This paper investigates whether instructors' adoption of constructive alignment has any impact on university students' learning approaches, which are highly correlated with students' achievement of learning outcomes. A multi-method model with a combination of qualitative and quantitative design was adopted, using document analysis, interviews and survey. The analysis of covariance results suggested that regardless of individual differences, students would adjust their learning approaches and study behaviours in response to the classroom teaching and learning environment. Students in more 'constructively aligned courses' were more likely to adopt deep learning approaches and less likely to use surface learning approaches in their study of a particular course.

Despite statistically imprecise risk estimates, the findings suggest potential associations with some occupational chemical exposures in this cohort of textile workers.

This study investigated the perceptual contributions of vowels and consonants to Mandarin sentence intelligibility. Mandarin sentences were edited using a noise-replacement paradigm to preserve various amounts of segmental information and presented to normal-hearing listeners to recognize. The vowel-only Mandarin sentences yielded a remarkable 3:1 intelligibility advantage over the consonant-only sentences. This advantage is larger than that obtained with English sentences, suggesting that vowels may have a greater contribution to sentence intelligibility in Mandarin than in English. Although providing information redundant to contributions from vowel centers, a little vowel-consonant boundary transition would significantly improve the intelligibility of the consonant-only Mandarin sentences.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to compare students' and faculty members' perceptions of academic integrity; their understanding of experiences pertaining to different aspects of academic misconduct (e.g. plagiarism); and to examine the underlying reasons behind academic integrity violations in a Hong Kong context.Design/methodology/approachA mixed methods approach comprising quantitative and qualitative methodologies was used. First, a quantitative survey was conducted with students and faculty. Results from the survey were used to generate interview questions for an interview‐based qualitative study, which consisted of individual interviews for faculty members and focus group interview for students.FindingsResults from both the survey and interviews showed that faculty members and students do not share a consensus on the definition of the seriousness of plagiarism and collusion. Students, in general, commit misconduct due to academic work, pressure for grades, and teachers' unclear instructions of academic integrity. Faculty members rarely report cases of misconduct to the university and handle the cases according to their own standard.Originality/valueThe topic of academic integrity has received increased attention in the past decade from college and university teachers and administrators around the world. Plagiarism is amongst the most widely studied acts of dishonesty in the area of academic behavior in universities world‐wide. Not many studies have investigated other acts of academic dishonesty and teachers' perception of academic integrity, especially in the Chinese context. The findings from this study provide useful insights for educators to implement academic honesty education programs, especially within the Chinese context, and especially in Hong Kong. The results also provide the foundations in developing an online academic integrity tutorial for the sampled institution.

Risks associated with toxicants in food are often controlled by exposure reduction. When exposure recommendations are developed for foods with both harmful and beneficial qualities, however, they must balance the associated risks and benefits to maximize public health. Although quantitative methods are commonly used to evaluate health risks, such methods have not been generally applied to evaluating the health benefits associated with environmental exposures. A quantitative method for risk-benefit analysis is presented that allows for consideration of diverse health endpoints that differ in their impact (i.e., duration and severity) using dose-response modeling weighted by quality-adjusted life years saved. To demonstrate the usefulness of this method, the risks and benefits of fish consumption are evaluated using a single health risk and health benefit endpoint. Benefits are defined as the decrease in myocardial infarction mortality resulting from fish consumption, and risks are defined as the increase in neurodevelopmental delay (i.e., talking) resulting from prenatal methylmercury exposure. Fish consumption rates are based on information from Washington State. Using the proposed framework, the net health impact of eating fish is estimated in either a whole population or a population consisting of women of childbearing age and their children. It is demonstrated that across a range of fish methylmercury concentrations (0-1 ppm) and intake levels (0-25 g/day), individuals would have to weight the neurodevelopmental effects 6 times more (in the whole population) or 250 times less (among women of child-bearing age and their children) than the myocardial infarction benefits in order to be ambivalent about whether or not to consume fish. These methods can be generalized to evaluate the merits of other public health and risk management programs that involve trade-offs between risks and benefits.

Formatively assessing communication skills in an integrative manner alongside clinical skills has been identified as an important part of the medical consultation skills training and can be incorporated into the routine assessment and feedback of pharmacy over-the-counter medicines advice.

PURPOSE Although night shift work has been associated with elevated risk of breast cancer in numerous epidemiologic studies, evidence is not consistent. We conducted a nested case-cohort study to investigate a possible association between shift work including a night shift and risk of breast cancer within a large cohort of women textile workers in Shanghai, China. METHODS The study included 1709 incident breast cancer cases and 4780 non-cases. Data on historical shift-work schedules were collected by categorized jobs from the factories where the study subjects had worked, and then were linked to the complete work histories of each subject. No jobs in the factories involved exclusively night shift work. Therefore, night shift was evaluated as part of a rotating shift work pattern. Hazard ratios and 95% confidence intervals were calculated using Cox proportional hazards modeling adapted for the case-cohort design for years of night-shift work and the total number of nights worked. Additionally, analyses were repeated with exposures lagged by 10 and 20 years. RESULTS We observed no associations with either years of night-shift work, or number of nights worked during the entire employment period, irrespective of lag intervals. Findings from the age-stratified analyses were very similar to those observed for the entire study population. CONCLUSIONS The findings from this study provide no evidence to support the hypothesis that shift work increases breast cancer risk. The positive association between shift work and breast cancer observed in Western populations, but not observed in this and other studies of the Chinese population, suggest that the effect of shift work on breast cancer risk may be different in Asian and Caucasian women.

It is now largely accepted that social and cultural factors have a significant impact on cognitive development in children. Piaget acknowledged the impact of social factors and peer interaction on cognitive development. However, there has been relatively little work on the impact of social and cultural factors on the development of metacognition in first-year university students. Using the Learning and study strategies inventory (LASSI) as a measure of metacognition, this study samples first-year undergraduates in Hong Kong (N = 1815) and identifies significant differences in metacognitive abilities between students living in their home environment and those who have moved away from their family and, in some cases, culture, to pursue undergraduate education.