The purpose of this study was to explore the processes of hope in informal caregivers of palliative patients. Interviews were conducted with caregivers who were living with and currently providing care to a palliative patient at home. Saturation was reached with 10 caregivers, five females and five males, from 2 cities in Saskatchewan, Canada. <p>The design of this qualitative study was Glasers (2001) grounded theory. Broad, unstructured face to face audio taped interviews were conducted in the participants homes. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using constant-comparative method of analysis in order to identify the main concern of the participants related to hope, and the basic social processes used to resolve that concern. <p>Eroding hope was the main concern relating to hope during caregiving for a palliative patient. Eroding hope was a result of bad days, negative messages, and experiences with the health care system. The participants deal with eroding hope by using the basic social process of hanging on to hope. Hanging on to hope has 4 sub-processes: a)doing what you have to do, b)living in the moment, c)staying positive, and d)writing your own story. The support of friends, family, and health care professionals and connecting with something bigger and stronger were sub-processes of hanging on to hope that together directly affect the other sub-processes.<p>The findings of this study have direct application for the care and support of informal caregivers providing palliative care at home, as a basis for assessment and interventions that will assist caregivers to hang on to hope. Nurses and other health care professionals need to recognize and value the experience of hope for caregivers by addressing, teaching, and reinforcing the sub-processes and ways of hanging on to hope into their practice.

The purpose of this study is to better understand the effects participatory pricing strategies have on consumer perceptions and behaviors in a sport event pricing scenario. Participatory pricing strategies are those that include the consumer in setting the final price of a good or service. These mechanisms include name-your-own-price (NYOP) and pay-what-you-want (PWYW). These pricing strategies are now being introduced into the sport industry. With the increased use of these strategies, and the lack of research in sport management pertaining to consumers’ perceptions of price, specifically consumer voice in price setting, there is a gap in the literature that needs to be filled. This study investigates the consumer’s perceptions of price fairness, perceived value, as well as consumer behavior (i.e. purchase intentions and willingness-to-pay), when encountering participatory pricing strategies. The following dissertation presents a quantitative experimental design, asking subjects to participate in a simulated ticket purchase experience. Difference between experimental groups was assessed based on price fairness, perceived value, willingness-to-pay, and purchase intentions. Results indicate there is a significant difference between participatory pricing groups and traditional fixed price groups when examining price fairness, perceived value, willingness-to-pay, and final average prices paid. Specifically, price fairness evaluations were significantly higher for the PWYW and fixed price groups, and lower for the NYOP group. In addition to the price fairness differences, the groups differed on their evaluations of perceived value (PWYW and fixed are the same, both higher than NYOP). Furthermore, the results reveal that consumers involved in the NYOP mechanism evoked higher levels of willingness-to-pay than PWYW and fixed. Furthermore, the study also found that the final average price paid following the experiment differed based on the mechanism. The PWYW and fixed price mechanisms paid similar amounts, while both of them were significantly higher than the NYOP mechanism. This suggests that while one of the biggest concerns for the PWYW treatment is a low final average price (even $0); this may not be an issue in a sport ticket pricing scenario. Study limitations and future research are included in the following dissertation.

The purpose of this study was to explore the processes of hope in informal caregivers of palliative patients. Interviews were conducted with caregivers who were living with and currently providing care to a palliative patient at home. Saturation was reached with 10 caregivers, five females and five males, from 2 cities in Saskatchewan, Canada. <p>The design of this qualitative study was Glasers (2001) grounded theory. Broad, unstructured face to face audio taped interviews were conducted in the participants homes. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using constant-comparative method of analysis in order to identify the main concern of the participants related to hope, and the basic social processes used to resolve that concern. <p>Eroding hope was the main concern relating to hope during caregiving for a palliative patient. Eroding hope was a result of bad days, negative messages, and experiences with the health care system. The participants deal with eroding hope by using the basic social process of hanging on to hope. Hanging on to hope has 4 sub-processes: a)doing what you have to do, b)living in the moment, c)staying positive, and d)writing your own story. The support of friends, family, and health care professionals and connecting with something bigger and stronger were sub-processes of hanging on to hope that together directly affect the other sub-processes.<p>The findings of this study have direct application for the care and support of informal caregivers providing palliative care at home, as a basis for assessment and interventions that will assist caregivers to hang on to hope. Nurses and other health care professionals need to recognize and value the experience of hope for caregivers by addressing, teaching, and reinforcing the sub-processes and ways of hanging on to hope into their practice.

