Vulnerability, social value and the equitable sharing of benefits from research: beyond the placebo and access debates.

The vulnerability of research participants is a critical topic for the 2024 revision of the Declaration of Helsinki, with the proposal to include "social value. " However, this proposal has been withdrawn and the relationship between the two concepts has not been clarified. This paper attempts to clarify: (1) the recent reform for the ethical inclusion of vulnerable study participants to promote diversity; (2) the social value, prerequisite for everyone, especially for those who are vulnerable and the most in need; (3) the requirements for promoting the inclusion of vulnerable participants, in particular the review of the norms for placebo-controlled trials and post-trial access; (4) finally, the direction of research ethics reform to achieve social value and equitable global health.

Striving for Global Consensus: A Systematic Review of Social Return on Investment Applied to Physical Activity and Sport.

BACKGROUND: Physical activity and sport (PAS) have been related to health and social benefits, but their monetary value remains unclear. This systematic review on the social return on investment of PAS aimed to find what are the social outcomes measured in previous PAS literature and how are these measured and valued. METHODS: A systematic search was conducted on WoS, PubMed, and EconLit. Articles in English, measuring the social value of any type of PAS in monetary terms and utilizing a social return on investment framework, were included. Risk of bias was evaluated using the Drummond checklist. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines were followed. RESULTS: Fifty-five documents (2010-2022), from all continents except America, were included; only 8 were published in peer-reviewed journals, whereas 47 were reports. Most studies evaluated the benefits of specific programs, and 6 measured the engagement in PAS at the population level based on national or community surveys. The social outcomes identified were health (94.5%), crime (50.9%), education (83.6%), subjective well-being (89.1%), social capital (60%), and other (3.6%-23.6%). The valuation methods included willingness to pay, well-being valuation, the cost of an activity that could result in the same outcome, and cost databases associating outcomes with a monetary value. CONCLUSIONS: This study updates a previous review and widens the scope by answering the question of how social outcomes are measured and valued in previous PAS literature. Given the heterogeneity found in the application of the method, this review will inform a Delphi study to reach a Global Consensus Statement on the measurement of social value and PAS.

Cocreation of social value: A tripartite game analysis with Chinese state-owned enterprises as an example.

In the context of the digital economy era, it is urgent for Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to engage in social value cocreation activities. The government and consumers' roles in SOEs' social value cocreation system cannot be ignored. Therefore, it is necessary to explore the tripartite social value cocreation model involving the government, SOEs, and consumers. In this respect, this study constructs a tripartite evolutionary game model of the government, SOEs, and consumers, and explores the influencing factors and evolutionary mechanism of the system overall. Matlab software is used to analyze the simulation data. The results reveal that the prerequisite for SOEs' successful social value cocreation is that consumers receive additional social value benefits greater than the level of improvement in social welfare. The allocation coefficient of consumers' additional social value benefits, the degree of the government's digital empowerment subsidy, and the level of the punishment for SOEs that violate the government's cocreation requirements will accelerate the achievement of equilibrium in the social value cocreation system, without affecting the final equilibrium result. By analyzing the strategic choices and interactive relationships among the government, SOEs, and consumers in social value cocreation in-depth, this study offers suggestions to promote the government, SOEs, and consumers' participation in social value cocreation. This research contributes to clarifying SOEs' social value cocreation model and has significant implications for promoting enterprises' high-quality development.

Social Media and Adolescents' Prosocial Behavior: Evidence of the Interaction Between Short Videos and Social Value Orientation.

Background/Objective: Social media significantly influences adolescents' prosocial behavior. With smartphones becoming ubiquitous, short videos have emerged as the predominant social media format for adolescents. However, the effects of adolescents' engagement with short videos on their prosocial behavior remain uncertain. This study aims to address the problem of how short videos (content and consequences) affect prosocial behavior in adolescents, and simultaneously explores the differences of this effect among individuals with different social value orientations. Methods: The current study conducted two research laboratory experiments using the between-subject study design of two factors. Study 1 (N=148) reveals that viewing prosocial short videos significantly predicts adolescents' prosocial behavior more so than neutral short videos. The interaction between short video content and social value orientation on prosocial behavior illustrates that the encouraging impact of prosocial content is primarily evident in prosocial individuals, rather than in pro-self individuals. In Study 2 (N=152), we introduce new dimensions by assessing adolescents' response to varying consequences of the same prosocial behavior (ie, reward, punishment) within the short video context. Findings indicate that reward consequences significantly bolster adolescents' prosocial behavior, whereas punitive measures tend to adversely affect it. Furthermore, the interaction between the consequences of prosocial short videos and social value orientation suggests that prosocial individuals exhibit no significant behavioral difference between rewards and punishments; instead, the reward/punishment consequences notably influence the prosocial behavior of pro-self individuals. Conclusion: Short videos (content and consequences) and social value orientations interactively influence adolescents' prosocial behaviors. This study underscores the need to recognize individual differences in adolescents' use of short videos and its impact on their prosocial behavior, particularly highlighting the crucial role of their social value orientations. Practically, the research offers valuable insights for parents and professionals seeking to foster adolescents' prosocial behavior.

