Background:Moral distress is recognized as a problem affecting healthcare professionals globally. Unaddressed moral distress may lead to withdrawal from the moral dimensions of patient care, burnout, or leaving the profession. Despite the importance, studies related to moral distress are scant in Thailand.Objective:This study aims to describe the experience of moral distress and related factors among Thai nurses.Design:A convergent parallel mixed-methods design was used. The quantitative and qualitative data were collected in parallel using the Measure of Moral Distress for Healthcare Professionals (...) and interview guide. The analysis was conducted separately and then integrated.Participants:Participants were Thai nurses from two large tertiary care institutions in a Southern province of Thailand.Ethical considerations:This study was approved by our organization's Institutional Review Board for Health Sciences Research, and by the Institutional Review Boards of the two local institutions in Thailand. Permission from the publisher was received to translate and utilize the Measure of Moral Distress (MMD-HP) under the license number: 4676990097151.Results:A total of 462 participants completed the survey questions. The top 7 causes of moral distress were related to system-level root causes and end-of-life care situations. Hierarchical multiple regression showed that work units, considering leaving position, and number of moral distress episodes in the past year were significant predictors of moral distress. Twenty interviews demonstrated three main themes of distressing causes: (1) powerlessness (at patients/family-, team-, and organizational-levels), (2) end-of-life issues, and (3) poor team function (poor communication and collaboration, incompetent healthcare providers, and inappropriate behavior of colleagues). The integration of data from both components indicated that the qualitative interviews enrich the quantitative findings, especially as related to the top 7 causes of moral distress.Discussion:Although the experience of moral distress among Thai nurses is similar to studies conducted elsewhere, the patient’s and family’s religious perspective that ties into the concept of moral distress needs to be explored.Conclusions:Although the root causes of moral distress are similar among different cultures, the experience of Thai nurses may vary according to culture and context. (shrink)

The present study examined the psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire Short Form (TEIQue-SF). Analyses were performed using a sample of undergraduates (N = 585) recruited from four universities across China. Confirmatory factor analysis of the Chinese TEIQue-SF supported the one-factor structure of trait emotional intelligence. Measurement invariance analyses were conducted across the Chinese sample and a sample of Canadian undergraduate students (N = 638). Although the two samples demonstrated configural and partial metric invariance, (...) scalar invariance was not found. Cross-cultural implications and explanations of the present findings, as well as suggestions for future research are discussed. (shrink)

In recent years, the Audit Pilot of Natural Resources Assets (APNRA) pilot program has been implemented by the Chinese government to strengthen the protection of natural resources and the ecological environment. Based on the APNRA pilot program, we use the multi-period differences–in–differences model to investigate the response of corporate environmental responsibility to external governance pressure. We find that firms significantly improve their environmental investment and performance after the implementation of the APNRA pilot program. Sewage charges (including green fees) and ecological (...) protection incentives constitute the two main channels that explain the positive relationship. We further find that the impact of the program on corporate environmental investment and performance is more pronounced for firms in regions with poor environmental quality, and for firms in heavy-polluting industries. This paper introduces the role of government governance in generating positive externality for firms and provides a valuable understanding of environmental governance in an emerging market. (shrink)

The relationship between bilingual language control and domain-general cognitive control has been a hot topic in the research field of bilingualism. Previous studies mostly examined the correlation between performances of bilinguals in language control tasks and that in domain-general cognitive control tasks and came to the conclusions that they overlap, partially overlap, or are qualitatively different. These contradictory conclusions are possibly due to the neglect of the moderating effect of second language proficiency, that is, the relationship between bilingual language control (...) and domain-general cognitive control might vary with the L2 proficiency of bilinguals. To examine this hypothesis, we recruited 36 unbalanced Chinese-English bilinguals to perform the Simon task, Oxford Placement Test, and picture naming tasks in single-and dual-language contexts. We find that Simon scores positively predicted switching costs in bilinguals with low L2 proficiency, but not in bilinguals with high L2 proficiency. Furthermore, Simon scores positively predicted mixing costs in bilinguals with high L2 proficiency, but not in bilinguals with low L2 proficiency. These results verify the moderating effect of L2 proficiency on the relationship between bilingual language control and domain-general cognitive control, that is, bilinguals with more proficient L2 rely on domain-general cognitive control less for local language control and more for global language control. This may imply a shift from local to global for the dependency of bilingual language control on domain-general cognitive control during the L2 development of bilinguals. (shrink)

In recent years, the incidence of depressive symptoms among Chinese college students has been increasing. Studies have shown that depressive symptoms are related to a variety of psychosocial factors, among which neuroticism, resilience, and attention bias are most notably related, but the correlation among the three is not clear. This study aimed to investigate the influence mechanisms of different degrees of resilience, attentional bias, and neuroticism in the formation of depressive symptoms. The college freshmen of this study were selected through (...) stratified multi-stage cluster sampling. Students provided informed consent and then completed a general situation questionnaire and four scales: the Chinese version of the Connor–Davidson Resilience Scale, the Attention to Positive and Negative Information Scale, the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, and the Zung Self-Rating Depressive Symptoms Scale. In total, 1,493 freshmen participated in the research group. Our results showed that low resilience, negative attention bias, and high neuroticism jointly increased the risk of depressive symptoms. There is a significant correlation between these three factors and depressive symptoms. Additionally, strength, tenacity, and attention bias all had more significant effects on the occurrence of depressive symptoms. These findings indicate that there may be an important psychological mechanism for the occurrence, development, and poor prognosis of depressive symptoms. (shrink)

Research showed that action real-time strategy gaming experience is related to cognitive and neural plasticity, including visual selective attention and working memory, executive control, and information processing. This study explored the relationship between ARSG experience and information transmission in the auditory channel. Using an auditory, two-choice, go/no-go task and lateralized readiness potential as the index to partial information transmission, this study examined information transmission patterns in ARSG experts and amateurs. Results showed that experts had a higher accuracy rate than amateurs. (...) More importantly, experts had a smaller stimulus-locked LRP component than amateurs on no-go trials, while the response-locked LRP component on go trials did not differ between groups. Thus, whereas amateurs used an asynchronous information transmission pattern, experts used a reduced asynchronous information transmission pattern or a synchronous pattern where most of processing occurred prior to response execution – an information transmission pattern that supports rapid, error-free performance. Thus, experts and amateurs may use different information transmission patterns in auditory processing. In addition, the information transmission pattern used by experts is typically observed only after long-term auditory training according to past research. This study supports the relationship between ARSG experience and the development of information processing patterns. (shrink)

By manipulating the location of prosodic boundary and the semantic bias of the ambiguous “V+N1+de+N2” phrase, which is composed of one verb (V), one noun (N1), one functional word (de), and another noun (N2), this study investigated how prosodic boundary and the semantic bias affect the processing of temporary ambiguous sentences formed by the ambiguous phrase “V+N1+de+N2” through an eye movement experiment. We found the effect of prosodic boundary in the late processing stage and observed an interaction between prosodic boundary (...) and the semantic bias of ambiguous phrases as well. The participants required more time for fixation and more regressions occurred when the meaning of the ambiguous phrase guided by prosodic boundary was inconsistent with context, especially when the ambiguous phrase was biased to the narrative-object phrase. This result suggests that prosodic boundary affects the processing of temporal ambiguous sentences and is influenced by the semantic bias of the ambiguous phrase. These findings provide further evidence from Chinese that indicate that implicit prosody plays a general role in language comprehension. (shrink)