This paper is an exploration of the theme of pilgrimage in the following three works: Gan&dotbelow;d&dotbelow;vyuha, Journey to the West and The Life of Marpa the Translator. / Through an examination of the narrative structure of the texts, I derive a pattern which is consistent throughout these three Mahayana works. This pattern is then compared to the Mahayana doctrine of Two Truths, which is shown to be expressed by the literary pilgrimage. Finally, by exploring the ways in which these texts 'work' on the reader---both by seeing the protagonist go through the stages of Buddhist practice and through the reader's interaction with the text---I show how reading these stories can act as a transformative Buddhist practice.

Dauguma išsivysčiusių pasaulio šalių susiduria su senatvės pensijų sistemos mokumo problemomis, todėl senatvės pensijų modelių analizei ir jų tobulinimui pastaraisiais dešimtmečiais skiriama vis daugiau dėmesio. Tyrimo objektu pasirinkti senatvės pensijų draudimo modeliai. Tyrimo problema yra ta, kad nėra vieno ir tobulo senatvės pensijų sistemos modelio, kurį būtų galima efektyviai pritaikyti esant konkrečioms ekonominėms, socialinėms ir demografinėms aplinkybėms. Tyrimo tikslas yra išanalizuoti įvairius senatvės pensijų draudimo modelius, identifikuoti pagrindinius jų parametrus, išskirti pagrindinius finansavimo ir išmokų mokėjimo būdus bei įvertinti priežastis, lemiančias modelių pasirinkimą bei jų tęstinumą užtikrinančius kriterijus, atlikti Lietuvos senatvės pensijų sistemos vertinimą. Darbe atlikta mokslinė užsienio ir lietuvių literatūros bei statistinių duomenų analizė, siekiant atskleisti senatvės pensijų modelius, kitimą, problemas ir svarbiausius teorinius aspektus, taip pat atliktas tyrimas siekiant įvertinti Lietuvos senatvės pensijų sistemą. Darbas susideda iš trijų skyrių. Pirmame skyriuje „Senatvės pensijų draudimo modeliai“ apibrėžiama senatvės pensinio draudimo ir tradicinių pensinių draudimo modelių samprata, susijusios sąvokos, administravimo būdai, analizuojami einamųjų mokėjimų ir kaupimo modeliai, pensijų pakopos. Pateikiami mokslininkų tyrimai ir nuomonės apie skirtingus modelius. Antrame skyriuje „Lietuvos senatvės pensijų draudimo modelis“... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Most developed countries faces a pension system solvency problems, that‘s why in recent decades old-age pension models analysis and development has received increasing attention. Object of study is chosen old-age pension models. The research problem is that there is no one perfect model, which can be effectively applied to specific economic, social or demographic circumstances. The aim of study is to analyze variety old-age pension models, identify key parameters, distinguish the main financing and payment methods and assess the reasons which influence the choice of models, evaluate Lithuania old-age pension system. Analysis of scientific foreign and Lithuania literature and statistical data are done in study, on purpose to reveal the problems, dynamics and the most important theoretical aspects, also a research is done to evaluate the Lithuanian old-age pension system. The study consists of three chapters. In the first part “The old-age pension models” are defined the concept of old age pension, related terms, traditional old-age models concepts, pension system administration methods are related, pay-as-you-go and fully funded models and pension pillars are analyzed. Scientific research and opinion are presented about different models. In the second part “Lithuania old-age pension model” Lithuania old age pension model is analyzed: current state, funding, legislative basis, performed a statistical data analysis. In the third part respondent’s systematized survey are... [to full text]

