Gendered behavior as a disadvantage in open source software development

Women are severely marginalized in software development, especially in open source. In this article we argue that disadvantage is more due to gendered behavior than to categorical discrimination: women are at a disadvantage because of what they do, rather than because of who they are. Using data on entire careers of users from GitHub.com, we develop a measure to capture the gendered pattern of behavior: We use a random forest prediction of being female (as opposed to being male) by behavioral choices in the level of activity, specialization in programming languages, and choice of partners. We test differences in success and survival along both categorical gender and the gendered pattern of behavior. We find that 84.5% of women's disadvantage (compared to men) in success and 34.8% of their disadvantage in survival are due to the female pattern of their behavior. Men are also disadvantaged along their interquartile range of the female pattern of their behavior, and users who don't reveal their gender suffer an even more drastic disadvantage in survival probability. Moreover, we do not see evidence for any reduction of these inequalities in time. Our findings are robust to noise in gender recognition, and to taking into account particular programming languages, or decision tree classes of gendered behavior. Our results suggest that fighting categorical gender discrimination will have a limited impact on gender inequalities in open source software development, and that gender hiding is not a viable strategy for women

Sustainable consumption: towards action and impact. : International scientific conference November 6th-8th 2011, Hamburg - European Green Capital 2011, Germany: abstract volume

This volume contains the abstracts of all oral and poster presentations of the international scientific conference „Sustainable Consumption – Towards Action and Impact“ held in Hamburg (Germany) on November 6th-8th 2011. This unique conference aims to promote a comprehensive academic discourse on issues concerning sustainable consumption and brings together scholars from a wide range of academic disciplines. In modern societies, private consumption is a multifaceted and ambivalent phenomenon: it is a ubiquitous social practice and an economic driving force, yet at the same time, its consequences are in conflict with important social and environmental sustainability goals. Finding paths towards “sustainable consumption” has therefore become a major political issue. In order to properly understand the challenge of “sustainable consumption”, identify unsustainable patterns of consumption and bring forward the necessary innovations, a collaborative effort of researchers from different disciplines is needed

Towards a Holistic Approach to Designing Theory-based Mobile Health Interventions

Increasing evidence has shown that theory-based health behavior change interventions are more effective than non-theory-based ones. However, only a few segments of relevant studies were theory-based, especially the studies conducted by non-psychology researchers. On the other hand, many mobile health interventions, even those based on the behavioral theories, may still fail in the absence of a user-centered design process. The gap between behavioral theories and user-centered design increases the difficulty of designing and implementing mobile health interventions. To bridge this gap, we propose a holistic approach to designing theory-based mobile health interventions built on the existing theories and frameworks of three categories: (1) behavioral theories (e.g., the Social Cognitive Theory, the Theory of Planned Behavior, and the Health Action Process Approach), (2) the technological models and frameworks (e.g., the Behavior Change Techniques, the Persuasive System Design and Behavior Change Support System, and the Just-in-Time Adaptive Interventions), and (3) the user-centered systematic approaches (e.g., the CeHRes Roadmap, the Wendel's Approach, and the IDEAS Model). This holistic approach provides researchers a lens to see the whole picture for developing mobile health interventions

Electrophysiological responses to alcohol cues are not associated with Pavlovian-to-Instrumental Transfer in social drinkers

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Lowering the pirate flag: a TPB study of the factors influencing the intention to pay for movie streaming services

The launch of several movie streaming services has raised new questions about how online consumers deal with both legal and illegal options to obtain their desired products. This paper investigates the factors influencing consumers’ intentions to subscribe to online movie streaming services. These services have challenged the dramatic growth in their illegal counterpart in recent years. Taking the theory of planned behavior as a starting point, we extended existing models in the literature by incorporating factors that are specific to consumer behavior in this particular field. A quantitative survey was conducted for the Italian market, and structural equation modeling was used for data analysis. Attitudes, involvement with products, moral judgement and frequency of past behavior were found to be the most important factors in explaining the intention to pay for movie streaming services. The paper provides insights for policy makers and industry managers on the marketing communication strategies needed to minimize the risk of digital piracy

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

E-cigarette use among women of reproductive age: Impulsivity, cigarette smoking status, and other risk factors.

INTRODUCTION: The study aim was to examine impulsivity and other risk factors for e-cigarette use among women of reproductive age comparing current daily cigarette smokers to never cigarette smokers. Women of reproductive age are of special interest because of the additional risk that tobacco and nicotine use represents should they become pregnant. METHOD: Survey data were collected anonymously online using Amazon Mechanical Turk in 2014. Participants were 800 women ages 24-44years from the US. Half (n=400) reported current, daily smoking and half (n=400) reported smokingsociodemographics, tobacco/nicotine use, and impulsivity (i.e., delay discounting & Barratt Impulsiveness Scale). Predictors of smoking and e-cigarette use were examined using logistic regression. RESULTS: Daily cigarette smoking was associated with greater impulsivity, lower education, past illegal drug use, and White race/ethnicity. E-cigarette use in the overall sample was associated with being a cigarette smoker and greater education. E-cigarette use among current smokers was associated with increased nicotine dependence and quitting smoking; among never smokers it was associated with greater impulsivity and illegal drug use. E-cigarette use was associated with hookah use, and for never smokers only with use of cigars and other nicotine products. CONCLUSIONS: E-cigarette use among women of reproductive age varies by smoking status, with use among current smokers reflecting attempts to quit smoking whereas among non-smokers use may be a marker of a more impulsive repertoire that includes greater use of alternative tobacco products and illegal drugs