366 research outputs found

    Assessing intention of volunteers to develop their leadership: creation of an instrument using the theory of planned behavior

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    During the current tough economic times volunteers are playing an increasingly important role in making human services widely available and in building collaborative community partnerships. Volunteers are most likely to be productive, to be satisfied with their experience, and to sustain their volunteer service when the opportunities provided to them are aligned with their motives for volunteering, which may include building the kinds of knowledge, skills, and interpersonal awareness that are the cornerstones of leadership. Organizations that purposefully recognize, support, and develop their volunteers’ leadership potential generate positive outcomes not only for themselves and their volunteers, but also for the clients they serve, and for whole communities. Across the country more than 240 affiliates of the HandsOn Network (HON), the nation’s largest volunteer network, serve as clearinghouses for individuals seeking both long-term and short-term (episodic) volunteer opportunities, and for nonprofit agencies seeking volunteer services. In its commitment to civic engagement and innovative problem solving, HON is investigating opportunities and technologies for volunteer and community empowerment, and is actively engaged in the inquiry as to how best to serve volunteers who want to cultivate their leadership at every level. In partnership with HON, and using the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1991), an elicitation study was conducted as formative research to determine the most salient factors that predict volunteers’ intentions to develop their leadership via their attitudes toward leadership development, subjective norms regarding leadership development, and perceived behavioral control of leadership development. Themes derived from the elicitation study provided the content framework to create a survey tool, which was then administered in a pilot study to HON volunteers across the country. Content analysis of pilot study responses produced a solution in which items reflecting the respective theoretical constructs of the Theory of Planned Behavior separated with near-exact fit in a six-factor solution. This research resulted in the production of an instrument, the Volunteer Leadership Development Questionnaire (VLDQ), which can identify the factors influencing intentions of HON volunteers to express and develop their leadership. Recommendations are made for ongoing validation and refinement of the instrument

    Using the Theory of Planned Behaviour to Investigate the Antecedents of Physical Activity Participation among Saudi Adolescents

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    Despite the widely documented physical, psychological, and social benefits of participation in physical activity (Sallis, Prochaska, & Taylor, 2000; U.S Department of Health & Human Services, 2000), less than half of young Saudi adolescents are involved in non-school organised sport (General Presidency for Youth Welfare, 2007; Al-Hazzaa, 2004). Thus, examination of social and psychological determinants of participation in leisure time physical activity is important. This PhD examined these determinants within Saudi adolescents. A mixed methods approach was adopted to identify and test the important social and psychological determinants of participation in leisure-time physical activity. Phase one of the research was qualitative in nature. The purpose of this phase was to illustrate how an elicitation method can be used to identify salient behavioural (termed consequences), normative (termed referents), and control (termed circumstances) beliefs about physical activity as perceived by adolescents. These findings, along with theoretical propositions and evidence from previous studies, contributed to the development of a model of the social and psychological determinants of participation in leisure-time physical activity. They also contributed to the development of ways to measure important concepts in the model. Phase two was quantitative in nature and used multiple regression analysis to test the relationships among the key variables of interest. In part one of this phase, self-report questionnaires measured the respondents’ intention to participate in leisure time physical activity (dependent variable); it also measured their attitude toward physical activity behaviour, as well as subjective norms, perceived behavioural control, descriptive norms, self-efficacy, self-identity, and past behaviour (independent variables). The results revealed that attitudes, subjective norms, perceptions of behavioural control predicted physical activity intentions in a Saudi Arabian context. Moreover, descriptive norms, self-efficacy, and past behaviour contributed to the prediction of intentions, while self-identity did not. The results also pointed to some gender differences: while Saudi females considered attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control and self-efficacy during intention formation, Saudi males considered attitude, subjective norms, perceived behaviour control, self-efficacy, and past behaviour only during intention formation. In terms of the salient beliefs, being active, maintaining fitness and controlling weight predicted attitudes; friends, mother, and brother predicted subjective norms; and availability of place, availability of time, and bad weather predicted perceived behavioural control. The results also pointed to some gender differences. While Saudi females considered being active, maintaining fitness, controlling weight, friends, family, father, mother, and brother, availability of place, availability of time, and bad weather, Saudi males considered being active, friends, family, father, brother, availability of place, availability of time and bad weather. In part two of this phase, five weeks after completing the main questionnaire, participants completed a follow-up questionnaire that assessed self-reported physical activity during the previous five weeks. Results revealed that intention, perceived behavioural control, subjective norms, self-efficacy, and past behaviour, but not attitude, descriptive norms, or self-identity predicted physical activity. Results also pointed out important gender differences. That is, while Saudi males appeared to consider intention, perceived behavioural control, and past behaviour when predicting exercising behaviour, this was not the case for Saudi females who considered intention, subjective norms, self-efficacy, and past behaviour only. Overall, the findings of this thesis offer partial support for the capacity of the theory of planned behaviour to predict participants’ physical activity intention and behaviour. The standard TPB variables, self-efficacy and past behaviour predicted intention, while, subjective norms, self-efficacy and past behaviour predicted behaviour. In general, findings also point out important gender differences. That is, while Saudi males appear to consider the standard TPB variables, self-efficacy, and past behaviour when predicting intention, and perceived behavioural control and past behaviour when predicting physical activity behaviour, this is not the case for Saudi females. In contrast, Saudi females consider attitude, subjective norms, and self-efficacy when predicting intention, and self-efficacy and past behaviour when predicting physical activity behaviour. Implications of these findings are that in order to alter physical activity patterns, factors influencing adolescents’ intention and behaviour to participate in physical activity must be addressed. Specially, effective interventions should target cognitive, social, environmental and psychological factors aimed at promoting physical activity among adolescents

