A Review of Ethnopsychiatric Studies of Depression

One of the common goals in medical anthropology is to elucidate the significance of culture in determining health and thus clarify the complex biopsychosocial model to provide better, more appropriate care (I). Prominent among environmental influences is the society in which a person develops: and it is his position in this constellation of people, with their shared ethos and world view, which molds experience, cognition, and affect (2). Cultural meanings, norms, and power arrangements shape illness to a great degree by defining the sick role and consequent illness behaviors. Medical anthropology, as a discipline, has among its concerns the cultural content of health and illness behaviors: it includes studies of how social experiences define sickness and shape ideas of disease recognition and therapy (3) . Both physician and patient offer, either unconsciously or consciously, explanatory models of disease and expectations of the health care system which form a continuum ranging from full agreement to mutual disregard (4). These observations spring from a cursory glance at even a single society and accumulate greater power when comparative cultural studies are involved, as is the case in cross-cultural psychiatry

An Integrative Model of IT Continuance: Applying Measures of Intention, Prior IT Use, and Habit Strength Across Conditions of Sporadic and Frequent IT Use

This paper is motivated by the desire to integrate and expand two recent literature streams, one that models effects of prior IT use and habit strength on continued IT use and another that studies how to apply such models to IT that are used in a characteristically sporadic manner. We find joint predictions of continuance intention, prior IT use, and habit strength within our research model are superior to subsets of the model across the range of frequency we studied. However, subsets of the model are able to provide reasonable predictions where all measures are not available

Interdisciplinary Research and Publication Opportunites in Information Systems and Health Care

Healthcare is a large and growing industry that is experiencing major transformation in its information technology base. IS confronted similar transformations in other industries and developed theories and methods that should prove useful in healthcare applications. In turn, IS may benefit from incorporating knowledge from health informatics, a discipline that studies IT within medical and healthcare contexts. Despite the benefits, it is often a struggle for interdisciplinary researchers in IS and healthcare to publish their work, especially in journals directed toward IS audiences. In this paper, we outline strategies and resources to help ease this publication bottleneck. As a part of our discussion, we identify and categorize journal outlets for interdisciplinary research in IS and healthcare

Predicting Patients’ Use of Provider-Delivered E-Health: The Role of Facilitating Conditions

This chapter presents a new rational-objective (R-O) model of e-health use that accounts for effects of facilitating conditions as well as patients’ behavioral intention. An online questionnaire measured patients’ behavioral intention to use a new e-health application as well as proxy measures of facilitating conditions that assess prior use of and structural need for health services. A second questionnaire administered three months later collected patients’ self-reported use of e-health during the intervening period. The new model increased predictions of patients’ e-health use (measured in R2) by more than 300% over predictions based upon behavioral intention alone, and all measured factors contributed significantly to prediction of use during the three-month assessment period

Effects of Prior Use, Intention, and Habit on IT Continuance Across Sporadic Use and Frequent Use Conditions

This article is motivated by the desire to integrate and expand two literature streams, one that models effects of prior information technology (IT) use and habit strength on continued IT use and another that studies how to apply such models to IT that are used in a characteristically sporadic manner. We find that joint predictions of continuance intention, prior IT use, and habit strength within our research model are superior to subsets of the model across the extended range of usage frequency we studied. However, subsets of the model can also provide reasonable predictions where all measures are not available

Predicting Continuing Acceptance of IT in Conditions of Sporadic Use

This paper tests a new predictive model of IT acceptance in conditions where use is characteristically sporadic. The model utilizes cognitive constructs from the well-known technology acceptance model (TAM) [8] in combination with habit and a new construct measuring perceived regularity of use. Initial tests indicate that the model explains several important effects of regularity and predicts substantially more of the variance in continuing acceptance than alternative models

The Distinct Roles of Prior IT Use and Habit Strength in Predicting Continued Sporadic Use of IT

This article studies prediction of continued IT use in conditions where individuals use the technology sporadically. Our study augments the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) model [Venkatesh et al., 2003] with measures of prior IT use frequency and habit strength. We find these two factors provide distinct predictions which explain most of the effects that occur within the model under sporadic use conditions

Civic Engagement Assessment: Linking Activities to Attitudes

In the March-April 2005 issue of Assessment Update, Trudy Banta issued a call to readers to provide information on individual campuses’ efforts to assess civic engagement. This call has prompted us to share the multifaceted approach that Tuffs University has taken to describe and assess this area of student endeavor. Specifically, we will describe an in-depth study designed to investigate undergraduates’ participation in and attitudes toward civic engagement

Civic Engagement: a Study of Changes in College

Using a mixed method longitudinal cohort design, the Tufts University study is examining student involvement in and attitudes towards civic engagement during the undergraduate years and beyond. It does this by using baseline data from students’ levels of community service in high school and then analyzes a variety of curricular and co-curricular experiences in college. This article focuses solely on the research design and some preliminary findings of students’ civic attitudes during their first two years of college