Distributive fairness during the transition to adolescence: The role of peer comparison and social value orientation.

Combining the dictator game (DG) and the ultimatum game (UG), this study recruited 546 Chinese children (321 boys, aged 9-12 years) as distributors, and found that both peer comparison and social value orientation (SVO) significantly influenced children's distributive fairness from late childhood to early adolescence. Results showed that as the unfairness of peer proposals increased, participants decreased the amount of gold coins distributed to the receiver in both tasks, revealing a peer comparison effect. This effect was more pronounced for adolescents than for children in both tasks. In addition, participants' fair distribution behaviors in the DG showed a three-way interaction effect of SVO, grade, and peer comparison. Specifically, for proselfs, children were not influenced by peers and consistently proposed self-interested distributions, whereas adolescents exhibited a peer comparison effect; for prosocials, both children and adolescents were influenced by peers, but children decreased the amount of their distributions only when they saw peers make extremely unfair distributions, whereas adolescents decreased the amount of their distributions when they saw peers make both mildly and extremely unfair distributions. This study highlights the importance of social environment and personal trait in shaping children's fair distribution behavior during the transition from late childhood to early adolescence.

The social value of place-based creative wellbeing: A rapid review and evidence synthesis.

Creative well-being is an increasing field of interest to which biomedical and social sciences have made uneven contributions. The instrumental value of culture and its subsequential public investment is grounded in the interplay of social, cultural and economic capital to attain and preserve wellbeing and health and foster social mobility. The current evidence addresses the effectiveness of arts interventions in improving illnesses. Little attention has been paid to the social value of creative wellbeing for the general population. This paper is a rapid review and evidence synthesis that aims to answer the question, 'What is the social value of place-based arts and culture interventions at individual (wellbeing) and community (social inequalities) levels in the UK and Europe?'. After a systematic search of five databases, search engines, and a call for evidence in August 2022, 14 out of 974 sources met the inclusion criteria. Studies were organised into three themes (Community, Events, Museums), and outcomes were analysed considering the indicators and dimensions of wellbeing (Office for National Statistics). The review evidenced that creative wellbeing leads to improvements in wellbeing outcomes and can contribute to alleviating social determinants of health. However, considering their impact on the underlying causes of structural social inequalities requires caution.

Organisational learning through a charitable trust-initiated project focusing on end-of-life care.

PURPOSE: We identify lessons from a project sponsored by a large charitable trust, which sought to build capability for end-of-life (EOL) care in Hong Kong through interdisciplinary and multi-agency collaboration. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: An in-depth case study drawing on 21 in-depth interviews with diverse stakeholders was conducted. Lyman et al.'s (2018) model of organisational learning (OL) in healthcare settings was applied to analyse the relative emphasis on particular contextual factors and mechanisms, and to identify outcomes perceived to have been achieved. FINDINGS: Infrastructure such as materials for assessment and education received the most emphasis among the contextual factors and deliberate learning such as training sessions received the greatest attention among the mechanisms. While perceptions indicated that desired outcomes were being achieved in terms of social impact, there were relatively few mentions of "soft" factors such as enhanced motivation, leadership or OL skills among staff. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: This study extends the literature on how to create valuable social impact through OL. While prior studies have examined social impact in terms of solutions for social and environmental problems, ours is one of the few that examines how improvements are made to organisations' capability to deliver such impacts in the context of healthcare.

Promoting Data Sharing: The Moral Obligations of Public Funding Agencies.

