COVID-19 hospital indoor environments and how it helped patients' recovery and staff's work: a case study in South Korea

The indoor environment has been recognized as a crucial factor that can influence health and wellbeing of occupants. This is particularly true in hospital settings, where various environmental attributes can significantly affect patients' recovery and staff members' productivity. The present study aimed to investigate how occupants in hospitals perceived indoor environment, focusing specifically on COVID-19 hospitals across Republic of Korea. The study recruited two groups of participants: patients (n = 100) who had been hospitalized in COVID-19 hospitals and staff members (n = 103) who worked in COVID-19 hospitals. The data collected from the participants were analyzed using multiple regression models to determine which environmental attributes significantly affected their perception of the indoor environment. The study revealed that satisfaction with indoor acoustic environment and odor were significant predictors for how patients perceived the indoor environment as helpful for their recovery from COVID-19. On the other hand, odor was also the significant factor affecting staff members' perceived helpfulness for work. The results suggested that different environmental attributes can have a significant impact on the perception of the indoor environment, depending on the characteristics of occupancy. The study's findings provided insights into the certain environmental factors that COVID-19 hospitals can prioritize. These insights can help policymakers and hospital administrators to develop strategies to create hospital environments that meet the needs of both groups. The study also suggested that further research is needed to investigate additional factors affecting occupants' perception of the indoor environment in hospital settings.

Effective Prediction and Important Counseling Experience for Perceived Helpfulness of Social Question and Answering-Based Online Counseling: An Explainable Machine Learning Model

The social question answering based online counseling (SQA-OC) is easy access for people seeking professional mental health information and service, has become the crucial pre-consultation and application stage toward online counseling. However, there is a lack of efforts to evaluate and explain the counselors' service quality in such an asynchronous online questioning and answering (QA) format efficiently. This study applied the notion of perceived helpfulness as a public's perception of counselors' service quality in SQA-OC, used computational linguistic and explainable machine learning (XML) methods suited for large-scale QA discourse analysis to build an predictive model, explored how various sources and types of linguistic cues [i.e., Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), topic consistency, linguistic style similarity, emotional similarity] contributed to the perceived helpfulness. Results show that linguistic cues from counselees, counselors, and synchrony between them are important predictors, the linguistic cues and XML can effectively predict and explain the perceived usefulness of SQA-OC, and support operational decision-making for counselors. Five helpful counseling experiences including linguistic styles of "talkative", "empathy", "thoughtful", "concise with distance", and "friendliness and confident" were identified in the SQA-OC. The paper proposed a method to evaluate the perceived helpfulness of SQA-OC service automatically, effectively, and explainable, shedding light on the understanding of the SQA-OC service outcome and the design of a better mechanism for SQA-OC systems.

Refining Sexual Assault Treatment: Recovered Survivors and Expert Therapists Concur on Effective Therapy Components

The goal of the present study was to refine sexual assault therapy through the examination of the level of agreement between survivor and therapist assessments of key recovery-promoting therapeutic interventions. This is the first study to explore the level of agreement between those who partake in the treatment process from either position. Semistructured interviews were conducted in this qualitative study with 10 survivors and 10 experienced therapists. The results document considerable concurrence between them regarding relational and trauma processing treatment components alike. Together, these reports outline key effective interventions, both common and specific in nature, concomitantly supported by both groups.

Give Goods or Give Money? The Influence of Cause-Related Marketing Approach on Consumers' Purchase Intention

With the progress of social and improvement of public awareness, the demand for enterprises to participate in a social welfare cause is increasing. A company can directly support corporate social responsibility issues through cause-related marketing (CRM) approaches, for example, by donating part of the proceeds from product sales (i.e., buy-one give-money or BOGM) or simply by donating their products (i.e., buy-one give-one or BOGO). Previous research has only discussed the impact of one of these CRM approaches on customers in one study. This research compared the effect of these two approaches on the purchase intention of consumers. Experiment 1 demonstrated that, for practical products, the purchase intention of BOGO (vs. BOGM) was higher, while for hedonic products, the purchase intention of BOGM (vs. BOGO) was higher. More importantly, we found a potential mechanism - perceived helpfulness - that drives our main effect. Experiment 2 revealed that the different statement order of charity information and product information in advertising can moderate the main effect. The research also provides several implications and insight into how companies can make donations while winning more customers' willingness to pay, thus encouraging more companies to fulfill their corporate social responsibility.

