The Influence of Korean Instagram Users’ Cultural Disposition, Social Capital, and Instagram Usage Propensity on their Evaluation Attributes for Fashion Influencers

This study investigates on how Millennials evaluate fashion influencers on Instagram whom have been slowly leading the micro-cultural trends. The users tend to selectively compare, choose, and evaluate these influencers in terms of their own tastes and propensities, and also their cultural and social characteristics. Literary reviews have been used to evaluate categories of individuals’ cultural disposition by vertical-collectivism, vertical-individualism, horizontal collectivism, and horizontal individualism. Furthermore, there are two types of social capital in social networks, which is that people value the “bridging” nature of what links them with influencers, and people use a “bonding” nature to seek emotional stability while being involved in their ideal social gatherings. This study conducted a questionnaire survey of 467, 20 to 30-year-old male and female Instagram users. The questionnaire contains 2 sub-dimensions of Culture Disposition: Vertical Collectivism and Vertical Individualism; 2 sub-dimensions of Social Capital: Connective Social Capital and Bonding Social Capital; 2 sub-dimensions of Instagram usage propensity: Relationship Seeking Propensity and Information Seeking Propensity; 3 sub-dimensions of Fashion Influencer Evaluation Attributes: Professionalism, Attractiveness and Intimacy. It is meaningful to provide basic data for understanding the characteristics of Instagram users who utilize fashion influencers, for the purpose of market actualization. As a result, Vertical Collectivism and Vertical Individualism were found to be related to Relationship Seeking Propensity; Only Vertical Individualism was found to be related to Information Seeking Propensity. Furthermore, Relationship Seeking Propensity was found to be related to Intimacy, and Information Seeking Propensity was related to Professionalism, Intimacy and Attractiveness

Green with Envy at Your Kid: The Effects of Two Different Types of Envy on Purchase Intention

Envy is an emotion that “arises when a person lacks another’s superior quality, achievement, or possession and either desires it or wishes that the other lacked it”. Envy has been classified into two types: benign envy and malicious envy. Benign envy emphasizes the brighter side of envy, which is related to moving-up motivation, while malicious envy represents the destructive side of envy, which motivates people to pull down. The purpose of this study is to address research gap by exploring how envy affects purchase intention among mom through experimental design. Participants were recruited by research company, total one hundred and twenty eight moms with 5-7 year old kids were randomized in each study. Envy is manipulated into two types depending on the deservingness of the situation. Participants were given a short scenario which described a friend who has more capital for raising her children. In purchasing economic capital related products, benign envy condition(M=2.57, SD=1.36) reported greater desire for purchasing products than malicious envy condition(M=2.35, SD=1.21)(F=5.392, p\u3c.05). In purchasing cultural capital related products, benign envy condition(M=4.00, SD=0.78) reported greater desire for purchasing products than malicious envy condition(M=3.98, SD=1.08)(F=.235,n.s). The findings confirm that difference depending on type of envy, and benign envy play an important role for Koreans in purchase intention. In result, envy has no influence in purchasing cultural capital related products. It reveals that in Korea, fashion is used as a strategy of cultural capital, and sense of advanced taste are likely to be interpreted as part of cultural capital

The road to recovery: impact of COVID-19 on healthcare utilization in South Korea in 2016–2022 using an interrupted time-series analysis

