Visualizing Social Influences on Filipino American and Southeast Asian American College Choice

This study identifies and explores social influences on the college choice process of Filipino American and Southeast Asian American high school seniors in an urban Midwestern setting. In an effort to contribute more depth to the knowledge regarding college choice among Filipino Americans and Southeast Asian Americans, this study engaged seven high school seniors in a photo elicitation study, allowing the students to tell their own stories of their pathways to college. Photos and follow-up interviews indicated that the students explicitly acknowledged kinship and peer networks as playing the most influential roles in the college choice process. Gender differences were found in how students understood their college choice experiences. Though not explicitly recognized by students in this study, college preparatory support programs and resources in the students’ schools also provided important supports in navigating college-going systems

Exploring the Impact of Analyst Knowledge of Socio-Technical Concepts on Requirements Questionnaires Quality

This paper explores the potential for a proposed socio-technical process model in enhancing analysts’ domain knowledge for the requirements elicitation phase. Following design science guidelines, we have developed a ST process model with demonstration in the self-care management area. Evaluation will be done using empirical investigation with a randomized two group experimental design, where the objective is to see the potential for the proposed process model in enhancing analysts’ domain knowledge, interview readiness, and questionnaire quality

Conflicting contexts : midwives' interpretation of childbirth through photo elicitation

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery and Health.BACKGROUND The increasing rates of interventions during childbirth in Australia raise serious concerns about how to keep birth normal. As midwives are the primary care givers for women during labour, it is conceivable that they have a direct influence on birth outcomes. Limited research has been undertaken regarding midwives' beliefs about childbirth and how they interpret the process of labour. This research examines the thought processes and cognitive frameworks that midwives construct around childbirth in order to understand if midwifery care is influencing the use of interventions during childbirth. METHOD A qualitative interpretive study was undertaken using a technique called photo elicitation. The study involved interviewing 12 midwives recruited from a variety of metropolitan maternity hospitals in Sydney, Australia. Photo elicitation is used to draw out in-depth responses from the midwives about their beliefs in relation to labour and to explore how and why they make clinical decisions. During the interview, participants were shown a photograph of a labouring woman and asked specific questions about how they would care for her. This was in the form of semi structured open-ended questions. The data were analysed using thematic analysis, which provided a flexible yet rigorous method for the interpretation and application of the themes. FINDINGS Six themes emerged from the data that clearly indicated midwives felt challenged by working in a system dominated by an obstetric model of care that undermined midwifery autonomy in maintaining normal birth. These themes were: Desiring Normal, Scanning the Environment, Constructing the Context, Navigating the Way, Relinquishing Desire and Reflecting on Reality. Most midwives felt they were unable to practice in the manner they were philosophically aligned with, that is, promoting normal birth, as the medical model restricted their practice. Midwives described a sense of frustration and powerlessness about having to conform to the protocols and procedures that reflected the institutionalised culture of the hospitals. DISCUSSION As the profession of midwifery comes from a history of marginalisation there remains a culture of subordination that inhibits the visibility and validity of midwifery philosophy. This research offers the concept of parrhesia, a Greek word, meaning to speak without fear, as a constructive and pragmatic way to challenge the dominant obstetric model. Parrhesia is suggested by Foucault as a technique to challenge unequal power relationships (Foucault 1983). This research recommends that midwives become skilled and confident in using parrhesia as an effective method to articulate their beliefs and desires for normal birth in the increasingly technological environment of childbirth

LadderBot: A requirements self-elicitation system

Digital transformation impacts an ever-increasing amount of everyone’s business and private life. It is imperative to incorporate user requirements in the development process to design successful information systems (IS). Hence, requirements elicitation (RE) is increasingly performed by users that are novices at contributing requirements to IS development projects. [Objective] We need to develop RE systems that are capable of assisting a wide audience of users in communicating their needs and requirements. Prominent methods, such as elicitation interviews, are challenging to apply in such a context, as time and location constraints limit potential audiences. [Research Method] We present the prototypical self-elicitation system “LadderBot”. A conversational agent (CA) enables end-users to articulate needs and requirements on the grounds of the laddering method. The CA mimics a human (expert) interviewer’s capability to rephrase questions and provide assistance in the process. An experimental study is proposed to evaluate LadderBot against an established questionnaire-based laddering approach. [Contribution] This work-in-progress introduces the chatbot LadderBot as a tool to guide novice users during requirements self-elicitation using the laddering technique. Furthermore, we present the design of an experimental study and outline the next steps and a vision for the future

A Phenomenological Study of the Lived Experiences of Parents of Young Children with Autism Receiving Special Education Services

Over the past two decades reported rates of autism have steadily risen. The current incidence is 1 in 68 children. While autism can be reliably diagnosed at 18 months in most children with the condition, specialized autism treatment rarely begins before a child\u27s third or fourth birthday. As screening and diagnosis procedures improve so does the need for effective early interventions for autism. Researchers and professionals have expressed a growing concern over the need for effective early interventions for infants and toddlers with autism. At the same time, there is a dearth of qualitative research exploring the needs and experiences of parents with a very young child with autism. Employing a phenomenological framework, the purpose of this study was to investigate the lived experiences of parents of a young child with autism receiving early special education services. Unstructured interviews and photo elicitation were used to generate rich, detailed descriptions of the phenomenon. Data analysis from photographic images and narrative dialogues illuminated six essential themes across participants: (a) parents as pioneers: forging the way for future families; (b) making the journey as a family; (c) navigating uncharted service systems; (d) overcoming challenges and obstacles; (e) resilience, ingenuity and hope; and (f) reflecting on the first three years and looking forward. Participants expressed that they felt this study gave them a voice in the research literature. This study is one of the first to investigate the lived experiences of parents as they seek and secure autism services for their child under five with autism