Sharing research data has great potential to benefit science and society. However, data sharing is still not common practice. Since public research funding agencies have a particular impact on research and researchers, the question arises: Are public funding agencies morally obligated to promote data sharing? We argue from a research ethics perspective that public funding agencies have several pro tanto obligations requiring them to promote data sharing. However, there are also pro tanto obligations that speak against promoting data sharing in general as well as with regard to particular instruments of such promotion. We examine and weigh these obligations and conclude that all things considered funders ought to promote the sharing of data. Even the instrument of mandatory data sharing policies can be justified under certain conditions.

Using construction procurement strategy to achieve socioeconomic development objectives.

The procurement strategy for a construction project should provide the framework to achieve secondary procurement and socio-economic development objectives [2]. However, little attention has been focused on this in theory and practice. This paper addresses that gap by presenting a case study of the innovative targeting strategy developed and successfully implemented on a New Universities Project in South Africa to promote specified socioeconomic development objectives. Document analysis was used to examine how four socioeconomic development targets or key performance indicators, namely: local employment, skills development, local expenditure, and B-BBEE, were contractually integrated into the main works contracts. Four out of five framework contractors achieved the development targets, with low-performance damages applied in one case where the contractor failed to achieve all the development targets. The findings demonstrate how an appropriate construction procurement strategy that effectively integrates the packaging, targeting, and contracting strategies with effective systems for monitoring performance-based specifications, can play an essential role in promoting and realising socio-economic development objectives and social value through infrastructure projects.

The Social Value Misconception in Clinical Research.

Clinical researchers should help respect the autonomy and promote the well-being of prospective study participants by helping them make voluntary, informed decisions about enrollment. However, participants often exhibit poor understanding of important information about clinical research. Bioethicists have given special attention to "misconceptions" about clinical research that can compromise participants' decision-making, most notably the "therapeutic misconception." These misconceptions typically involve false beliefs about a study's purpose, or risks or potential benefits for participants. In this article, we describe a misconception involving false beliefs about a study's potential benefits for non-participants, or its expected social value. This social value misconception can compromise altruistically motivated participants' decision-making, potentially threatening their autonomy and well-being. We show how the social value misconception raises ethical concerns for inherently low-value research, hyped research, and even ordinary research, and advocate for empirical and normative work to help understand and counteract this misconception's potential negative impacts on participants.

Wait or Pass? Promoting intersection's cooperation via identifying vehicle's social behavior.

Lack of communication between road users can reduce traffic efficiency and cause safety issues like traffic accidents. Researchers are exploring how intelligent vehicles should communicate with the environment, other vehicles, and road users. This study explores the impact of social information communication on traffic safety and efficiency at intersections through vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication. The research examines how these factors influence drivers' decision-making and cooperative behavior by incorporating social value orientation (SVO) and driving agent identity into V2V systems and automated vehicle (AV) decision-support systems. An experimental platform simulating intersection conflict scenarios was developed, and three studies involving 334 participants were conducted. The findings reveal that providing drivers with social information about opposing vehicles significantly promotes cooperative behavior and safer driving strategies. Specifically, the waiting rate for people facing proself vehicles (Mean = 0.22) is significantly higher than when facing prosocial vehicles (Mean = 0.79). When SVO is unknown, the waiting rate is around 0.5. Participants behaved more waiting when confronted with an AV than human-driven vehicles. With AV recommendations based on SVO, participants' final waiting rate increases as the recommended waiting rate increases. The optimal recommended waiting rate for AV is most acceptable when it matches the average waiting rate of the other vehicle. This research underscores the importance of integrating social information into V2V communication to improve road safety, aiding in designing automated decision-making strategies for AV and enhancing user satisfaction.

Social value framing of physical activity in European Member State policies: a content analysis.

Background: Engagement in physical activity (PA) benefits physical and mental health as well as many other areas of society. In Europe however, 1/3 adults do not meet minimum PA recommendations. Social value, and its quantification through social return on investment (SROI) evidence, may be a useful framing to enhance PA promotion. This study aimed to assess the current use of social value framing of PA in European Union (EU) policies. Methods: Content analysis of 45 EU member state policies which contain reference to PA was conducted to evaluate the presence of five social value domains and SROI evidence. Data was analysed using manual inductive coding, supported by DeepL translation and NVivo tools. Results: Social value framing was present to a certain extent in existing policies, with improved health being the most commonly referenced benefit of PA, followed by reference to social and community and then environmental benefits. Acknowledgement of the positive impacts of PA on wellbeing and education was the least present. Reference to SROI evidence was also limited. Generally, policies lacked holistic recognition of the social value of PA. Policies from the health sector were particularly limited in recognising the wider benefits of PA, whilst those from the environmental sector acknowledged the widest range of co-benefits. Conclusion: Adopting social value framing could be a useful approach for enhancing PA promotion. Whilst it is present to a certain extent in existing policy, this could be increased in terms of comprehensiveness to increase issue salience and multisectoral policy action.

