Sex differences in attitudes towards online privacy and anonymity among Israeli students with different technical backgrounds

Introduction. In this exploratory study, we proposed an experimental framework to investigate and model male/female differences in attitudes towards online privacy and anonymity among Israeli students. Our aim was to comparatively model men and women's online privacy attitudes, and to assess the online privacy gender gap. Method. Various factors related to the user's online privacy and anonymity were considered, such as awareness of anonymous threats made online, concern for protecting personal information on the Internet, online privacy self-efficacy, online privacy literacy and users' tendency to engage in privacy paradox behaviour, i.e., personal data disclosure despite the awareness of anonymity and privacy threats. Analysis. A user study was carried out among 169 Israeli academic students through a quantitative method using closed-ended questionnaires. The subjects' responses were analysed using standard statistical measures. We then proposed a summarized comparative model for the two sexes' online privacy behaviour. Results. We found that a digital gap still exists between men and women regarding technological knowledge and skills used to protect their identity and personal information on the Web. Interestingly, users' tendency to engage in privacy paradox behaviour was not higher among men despite their higher level of technological online privacy literacy compared to women. Conclusions. Women's relatively high online privacy self-efficacy level and their low awareness of technological threat do not match their relatively low technological online privacy literacy level. This leads to a lower ability to protect their identity and personal information as compared to men. We conclude that further steps should be taken to eliminate the inter-gender technological gap in online privacy and anonymity awareness and literacy

Smartphones

Many of the research approaches to smartphones actually regard them as more or less transparent points of access to other kinds of communication experiences. That is, rather than considering the smartphone as something in itself, the researchers look at how individuals use the smartphone for their communicative purposes, whether these be talking, surfing the web, using on-line data access for off-site data sources, downloading or uploading materials, or any kind of interaction with social media. They focus not so much on the smartphone itself but on the activities that people engage in with their smartphones

Understanding experiences of mental health help-seeking in Arab populations around the world: a systematic review and narrative synthesis

BACKGROUND: Racial and ethnic disparities in mental health service utilisation and access is well established. Mental illness is common among Arab populations globally, but most individuals display negative attitudes towards mental health and do not seek professional help. The aim of this systematic review was to determine 1) help-seeking behaviours 2) help-seeking attitudes and 3) help-seeking barriers and facilitators, related to mental health services among Arab adults. METHOD: A pre-defined search strategy and eligibility criteria allowed for database searching using terms related to: mental health, Arabs, help-seeking, as well as experiences and behaviours. Seventy-four articles were included and analysed through narrative synthesis. Results were reported using the PRISMA guidelines. The review protocol was registered prospectively on PROSPERO (CRD42022319889). RESULTS: Arabs across the world have negative attitudes towards formal help-seeking and are reluctant to seek help, despite the presence of psychological distress. There is little information on factors that influence help-seeking behaviours and rates of service use. Preference for informal help sources such as family and friends were expressed and considered more acceptable. Low mental health literacy, stigma, gender, age, education, religion, acculturation, and immigrant status were the most common factors influencing help-seeking attitudes. Barriers to help-seeking included stigma, privacy and confidentiality, trust, mental health literacy, language, logistics, and culture related barriers. Increasing societal and family awareness, external support and encouragement, shared culture between the client and therapist, quality of doctor patient relationship, and feelings of connectedness with the host country among refugees were mentioned facilitators. Mixed findings for the role of religion, and family and community, in relation to facilitating or hindering help-seeking were reported. CONCLUSIONS: There is an increased likelihood and preference to seek informal sources of psychological support among Arabs. Contextual and cultural factors impeding help-seeking for Arabs are common across the world. Future research should address actual utilisation rates of services to better understand factors that influence help-seeking behaviours and facilitators to help-seeking. Increasing mental health literacy and developing anti stigma campaigns is necessary. Developing culturally informed interventions should inform future efforts to promote help-seeking among this population

Exploring leadership in Facebook communities: personality traits and activities

Leaders of online communities are today becoming key players in social media sites like Facebook. Responsible for the community\u27s participation rules, limits and members’ identities, these leaders represent an important population on which to focus. This paper compares 94 Facebook community leaders to 94 other Internet users (N=188) in order to identify differences among them with respect to five major personality traits ( the BIG 5 ) as well as their online and offline activities. The results of the online surveys show that Facebook community leaders are more extroverted, open to experience, emotionally stable and active online and offline than are other Internet users. Examining the community categories, the leaders who manage Facebook support communities were found to be more introverted and less active online than leaders of other community types. The results are discussed in the context of the unique role of online leadership in the social media environment

Aligning Community-Engaged Research to Context.