A Systematic Review of User Mental Models on Applications Sustainability

In Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), a user’s mental model affects application sustainability. This study's goal is to find and assess previous work in the area of user mental models and how it relates to the sustainability of application. Thus, a systematic review process was used to identify 641 initial articles, which were then screened based on inclusion and exclusion criteria. According to the review, it has been observed that the mental model of a user has an impact on the creation of applications not only within the domain of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), but also in other domains such as Enterprise Innovation Ecology, Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI), Information Systems (IS), and various others. The examined articles discussed company managers' difficulties in prioritising innovation and ecology, and the necessity to understand users' mental models to build and evaluate intelligent systems. The reviewed articles mostly used experimental, questionnaire, observation, and interviews, by applying either qualitative, quantitative, or mixed-method methodologies. This study highlights the importance of user mental models in application sustainability, where developers may create apps that suit user demands, fit with cognitive psychology principles, and improve human-AI collaboration by understanding user mental models. This study also emphasises the importance of user mental models in the long-term viability and sustainability of applications, and provides significant insights for application developers and researchers in building more user-centric and sustainable applications

Using Photovoice to Navigate Social-ecological Change in Coastal Maine: a Case Study on Visibility, Visuality, and Visual Literacy

Media representations of the environment support specific cultures of viewing that can create expectations about how to observe social-ecological interactions in everyday life. While public perceptions may appear, in some cases, to reflect these normative representations, more critical and participatory approaches to environmental research and management have begun to complicate these representations as they are negotiated through intrapersonal, interpersonal, and group communication. Working from a visual cultural approach that interrogates issues of visibility, visuality, and visual literacy, this dissertation theorizes how coastal residents represent their own observations and experiences of environmental change through photography and what impact their views have on the perceived availability, desirability, and feasibility of community responses to change. For this project, I designed and facilitated a multi-stage photovoice project and a Q method evaluation that engaged a small group of residents from the communities surrounding the Bagaduce and Damariscotta Rivers in Maine. Across the three main chapters, I critically and collaboratively analyze the affordances of photography as a research methodology, visual communication practice, and social-ecological assessment tool. In the second chapter, I document the social-ecological changes residents perceived to impact their community and how related interactions were framed as inevitable, manageable, and deconstructive. In the third chapter, I explore how residents used photographs in individual interviews and group discussions and through material and dialogic exchanges to broaden, focus, and shift their meaning-making. In the fourth chapter, I evaluate how the photovoice methodology influenced participants’ perceived development of visual learning and communication skills and discuss implications for photovoice goal attainment. Together, this research indicates that environmental applications of photovoice may inspire resilience thinking through group negotiation of visual meaning and critical reflection on self-other-environment relationships. In turn, this research offers new possibilities for understanding and engaging visual representations of social-ecological change that constitute community experience and influence environmental adaptation

"I Knew Who I was This Morning" The Hosts' Journey of Self-Discovery and Self-Reflection in the Midst of Volunteer Tourism

In recent years, volunteer tourism has emerged as not only a meaningful way to spend a vacation, but also as an intriguing area of empirical inquiry. This phenomenon, which began as wealthy westerners sought to give a helping hand to the less privileged, has morphed into a worldwide trend that has put destinations on the map. Little is known, however, of how intimate experiences in volunteer tourism shape the hosts’ sense of self and identity. Looking at identity formation as a process (Burke, 1991), I conducted photo elicitation interviews with rural farmers in Guatemala's San Miguel Cooperative, outside of Antigua Guatemala. This study was an effort to understand the maintenance of identities in the presence of volunteer tourists and how the host self is impacted after the tourists have returned home. The study focuses on two main objectives. First, exploring how the intimacy of volunteer tourism and the presence of volunteer tourists helps to form and maintain host personal identity, and second, understanding how these identities are negotiated and maintained after the departure of volunteer tourists. Through this qualitative approach, I aimed to give a voice to the unheard host, telling and sharing the story of those whose voices are often overshadowed. The narrow scope of this study, however, emphasizes only one construct in a multi-dimensional, postcolonial relationship that will require constant scrutiny and progress. Over the course of 12 interviews, using photos to guide the conversation, we are able to better understand the progression of the host self, their journey from discomfort to confidence. The hosts’ experience with volunteer tourism proved to be a journey that bred feelings of oppression, nervousness, and disconnection but was met with a concluding positivity. Despite inciting these detrimental feelings, the volunteer tourism journey offered the hosts an opportunity to reevaluate their understanding of their self and prosper in the immediate situation and beyond. We learned that, despite the neocolonialistic nature of volunteer tourism (Palacios, 2010), the hosts are able to overcome oppressive dynamics and persist with a more positive view of the self and a new understanding of societies beyond their own

Four facets of a process modeling facilitator

Business process modeling as a practice and research field has received great attention in recent years. However, while related artifacts such as models, tools or grammars have substantially matured, comparatively little is known about the activities that are conducted as part of the actual act of process modeling. Especially the key role of the modeling facilitator has not been researched to date. In this paper, we propose a new theory-grounded, conceptual framework describing four facets (the driving engineer, the driving artist, the catalyzing engineer, and the catalyzing artist) that can be used by a facilitator. These facets with behavioral styles have been empirically explored via in-depth interviews and additional questionnaires with experienced process analysts. We develop a proposal for an emerging theory for describing, investigating, and explaining different behaviors associated with Business Process Modeling Facilitation. This theory is an important sensitizing vehicle for examining processes and outcomes from process modeling endeavors