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It is generally accepted that effective leadership is an essential element of positive social change in any institution. It also seems evident that no society can continue to grow and develop without it and that no institution can thrive where it is unavailable. However, these statements raise a number of questions such as: • Whose perceptions of effective leadership is applicable here – the perceptions of those in leadership positions themselves, or the perceptions of others? • What is likely to happen in the case of conflicting perceptions of leadership effectiveness? This study explores this issue by focusing on the relationship between self-ratings and otherratings of managerial leadership within a particular context, namely a South African higher education institution that is in the throes of a radical merging process and on the prevalence of self-perception accuracy amongst the managers of that institution.

a b s t r a c t Purpose of the research: The purpose of the study was to explore what women living in Ga-Rankuwa in Tshwane, South Africa know and understand about cancer as well as their health seeking behaviour should they suspect that they might have cancer. Methods and Sample: An exploratory, contextual, quantitative door-to-door survey was conducted. The sampling method was convenient (n ¼ 565). Data were gathered by means of self-reports using structured interviews. Key Results: The study provided evidence that, despite all the interventions to teach the community about cancer, women had a low level of knowledge and understanding of cancer. Cancer was seen as something that primarily happens to the breast. There was no link between the perception of cancer and the seriousness of the warning signs. It is doubtful if the woman, except for the possibility of a lump in the breast, would recognize any sign of cancer and consider it to be serious. Women still needed to ask permission to seek health-care and in some instances, the health care provider was chosen for them. Not all women were prepared to spend money of their own health and some would even feel guilty should they do so. Conclusions: Women’s knowledge and understanding of cancer and health seeking behaviour related to cancer do not facilitate early detecting and therefore the possibility to be cured. The fundamental strategy of primary and secondary prevention of cancer, teaching the community, remains a challenge for both nursing practice and nursing research.

Cardiovascular disease causes 30% of deaths globally. By comparison, infectious disease accounts for 10% of global mortality. As these statistics indicate, cardiovascular disease is the most common cause of death in the world. In South Africa, through urbanisation and changes in lifestyle and dietary habits, the prevalence of risk factors and, by extension, the resulting morbidity and mortality from cardiovascular disease in black people, are expected to increase. Owing to the natural progression of the disease, the first ‘westernised illness’ is hypertension, which is very prevalent among the black population. Knowledge and awareness of risk factors are essential components of behaviour change; however, little is known about the knowledge and awareness of cardiovascular disease among the working-age people in the Ga-Rankuwa community. The purpose of the study was therefore to determine the knowledge and awareness of the identified risk factors among the working-age people (18-40 years old) in the Ga-Rankuwa community. The design was a quantitative survey. The study sample (n=604) was selected from zones 1, 2, 4 and 16 of Ga-Rankuwa to determine the prevalence of risk factors for cardiovascular disease. Only people with an identified risk factor were included in the knowledge and awareness survey (n=551). Data was gathered from July to October 2005. The data gathering was self-reported with a structured questionnaire. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics and statistical analysis. The results obtained from the knowledge and awareness survey indicate that knowledge and awareness of the risk factors for cardiovascular disease are low in the Ga-Rankuwa community.

In this thesis, I present, illustrate and empirically validate a novel approach to modelling and explaining design process. The main outcome of this work is the formal definition of the problem framing, and the formulation of a recursive model of framing in design. The model (code-named RFD), represents a formalisation of a grey area in the science of design, and sees the design process as a recursive interaction of problem framing and problem solving. The proposed approach is based upon a phenomenon introduced in cognitive science and known as (reflective) solution talkback. Previously, there were no formalisations of the knowledge interactions occurring within this complex reasoning operation. The recursive model is thus an attempt to express the existing knowledge in a formal and structured manner. In spite of rather abstract, knowledge level on which the model is defined, it is a firm step in the clarification of design process. The RFD model is applied to the knowledge-level description of the conducted experimental study that is annotated and analysed in the defined terminology. Eventually, several schemas implied by the model are identified, exemplified, and elaborated to reflect the empirical results. The model features the mutual interaction of predicates ‘specifies’ and ‘satisfies’. The first asserts that a certain set of explicit statements is sufficient for expressing relevant desired states the design is aiming to achieve. The validity of predicate ‘specifies’ might not be provable directly in any problem solving theory. A particular specification can be upheld or rejected only by drawing upon the validity of a complementary predicate ‘satisfies’ and the (un-)acceptability of the considered candidate solution (e.g. technological artefact, product). It is the role of the predicate ‘satisfies’ to find and derive such a candidate solution. The predicates ‘specifies’ and ‘satisfies’ are contextually bound and can be evaluated only within a particular conceptual frame. Thus, a solution to the design problem is sound and admissible with respect to an explicit commitment to a particular specification and design frame. The role of the predicate ‘acceptable’ is to compare the admissible solutions and frames against the ‘real’ design problem. As if it answered the question: “Is this solution really what I wanted/intended?” Furthermore, I propose a set of principled schemas on the conceptual (knowledge) level with an aim to make the interactive patterns of the design process explicit. These conceptual schemas are elicited from the rigorous experiments that utilised the structured and principled approach to recording the designer’s conceptual reasoning steps and decisions. They include • the refinement of an explicit problem specification within a conceptual frame; • the refinement of an explicit problem specification using a re-framed reference; and • the conceptual re-framing (i.e. the identification and articulation of new conceptual terms) Since the conceptual schemas reflect the sequence of the ‘typical’ decisions the designer may make during the design process, there is no single, symbol-level method for the implementation of these conceptual patterns. Thus, when one decides to follow the abstract patterns and schemas, this abstract model alone can foster a principled design on the knowledge level. It must be acknowledged that for the purpose of computer-based support, these abstract schemas need to be turned into operational models and consequently suitable methods. However, such operational perspective was beyond the time and resource constraints placed on this research.

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published_or_final_version / Computer Science and Information Systems / Master / Master of Philosophy

This paper discusses and analyzes the conceptual basis for classification work in the 21st century; it provides an account of classification that lays out the boundaries within which classification operate. The methodological and practical effects of the boundaries are discussed. The main point of the paper is to demonstrate that classifications are bound by particular contexts and conceptual frameworks.

Artificial Intelligence Lab, Department of MIS, University of Arizona / There has been renewed research interest in using the statistical approach to extraction of key phrases from Chinese documents because existing approaches do not allow online frequency updates after phrases have been extracted. This consequently results in inaccurate, partial extraction. In this paper, we present an updateable PAT-tree approach. In our experiment, we compared our approach with that of Lee-Feng Chien with that showed an improvement in recall from 0.19 to 0.43 and in precision from 0.52 to 0.70. This paper also reviews the requirements for a data structure that facilitates implementation of any statistical approaches to key-phrase extraction, including PATtree, PAT-array and suffix array with semi-infinite strings.

This presentation will address the difficult task of representing complex concepts in a text in a way that reflects their contextual meaning. The preservation of context enables the disambiguation of a termiÌ s possible multiple senses, and also shows how the term is being used. In developing these ideas we revisit an indexing system called PRECIS, which was developed by Derek Austin in the early 1970s for subject indexing for the British National Bibliography, and subsequently developed by him with the assistance of Mary Dykstra into a adaptable method of linking both the semantics and syntax of indexing terms.