abstract: In two independent and thematically connected chapters, I investigate consumers' willingness to pay a price premium in response to product development that entails prosocial attributes (PATs), those that allude to the reduction of negative externalities to benefit society, and to an innovative participatory pricing design called 'Pay-What-You-Want' (PWYW) pricing, a mechanism that relinquishes the determination of payments in exchange for private goods to the consumers themselves partly relying on their prosocial preferences to drive positive payments. First, I propose a novel statistical approach built on the choice based contingent valuation technique to estimate incremental willingness to pay (IWTP) for PATs that accounts for consumer heterogeneity, dependence in the decision making processes, and incentive compatibility. I validate the approach by estimating IWTP for a variety of PATs and contrast the theoretical and managerial benefits of using the proposed approach over extant techniques used in the literature for this purpose. Second, I propose a general and flexible statistical modeling framework for estimating PWYW payments that exceed zero. It relies on the joint estimation of three types of consumer decision processes namely, the consumer propensity to default to an explicit price recommendation, the propensity to pay a least legitimate price, and the payment of a freely-chosen non-zero payment. Of particular interest is the model's ability to account for a wide variety of design constraints such as the setting of price bounds, explicit price recommendations, and the provision of a menu of discrete prices to choose from. I validate the approach by estimating PWYW payments for a variety of products such as music licenses, snacks, and sports tickets. I specifically examine and report the differential impact of three managerially controllable variables namely, 'payment anonymity', 'information on payment recipients' and 'information of product value/quality'. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Business Administration 2016

This master{\crq}s thesis deals with the issue of the pension system in relation to the demographic development in the Czech Republic. In describes the pension system from its very beginning until the effective legislation regulated by Act No. 155/1995, on Pension Insurance. The Czech pension system is based on two pillars {--} the basic obligatory system of pension insurance where the principle of social solidarity is applied and that is based on continuous funding (PAYG), and the voluntary private pension scheme with a state contribution. The private scheme is conceived as individual savings and is based on capital funding. The financial balance of the pay-as-you-go system where the expenditures on the benefits for current pensioners are immediately paid from the funds of those who are economically active to a critical extent depends on the rate between the number of pensioners and the number of contribution payers. As the expenditure on old-age pension accounts for the highest share in the expenditure on pension insurance, the rate between the number of pensioners and the number of contribution payers is primarily determined by the age structure of the population. Similarly to all developed countries, the development of the age structure of the population of the Czech Republic is marked with ageing of population as a result of the stagnating or decreasing fertility and extension of the lifespan. Benefits derived from the period of insurance and generated earnings are then paid from the pension insurance. They include old-age pension, disability pensions, and survivors{\crq} pensions. The aim of this thesis was not only to map out the current situation, but to define pros and cons of effective legislation related to pension insurance based on interviews with employees of district social security administrations, taking into account the demographic development in the Czech Republic. It also aimed at establishing the opinion of the lay public on the operation of the existing system and providing it within the context of the answers given by the expert public. To achieve these objectives, the qualitative method of document analysis and questioning was applied. Research techniques included a secondary data analysis and a half-standardised interview. The reviewed set comprised 11 officers at pension departments of district social security administrations and 11 respondents from among the lay public. The results of the research show that the current setting of the pension system is regarded as rather negative. The changes that must be made must be comprehensive and going across multiple systems; with a functioning labour market and stable background for families with children being an utmost necessity. It is also necessary to change the thinking of the citizens of the Czech Republic where one should no longer rely on the state only, but build on a responsible approach to one{\crq}s life and provide for oneself with one{\crq}s own founds for any social event, not only including the loss of income due to old age. The opinions of the expert and lay public were the same in more than 80%. With respect to the information obtained, this thesis might be a useful contribution to the discussion on other legislative changes in the pension system with a subsequent positive impact when applied in practice.

