Mediated Communication and Customer Service Experiences: Psychological and Demographic Predictors of User Evaluations in the United States

People around the world who seek to interact with large organisations increasingly find they must do so via mediated and automated communication. Organisations often deploy both mediated and automated platforms, such as instant messaging and interactive voice response systems (IVRs), for efficiency and cost-savings. Customer and client responses to these systems range from delight to frustration. To better understand the factors affecting people's satisfaction with these systems, we conducted a representative U.S. national survey (N = 1321). We found that people overwhelmingly like and trust in-person customer service compared to mediated and automated modalities. As to demographic attitude predictors, age was important (older respondents liked mediated systems less), but income and education were not strong attitude predictors. For personality variables, innovativeness was positively associated with mediated system satisfaction. However, communication apprehensiveness, which we expected to be related to satisfaction, was not. We conclude by discussing implications for the burgeoning field of human-machine communication, as well as social policy, equity, and the pullulating digital services divide

BUOCA: Budget-Optimized Crowd Worker Allocation

Due to concerns about human error in crowdsourcing, it is standard practice to collect labels for the same data point from multiple internet workers. We here show that the resulting budget can be used more effectively with a flexible worker assignment strategy that asks fewer workers to analyze easy-to-label data and more workers to analyze data that requires extra scrutiny. Our main contribution is to show how the allocations of the number of workers to a task can be computed optimally based on task features alone, without using worker profiles. Our target tasks are delineating cells in microscopy images and analyzing the sentiment toward the 2016 U.S. presidential candidates in tweets. We first propose an algorithm that computes budget-optimized crowd worker allocation (BUOCA). We next train a machine learning system (BUOCA-ML) that predicts an optimal number of crowd workers needed to maximize the accuracy of the labeling. We show that the computed allocation can yield large savings in the crowdsourcing budget (up to 49 percent points) while maintaining labeling accuracy. Finally, we envisage a human-machine system for performing budget-optimized data analysis at a scale beyond the feasibility of crowdsourcing.First author draf

BUOCA: Budget-Optimized Crowd Worker Allocation

Due to concerns about human error in crowdsourcing, it is standard practice to collect labels for the same data point from multiple internet workers. We here show that the resulting budget can be used more effectively with a flexible worker assignment strategy that asks fewer workers to analyze easy-to-label data and more workers to analyze data that requires extra scrutiny. Our main contribution is to show how the allocations of the number of workers to a task can be computed optimally based on task features alone, without using worker profiles. Our target tasks are delineating cells in microscopy images and analyzing the sentiment toward the 2016 U.S. presidential candidates in tweets. We first propose an algorithm that computes budget-optimized crowd worker allocation (BUOCA). We next train a machine learning system (BUOCA-ML) that predicts an optimal number of crowd workers needed to maximize the accuracy of the labeling. We show that the computed allocation can yield large savings in the crowdsourcing budget (up to 49 percent points) while maintaining labeling accuracy. Finally, we envisage a human-machine system for performing budget-optimized data analysis at a scale beyond the feasibility of crowdsourcing

Mediated communication and customer service experiences

People around the world who seek to interact with large organisations increasingly find they must do so via mediated and automated communication. Organisations often deploy both mediated and automated platforms, such as instant messaging and interactive voice response systems (IVRs), for efficiency and cost-savings. Customer and client responses to these systems range from delight to frustration. To better understand the factors affecting people's satisfaction with these systems, we conducted a representative U.S. national survey (N = 1321). We found that people overwhelmingly like and trust in-person customer service compared to mediated and automated modalities. As to demographic attitude predictors, age was important (older respondents liked mediated systems less), but income and education were not strong attitude predictors. For personality variables, innovativeness was positively associated with mediated system satisfaction. However, communication apprehensiveness, which we expected to be related to satisfaction, was not. We conclude by discussing implications for the burgeoning field of human-machine communication, as well as social policy, equity, and the pullulating digital services divide.Published versio

Opening education through emerging technology: what are the prospects? Public perceptions of artificial intelligence and virtual reality in the classroom

Education technology (Edtech) is a booming industry based on its potential to transform education and learning outcomes. With concern over remote learning, there is renewed excitement about the visual component of Edtech, namely VR, along with artificial intelligence (AI), resulting in more significant investments and innovations. Despite industrial-scale investment in Edtech's diffusion, less is known about the public's view. The public's reception of these technologies, though, maybe necessary in determining the contours of their eventual utilization. Therefore, we conducted a mixed-methods analysis based on a survey of a representative sample of the US population (N=2,254) that explores perceptions of Edtech in two instantiations: AI and VR in education. Respondents were more accepting of VR as a teaching tool than AI taking on educational roles. Assistive AI was born over AI with decision-making responsibilities. Personality and experiential traits had an influence on respondents' openness to education technologies. The results suggest support for a blended model of AI and VR use in the classroom.http://opuseteducatio.hu/index.php/opusHU/article/view/41

