The obligation to maintain and develop professional competence throughout an individual’s career is a fundamental requirement of a maintaining a professional accounting designation. Accountants can select their continuing professional development (CPD) from a number of modalities. The study was a cross sectional sample created by self selection from a researchers' email invitation to accountants in Canada to determine which modalities accountants preferred, and the selection factors they used in making those selections. A total of 428 accountants from across Canada completed the online survey. The results found that the accountants had taken courses in all modalities presented with live seminar and live webinar being the most popular modalities. Accountants preferred synchronous over asynchronous courses. The factors most important to accountants are content, cost and CPD hour requirements. Generally, the differences found in selection factors for distance versus face-to-face modalities related to the flexibility of the distance course to reduce time away from work. The ranking of selection factors for synchronous courses in general did not differ from those for asynchronous courses with the exception of self-paced courses where the pace and time away from work were ranked higher than for other courses. Further research is suggested to determine the value of both live and recorded seminars and webinars, as well as potential opportunities for mobile modality use for CPD courses. Additional research should be conducted to determine why differences were found in ranking in demographics in order to ensure that future CPD courses are offered in modalities that provide benefits for all respondents. / 2012-06

<p>This thesis consists of three related studies presented as three separate manuscripts. The first two comprise part of a larger sequential mixed-methods study with a qualitative and subsequent quantitative (survey) component. The overarching goal of this study was to understand the factors that influence the use of home dialysis, from the perspectives of Canadian nephrologists. The third study was a methodological study (a clinical trial) embedded in the survey, evaluating a novel strategy to incentivize survey responses.</p> <p>In the first paper, we aimed to develop a theoretical framework describing determinants of dialysis modality choice. We selected informants using a maximum-variation sampling strategy, and used in-depth interviews to explore their perspectives. We used a grounded theory-informed analytical approach to construct a taxonomy of barriers and related facilitators to home dialysis use. We triangulated our findings against related published studies and qualitative results from our survey study. This study informed the development of the questionnaire that is the focus of the second study.</p> <p>The second paper describes the development, administration, and results of a 47-item survey measuring Canadian nephrologist perspectives on the relevance of barriers to home dialysis use, and the utility of candidate interventions to overcome them. We used factor analysis to aggregate items into domains, and examined the relationships between respondent and practice characteristics with domain-level scores. Respondents expressed enthusiasm and reluctance towards a number of strategies to optimize home dialysis use. Our findings will guide policy development and further research directed at managing barriers to home dialysis use.</p> <p>The third and final study tests the effectiveness of a promised donation as an incentive for survey completion. We randomized survey recipients to receive standard notifications versus notifications that offered a charitable donation of $40 CAD to the Kidney Foundation of Canada in exchange for returning a completed survey. Contrary to our hypothesis, the intervention was not effective, thus adding to the cumulative evidence that such incentives do not impact on physician response rates.</p> / Master of Science (MSc)