The IS Core XII: Authority, Dogma, and Positive Science in Information Systems Research

Three related papers recently argued for the adoption of specific \u27organizing principles\u27 for academic research in Information Systems. These principles, centered on nomological networks of IT artifacts, are offered as prescriptions which, it is argued, resolve an \u27identity crisis\u27 in IS research. The present paper concludes that, rather than resolving an identity crisis, the prescriptions are likely to confound any search for identity by biasing future IS research into directions that do not move the field forward. We show how a positive science of Information Systems can retain the benefits sought without the recommended prescriptions

Special issue on digital marketing and eCommerce

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Development and testing of an instrument to measure contextual factors influencing self-care decisions among adults with chronic illness

BACKGROUND: Decisions about how to manage bothersome symptoms of chronic illness are complex and influenced by factors related to the patient, their illness, and their environment. Naturalistic decision-making describes decision-making when conditions are dynamically evolving, and the decision maker may be uncertain because the situation is ambiguous and missing information. Contextual factors, including time stress, the perception of high stakes, and input from others may facilitate or complicate decisions about the self-care of symptoms. There is no valid instrument to measure these contextual factors. The purpose of this study was to develop and test a self-report instrument measuring the contextual factors that influence self-care decisions about symptoms. METHODS: Items were drafted from the literature and refined with patient input. Content validity of the instrument was evaluated using a Delphi survey of expert clinicians and researchers, and cognitive interviews with adults with chronic illness. Psychometric testing included exploratory factor analysis to test dimensionality, item response theory-based approaches for item recalibration, confirmatory factor analysis to generate factor determinacy scores, and evaluation of construct validity. RESULTS: Ten contextual factors influencing decision-making were identified and multiple items per factor were generated. Items were refined based on cognitive interviews with five adults with chronic illness. After a two round Delphi survey of expert clinicians (n = 12) all items had a content validity index of \u3e 0.78. Five additional adults with chronic illness endorsed the relevance, comprehensiveness, and comprehensibility of the inventory during cognitive interviews. Initial psychometric testing (n = 431) revealed a 6-factor multidimensional structure that was further refined for precision, and high multidimensional reliability (0.864). In construct validity testing, there were modest associations with some scales of the Melbourne Decision Making Questionnaire and the Self-Care of Chronic Illness Inventory. CONCLUSION: The Self-Care Decisions Inventory is a 27-item self-report instrument that measures the extent to which contextual factors influence decisions about symptoms of chronic illness. The six scales (external, urgency, uncertainty, cognitive/affective, waiting/cue competition, and concealment) reflect naturalistic decision making, have excellent content validity, and demonstrate high multidimensional reliability. Additional testing of the instrument is needed to evaluate clinical utility

Detecting deception and suspicion in dyadic game interactions

In this paper we focus on detection of deception and suspicion from electrodermal activity (EDA) measured on left and right wrists during a dyadic game interaction. We aim to answer three research questions: (i) Is it possible to reliably distinguish deception from truth based on EDA measurements during a dyadic game interaction? (ii) Is it possible to reliably distinguish the state of suspicion from trust based on EDA measurements during a card game? (iii) What is the relative importance of EDA measured on left and right wrists? To answer our research questions we conducted a study in which 20 participants were playing the game Cheat in pairs with one EDA sensor placed on each of their wrists. Our experimental results show that EDA measures from left and right wrists provide more information for suspicion detection than for deception detection and that the person-dependent detection is more reliable than the person-independent detection. In particular, classifying the EDA signal with Support Vector Machine (SVM) yields accuracies of 52% and 57% for person-independent prediction of deception and suspicion respectively, and 63% and 76% for person-dependent prediction of deception and suspicion respectively. Also, we found that: (i) the optimal interval of informative EDA signal for deception detection is about 1 s while it is around 3.5 s for suspicion detection; (ii) the EDA signal relevant for deception/ suspicion detection can be captured after around 3.0 seconds after a stimulus occurrence regardless of the stimulus type (deception/ truthfulness/suspicion/trust); and that (iii) features extracted from EDA from both wrists are important for classification of both deception and suspicion. To the best of our knowledge, this is the firstwork that uses EDA data to automatically detect both deception and suspicion in a dyadic game interaction setting.N

Self-care management of bothersome symptoms as recommended by clinicians for patients with a chronic condition: A Delphi study

BACKGROUND: Chronically medically ill patients often need clinical assistance with symptom management, as well as self-care interventions that can help to reduce the impact of bothersome symptoms. Experienced clinicians can help to guide the development of more effective self-care interventions. OBJECTIVE: To create a consensus-based list of common bothersome symptoms of chronic conditions and of self-care management behaviors recommended to patients by clinicians to reduce the impact of these symptoms. METHODS: A two-round Delphi study was performed among an international panel of 47 clinicians using online surveys to identify common and bothersome symptoms and related self-care management behaviors recommended to patients with heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, type 2 diabetes, or arthritis. RESULTS: A total of 30 common bothersome symptoms and 158 self-care management behaviors across the five conditions were listed. Each chronic condition has its own bothersome symptoms and self-care management behaviors. Consensus was reached on the vast majority of recommended behaviors. CONCLUSIONS: The list of common bothersome symptoms and self-care management behaviors reflect consensus across four countries on many points but also disagreement on others, and a few recommendations are inconsistent with current guidelines. Efforts to encourage clinicians to recommend effective self-care management behaviors may reduce symptom impact in chronically ill patient populations