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COVID-19 has emerged as a devastating pandemic of the century that the current genera-tions have ever experienced. The COVID-19 pandemic has infected more than 12 million people around the globe, and 0.5 million people have succumbed to death. Due to the lack of effective vaccines against the COVID-19, several nations throughout the globe have imposed a lock-down as a preventive measure to lower the spread of COVID-19 infection. As a result of lock-down, most of the universities and research institutes have witnessed a long pause in basic science research ever. Much has been discussed about the long-term impact of COVID-19 on the economy, tourism, public health, small and large-scale businesses of several kinds. However, the long-term effects of the shut-down of these research labs and their impact on basic science research has not been much focused. Herein, we provide a perspective that portrays a common problem of all the basic science researchers throughout the globe and its long-term consequences.Copyright © 2021 Bentham Science Publishers.
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This article explores some of the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic has served as a collective critical event for anthropologists and other social scientists, examining how it has promoted new configurations of the research imagination. We draw on our own experiences of participating in a team of 17 researchers, hailing from anthropology and anthropology-adjacent disciplines, to research social life in Aotearoa/New Zealand during the pandemic, examining how our own research imaginations were transformed during, and via, the process of our collaboration. When our project first began, many of us had doubts reflective of norms, prejudices and anxieties that are common in our disciplines: that the group would be too large to function effectively, or that it would be impossible to develop an approach to authorship that would allow everyone to feel their contributions had been adequately recognised. In practice, the large group size was a key strength in allowing our group to work effectively. Difficulties with authorship did not arise from within the group but from disconnects between our preferred ways of working and the ways authorship was imagined within various professional and publishing bodies. We conclude that large-scale collaborations have many points in their favour, and that the research imaginations of funders, journals, universities and professional associations should be broadened to ensure that they are encouraged, supported and adequately rewarded. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
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Employees may continue to work remotely for a substantial amount of time, even after the end of the pandemic. Our established theories of group processes and intergroup relations can help us understand these new ways of working and online group experiences. However, there are key differences in computer-mediated and face-to-face (FtF) groups. In this essay, I present some of the extant robust theories and findings from computer communication research to understand virtual working within online groups. These perspectives include that group processes develop over a longer period of time as compared to FtF, informal communication is neglected, computer-mediated groups have some advantages over FtF groups, sociomateriality is a useful theoretical lens, and dispersion affects group member cognitions about each other. I use my own lab's work on entitativity as an example of how moving from FtF to online group research can deepen our understanding of both FtF and online groups. The essay concludes with recommendations for future research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
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The article provides an overview of the main steps in the development and the follow-up of the ISTROX pilot project developed within the Faculty of Linguistics, Philology, and Phonetics at the University of Oxford. Planned for 2018–2020, and extended to July 2021 in the context of the Covid pandemic, ISTROX aimed to prepare the ground for a larger envisaged project exploring the history of the Istro-Romanian language (vlaški and žejanski) and community. At the core of ISTROX is a previously unpublished body of sound recordings of IstroRomanian made in Istria during the 1960s by the Oxford linguist Tony Hurren and donated to the University in the 2000s by his wife, Vera Hurren. Part of the approach of ISTROX entailed initiating the online sourcing of linguistic information from the very small community of remaining speakers of ‘Istro-Romanian' worldwide. As the development of the project overlapped with the Covid pandemic, the ISTROX team had to redesign the relationship between the offline and the online elements of the project – a process which is being reoriented towards the offline in post-pandemic context. © 2022, Publishing House of the Romanian Academy. All rights reserved.
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This paper is a critical essay to discuss an original methodological design for an equity school evaluation in diverse-by-design schools. The evaluation was to gather a broad swathe of data necessary to provide detailed insights on diverse-by-design schools in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices. We chronicle and critically explore the methodological pivots generated by the research team as we conducted this research against the backdrop of both the COVID-19 pandemic and US nationwide protests in response to the murder of George Floyd and countless other Black people at the hands of the police. We challenge our own use of equity in our research design by centering school communities through agency of partnership.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Humans , Pandemics , Program Evaluation , Police , Problem SolvingABSTRACT
Purpose –Engineering processes involve multiple interrelated activities comprehended through workflows. An increase in remote working accelerated by Covid-19 has pushed an immediate shift to technology-enabled processes, fundamentally shifting workflow dynamics causing information overload. Graphic facilitation as a high-artifact representation methodology for processes, concepts, or ideations, employing an organized cluster of images, arrows, diagrams, sketches, doodles, and text elements offers a unique application for information management in engineering context. and the article further investigates the adoption framework focusing on the stakeholders. Methodology –This study applies a systematic literature review (SLR) approach to present essential literature across multiple databases and provides an adoption framework systematically exploring six years of popular peer-reviewed journal bibliographic and global patent grants data. Findings –The study reveals that the discussions are still emerging, and the domain is not thoroughly explored in engineering context. The patent dataset showcases insignificant development;however, emerging approaches are summarized, and newer tools are presented along with an adoption framework as a roadmap to further exploration. Practical Implications –Graphic facilitation demonstrates the potential capacity to support individuals and groups in different, creative, and innovative ways to address information overload. The presented outline will serve as a template for engineering leaders towards reviewing, experimenting with, and incorporating across the engineering workflows. Originality –The approach addresses information overload and presents its use cases along with entry-level barriers to graphic facilitation and suggests an exploratory future research scope including enhanced patent data analytics that synergises with the latest technologies mitigating barriers. IEEE
