No abstract

Most of the research on the concept of “ageing‐in‐place” has focused on surveys of the needs of senior citizens and/or the quality of the services delivered to them. Service innovation for ageing‐in‐place has received little research attention, however. The present study addresses this issue by proposing a service innovation model for ageing‐in‐place. In this model, a TRIZ methodology is used to develop the parameter correspondence table, which integrates TRIZ contradiction parameters and ageing‐in‐place service‐quality determinants, to deal with service contradiction. A TRIZ contradiction matrix is then applied to generate inventive solutions for the innovation of the ageing‐in‐place service system. A case study is also conducted to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed model.

Over 73% of hi-tech industry employees in Taiwan lack regular exercise. They are exposed to a highly variable and stressful work environment for extended periods of time, and may subsequently experience depression, detrimental to workers' physiological and mental health. In this cross-sectional survey, the authors explored the effect of an 8-week brisk walking program on the fatigue of employees in the hi-tech industry. The participants, from a hi-tech company in northern Taiwan, were randomly assigned to an experimental group (EG; 41 subjects, Mage = 33.34 ± 6.40) or control group (CG; 45 subjects, Mage = 29.40 ± 3.60). Following the 8-week brisk walking program, the EG showed significantly lower scores for subjective fatigue, working motivation, attention, and overall fatigue. The authors confirmed that the 8-week outdoor brisk walking program significantly improved the level of fatigue among employees of the hi-tech industry. The finding serves as an important reference for health authorities in Taiwan and provides awareness of workplace health promotion in the hi-tech industry.

Sport injury has been identiˆed as one of the major adolescent health problems. This study investigated the current level of knowledge and attitude of sports injury prevention and management (SIPM), and the correlations between the demographic factors among senior high school athletes in Taiwan. The population covers a total of three hundred school athletes who accepted the survey and were selected with purposive sampling from the school athletes of seven public and private senior high schools in Hsinchu County. Data were collected with self-administered questionnaires. 86.0% participants had sports injury history in the last year; gender (pº.001), type of school (pº.001), grade (pº.01) and total practicing days a week ( pº.01) was statistically signiˆcant in SIPM knowledge. All participants believed that none of the sports injury related courses provides adequate knowledge; and the highly positive correlation between knowledge and attitude of SIPM was found (r＝.608, pº.001). We suggest that the higher risk group of sports injuries, such as school athletes will be deprived from learning more about sports injury prevention and management. The training of high school teachers and coaches will likely increase students' knowledge and in‰uences their attitudes then motivate their practice to keep health.

Quality management (QM) has been popular and widely used in Taiwan since the 1960s. However, it has been found that a review of its development is lacking. Hence, this paper aims to examine the history and the evolution of QM in Taiwan, and to take a step further to look for cues for shaping its future development. The research purpose of this paper is more specifically to review the development of QM during the period from 1970 to 2012. Quality Magazine, the most popular reading material on QM in Taiwan, has been selected as the search database. The overall review result shows that the development of QM in Taiwan has three developmental phases: (1) the quality technologies and tools focus period (1970-1985); (2) the QM system integration period (1986-2000) and (3) the quality in service industry development period (2001-2012). In light of the overall as well as the detailed review results, senior quality experts were invited for consultation, discussion and prediction of the needs and the future development of QM in Taiwan