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Public Participation¡FNGT (Nominal Group Technique )

As education systems, in particular Technology Education, adapt to new expectations for secondary students entering an uncertain workforce, the time is appropriate to investigate the need for school facilities to meet these present demands and those that continue to change curricula. This study has been conducted in order to determine the facility requirements for the delivery of the evolving technology/manual arts curriculum in Queensland. A set of validated design criteria for evaluating technology education and vocational education settings was developed and trialed to assist the designer of such facilities to meet the needs of this area on schools designed in different eras from the 1 960s to the present. A review of the published literature would indicate that little has been written on this aspect of facilities design. While related studies have been conducted in North America, they were not confined to the designing of the facilities and only had specific relevance in that country. An expert group consisting of prominent Queensland educators provided the impetus for developing the criteria which had been generated through a systematic search of the literature. The methodology utilised to involve the expert group was the Nominal Group Technique. After the criteria had been developed, they were validated by questionnaire through a 30% random sample of practicing heads of department across Queensland in both state and independent systems. A trial evaluation using current facilities was subsequently conducted to determine the effectiveness of the criteria in terms of teacher acceptability as well as establishing a pattern of needs for modification. Practitioners who use the facility for teaching technology education and/or vocational education could use the set of criteria to evaluate their facility in a similar manner to that of evaluating their students. Such evaluations could then become the basis for ffiture school planning and budgetary allocations as well as asset management of existing facilities. The study proved to be valuable as the validated criteria have the potential of being used as a tool by teachers to evaluate their facilities. At the systems level of operation, the criteria will provide assistance for designers, architects and teachers to prepare informal educational briefs. Such briefs would provide a consistent approach to the some times difficult task of clearly defining the function of a facility. The modem facility must meet the needs of current curriculum and be sufficiently flexible and adaptable to provide the educational requirements well into the twenty-first century. These developed criteria will greatly assist in this process.

Because of the global economic depression and competitive stress from international industries, Kaohsiung also faces its difficulty for further development and construction. Due to the 911 terrorist attack event in the U.S., the total number of those who travel to Taiwan from January to June of year 2002 decreased 7.3% compared to the same period of year 2001, a sharp decline. In October year 2002, an explosion event happened in Bali in Indonesia, and furthermore, in April year 2003, another disaster, the dreadful SARS disease raged through Taiwan. These could make tourists worry about safety while traveling, making the dull tourism business an even worse situation. In order to carry out decisions made by Council for Economic Planning and Development, starting form January 1st, year 2002, the Executive Yuan opened the gate of visiting Taiwan for people from Mainland China under particular conditions. However, with concerns of safety of the whole island, we still hold serious control of opening our gate for tourism, so the tourism business still cannot make a hit as originally expected. Actually it is a very important step to open the tourism market for people from Mainland China to visit Taiwan, to make the relationship of cross strait normalize. With WTO principles do cross strait share equal rights to open the tourism market to each other. Our government has been seriously considering the issue of Three-Links in recent years but has made only little progress. The present study collected and investigated newspaper articles and editorials related to this issue in Taiwan of year 2002. The findings point out that the two political parties in Taiwan differed a lot in political stands. This may influence the economy in Taiwan. Though Three-Links is not a cure-all, it could definitely benefit the economic development in Taiwan. Moreover, according to interviews with some experts in this field and an analysis of questionnaires, it is easy to tell Three-Links is a future trend. Three-Links can benefit industries in Taiwan to make business contacts with industries in Mainland China, even to broaden the business scope to the whole world. The main spirit of tourism business is ¡§human¡¨. Mainland Chinese who regularly travel abroad and who are willing to visit Taiwan reached up to the number of 1.2 million. Kaohsiung is an international harbor and further a must pass port for Mainland Chinese. This should be an important chance and moment to develop and push Kaohsiung to become the entrance of tourism business in southern Taiwan. Nominal Group Technique (NGT) is one of the Interactive Management (IM) methods. This method can efficiently deal with complicated problems or controversial issues discussed in a group or a society. By questionnaire analysis and the NGT method did I complete this study and achieve the following goals: 1. Cooperative efficient participation 2. Clarify and define issues 3. Form common consensus and conclusion 4. Interactive learning rebuild cognition as a group We vote for the top 10 strategies to urge development of Kaohsiung. We consider that ¡§Make Kaohsiung the entrance of tourism business and deepen the mechanism of culture and biology in southern Taiwan.¡¨ and ¡§Release limitations for Mainland Chinese¡¦s¡¦ visiting Taiwan, make Kaohsiung international airport the first.¡¨ two worth studying future topics and very likely make benefits for the future development of Kaohsiung.