Integrating isotopes and documentary evidence : dietary patterns in a late medieval and early modern mining community, Sweden

We would like to thank the Archaeological Research Laboratory, Stockholm University, Sweden and the Tandem Laboratory (Ångström Laboratory), Uppsala University, Sweden, for undertaking the analyses of stable nitrogen and carbon isotopes in both human and animal collagen samples. Also, thanks to Elin Ahlin Sundman for providing the δ13C and δ15N values for animal references from Västerås. This research (Bäckström’s PhD employment at Lund University, Sweden) was supported by the Berit Wallenberg Foundation (BWS 2010.0176) and Jakob and Johan Söderberg’s foundation. The ‘Sala project’ (excavations and analyses) has been funded by Riksens Clenodium, Jernkontoret, Birgit and Gad Rausing’s Foundation, SAU’s Research Foundation, the Royal Physiographic Society of Lund, Berit Wallenbergs Foundation, Åke Wibergs Foundation, Lars Hiertas Memory, Helge Ax:son Johnson’s Foundation and The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

School nurses' experiences of delivering the UK HPV vaccination programme in its first year

Background: In the United Kingdom (UK) in September 2008, school nurses began delivering the HPV immunisation programme for girls aged 12 and 13 years old. This study offers insights from school nurses' perspectives and experiences of delivering this new vaccination programme. Methods: Thirty in-depth telephone interviews were conducted with school nurses working across the UK between September 2008 and May 2009. This time period covers the first year of the HPV vaccination programme in schools. School nurses were recruited via GP practices, the internet and posters targeted at school nurse practitioners. Results: All the school nurses spoke of readying themselves for a deluge of phone calls from concerned parents, but found that in fact few parents telephoned to ask for more information or express their concerns about the HPV vaccine. Several school nurses mentioned a lack of planning by policy makers and stated that at its introduction they felt ill prepared. The impact on school nurses' workload was spoken about at length by all the school nurses. They believed that the programme had vastly increased their workload leading them to cut back on their core activities and the time they could dedicate to offering support to vulnerable pupils. Conclusion: Overall the first year of the implementation of the HPV vaccination programme in the UK has exceeded school nurses' expectations and some of its success may be attributed to the school nurses' commitment to the programme. It is also the case that other factors, including positive newsprint media reporting that accompanied the introduction of the HPV vaccination programme may have played a role. Nevertheless, school nurses also believed that the programme had vastly increased their workload leading them to cut back on their core activities and as such they could no longer dedicate time to offer support to vulnerable pupils. This unintentional aspect of the programme may be worthy of further exploratio

Scoping review of indicators and methods of measurement used to evaluate the impact of dog population management interventions

Background: Dogs are ubiquitous in human society and attempts to manage their populations are common to most countries. Managing dog populations is achieved through a range of interventions to suit the dog population dynamics and dog ownership characteristics of the location, with a number of potential impacts or goals in mind. Impact assessment provides the opportunity for interventions to identify areas of inefficiencies for improvement and build evidence of positive change. Methods: This scoping review collates 26 studies that have assessed the impacts of dog population management interventions. Results: It reports the use of 29 indicators of change under 8 categories of impact and describes variation in the methods used to measure these indicators. Conclusion: The relatively few published examples of impact assessment in dog population management suggest this field is in its infancy; however this review highlights those notable exceptions. By describing those indicators and methods of measurement that have been reported thus far, and apparent barriers to efficient assessment, this review aims to support and direct future impact assessment

Breaching perpetual contact: Withdrawing from mobile and social media use in everyday life

This qualitative study aimed to investigate the norms and daily practices around mobile and social technology by examining what happens when mobile phones and social media on any devices are removed from one’s daily life. Most studies on technology non-use focus on one device or plat-form. In this study, participants (N = 78) relinquished not only social media but also their mobile phones for a 10-day period, and made observations on their experiences before, during, and after the “withdrawal.” Participants initially experienced guilt and anxiety over violating a social contract by not being available and reachable anytime and anywhere, but mostly found their social capital — particularly bonding social capital — reinforced through the withdrawal. On the personal front, participants (re)discovered certain “life skills” like memory, imagination, and creativity in navigating their physical world and spending their time