Adoption of New Movie Distribution Services on the Internet

Although the Internet features excess demand for media, especially movie downloads, the motion picture industry lacks sustainable business models for this market. An enriched form of the theory of planned behavior can identify drivers of consumer intentions to adopt a legal movie download service. Using a large data set, this study estimates structural equation model parameters. The magnitude of specific influences is subject to unobserved heterogeneity, according to a finite mixture approach with partial least squares estimation. Not only attitude, but also social influence, perceived technical feasibility, innovativeness, compatibility, and past behavior drive adoption decisions.     

SHORT REPORTS

This short report explores the quality of the care process for children with intellectual disabilities. A Delphi procedure was used to identify a set of indicators for the quality of the care process reflecting the perspectives of the care providers, the parents and the experts. The sample consisted of 59 individuals involved in different ways in the process of the caring for children with intellectual ­disabilities. The first round of the Delphi procedure resulted in 56 themes, distributed across four different phases of the care process. In the second round of the Delphi procedure, these themes were elaborated into 346 indicators that were, in turn, evaluated on their importance for the quality of the care process by the respondents. Finally, 328 indicators did meet the 85% criterion for consensus. Six themes proved to be relevant in all phases of care: transfer of information, report, consultation, attitude of care provider, respect and appointments. The operationalization of quality of care presented in this study points in the direction of actually measuring, monitoring and improving the quality of care for children with intellectual disabilities.     

Conceptions of first‐year university students of the constituents of matter and the notions of acids and bases

Preconceptions of first‐year university students of the constituents of matter and the notions of acids and bases were investigated on a total of 400 students. The procedure used consisted of free interviews, semi‐structured interviews and questionnaires.

It was found that the constituents of matter were well known to students, but that interactions between these constituents were either totally unknown or were the subject of severe misconceptions. The students’ knowledge tended to be qualitative and formal, with a worrying lack of connection with everyday life.     

Skills for Complexity

One of the major conceptual difficulties of environmental education is its complexity. During a 20 h module of initial training gathering together primary and secondary school teachers this concept was highlighted. Some approaches have been tested, all dynamic and transferable. They are analysed and assessed.     

Choix de partenaires et respect des règles

European Journal of Psychology of Education - Cette recherche se rapporte au domaine d’étude des conduites sociales des élèves de la sixième année et aux liens qui...     

Semiotic mediation in guiding interactions with young children: The role of context and communication handicap on distanciation in adult discourse

This paper pays attention to two factors often neglected in the studies of instructional or guidance interaction: the specifity of the child as interlocutor and the constraints exerted by the properties of the tasks on the semiotic means used to guide the child. Following Sigel’s ‘distanciation hypothesis’ we have studied the ‘distancing’ characteristics of the adult’s discourse adressed to the child in two groups of dyads, one with deaf (N=5), the other with hearing children (N=7) aged around 24 months, in two tasks: Symbolic Play and Picture — Book reading. The main results indicate a strong effect of the tasks, SP allowing more distanciation than PB for both categories. D-dyads show few differences in SP task but less ability to share references in Picture-Book reading. It appears also that with such young children, the distancing potential might be conveyed by the forms and pragmatic functions and not only by the semantic components of adult’s utterances.     

Reciprocal (and Reductionist?) Newswork

This paper builds upon previous research that examines participatory forms of “reciprocal journalism” and “public communication” led by high school and college students in Miami, Florida, USA, in the fall of 2014. In this study, the students’ assessment of local and national media coverage is used to reveal greater details inherent in examining participatory methods of newswork. Collectively, students said that media coverage emphasis on local and national public officials instead of residents and community members who experience sea-level rise first-hand, combined with a lack of scientific explanation of and solutions for sea-level rise reduced the event's potential to build reciprocal relationships with younger audiences.     

Upper limb joint muscle/tendon injury and anthropometric adaptations in French competitive tennis players

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the upper limb anthropometric dimensions and a history of dominant upper limb injury in tennis players. Dominant and non-dominant wrist, forearm, elbow and arm circumferences, along with a history of dominant upper limb injuries, were assessed in 147 male and female players, assigned to four groups based on location of injury: wrist (n = 9), elbow (n = 25), shoulder (n = 14) and healthy players (n = 99). From anthropometric dimensions, bilateral differences in circumferences and in proportions were calculated. The wrist group presented a significant bilateral difference in arm circumference, and asymmetrical bilateral proportions between wrist and forearm, as well as between elbow and arm, compared to the healthy group (6.6 ± 3.1% vs. 4.9 ± 4.0%, P < 0.01; ?3.6 ± 3.0% vs. ?0.9 ± 2.9%, P < 0.05; and ?2.2 ± 2.2% vs. 0.1 ± 3.4%, P < 0.05, respectively). The elbow group displayed asymmetrical bilateral proportions between forearm and arm compared to the healthy group (?0.4 ± 4.3% vs. 1.5 ± 4.0%, P < 0.01). The shoulder group showed significant bilateral difference in elbow circumference, and asymmetrical bilateral proportions between forearm and elbow when compared to the healthy group (5.8 ± 4.7% vs. 3.1 ± 4.8%, P < 0.05 and ?1.7 ± 4.5% vs. 1.4 ± 4.3%, P < 0.01, respectively). These findings suggest that players with a history of injury at the upper limb joint present altered dominant upper limb proportions in comparison with the non-dominant side, and such asymmetrical proportions would appear to be specific to the location of injury. Further studies are needed to confirm the link between location of tennis injury and asymmetry in upper limb proportions using high-tech measurements in symptomatic tennis players.