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic substantially disrupted healthcare utilization patterns, globally. South Korea had been praised widely in its efforts to contain the spread of the pandemic, which may have contributed to a significantly smaller reduction in healthcare utilization compared to neighboring countries. However, it remains unknown how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted utilization patterns across population sub-groups, particularly vulnerable patient groups in South Korea. This paper quantifies the changes in healthcare utilization attributable to COVID-19 and the COVID-19 vaccination by sub-groups. Methods: An interrupted time series analysis was conducted to examine the impact of COVID-19 on healthcare utilization in South Korea from January 2016 to December 2022 using aggregated patient-level data from the national health insurance system that accounts for 99% of all healthcare services in South Korea. We applied negative binomial models adjusting for seasonality and serial correlation. Falsification tests were conducted to test the validity of breakpoints. Stratified analyses by type of healthcare services, age, sex, income level, health facility type, and avoidable/non-avoidable hospitalizations was performed, and we assessed differences in utilization trends between population groups across three phases of the pandemic. Findings: In early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic caused a reduction in monthly volume of outpatient utilization by 15.7% [95% CI 13.3%–18.1%, p < 0.001] and inpatient utilization by 11.6% [10.1%–13.0%, p < 0.001]. Most utilization recovered and rebounded to pre-COVID-19 levels as of December 2022 although variations existed. We observed heterogeneity in the magnitude of relative changes in utilization across types of services, varying from a 42.7% [36.8%–48.0%, p < 0.001] decrease for pediatrics, a 23.4% [20.1%–26.5%%, p < 0.001] reduction in utilization of public health centers, and a 24.2% [21.2%–27.0%, p < 0.001] reduction in avoidable hospitalizations compared to the pre-pandemic period. Contrary to global trends, health utilization among the elderly population (65 and older) in South Korea saw only marginal reductions compared to other age groups. Similarly, Medicaid patients and lower income groups experienced a smaller reduction compared to higher income groups. Interpretation: The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on healthcare utilization in South Korea was less pronounced compared to the global average. Utilization of vulnerable populations, including adults over 65 years old and lowest-income groups reduced less than other type of patients. Funding: No funding

Supratentorial Gangliocytoma Mimicking Extra-axial Tumor: A Report of Two Cases

We report two cases of supratentorial gangliocytomas mimicking an extra-axial tumor. MR imaging indicated that the tumors were extra-axial, and meningiomas were thus initially diagnosed. Relative to gray matter, the tumors were hypointense on T1-weighted images and hyperintense on T2-weighted images. On contrast-enhanced T1-weighted images, homogeneous enhancement was observed, while CT scanning revealed calcification in one of the two cases

Biomarkers of thyroid function and autoimmunity for predicting high-risk groups of thyroid cancer: a nested case–control study

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited.Abstract Background A remarkable increase in the number of thyroid cancer cases has been reported in recent years; however, the markers to predict high-risk groups have not been fully established. Methods We conducted a case–control study (257 cases and 257 controls) that was nested in the Cancer Screenee Cohort Study between August 2002 and December 2010; the mean follow-up time for this study was 3.1 ± 2.2 years. The levels of total triiodothyronine (TT3), free thyroxine (FT4), thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH), thyroglobulin (Tg), anti-thyroperoxidase antibody (TPOAb), and anti-thyroglobulin antibody (TgAb) were measured using samples with pre-diagnostic status. Logistic regression models were used to examine the association between thyroid function/autoimmunity and thyroid cancer risk. Results When the markers were categorized by the tertile distributions of the control group, the highest tertile of FT4 (OR = 1.73, 95% CI = 1.11 - 2.69) and the middle tertile of TSH (OR = 1.77, 95% CI = 1.14 - 2.74) were associated with an increased risk of thyroid cancer by multivariate analyses. In addition, an elevated risk for thyroid cancer was found in subjects with TPOAb levels above 30 IU/mL (OR = 8.47, 95% CI = 5.39 - 13.33 for 30–60 IU/mL and OR = 4.48, 95% CI = 2.59 - 7.76 for ≥60 IU/mL). Stratified analyses indicated that some of these associations differed by sex, BMI, smoking status, and the duration of follow-up. Conclusions This study demonstrated that the levels of biomarkers of thyroid function/autoimmunity, particularly the presence of TPOAb, might be used as diagnostic markers for predicting thyroid cancer risk. Our findings suggest that careful monitoring of thyroid biomarkers may be helpful for identifying Korean populations at high-risk for thyroid cancer