    Seeing For Understanding: Unlocking the Potential of Visual Research in Information Systems

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    In this paper, we argue that information researchers should use images as a source of data. The information systems field is overwhelmingly visual in nature. Not only is the Internet crammed with images, but also almost every detail observed during fieldwork in different research settings can be captured in the form of digital images. Yet, we rarely engage with those images. Except for sporadic video recordings in analyzing human-computer interaction and, more recently, neurophysiological imaging, using images in information systems research has been sparse and non-systematic. Where images are used, the purpose of using them has been largely restricted to visually representing the context of the research setting. This approach underuses the knowledge embedded in visual material, which needs to be unpacked in a systematic fashion. We discuss the theoretical underpinnings of visual research and illustrate via a three-step framework how images in information systems research can be collected, analyzed, and presented. We conclude with four considerations for researchers that can help them develop a visual research capacity in information systems and encourage researchers to engage with the images that are now a major feature of the information systems environment

    Advanced Knowledge Technologies at the Midterm: Tools and Methods for the Semantic Web

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    The University of Edinburgh and research sponsors are authorised to reproduce and distribute reprints and on-line copies for their purposes notwithstanding any copyright annotation hereon. The views and conclusions contained herein are the author’s and shouldn’t be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies or endorsements, either expressed or implied, of other parties.In a celebrated essay on the new electronic media, Marshall McLuhan wrote in 1962:Our private senses are not closed systems but are endlessly translated into each other in that experience which we call consciousness. Our extended senses, tools, technologies, through the ages, have been closed systems incapable of interplay or collective awareness. Now, in the electric age, the very instantaneous nature of co-existence among our technological instruments has created a crisis quite new in human history. Our extended faculties and senses now constitute a single field of experience which demands that they become collectively conscious. Our technologies, like our private senses, now demand an interplay and ratio that makes rational co-existence possible. As long as our technologies were as slow as the wheel or the alphabet or money, the fact that they were separate, closed systems was socially and psychically supportable. This is not true now when sight and sound and movement are simultaneous and global in extent. (McLuhan 1962, p.5, emphasis in original)Over forty years later, the seamless interplay that McLuhan demanded between our technologies is still barely visible. McLuhan’s predictions of the spread, and increased importance, of electronic media have of course been borne out, and the worlds of business, science and knowledge storage and transfer have been revolutionised. Yet the integration of electronic systems as open systems remains in its infancy.Advanced Knowledge Technologies (AKT) aims to address this problem, to create a view of knowledge and its management across its lifecycle, to research and create the services and technologies that such unification will require. Half way through its sixyear span, the results are beginning to come through, and this paper will explore some of the services, technologies and methodologies that have been developed. We hope to give a sense in this paper of the potential for the next three years, to discuss the insights and lessons learnt in the first phase of the project, to articulate the challenges and issues that remain.The WWW provided the original context that made the AKT approach to knowledge management (KM) possible. AKT was initially proposed in 1999, it