Understanding food waste sorting behavior in institutional food services: An integrated psychological framework.

Food waste from institutional food services accounts for a significant part of global food waste. Food waste sorting (FWS) at the source reduces waste management costs and environmental impacts in organizations. Yet what drives individual FWS behavior remains underexplored. This study explores the psychological process of FWS in institutional catering environments, integrating the value-belief-norm model, the theory of planned behavior, and self-determination theory. Data were collected from 431 university students in China and analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Results indicated the interplay of values, beliefs, norms, and motivations in shaping FWS behaviors. Social value orientations (SVO) indirectly affected FWS through awareness of consequences and personal norms. Subjective norms, potentially attributed to external regulations in canteens, influenced FWS intention through personal norms and induced FWS primarily via controlled motivations. The findings imply that behavioral strategies to induce FWS may leverage social influence and external regulation while also translating values and knowledge into intrinsic motivations through educational programs and awareness campaigns.

The importance of trust and altruistic social orientation for COVID-19 distress.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic, the biggest global health crisis in decades, has been a difficult experience for nations all over the world. In the present study we wanted to assess to what extent a positive attitude towards others, expressed in altruistic social orientation and a high level of trust, would be linked to lower levels of COVID-19 distress in infected and non-infected individuals. PARTICIPANTS AND PROCEDURE: A total 405 individuals (180 women, 44%), aged 18-60 (M = 38.91, SD = 11.02) participated in the study. Respondents were recruited by a research platform. The following questionnaires were completed: the Subjective Happiness Scale, Generalized Trust Scale, survey about COVID-19, social value orientations. RESULTS: The analysis showed that in non-infected high trustors the relationship between altruistic social orientation and COVID-19 distress was significant - the more they were willing to benefit others, the less distress they felt. The reverse effect was observed for infected high trustors - the more altruistic social orientation they expressed, the higher the level of COVID-19 distress they declared. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings shed some light on the importance of a positive attitude towards others in assessing the emotional outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic. They also imply that people who have experienced the COVID-19 disease can suffer from distress differently than people who have not been affected.

Volunteering intentions during social crises: The role of considering the welfare of others and consequences of own behavior.

In the current paper, we investigate how people with experience with volunteering in their lifetime intend to engage in hypothetical crisis volunteering in the future. We took into account two types of hypothetical social crises: a pandemic and a refugee crisis. We suggest that individual differences in considering the welfare of others (social value orientation) and consideration of future/immediate consequences play a role in the volunteer responses to crises. We also control for the willingness to volunteer in the proximal (a month) and distal (3 years) future, gender, age, and length of volunteer experience. We conducted two survey-based online studies in October 2023. We recruited N = 287 people for Study 1 (Poland) and N = 231 for Study 2 (Italy). Our results suggested that people who declare they want to remain volunteers intend to engage during social crises, but not necessarily in a proactive way. Furthermore, consideration of future consequences can result in proactivity, which was especially visible in the Italian sample. Consideration of immediate consequences can have twofold correlates - one might be the engagement in volunteering in case of a sudden emergency or refraining from the voluntary activity. These results can be used by people leading volunteer activities to predict what to expect from their volunteers and plan the volunteer recruitment and retention processes during crises.

Consensus on a social return on investment model of physical activity and sport: a Delphi study protocol.

Background: Physical activity and sport (PAS) have been related to many health outcomes and social benefits. The main aim of this research is to build a Social Return on Investment (SROI) model of PAS based on experts' opinion to clarify the domains of impact and how to measure and value them. Methods and analysis: A Delphi method will be employed with a systematic review on the SROI framework applied to PAS and initial interviews with experts informing the design of the Delphi survey statements. Three iterative rounds of communication with the expert panel will be carried out. Participants will indicate their level of agreement with each statement on a five-point Likert scale. During the second and third iterative rounds, experts will reappraise the statements and will be provided with a summary of the group responses from the panel. A statement will have reached consensus if ≥70% of the panel agree/strongly agree or disagree/strongly disagree after round 3. Finally, group meetings (3-4 experts) will be conducted to ask about the measurement and valuation methods for each domain. Discussion: The final goal of this project will result in the design of a toolkit for organizations, professionals, and policymakers on how to measure the social benefits of PAS.