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Intergenerational programs have benefits for both children and older adults;however, the ongoing pandemic has changed social situations across the globe. The focus of this article is on exploring transitions and transformations due to societal conditions and demands that drive the implementation of intergenerational programs during a time of a global crisis that is the COVID-19 pandemic. Through an online survey form and focus group discussion, a total of 64 kindergarten practitioners shared their perspectives on intergenerational programs between young children and older adults in kindergartens in Norway. Kindergarten practitioners identified challenges that hinder intergenerational programs in kindergarten settings during the pandemic, as well as conditions that facilitate its implementation. Implications from this research indicate the need to think differently to be able to provide children with intergenerational experiences in kindergarten settings in Norway even during the pandemic and beyond. © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
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Purpose: This paper aims to discuss the challenges of conducting research with homelessness services frontline workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Design/methodology/approach: Between 2015 and 2019, the research team surveyed frontline staff in three cities about their psychosocial stressors and needs. In 2020, the authors replicated the previous study and expanded data collection to seven cities across Canada to determine the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the well-being of frontline staff. This report describes how the authors adapted the research methodologies to continue work throughout the pandemic, despite various restrictions. Findings: The original studies had very high participation rates because of several methodological approaches that minimized barriers, especially in-person data collection. During the pandemic, distancing requirements precluded replication of these same methods. Research strategies that enabled staff participation during working hours, with designated time allotted for participation, was key for ensuring high participation rates, as access to technology, availability of free time and other factors frequently make online survey research a hardship for these staff. Restrictive interpretation and regional variations of COVID-19 guidelines by some research ethics boards were also a challenge to rapid and responsive data collection. Originality/value: Few studies describe the experiences of frontline workers in the homelessness sector, and quantitative reports of their experiences are particularly scant. Consequently, little is known about specific methodologies that facilitate large-scale data collection in the homelessness services sector. The present research advances the field by providing lessons learned about best practice approaches in pre and post COVID-19 front line worker contexts. A strength of this research is the well-controlled design. The authors collected data within several of the organizations that had previously participated. This fortunate baseline provided opportunity for comparison before and during the pandemic;the authors can highlight factors that might have had influence during the pandemic. © 2021, Jeannette Waegemakers Schiff, Eric Paul Weissman, Deborah Scharf, Rebecca Schiff, Stephanie Campbell, Jordan Knapp and Alana Jones.
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BACKGROUND: Public health emergency is vulnerable time where maintaining ethical principles is obligatory while doing research, on the other hand, it is the same time when breach in ethics is much likely whenever a researcher is unaware, unprepared or hastens to do research. The aim of this study was to assess ethical issues of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) related research proposals submitted during the early stages of pandemic in Nepal. METHODS: Retrospective analysis of COVID-19 related research proposals and their informed consent document submitted to the ethical review board at Nepal Health Research Council was done for the study. The analysis was done as per the National Ethical Guidelines, Standard Operating Procedure for Health Research in Nepal and World Health Organization guidelines for infectious disease outbreak, 2016 under ethically relevant headings. Descriptive data were analyzed in SPSS v24. RESULTS: The major issues were observed in the informed consent documents where 55% were lacking principal investigator's contact information, 68% not having participant selection criteria, 70% without clear informed consent taking process, 57% without explanation of possible risks. Similarly, 68% of the interventional studies' consent form didn't mention possible adverse events and mitigation mechanisms. CONCLUSIONS: Most of the research proposals related to COVID-19 were devoid of major ethical elements which took longer time for receiving approval and eventually delayed the opportunity for evidence generation in critical time. More attention is needed to increase awareness and to develop capacity of researchers, reviewers, ethics committees and relevant stakeholders at the time of health emergencies.
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Biomedical Research/ethics , COVID-19/epidemiology , Ethical Review , Humans , Nepal/epidemiology , Pandemics , Research Design , Retrospective Studies , SARS-CoV-2ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an unprecedented response in terms of clinical research activity. An important part of this research has been focused on randomized controlled clinical trials to evaluate potential therapies for COVID-19. The results from this research need to be obtained as rapidly as possible. This presents a number of challenges associated with considerable uncertainty over the natural history of the disease and the number and characteristics of patients affected, and the emergence of new potential therapies. These challenges make adaptive designs for clinical trials a particularly attractive option. Such designs allow a trial to be modified on the basis of interim analysis data or stopped as soon as sufficiently strong evidence has been observed to answer the research question, without compromising the trial's scientific validity or integrity. In this article, we describe some of the adaptive design approaches that are available and discuss particular issues and challenges associated with their use in the pandemic setting. Our discussion is illustrated by details of four ongoing COVID-19 trials that have used adaptive designs.