416,111 research outputs found

    The motivational atmosphere in youth sport: coach, parent, and peer influences on motivation in specializing sport participants

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    This study qualitatively examined the motivationally relevant behaviors of key social agents in specializing sport participants. Seventy-nine participants (9-18 years old) from 26 sports participated in semi-structured focus-groups investigating how coaches, parents, and peers may influence motivation. Using a critical-realist perspective, an inductive content-analysis indicated that specializing athletes perceived a multitude of motivationally-relevant social cues. Coachesā€™ and parentsā€™ influences were related to their specific roles: instruction/assessment for coaches, support-and-facilitation for parents. Peers influenced motivation through competitive behaviors, collaborative behaviors, evaluative communications, and through their social relationships. The results help to delineate different roles for social agents in influencing athletes' motivation

    A qualitative study of stakeholders' perspectives on the social network service environment

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    Over two billion people are using the Internet at present, assisted by the mediating activities of software agents which deal with the diversity and complexity of information. There are, however, ethical issues due to the monitoring-and-surveillance, data mining and autonomous nature of software agents. Considering the context, this study aims to comprehend stakeholders' perspectives on the social network service environment in order to identify the main considerations for the design of software agents in social network services in the near future. Twenty-one stakeholders, belonging to three key stakeholder groups, were recruited using a purposive sampling strategy for unstandardised semi-structured e-mail interviews. The interview data were analysed using a qualitative content analysis method. It was possible to identify three main considerations for the design of software agents in social network services, which were classified into the following categories: comprehensive understanding of users' perception of privacy, user type recognition algorithms for software agent development and existing software agents enhancement

    Like oil and water or chocolate and peanut butter? Ethnic diversity and social participation of young people in England

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    The paper studies the impact of ethnic diversity on social participation of young people. We first propose a theoretical model in which the agents choose between structured and unstructured social activities by taking into account the ethnic composition of the groups they join. We test our predictions using English census data together with the ā€œLongitudinal Survey of Young People in Englandā€ (LSYPE) and we find that ethnic segregation increases the probability of hanging around near home, while ethnic fractionalization decreases it. Furthermore, more structured activities are not affected by ethnic fractionalization. Finally, we use an IV strategy based on both historical and geographical data to correct for endogenous sorting into neighborhoods. The results we get are even stronger than those obtained where the ethnic composition of the neighborhood is taken as exogenous.Social participation, Fractionalization, Segregation

    Agent oriented modeling of business information systems

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    Enterprise modeling is an abstract definition of processes running in enterprise using process, value, data and resource models. There are two perspectives of business modeling: process perspective and value chain perspective. Both have some advantages and disadvantages. This paper proposes a combination of both perspectives into one generic model. The model takes also social part or the enterprise system into consideration and pays attention to disturbances influencing the enterprise system. Due to heterogeneous nature of the enterprise processes the outline proposed is oriented on the modeling using agents. Several types of agents are defined for the simulation model. The agents are structured into several layers. Well known JADE platform is proposed as the modeling framework. Further research directions are summed up in conclusionprocess model, value chain model, business pattern, agent, control loop, feedback, JADE platform.

    knowledge_diffusion_with_complex_cognition

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    This paper aims to understand some of the mechanisms which dominate the phenomenon of knowledge diffusion in the process that is called ā€˜interactive learningā€™. We examine how knowledge spreads in a network in which agents interact by word of mouth. We define a social network structured as a graph consisting of agents (vertices) and connections (edges) and situated on a wrapped grid forming a torus. The target of this simulation is to test whether knowledge diffuses homogeneously or whether it follows some biased path, and its relation with the network architecture. We also investigate the impact of a modelled ICT platform on the knowledge diffusion process.Agent-based Knowledge Network Small world
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