brought together an interdisciplinary consortium with the technological breadth and complementarity to create the conditions for a unified approach to knowledge across its lifecycle. The combination of this expertise, and the time and space afforded the consortium by the IRC structure, suggested the opportunity for a concerted effort to develop an approach to advanced knowledge technologies, based on the WWW as a basic infrastructure.The technological context of AKT altered for the better in the short period between the development of the proposal and the beginning of the project itself with the development of the semantic web (SW), which foresaw much more intelligent manipulation and querying of knowledge. The opportunities that the SW provided for e.g., more intelligent retrieval, put AKT in the centre of information technology innovation and knowledge management services; the AKT skill set would clearly be central for the exploitation of those opportunities.The SW, as an extension of the WWW, provides an interesting set of constraints to the knowledge management services AKT tries to provide. As a medium for the semantically-informed coordination of information, it has suggested a number of ways in which the objectives of AKT can be achieved, most obviously through the provision of knowledge management services delivered over the web as opposed to the creation and provision of technologies to manage knowledge.AKT is working on the assumption that many web services will be developed and provided for users. The KM problem in the near future will be one of deciding which services are needed and of coordinating them. Many of these services will be largely or entirely legacies of the WWW, and so the capabilities of the services will vary. As well as providing useful KM services in their own right, AKT will be aiming to exploit this opportunity, by reasoning over services, brokering between them, and providing essential meta-services for SW knowledge service management.Ontologies will be a crucial tool for the SW. The AKT consortium brings a lot of expertise on ontologies together, and ontologies were always going to be a key part of the strategy. All kinds of knowledge sharing and transfer activities will be mediated by ontologies, and ontology management will be an important enabling task. Different applications will need to cope with inconsistent ontologies, or with the problems that will follow the automatic creation of ontologies (e.g. merging of pre-existing ontologies to create a third). Ontology mapping, and the elimination of conflicts of reference, will be important tasks. All of these issues are discussed along with our proposed technologies.Similarly, specifications of tasks will be used for the deployment of knowledge services over the SW, but in general it cannot be expected that in the medium term there will be standards for task (or service) specifications. The brokering metaservices that are envisaged will have to deal with this heterogeneity.The emerging picture of the SW is one of great opportunity but it will not be a wellordered, certain or consistent environment. It will comprise many repositories of legacy data, outdated and inconsistent stores, and requirements for common understandings across divergent formalisms. There is clearly a role for standards to play to bring much of this context together; AKT is playing a significant role in these efforts. But standards take time to emerge, they take political power to enforce, and they have been known to stifle innovation (in the short term). AKT is keen to understand the balance between principled inference and statistical processing of web content. Logical inference on the Web is tough. Complex queries using traditional AI inference methods bring most distributed computer systems to their knees. Do we set up semantically well-behaved areas of the Web? Is any part of the Web in which semantic hygiene prevails interesting enough to reason in? These and many other questions need to be addressed if we are to provide effective knowledge technologies for our content on the web

    The mental model comparison of expert and novice performance improvement practitioners

