrality measures as calculated on the original networks and their skeletons and conclude that convex skeletons may help detect influential scholars that are hardly identifiable in the original collaboration network. As their inherent feature, convex skeletons retain the properties of collaboration networks. These include high-level structural properties but also the fact that the same authors are highlighted by centrality measures. Moreover, the most important ties and thus the most important collaborations are retained in the skeletons.