Differences in help-seeking behaviours and perceived helpfulness of services between abused and non-abused women: A cross-sectional survey of Australian postpartum women

New mothers may face substantial physical and mental health challenges during the postpartum period and are at a greater risk of intimate partner violence. Healthcare services provide support, however, acknowledging a problem and seeking help for it can be difficult. Research on where postpartum women seek help and how helpful they perceive it is limited. Additionally, little is known of how these help-seeking behaviours differ between abused and non-abused postpartum women. The aim of this study was to examine the help-seeking behaviour and perceived helpfulness of services in abused and non-abused postpartum women. Secondary analysis was undertaken of data collected during the MOVE (Improving Maternal and Child Health Care for Vulnerable Mothers) cluster randomised controlled trial of a nurse, intimate partner violence screening and supportive care intervention. MOVE was set in eight community-based nurse teams in Melbourne, Australia. The trial (2010-2013) included a survey of n = 2,621 postpartum Australian women who had given birth within the previous 8 months. Data were analysed using descriptive and interferential statistics. Findings indicate that abused women who had experienced partner violence sought informal family support less frequently (81.3% compared with 92.4%, p < .001) and were more frequent users of hospital emergency departments (p = .03), nurse home visiting programs (p = .02) and some breastfeeding services (p = .001), compared with non-abused women. They were also more frequent users of psychiatrists (p ≤ 0.001), early parenting centres (both day stay (p = .006) and residential (p = .008), child welfare services (p < .001), and were generally less satisfied with the help received. Postpartum women experiencing partner violence seek help from certain formal services more frequently and are less satisfied with the care received, compared with non-abused women. Access to potential protective supports from family and friends is limited. Further qualitative research is needed to gain a greater understanding of abused postpartum women's experiences and help-seeking behaviours.

Perceived helpfulness of the individual components of a behavioural weight loss program: results from the Hopkins POWER Trial

Background

Behavioural weight loss programs are effective first‐line treatments for obesity and are recommended by the US Preventive Services Task Force. Gaining an understanding of intervention components that are found helpful by different demographic groups can improve tailoring of weight loss programs. This paper examined the perceived helpfulness of different weight loss program components.

Methods

Participants (n = 236) from the active intervention conditions of the Practice‐based Opportunities for Weight Reduction (POWER) Hopkins Trial rated the helpfulness of 15 different components of a multicomponent behavioural weight loss program at 24‐month follow‐up. These ratings were examined in relation to demographic variables, treatment arm and weight loss success.

Results

The components most frequently identified as helpful were individual telephone sessions (88%), tracking weight online (81%) and coach review of tracking (81%). The component least frequently rated as helpful was the primary care providers' general involvement (50%). Groups such as older adults, Blacks and those with lower education levels more frequently reported intervention components as helpful compared with their counterparts.

Discussion

Weight loss coaching delivered telephonically with web support was well received. Findings support the use of remote behavioural interventions for a wide variety of individuals.

Therapeutic processes and perceived helpfulness of dang-ki (Chinese shamanism) from the symbolic healing perspective

This study focuses on the therapeutic process and perceived helpfulness of dang-ki, a form of Chinese shamanistic healing, in Singapore. It aims to understand the healing symbols employed in dang-ki, whether or not patients find them helpful and whether their perceived helpfulness can be explained by the symbolic healing model (Dow, Am Anthropol 88(1):56-69, 1986; Levi-Strauss, Structural anthropology. Basic Books, New York, 1963). Although many researchers have applied this model to explain the efficacy of shamanistic healings, they did not directly provide empirical support. Furthermore, the therapeutic process of a shared clinical reality as proposed by the model may be achievable in small-scale traditional societies that are culturally more homogeneous than in contemporary societies that are culturally more diversified due to globalization and immigration. Patients may hold multidimensional health belief systems, as biomedicine and alternative healing systems coexist. Thus, it would be interesting to see the relevance and applicability of the symbolic healing model to shamanistic healing in contemporary societies. In this study, ethnographic interviews were conducted with 21 patients over three stages: immediately before and after the healing and approximately 1 month later. The dang-ki healing symbols were identified by observing the healing sessions with video recording. Results show that dang-kis normally applied more than one method to treat a given problem. These methods included words, talismans and physical manipulations. Overall, 11 patients perceived their consultations as helpful, 4 perceived their consultations as helpful but were unable to follow all recommendations, 5 were not sure of the outcome because they had yet to see any concrete results and only 1 patient considered his consultation unhelpful. Although the symbolic healing model provides a useful framework to understand perceived helpfulness, processes such as enactment of a common meaning system and symbolic transformation are complex and dynamic, and may be carried over several healing sessions.