For years Penghu has been actively developing its tourism gaming (gambling) industry since its location, climate, and soil quality have hindered the development of its agriculture, fishery, and local industries and resulted in slow economy and reduced population. Its tourism industry had not developed well despite the unique natural sceneries and local history; therefore, the local government placed hope on the gambling industry in the wish of attracting foreign investors. For the past two decades, the local effort of legalizing off-shore gambling -- the only and the most important force behind this policy, has never ceased. The scenario adopted in this study is that the draft of the "Offshore Islands Development Act" that serves as the legal basis of Penghu's development of the gambling industry has been approved by the Legislative Yuan and is supported by the majority in a public vote. Being the only area where legalized gambling is allowed, the local government of Penghu and the central government immediately start to work on the applicable legal basis and regulations. Born and raised in Penghu, the researcher of this study also cares very much about this topic and thus wishes to come up with the recommendations for optimal local development. In this study the "Nominal Group Technique" (NGT) of "Interactive Management" (IM) was utilized for the purpose of getting everyone's opinions across in a democratic manner and reducing egocentric and arbitrary perspectives. Through NGT, an interactive seminar is held where "feasible and specific recommendations for the influences of Penghu's gambling industry on its economy and society" are provided. The 2-stage Seminar is held based on the unique procedures of NGT: Identify problems, clarify problems, vote and select problems, and come up with 12 specific strategies: 1. Invest a certain portion of the gambling revenue in the local environment in order to maintain the local landscapes and culture. 2. Establish a Penghu Gambling Committee or a dedicated authority that carries out its duties objectively and wins public trust and support. 3. Give a certain portion of the jobs in the gambling industry to the local residents whose households have been registered in Penghu for at least 5 years. 4. Make timely plans that are dedicated to Penghu's environment and surrounding. Gambling authorities should hold studies on the size of the gambling market. 5. Establish a security system between a service provider and a security authority and invest more in software/hardware for crime prevention. 6. Reinforce personnel training and industrial-academic collaborations in order to provide more jobs. 7. Establish a Supervisory Committee that is in charge of analyzing/evaluating relevant policies and formulating tasks. 8. Formulate strategies that protect the development of local industries and create a win-win situation for them and foreign inventors. 9. Penghu County Government should formulate a public-supervision system for the gambling industry in order to prevent corruptions and political manipulation. 10. Complete the infrastructure and public transportation as quickly as possible. 11. Actively help Penghu's traditional industries and develop tourism with the gambling industry and create a win-win situation. 12. Evaluate the influences of the population-carrying capacity on infrastructure and ecosystems and determine the responses. After comparing all the strategies, the inter-strategic relationships are reinforced using "Interpretive Structural Modeling" (ISM), and the ISM software was used to draw the diagram of the structural enhancement. After the second-stage discussions and revisions, the final, revised Diagram of Enhanced Structure was completed that clearly shows the causal relationships between each strategy and how they are ordered and ranked. The main contribution of this study is the information found provides the government with a clear, prioritized set of instructions that help the authority understand how the 12 strategies work and what they actually achieve. Through the 2-stage interactive seminar, questionnaire surveys were conducted twice on the participants in order for us to understand their expectations for the actual procedures, participation, understanding, and interactions in the seminar, and such information helps us understand how satisfied they are towards the interactive learning and whether they have actually achieved the expected results through independent thinking, diverse perspectives, debates, listening, group discussions, brain storming, and communication. In other words, we wish to find out how effective participation, problem-defining and clarifications, and consensus-reaching benefit the entire effort.

The purpose of the present study was to examine the information needs and information seeking behaviour of coaches in the sports of swimming and track and field who had completed level 2 accreditation of the Australian Coaching Council. The study aimed to identify information needs, the sources from which information is currently obtained and to gauge the level of satisfaction with current information provision in terms of the quantity, content and timeliness of information received. The study also aimed to examine the influence of the independent variables of sport, geographic location and education level on information needs and information seeking behaviour. In line with current theoretical thinking in the examination of information needs described in the literature, the researcher took a 'user-centred' approach in the identification of information needs utilising the structured group discussion process, Nominal Group Technique (NGT) as the first stage of the research. This process established the broad parameters of coaches' information needs and provided the basis for the design of a subsequent survey which was distributed to all swimming and track and field coaches who had completed level 2 accrediation. The survey resulted in a response rate of 69 percent from a total population of 568. The study revealed that coaches have a wide range of information needs many of which would not generally be associated with libraries, that there are few differences between coaches from different sports, those of differing education levels and between those of different geographic locations, although access to information is made more difficult through geographic isolation. The study revealed that coaches use multiple sources to obtain information and that libraries and formal sport information providers are not key sources for most types of information. Low levels of satisfaction were found to exist with the quantity and content of information with the highest level of dissatisfaction being expressed with the timeliness of information received. The study concludes by identifying issues, recommending possible actions in relation to these issues and identifies areas for future research.