Submitted by Coordenação Hotelaria (hotelaria@vm.uff.br) on 2016-05-04T18:18:06Z No. of bitstreams: 1 TCC Luana Soares.pdf: 1473466 bytes, checksum: de50c8e5ecaecd8cdadf005d4582a524 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-05-12T14:15:57Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 TCC Luana Soares.pdf: 1473466 bytes, checksum: de50c8e5ecaecd8cdadf005d4582a524 (MD5) / Embasado nas teorias da hospitalidade, essa monografia busca a reflexão sobra a hospitalidade através da análise do filme Rio, Eu Te Amo. São analisados exemplos de hospitalidade presentes no filme, através dos conceitos de Hospitalidade brasileira Castelli (2005), Hospitalidade nas cidades, com foco nos indicadores desenvolvidos por Grinover (2007), e a hostilidade, tendo como principal referência a teoria de Boff (2002). Assim sendo possível entender a hospitalidade que se faz presente na cidade do Rio de Janeiro, e a hospitalidade que é inerente na personalidade dos cariocas, traduzida para a linguagem do cinema, pelos diretores brasileiros e estrangeiros que dirigem os curtas que compõem o longa metragem Rio, Eu Te Amo. Palavras- / Grounded in theories of hospitality, this monograph seeks to reflect about hospitality through the analysis of the movie Rio, I Love You. Examples of hospitality are analyzed in the film, through the concepts of Brazilian hospitality, conceptualized by Castelli (2005) Hospitality in cities, focusing on indicators developed by Grinover (2007), and hostility, having as main reference the theory from Boff (2002). Thus it is possible to understand the hospitality that is present in the city of Rio de Janeiro, and the hospitality that is inherent in the character of the people form Rio de Janeiro, translated into the language of cinema, by Brazilian and foreign directors who direct the short films that make up the feature film Rio, I love you.

In pay-as-you-go data integration, feedback can inform the regeneration of different aspects of a data integration system, and as a result, helps to improve the system's quality. However, feedback could be expensive as the amount of feedback required to annotate all the possible integration artefacts is potentially big in contexts where the budget can be limited. Also, feedback could be used in different ways. Feedback of different types and in different orders could have different effects in the quality of the integration. Some feedback types could give rise to more benefit than others. There is a need to develop techniques to collect feedback effectively. Previous efforts have explored the benefit of feedback in one aspect of the integration. However, the contributions have not considered the benefit of different feedback types in a single integration task. We have investigated the annotation of mapping results using crowdsourcing, and implementing techniques for reliability. The results indicate that precision estimates derived from crowdsourcing improve rapidly, suggesting that crowdsourcing can be used as a cost-effective source of feedback. We propose an approach to maximize the improvement of data integration systems given a budget for feedback. Our approach takes into account the annotation of schema matchings, mapping results and pairs of candidate record duplicates. We define a feedback plan, which indicates the type of feedback to collect, the amount of feedback to collect and the order in which different types of feedback are collected. We defined a fitness function and a genetic algorithm to search for the most cost-effective feedback plans. We implemented a framework to test the application of feedback plans and measure the improvement of different data integration systems. In the framework, we use a greedy algorithm for the selection of mappings. We designed quality measures to estimate the quality of a dataspace after the application of a feedback plan. For the evaluation of our approach, we propose a method to generate synthetic data scenarios. We evaluate our approach in scenarios with different characteristics. The results showed that the generated feedback plans achieved higher quality values than the randomly generated feedback plans in several scenarios.

The object of my diploma is focused in the pension system of The Czech Republic and the perspective of it in the future. At present there is still no problem in the financial balance of the pay-as-you-go pillar but due to the ageing of population the Czech dominant pillar will certain face to serious problems in case of no modifications. This conclusion arises from the first part of the analysis which also consists of the possible parameter modifications that could keep the system in balanced in long term. The next part is the analysis of the savings in the pension funds as the main alternative to the PAYGs. Each approach has its advantages and disadvantages which are main objects of both analyses in this diploma. Beside of the ability to keep the system stabled in financial terms I examine also the equivalence of contributions to the level of pensions that is important for the motivation of people to be responsible for their financial security in their old-age. The last part deals with the experiences of the pension systems in Chile, Slovak Republic and Sweden from where we could gain the real results of the reformed systems in different way in each country. From the results of these analyses I also give some possible recommendations for the elementary modifications in Czech system in the final part.