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    The primary purpose of this study was to reveal performance improvement practitioner expert and novice mental models and identify differences and similarities between these models. The secondary purpose was to analyze the potential relationships of the professional profile characteristics of performance improvement practitioners with their mental model of expertise derived from Pathfinder scaling algorithm. The study was stemmed from one of the critical research trends in the field of Human Performance Technology (HPT). There are two phases of the study. In the first round of the first phase, experts, who were selected based on several criteria, were contacted to identify the most critical concepts related the HPT. The Online Ranking Questionnaire was utilized. 23 experts were responded, and 11 of 30 concepts were selected. In the second round of the first phase, the experts who responded to the first round were contacted again to share their professional profile characteristics and ratings about the concept-pairs generated from the 11 concepts. These ratings provided the proximity data necessary to generate the common mental models of expert (the expert referent model) in the KNOT using the Pathfinder algorithm. The Professional Profile Characteristics and The Concept-Pairs Comparison online questionnaires were used. 16 experts responded in this round. In the second phase of the study, practitioners in the field were invited to participate in the study via International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI) newsletters, The American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) discussion forums, and Association for Educational Communications and Technologies (AECT) mailing list. Moreover, professional social networking sites, e.g., Linked-In, and the researcher personal contact list were used as well to increase return-rate. Practitioners were asked to complete the same online questionnaires completed by the experts in the second round of the first phase. 335 practitioners started the questionnaires; 272 completed the Professional Profile Characteristics questionnaire; 242 completed both the Professional Profile Characteristics and the Concept-Pairs Comparison questionnaires. 33 practitioners of 242 were identified as novices who were selected based on the criteria used to select experts. In contrast to the experts, the novices were chosen as those who do not meet all of the criteria. The proximity data of those 33 novices were used to create the common mental model of novices. The common mental model of experts demonstrated more coherent and hierarchical structure. However, the common mental model of novices was in more linear structure. The models were also compared, and the experts\u27 model was different from the novices\u27 model. The expert model had deep structure of practical knowledge; whereas, the novice model contained step-by-step and textbook style structure. The professional profile characteristics of the practitioners and the experts were also presented. Several relationships found between the professional profile characteristics and the mental model of expertise, which was generated from three Pathfinder measures: relatedness, coherence, and similarity. The mental model of expertise was positively associated with the number of organizations worked, the number of completed projects, the diversity of project types, the number of the HPT related courses taught; whereas, it was negatively associated with the total years spent to earn degrees. There were several implications of the current study. The first is either informal or formal approaches for the development of expertise. This study may enlighten the mentoring novices while progressing to expertise in the field. Colleges, universities and other types of institutions providing education or training for performance improvement practitioners may take advantage of the results of this study by improving their course or curriculum designs with additional experiences. Moreover, the professional organizations, such as ISPI and ASTD, may be informed with this study for their certification and designation programs. They may include new rationale and criteria for assessment and evaluation processes. This study also may provide additional information from the expertise perspective to the efforts related to the development of competencies in the performance improvement field. Finally, future studies were recommended. The first recommendation was the replication of the current study with different sample characteristics and sizes. The future studies regarding expertise in HPT may consider different using different research design and knowledge elicitation techniques. Since the current study utilized stand-alone concepts, the studies examining groups of stand-alone concepts with common characteristics may provide more meaningful and overarching interpretations. There were numerous either demographic, e.g., age, or professional, e.g., years of experience, deliberate practice, and so forth, factors influencing in expertise in either general or more specific to performance improvement field. These factors needed to be analyzed to reveal the relationships with the progression to expertise

    Relationship marketing and client trust towards contractors within the large private building sector of the UK construction industry

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    A history of adversarial relationships, resulting in conflict between parties involved in building projects has raised levels of perceived risk for clients working with contractors. Therefore, traditional approaches to marketing management have been found to be inappropriate. The new development in relationship marketing may assist contractors in developing more appropriate marketing strategies. However, trust is essential to the development of positive on-going relationships and if future relationship marketing strategiesa re going to work, this must first be addressedW. ith calls for the development of trust, the thesis concentrateso n this, whilst taking into considerationt he complex exchangep rocessb etweenc lients and contractorse xisting over an extendedp eriod of time in any one project. This within what is calledt he TemporaryM ulti-organisation( TMO). From the client decision-maker's(C DNI) perspectivein the large private building sector of the UK construction industry, this thesis empirically examines client attitude and consequentiabl eliefs about, trusting contractors. It also examinesc ontractor behaviour affecting client willingness to trust them, whilst allowing for the influence other parties within the TMO have on CDM perspectiveo f the contractor. To do this, two models,t he 'ReasonedA ction Model' and 'Conditions of Trust InventorV were executed together through a carefully designedq uestionnaires urvey sent to key decision-makers'i n 590 leading large client organisationss uch as BAA, British Land, and major retail, hotel and leisure companies.D epth interviews with leading UK CDM's were used in conjunction with prescribedp racticet o aid in the designa nd contento f the questionnaire. Given the history of client-contractor relationships, results revealed some interesting findings. Third party influence from architects, colleagues within the CD"s firm, contractorsp ast clients and sub-contractorsw ere found to be the dominanti nfluenceo ver CDM trust of contractors. Results also show CDM's consider being able to trust contractors as important, reasonablea nd beneficial. This leads to fewer problemsw ith disclosureo f information, less monitoring of contractor performancei n terms of quality checksa nd greater likelihood of a successfupl roject. Also, all ten 'Conditions of Trust' relating to CDM's past experienceo f contractor behavioura re shown to be affecting the development of trust for future projects. The research makes an original contribution, providing insight into issues affecting client trust toward contractors during projects, whilst identifying areasf or action if trust is to be developed.I t also provides marketing theory with an insight into trust and relationshipm anagemenwt ith the TNIO, a forerunner to modem virtual organisations

