Perception of the Residence Hall Conduct Process at a Small Private Institution

The code of conduct process at small institutions can be difficult to manage. The purpose of the study, using a qualitative approach, was to research residents\u27 and Conduct Officers\u27 perception of the resident housing code of conduct process at a small private institution. Research participants included three residents who participated in the conduct process and three Conduct Officers who were involved in the hearings. Results revealed that residents who were sanctioned found the process to be inconsistent and too long. As a result, the impact of the sanctions varied. Conduct Officers involved in the hearings perceived the conduct process to be educational and a method of deterrence. Some barriers to the process included the dual roles of the Conduct Officers and inconsistent management of the process. Participants suggested identifying one person to be the conduct officer and designating a space for the hearings would help. The study provided an opportunity for college institutions to reevaluate their conduct process in light of the findings

HCI as a means to prosociality in the economy

HCI research often involves intervening in the economic lives of people, but researchers only rarely give explicit consideration to what actually constitutes prosociality in the economy. Much has been said previously regarding sustainability but this has largely focused on environmental rather than interpersonal relations. This paper provides an analysis of how prosocial HCI has been discussed and continues to be defined as a research field. Based on a corpus of published works, we describe a variety of genres of work relating to prosocial HCI. Key intellectual differences are explored, including the epistemological and ethical positions involved in designing for prosocial outcomes as well as how HCI researchers posit economic decision-making. Finally, emerging issues and opportunities for further debate and collaboration are discussed in turn

Disentangling participatory ICT design in socioeconomic development

Participatory design in socioeconomic development is an invariably political activity fraught with both political as well as ethical entanglements. ICT for development (ICTD) - often involved in contexts of great inequality and heteogeneity - places these in especially sharp relief. This paper draws attention to these entanglements as well as what they mean for the role and practice of designer-researchers practicing PD. We then draw upon our experiences in an active PD project to highlight approaches that serve as a partial response to these entanglements. These presents both limitations as well as orientations for our role as designer-researchers in engaging with and organising PD work in ICTD - providing a starting point for answering the question “who participates with whom in what and why?

Electronic data capture for large scale typhoid surveillance, household contact tracing, and health utilisation survey: Strategic Typhoid Alliance across Africa and Asia

Background Electronic data capture systems (EDCs) have the potential to achieve efficiency and quality in collection of multisite data. We quantify volume, time, accuracy and costs of an EDC using large-scale census data from the STRATAA consortium, a comprehensive programme assessing population dynamics and epidemiology of typhoid fever in Malawi, Nepal and Bangladesh to inform vaccine and public health interventions. Results A census form was developed through a structured iterative process and implemented using Open Data Kit Collect running on Android-based tablets. Data were uploaded to Open Data Kit Aggregate, then auto-synced to MySQL-defined database nightly. Data were backed-up daily from 3 sites centrally, and auto-reported weekly. Pre-census materials’ costs were estimated. Demographics of 308,348 individuals from 80,851 households were recorded within average of 14.7 weeks range (13-16) using 65 fieldworkers. Overall, 21.7 errors (95% confidence interval: 21.4, 22.0) per 10,000 data points were found: 13.0 (95% confidence interval: 12.6, 13.5) and 24.5 (95% confidence interval: 24.1, 24.9) errors on numeric and text fields respectively. These values meet standard quality threshold of 50 errors per 10,000 data points. The EDC’s total variable cost was estimated at US$13,791.82 per site. Conclusions In conclusion, the EDC is robust, allowing for timely and high volume accurate data collection, and could be adopted in similar epidemiological settings

Electronic Data Management for Vaccine Trials in Low Resource Settings: Upgrades, Scalability, and Impact of ODK

Background: ODK provides software and standards that are popular solutions for off-grid electronic data collection and has substantial code overlap and interoperability with a number of related software products including CommCare, Enketo, Ona, SurveyCTO, and KoBoToolbox. These tools provide open-source options for off-grid use in public health data collection, management, analysis, and reporting. During the 2018–2020 Ebola epidemic in the North Kivu and Ituri regions of Democratic Republic of Congo, we used these tools to support the DRC Ministère de la Santé RDC and World Health Organization in their efforts to administer an experimental vaccine (VSV-Zebov-GP) as part of their strategy to control the transmission of infection. Method: New functions were developed to facilitate the use of ODK, Enketo and R in large scale data collection, aggregation, monitoring, and near-real-time analysis during clinical research in health emergencies. We present enhancements to ODK that include a built-in audit-trail, a framework and companion app for biometric registration of ISO/IEC 19794-2 fingerprint templates, enhanced performance features, better scalability for studies featuring millions of data form submissions, increased options for parallelization of research projects, and pipelines for automated management and analysis of data. We also developed novel encryption protocols for enhanced web-form security in Enketo. Results: Against the backdrop of a complex and challenging epidemic response, our enhanced platform of open tools was used to collect and manage data from more than 280,000 eligible study participants who received VSV-Zebov-GP under informed consent. These data were used to determine whether the VSV-Zebov-GP was safe and effective and to guide daily field operations. Conclusions: We present open-source developments that make electronic data management during clinical research and health emergencies more viable and robust. These developments will also enhance and expand the functionality of a diverse range of data collection platforms that are based on the ODK software and standards

Evaluation Beyond Usability

The evaluation of research artefacts is an important step to validate research contributions. Sub-disciplines of HCI often pursue primary goals other than usability, such as Sustainable HCI (SHCI), HCI for development, or health and wellbeing. For such disciplines, established evaluation methods are not always appropriate or sufficient, and new conventions for identifying, discussing, and justifying suitable evaluation methods need to be established. In this paper, we revisit the purpose and goals of evaluation in HCI and SHCI, and elicit five key elements that can provide guidance to identifying evaluation methods for SHCI research. Our essay is meant as a starting point for discussing current and improving future evaluation practice in SHCI; we also believe it holds value for other subdisciplines in HCI that encounter similar challenges while evaluating their research

Improving Clinical Decision Support in Low-Income Regions

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2012The combination of lightly trained doctors, under-resourced hospitals, and complex treatment protocols can sometimes result in sub-standard care for HIV patients in low-income regions. While previous work has shown that printed patient summaries with reminders improve the quality of care, reliable access to such decision support is limited. Moreover, even when summaries are available, there are no efficient mechanisms for doctors to correct serious errors found in the summaries. Supervisors of these systems also face challenges, such as depending on unreliable manual processes to monitor summary usage across geographically dispersed clinics. This dissertation describes ODK Clinic, a mobile phone application that makes patient summaries with reminders available at the point of care, enables doctors to correct mistakes in a patient's record, and empowers supervisors with detailed usage data. Informed by the results of a 90-day deployment with over 13,000 patient encounters, I present evidence of how ODK Clinic has improved clinical decision support at one of the largest HIV treatment programs in Sub-Saharan Africa

Perception of the Residence Hall Conduct Process at a Small Private Institution

The code of conduct process at small institutions can be difficult to manage. The purpose of the study, using a qualitative approach, was to research residents\u27 and Conduct Officers\u27 perception of the resident housing code of conduct process at a small private institution. Research participants included three residents who participated in the conduct process and three Conduct Officers who were involved in the hearings. Results revealed that residents who were sanctioned found the process to be inconsistent and too long. As a result, the impact of the sanctions varied. Conduct Officers involved in the hearings perceived the conduct process to be educational and a method of deterrence. Some barriers to the process included the dual roles of the Conduct Officers and inconsistent management of the process. Participants suggested identifying one person to be the conduct officer and designating a space for the hearings would help. The study provided an opportunity for college institutions to reevaluate their conduct process in light of the findings