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For more than twenty years, the issue of setting up gamming industry in Penghu has continually deepened, and is turning into an official agenda. Thus, the government must take serious and careful action after through the scrutinized evaluation, rather merely a public concern. This research is based on the consultation framework of integrated public affairs administration to analyze Penghu¡¦s historical process of striving for the tourism gamming industry and to discuss the reasons of postponement from social, economic, political and governmental views. The dilemma of local development in Penghu results from the lack of public discussion and the failure of public policymakings. This study therefore aims, by using IM of NGT methods, to effectively communicate with the public participators, and to initiate the focus of the interactive conference to perceive ¡§how to decrease the doubt of the counterforce about setting up casinos¡¨. In the interactive conference, participators reached the consensuses that the foundation lies in (1) holding trips to learn from existing casino; the planning phase should (2) actively strive for chief officials¡¦ support and (3) enhance positively to public security and (4) ensure financial distributed proportions; further implementation should (5) avoid interventions by politicians, (6) ensure the proportions of locals employment, and (7) to emphasize the necessity of developing casinos in Penghu and (8) to invite people from every status to expand related activities; and, the last requests are to (9) hold public hearing and statement to decrease people¡¦s suspicion and (10) set up the White Paper of Casinos for Penghu for future guidance. Two tests of questionnaires before and after the NGT were set for each observer in the conference to examine the participant satisfaction, NGT interactive conference effectiveness, results of interactive learning, and affirmation of defining and differentiating problems in order to solve a complex and mal-organized issue.

This dissertation describes a study that investigated the perceptions of foster parents and kinship caregivers (grandparents caring for their grandchildren) around contact issues between children in their care and their birth parents in Canterbury, New Zealand. The study employed a qualitative approach for data collection and analysis. The qualitative method of data collection for the study comprised of three focus groups, two with foster parents and one with grandparents. The focus groups were conducted using a modified Nominal Group Technique (NGT) where two questions posed to the participants sought to understand their views about behaviours they noticed in children in their care before and after contact with birth parents. In addition, a further question was asked to gain an understanding around their feelings on contact with birth parents. Findings of the study indicated that foster parents largely described children’s behaviour before and after contact to be distressing and stressful for them, with few positive benefits. Furthermore, foster parents mainly stated strong, negative feelings around contact with biological parents. In the discussion, implications of these results are discussed for foster children, foster parents and social welfare practices.

Background, aim and objectives: Evaluating quality of care is essential when redesigning or improving practice. Medicines reconciliation (MR) on hospital admission is now policy in the UK. It is the process of obtaining an up-to-date and accurate medication list and documenting any discrepancies. The overall aim of this work was to develop quality indicators to evaluate MR on admission to hospital; the specific objectives include developing MR quality indicators, achieving consensus on their appropriateness and testing their feasibility by applying them in a hospital setting. Design: The study was designed in three parts, each consisting of three steps. In part I, ideas about potential indicators were obtained from two sources: a literature search and the nominal group technique. These ideas were converted to potential indicators using criteria for good indicators and then reviewed by nine reviewers. Part II was designed to achieve consensus on the appropriateness of the indicators to evaluate MR. It involved pre-piloting, piloting and conducting the main two-round online Delphi study. Several methods were used to approach predefined experts. Part III involved applying in hospital settings those MR indicators that had achieved consensus. It included developing operational definitions and directly observing the MR process as conducted by pharmacy staff in two hospitals. The indicators were further tested by collecting data about the MR process for all patients seen by pharmacy staff on one weekday in the two hospitals. Results: A systematic approach was followed to develop MR indicators. The idea generation step produced over 90 ideas about potential indicators, which were converted to 85 MR indicators. The assessment by the nine practicing hospital pharmacists discarded 29 of them and the remaining 56 MR indicators were carried forward to the Delphi study, during which 41 indicators achieved consensus as appropriate for evaluating MR on admission to hospital. In the feasibility study, 5 MR indicators were found not to be feasible and three not adequately assessed, while 33 indicators were considered feasible to be used in a hospital setting. Conclusions: This work provided a novel list of 33 indicators that achieved consensus and were found to be feasible to evaluate the MR process on admission to hospital. Further research should explore the use of these indicators, among others, to assess and improve the overall quality of care provided to patients on admission and throughout the hospitalization journey.