    Interpretative phenomenological analysis

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    The Second Edition of The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research in Psychology provides comprehensive coverage of the qualitative methods, strategies, and research issues in psychology. Qualitative research in psychology has been transformed since the first edition's publication. Responding to this evolving field, existing chapters have been updated while three new chapters have been added on Thematic Analysis, Interpretation, and Netnography. With a focus on methodological progress throughout, the chapters are organised into three sections: Section One: Methods. Section Two: Perspectives and Techniques. Section Three: Applications. In the field of psychology and beyond, this handbook will constitute a valuable resource for both experienced qualitative researchers and novices for many years to come

    Human information processing research in accounting: The state of the art in 1982

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    Awareness of the importance of human information processing research to accounting issues has increased dramatically since 1977. As a result, this literature has expanded in volume and addresses a larger spectrum of accounting problems. Further, it incorporates a wider variety of theories and methodologies. This paper draws upon the framework provided by Libby and Lewis (1977) to synthesize and evaluate accounting research conducted since 1977 using the lens model, probablistic judgment, predecisional behavior, and cognitive style approaches. In addition, the impact of the research on practice and some directions for future research are discussed.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/24105/1/0000362.pd

    Designing and evaluating a behaviour change intervention that introduces modification of time perceptions as a solution to promote sustainable behaviours

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    This research presents the design and evaluation of an intervention that introduces modification of time perceptions as one of the solutions to promote sustainable behaviours. It is demonstrated in this thesis that unnecessary energy use is often caused by temporal tensions, defined as the relation between actions to be performed and available time. This research proposes that it is possible to deliberately reduce temporal tensions, and this can motivate people to behave more sustainably. Persuasive technology and human-computer interaction provided the tools needed to manipulate time perceptions and therefore bring about changes in the specific behaviours that result in unnecessary energy usage. Previous studies indicate that behaviours play an important role in energy consumption. From the different domains of energy use that could be examined, cooking was chosen to be the platform where the studies on behaviour change and energy use would take place. How behaviours influence energy use motivated the design of empirical studies to understand behaviours related to domestic energy use and identify what are the determinants of these behaviours. Each determinant was related to a strategy to be included on a behaviour change intervention. A wider survey was developed to understand students acceptance of a set of proposed energy saving techniques, and resulted in a vast volume of information about user preferences and intentions to perform the suggested energy saving behaviours for cooking. It emerged that participants rushed into the cooking tasks without much deliberation, consequently not following preparation procedures and thus using more energy. Information gathered during the first studies also showed that participants behaviours were partially motivated by the need to speed up the cooking process in order to reduce boredom when they were waiting for the food to cook, consequently resulting in extra energy usage. The knowledge gathered from the preceding steps and a literature review informed the design of strategies to modify the non-sustainable behaviours and promote energy saving. A user-centred design process involving an idea generation session and scenario analysis was used to provide a set of strategies to be embedded in an intervention, containing the specific methods to tackle the correspondent determinants of behaviours. The specific needs of the cooking activity indicated that an electronic intervention was an adequate platform to be implemented and tested. Two high resolution working prototypes of the electronic interventions were developed as mobile phone applications. The final study comprised the evaluation of the proposed interventions in improving aspects of the cooking activity, the acceptance of the interventions and effectiveness in promoting energy saving
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