Empirical Study of Knowledge, Attitude and Practice towards to Radiation Health Hazards of Cell Phone: a Case Study on Medical Science Students

The cell phone has become an essential part of life, however, in developing countries, knowledge and awareness of users about its adverse health effects have not enough increased. This study aimed to develop a questionnaire to investigate knowledge, attitude and practice regarding health hazards of the cell phone among college students. In this cross-sectional study, 230 graduate students of University of medical sciences located in Hamadan (western province of Iran) were participated, randomly. A developed self-administered questionnaire was completed by each participant to assess knowledge, attitude and practice regarding health hazards of the cell phone. The data was analyzed using SPSS 21. The results showed that the content validity ratio and the content validity index of the developed questionnaire were 0.915, 0.79, respectively. Cronbach (alpha), as a criterion of the reliability of the developed questionnaire, was also equal to 0.85. The scores of knowledge, attitudes and practice among the students were 7.95±2.5, 74.78±8.8, and 28.91±9.0, respectively. Relative to the maximum achievable scores, the acquired scores of attitudes was more acceptable than the others. Moreover, the acquired scores of the knowledge were more than the practice. The scientific controversy about health risks of the cell phones aggravated the public concerns about not well-known effects and consequently, it supported and motivated good attitude among student users. Moreover, it seems that the lack of proper knowledge about cell phone health hazards and protection principles can influence adequate practices. As low as reasonably achievable (ALARA) principle should be adopted for uses of the cell phone, while a major effort is done for monitoring of its new potential health impacts

Public Sentiments Towards the Arts: A Critical Reanalysis of 13 Opinion Surveys

This paper summarizes and reviews studies of public perceptions of and sentiments towards the arts. It provides the first critical synthesis of such research based upon original secondary analyses of thirteen of the major data sets collected between 1973 and 1993. In so doing, it reports on what the surveys tell us about several questions of pressing interest to policy makers and others interested in the role of the arts in American society. To what extent do Americans support government funding of the arts, and from what level of government? To what extent do Americans believe that it is important for children to learn about the arts and that the arts are worthy of inclusion in the school curriculum? To what extent do Americans regard the arts as fundamentally important for the quality of community life, on the one hand, or the domain of a select few, on the other? To what extent do sentiments vary between men and women, African-Americans and Euro-Americans, the highly educated and the less schooled, the old and the young, and the wealthy and the less well off? And finally, what, if anything, can we infer about how these patterns have changed over time?

Voice of society: Revealing people's aspirations and reactions to da'wah communication containing halal product messages

Purpose - This paper aims to present data on citizens' aspirations and responses regarding da'wah communication channels containing messages about halal products. This data can be referred by preachers (muballig) to improve the citizen literacy regarding halal products.Method - This paper results from quantitative research with 468 respondents in Bandung Regency, Indonesia. This applies uses and gratifications theory (UGT) as a conceptual framework.Result  - The findings show that a) media and communication channels are intensively put forward to convey information about halal products; b) da'wah communication channels through preachings are widely used because those are able to grow citizens' trust toward halal products; and c) public channels are believed to be able to grow citizens' desire for using halal products.Implication – This implies that da'wah communication channels urgently raise people's trust toward information about halal products.Originality - The originality of this article is that it reveals aspects of citizens' aspirations.***Tujuan - Tulisan ini bertujuan untuk menyajikan data tentang aspirasi dan tanggapan masyarakat mengenai saluran komunikasi dakwah yang memuat pesan tentang produk halal. Data ini dapat dirujuk oleh para muballig untuk meningkatkan literasi masyarakat mengenai produk halal.Metode - Makalah ini merupakan hasil penelitian kuantitatif dengan 468 responden di Kabupaten Bandung, Indonesia. Penelitian ini menggunakan teori uses and gratifications (UGT) sebagai kerangka kerja konseptual.Hasil - Temuan menunjukkan bahwa a) media dan saluran komunikasi secara intensif dikedepankan untuk menyampaikan informasi tentang produk halal; b) saluran komunikasi dakwah melalui ceramah banyak digunakan karena dapat menumbuhkan kepercayaan masyarakat terhadap produk halal; dan c) saluran publik diyakini dapat menumbuhkan keinginan masyarakat untuk menggunakan produk halal.Implikasi - Hal ini mengimplikasikan bahwa saluran komunikasi dakwah sangat penting untuk meningkatkan kepercayaan masyarakat terhadap informasi tentang produk halal.Orisinalitas - Orisinalitas dari artikel ini adalah bahwa artikel ini mengungkapkan aspek aspirasi warga negara

