Background: Nosocomial infections pose a big threat to patient safety and increased costs for society. An effective way of preventing cross-infections is to apply hygiene routines. Studies show that compliance to hygiene routines is low while there's a lack of knowledge about the best way of improving it. Aim: To investigate whether a conversation based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) could influence a nurse's compliance to hygiene routines and whether it could benefit the understanding of a nurse's compliance. Method: A quantitative and qualitative method was used in the study and included one nurse. An observation of his/her daily work at a hospital ward was carried out before and after a conversation which focused on attitude, subjective norm and perceived behaviour control. Main results: Even if compliance was good to start with it improved after the conversation. The nurse's attitude towards hygiene procedures was positive, but heavy workloads and difficulty to access materials could be a barrier. The norm in the ward was, according to the nurse, that hygiene routines were important even if some were less compliant. Conclusion: the use of TPB in a conversation could benefit the understanding of the nurse's compliance. Improvements in daily practices were noticed after the conversation, which could be due to an increased awareness of the need to perform hygiene procedures. No direct conclusions could be drawn from this study because the sample was limited, but the study provides suggestions for further research.

国立情報学研究所で電子化したコンテンツを使用している。

The aim of this research was to implement and evaluate guidelines that will be used by treatment support counsellors in an attempt to increase client adherence to antiretroviral treatment.

A growing body of research suggests that cross-examination may be detrimental to the accuracy of children�s event reports. The primary goal of the present research was to investigate three specific ways in which the negative effect of cross-examination could be reduced. Experiment 1 examined the effect of reducing the delay between the collection of the primary evidence and cross-examination. Five- and 6-year-old children (N = 76) took part in a staged event and were interviewed 1 to 2 days later. In this interview, children were asked to recall everything they could remember about the event. Children were then asked specific yes/no questions. Next, either 1 to 3 days or 8 months later, all children were interviewed for a second time in a cross-examination format. The 8-month delay was equivalent to the average delay experienced by children in New Zealand courts (Lash, 1995). The aim of the cross-examination interview was to talk the children out of their original responses, irrespective of the accuracy of their original account. Cross-examination questioning had a significant negative effect on the accuracy of children�s reports, regardless of timing. That is, children cross-examined soon after the memory event performed no better than those who were cross-examined after an 8-month delay. Furthermore, one week after cross-examination, children were interviewed again. The purpose of this interview was to establish whether children actually believed the responses they had given during cross-examination. During this interview, many children reversed what they had said during cross-examination, indicating that the responses they had given during cross-examination were due primarily to compliance to authority. Given the finding that compliance to authority played a significant role in children�s cross-examination performance in Experiment 1, Experiment 2 addressed whether a pre-interview intervention aimed to decrease compliance would reduce the negative impact of cross-examination. Five- and 6-year-old children (n = 59) and 9- and 10-year-old children (n = 62) participated in the same staged event and were interviewed for their primary evidence as in Experiment 1. Prior to the cross-examination interview, however, some children were warned that the interviewer might ask some questions which were tricky and that it was okay to tell her that she was wrong. Warning children prior to the cross-examination interview did not reduce the negative impact of cross-examination for either age group, even when the warning was delivered by the cross-examining interviewer. Experiment 3 addressed whether a more intensive pre-interview intervention could reduce the negative impact of cross-examination. Using the same experimental procedures as Experiment 2, half of the 5- and 6-year-old children (n = 77) and 9- and 10-year-old children (n = 87) received a practice and feedback session with cross-examination type questions prior to the target interview. While cross-examination still resulted in a decrease in children�s accuracy, children in the preparation condition performed significantly better than the control children. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that the negative effect of cross-examination is highly robust and that compliance appears to be the underlying mechanism responsible for this. A practice and feedback session targeting the factors that contribute to compliance reduced, but did not eliminate, the negative effect of this questioning style. Therefore, children�s accuracy may be facilitated to some extent by cross-examination preparation prior to testifying.

