Models of the convergence of opinion in social systems have been the subject of considerable recent attention in the physics literature. These models divide into two classes, those in which individuals form their beliefs based on the opinions of their neighbors in a social network of personal acquaintances, and those in which, conversely, network connections form between individuals of similar ...

Members of different social groups often hold widely divergent public beliefs regarding the nature of the world in which they live. We develop a model that can accommodate such public disagreement, and use it to explore questions concerning the aggregation of distributed information and the consequences of social integration. The model involves heterogeneous priors, private information, and rep...

OBJECTIVES To characterize the beliefs and opinions of nursing home (NH) and emergency medicine providers about communication between NH and emergency departments (ED) during transitions of care of NH residents. DESIGN A cross-sectional study using a mailed and Internet survey. PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING Physicians, nurse practitioners, physicians assistants, and nurses who practice in ED set...

This research examined whether access to attitude-relevant beliefs and prior experiences mediates the relation between attitudes and behavior. Subjects’ opinions toward preservation of the environment and their recall of preservation-related beliefs and experiences were assessed during the first experimental session. Approximately 2 weeks later. subjects were contacted at home and asked to sign...

Belief elicitation is an important methodological issue for experimental economists. There are two generic questions: 1) Do incentives increase belief accuracy? 2) Are there interaction effects of beliefs and decisions? We investigate these questions in the case of finitely repeated public goods experiments. We find that belief accuracy is significantly higher when beliefs are incentivized. The...

PURPOSE Although prior research has investigated teachers' beliefs about people who stutter (PWS), this work has not indicated how these beliefs compare with those of the general public or taken into account key demographic variables that may be related to these beliefs. The main purpose of this study was to evaluate whether beliefs about PWS in teachers are different from those in the general ...

We address the problem of decision-making in group settings where there is uncertainty and disagreement about the utility that actions will yield. Each individual brings his own private information and subjective beliefs, and a decision-maker aims to arrive at a choice that sensibly aggregates all relevant information to maximize expected social welfare. Agents and the decision-maker revise bel...

Klemenc-Ketis and Vrecko described the development and validation of a professionalism assessment scale for medical students in a recent issue of this journal.1 In the introduction to this article they state that ‘professionalism can be defined as a collection of attitudes, values, behaviours and relationships that act as the foundation of the health professional’s contract with society’. Subse...

This study investigated teaching self-efficacy beliefs and opinions about distance education of teachers in Turkey who switched to during the COVID-19 pandemic. 758 from completed an online questionnaire comprising demographic information questions, likert type scale items on for education, closed-ended questions addressing teachers’ open-ended question enabling express their experiences with e...