Influence of Media on Overweight and Obesity Among Latino Youth

Outlines findings about how media marketing affects the health-related behaviors of Latino youth, including trends in television viewing, fast-food advertisement in low-income Latino communities, and snacking and caloric intake. Lists policy implications

Language exclusionary behavior and attitudes toward immigrants

Immigrants often speak languages that natives do not understand, leading to intentional or inadvertent ostracism, which in turn may increase perceptions of threat. For example, English language participants excluded from a conversation in Spanish report more negative reactions than participants excluded in English (Hitlan, Kelly, & Zarate, 2010). Integrated threat theory (ITT) suggests that there are four threats that lead to prejudice toward outgroups such as immigrants: realistic threat, symbolic threat, intergroup anxiety, and negative stereotypes (Stephan, Ybarra, & Bachman, 1999). The current study expanded upon prior research by ostracizing participants in English, Spanish, or Arabic and then measuring participants\u27 attitudes toward immigrants using measures of these four ITT concepts. Further, the personality trait of social dominance orientation (SDO) correlates with unfavorable attitudes toward immigrants (Esses, Jackson, & Armstrong, 1998). People high in SDO want their social group to dominate and subordinate groups they consider inferior, so they may be particularly bothered by language-based ostracism. In this study, I also examined whether SDO moderated the effects of ostracism in situations where participants were ostracized. Eighty-five college students participated in a computer-based chat with a confederate posing as two other participants. Each participant was randomly assigned to one of four conditions: Spanish-language exclusion, Arabiclanguage exclusion, English-language exclusion, or English-language inclusion (control group). Excluded participants reported feeling less accepted than included participants. Furthermore, participants in the Spanish and Arabic exclusion conditions reported feeling less accepted than the participants in the English exclusion condition. Unexpectedly, language-based exclusion did not affect attitudes toward immigrants and the effects were not moderated by SDO. However, participants who were higher in SDO reported greater realistic threat, symbolic threat, and negative stereotypes. Although language-based exclusion decreases feelings of acceptance, it may not change or create negative attitudes toward immigrant populations

THE role of the technology acceptance model in information systems research: a case study

Explaining the factors that lead to use and acceptance of information technology (IT), both at individual and organizational levels, has been the focus of information systems (IS) researchers since 1970s. The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is known as such an explanatory model and has increasingly gained recognition due to its focus on theories of human behaviour. Although this model has faced with some criticism in terms of not being able to fully explain the social-technical acceptance of technology, it is still known as one of the best IS methodologies that contributes greatly to explaining it. This paper discusses, describes and explains TAM as one of the well-known information system research methodologies and attempts to demonstrate how this model can be applied in practice in IS research projects. TAM is widely used in different areas of IS studies such as e-commerce, e-business, multimedia and mobile commerce. This paper shows how TAM can be applied in an IS research project by referring to a case study conducted in the area of mobile banking in the UK. This paper aims to contribute to IS research by providing an informed criticism of TAM as well as a clear proposal on how to use it

What Do You Use Mobile Phones for? A Creative Method of Thematic Drawing with Adolescents in Rural China

This study sets out to explore Chinese adolescents’ subjectivities toward the use of mobile phones, and reveal the dynamic relationship among students, parents, and school concerning mobile phone usage in rural China. Twenty-one high school students were recruited, and asked to draw a painting that expresses their perceptions of mobile phones in relation to family and school life. After analyzing the thematic drawings and their self-explanations upon the drawings, several themes arise: the mobile phone as a bridge of love, as an extension of the home, as an iron cage, as the blasting fuse of family conflicts, and as a threat to school life. Contrary to popular belief that adolescents are digital natives who were immersed in mobile technologies since birth, this study suggests that digital culture divides based on social-economic status and the concept of digital natives should be used with caution when analyzing teenagers’ mobile culture in rural China

Consumption, youth and new media: The debate on social issues in Brazil

siirretty Doriast

A New Artificial Intelligence-Based Hierarchical K-Means Clustering Technique to Detect Addictive Twitter Activity

To stop the COVID-19 epidemic from spreading among their populations, several countries have implemented lockdowns. Students are being forced to stay at home during these lockdowns, which is causing them to use mobile phones, social media, and other digital technologies more frequently than ever. Their poor utilization of these digital tools may be detrimental to their emotional and mental health. In this study, we implement an Artificial Intelligence (AI) approach named Hierarchy-based K-Means Clustering (HKMC) algorithm to group individuals with comparable Twitter consumption habits to detect addictive Twitter activity during the epidemic. The effectiveness of the suggested HKMC is evaluated in terms of accuracy, precision, recall, and f1-score in respect to the association between students’ mental health and mobile phone dependency. Additionally, this study offers a comparative examination of both the suggested and existing procedures