A comparative ethical analysis of the Egyptian clinical research law.

BACKGROUND: In this study, we examined the ethical implications of Egypt's new clinical trial law, employing the ethical framework proposed by Emanuel et al. and comparing it to various national and supranational laws. This analysis is crucial as Egypt, considered a high-growth pharmaceutical market, has become an attractive location for clinical trials, offering insights into the ethical implementation of bioethical regulations in a large population country with a robust healthcare infrastructure and predominantly treatment-naïve patients. METHODS: We conducted a comparative analysis of Egyptian law with regulations from Sweden and France, including the EU Clinical Trials Regulation, considering ethical human subject research criteria, and used a directed approach to qualitative content analysis to examine the laws and regulations. This study involved extensive peer scrutiny, frequent debriefing sessions, and collaboration with legal experts with relevant international legal expertise to ensure rigorous analysis and interpretation of the laws. RESULTS: On the rating of the seven different principles (social and scientific values, scientific validity, fair selection of participants, risk-benefit ratio, independent review, informed consent and respect for participants) Egypt, France, and EU regulations had comparable scores. Specific principles (Social Value, Scientific Value, and Fair selection of participants) were challenging to directly identify due to certain regulations embodying 'implicit' principles more than explicitly stated ones. CONCLUSION: The analysis underscores Egypt's alignment with internationally recognized ethical principles, as outlined by Emanuel et al., through its comparison with French, Swedish, and EU regulations, emphasizing the critical need for Egypt to continuously refine its ethical regulations to safeguard participant protection and research integrity. Key issues identified include the necessity to clarify and standardize the concept of social value in research, alongside concerns regarding the expertise and impartiality of ethical review boards, pointing towards a broader agenda for enhancing research ethics in Egypt and beyond.

Organizational and social justice paradoxes in EDI.

This perspective article positions social justice as an addition to the aims of organizational justice, and core to diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI). It problematizes simplistic DEI rhetoric and positions paradoxes within DEI, as experienced by employers, based on an explanation of key justice concepts and the introduction of fairness, equality, desert, and need. The paper broadens perspective-taking beyond a sole focus on beneficiaries of DEI, towards tensions that employers experience in working towards the aims of workplace justice, including the embeddedness of social justice within both organizations and social systems. The paper concludes with avenues for future research and a call to carefully examine simplistic notions of organizational justice in effecting DEI, suggesting a paradoxical lens on embracing, rather than avoiding, multiple and often conflicting workplace justice imperatives.

The impact of price and image warnings on the social perception of gifting cigarettes in China.

INTRODUCTION: The tobacco gift-giving culture in China poses a significant challenge to public health; however, there is limited research on effectively curbing the tobacco gift-giving culture and its associated tobacco gift consumption. This study examines the potential impact of two tobacco control measures that the Chinese government may consider adopting on cigarette gifting behavior in the future in Chinese society. METHODS: This study employed a randomized survey experiment to examine the effects of cigarette price treatment and pictorial health warning labels (HWLs) on cigarette gifting. The total sample size of this study is 1035. Four groups of participants were presented with representative cigarettes categorized into high-, medium-, and low-priced products, along with different prices (normal and double) or external packaging imagery (normal and pictorial HWL versions). RESULTS: The price of cigarettes for personal consumption forms an L-shaped distribution, and the price of cigarette gifts forms a W-shaped distribution. Increasing cigarette prices reduces smokers' willingness to gift high-priced cigarettes but stimulates the consumption of low-price cigarettes as gifts. Pictorial HWLs do not directly influence smokers' intentions to gift cigarettes, but they enhance the effectiveness of price regulation concerning medium-priced cigarette products. CONCLUSIONS: If the price variance of cigarettes is not reduced, the effect of price regulation will be very limited. Implementing combined interventions of pictorial HWLs and price regulation or modifying the pricing structure of tobacco products may yield stronger control outcomes.