Public employment services are provided in all developed economies, justified on the basis of a public interest in efficient, effective operation of national labour markets. Although such countries adopt different approaches to delivering these services each offers what I refer to as ‘the three essential roles of a public employment service’. These are labour exchange services, providing job brokerage to labour market participants to enhance the efficiency of the labour market; an equity role, offering assistance to disadvantaged jobseekers to improve their prospects of employment; and a ‘compliance monitoring role’ which contributes to maintaining the integrity of the welfare system by detecting welfare abuse. Informed by a body of research on policies and practices in the OECD I construct a model of a notional public employment service incorporating these three essential roles that I call ‘an OECD model’. The Job Network, an early policy reform of a newly-elected Coalition government, appeared to replicate ‘the OECD model’, insofar as it performed brokerage, offered equity measures and conducted invigilation of welfare compliance. However, it differed from its predecessor, the CES, in two significant respects. First it was created by the bureaucracy as a new ‘market’ in which all employment services were purchased through a competitive tending process from private sector providers; in this, it was unique in the OECD. Second, rather than offering prescribed employment programs and services designed by public officials, private providers were free to determine the needs of clients (within broadly-defined service categories) and devise their own strategies to achieve contractually-defined ‘outcomes’ for which they would be paid. Services were focused particularly on disadvantaged jobseekers who were expected to receive personalised assistance tailored to overcome their complex or multiple barriers to employment. The purpose of my thesis is to discover whether the Job Network (in the period from its inception to the end of the second contract) was an OECD model, by which I mean whether its three roles were conceptualised, constructed and delivered in ways that enabled them to perform the same functions as the three essential roles of the OECD model. I see this question as involving two distinct, but interrelated issues. First, I am concerned to discover whether the three roles of the Job Network share the objectives and priorities of their counterparts in the OECD model, positing that these will shape the design of services. Second, informed by a body of literature which draws attention to a range of issues emerging from privatisation of public services, I consider the impacts that private delivery had on the design and implementation of its services. iv I approach this task from a qualitative perspective to explore assumptions and priorities underpinning the political construction of the issues deemed to require policy intervention and the responses to these as reflected in the design and implementation of services, noting the effects of practices on service recipients. I argue that, together, these are the determinants of the Job Network’s policy objectives and capacities. I take as my data the political discourse, bureaucratic texts, interview materials and texts of service recipients that I have gathered to investigate, in turn, each of the three roles of the Job Network using tools and techniques from the broader field of discourse analysis, selecting those most appropriate to the nature of the data. My analysis concludes that the Job Network’s three roles do not reflect those of the OECD model, first because they are predicated on different policy objectives and second, because privatisation of service delivery affected the design of its services and the priorities of service providers in ways that undermined its capacity to perform the ‘essential roles’. The evidence suggests that ideological-based assumptions and preferences of a conservative government steered the Job Network towards prioritising its role in compliance monitoring, positioning it as a tool of welfare reform rather delivering interventions to enhance efficiency or equity in the labour market such as those predicated of the OECD model.

This study investigated the effectiveness of the Triple P Programme to reduce non-compliant behaviour in three solo father families. Using behavioural monitoring, observational coding, and self-report questionnaires, outcome measures included non-compliant behaviour, the quality of the parent-child relationship, parenting efficacy, parental mental health, and parenting practices. A measure of change was also included to identify change points in the therapeutic process. Results suggest that parent training is effective in the reduction of non-compliant behaviour, as positive changes were found across all the measures employed. This early intervention has the potential to increase child compliance with solo fathers, and contributes to the knowledge base about this under-reported population. Limitations of the study and directions for future research are discussed.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Texas at El Paso, 2007. / Title from title screen. Vita. CD-ROM. Includes bibliographical references. Also available online.

Thesis (M.S.) -- University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, 2006. / Vita. Bibliography: pp. 159-175.

Universiẗat, Diss., 2006--Osnabrück. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 279-291).

Assignment (MA)--University of Stellenbosch, 2006. / Bibliography. Also available via the Internet.