Community-engaged research is understood as existing on a continuum from less to more community engagement, defined by participation and decision-making authority. It has been widely assumed that more is better than less engagement. However, we argue that what makes for good community engagement is not simply the extent but the fit or alignment between the intended approach and the various contexts shaping the research projects. This article draws on case studies from three Community Engagement Cores (CECs) of NIEHS-funded Environmental Health Science Core Centers (Harvard University, UC Davis and University of Arizona,) to illustrate the ways in which community engagement approaches have been fit to different contexts and the successes and challenges experienced in each case. We analyze the processes through which the CECs work with researchers and community leaders to develop place-based community engagement approaches and find that different strategies are called for to fit distinct contexts. We find that alignment of the scale and scope of the environmental health issue and related research project, the capacities and resources of the researchers and community leaders, and the influences of the sociopolitical environment are critical for understanding and designing effective and equitable engagement approaches. These cases demonstrate that the types and degrees of alignment in community-engaged research projects are dynamic and evolve over time. Based on this analysis, we recommend that CBPR scholars and practitioners select a range of project planning and management techniques for designing and implementing their collaborative research approaches and both expect and allow for the dynamic and changing nature of alignment

Joining and Gaining Knowledge From Digital Literacy Courses: How Perceptions of Internet and Technology Outweigh Socio-Demographic Factors

Many government-sponsored policies and programs have been implemented in recent years to reduce digital inequality, but research on the effectiveness of such programs is severely lacking. We examine the short-term effects of participation in Lehava, the largest such program in Israel. Participants in our study completed a survey before and after taking introductory computer and internet classes. The findings demonstrate that motivations for participating in the program (measured before taking the course), as well as knowledge gains (i.e., differences between levels of familiarity with concepts before and after taking the course), were predicted almost exclusively by participants' perceptions of technology and the internet, and not by socio-demographic or other variables. We conclude by discussing the significance of perceptions over and above socio-demographic considerations for bridging digital inequality gaps

Citizens' Attitudes, Knowledge, and Educational Needs in the Field of Omics Sciences: A Systematic Literature Review

Background: The huge development of omics sciences is changing the classical medical approach and making new technologies available. In this context, education of citizens is essential to allow appropriate decisions about their own health. Hence, we aimed to summarize existing literature regarding citizens' knowledge, attitudes, and educational needs on omics sciences. Methods: We performed a systematic literature review (SLR) using Pubmed, ISI Web of Science, and Embase databases. The eligibility criteria for inclusion in this review required that the studies investigated knowledge, attitudes, or educational needs regarding omics sciences among the general population. Results: We included 54 studies, published between 2006 and 2020. Most of the included studies (72%) investigated citizens' knowledge, half of them (56%) attitudes, and 20% educational needs in the field of omics sciences, while 52% investigated attitudes and perceptions about genetic and/or omics tests. Most studies (64%) reported a limited knowledge level among citizens, even though most (59%) reported participants understood the benefits of the use of omics sciences into medicine. As for omics tests, a controversial opinion toward their use into practice was reported among citizens. Most of the studies (82%) investigating citizens' educational needs highlighted a clear gap to be filled. Conclusions: Our SLR summarizes current knowledge on citizens' literacy, attitudes, and educational needs on omics science, underlining the need for strengthening public engagement on this topic. Further research is needed, however, to identify appropriate methods and models to achieve such an improvement

Perceived risk in online services and its effect on password strength

Passwords are the most used method for authentication in online platforms. At the same time, password management continues to be one of the biggest security risks for individual users. This is due to both inadequate password behavior of most users, especially related to password strength which depends on the parameters assigned by the user in most cases. Two of the most prevalent behaviors that can expose users to danger are password reuse and weak password strength. Our thesis focuses on the problem of weak password strength usage. Therefore, we seek to answer the following research problem: “Does the perception of risk associated with different online services influence password strength and is this universally applied?”. We conducted the research study on Norwegian students from the University of Agder. To answer our question, we followed a quantitative methodology in form of an online distributed survey. The study was based on findings from a literature review which helped us get an understanding of different factors affecting users’ password behavior, risk perception, knowledge, and the state of password strength. The survey received 99 respondents of which 70 were eligible for further analysis. The analyses of the data were conducted using Excel. We present our findings in figures, tables, and descriptive analysis. Our results show that using different password strengths for different online services is common among users. In addition, there are no significant changes in password strength between the services when analyzing behaviors of individual users. Moreover, the perceived risk of user accounts being attempted compromised, and the consequences of compromise in services have low correlation with password strength, with a few exceptions for some services. Two of these exceptions being porn, and news. Furthermore, we discuss our findings in detail by looking at outliers and trends in the data, and some commonalities between the services that follow a similar pattern in our findings. We concluded that password strength differs among online services, and that certain online services are more likely to have weaker passwords than others