The considerable growth of the global information technology (IT) sector demands a supply of suitable qualified workers. While universities are an important source of IT graduates, the number needs to be increased, especially those of women and underrepresented minorities. This study investigates the factors that influence the decision of female South African university students to study Information Technology. An explanatory sequential mixed methods approach is followed. It consists of three phases of data collection: a quantitative phase consisting of two surveys (n=1518 and n=3289), a qualitative phase consisting of interviews (n=21) and another quantitative phase consisting of an open-ended questionnaire (n=253). Data collection across all phases is supported by a framework based on the Individual Differences Theory of Gender and IT. We found that female students from the African, Coloured and Asian population groups were twice as likely to choose an IT-related degree than female students from the White population group. This was possible due to the unique interaction of various relevant constructs from the framework. Students of lower socio-economic status availed themselves of government-sponsored bursaries and pursued IT studies fuelled by the opportunities in the IT industry. Tertiary institutions that offered introductory IT courses presented this opportunity to students who have no IT background. Strong female role-models destroyed any prejudices toward women in the IT workplace. IT majors were carefully chosen to exclude the overtly technical degrees such as Computer Science and Computer Engineering and favoured IT qualifications such as Informatics and Publishing. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s social theory as a lens to interpret the results, this study concludes that Bourdieu’s argument regarding the perpetuation of social status via education does not hold in the case of information technology studies. In the IT field, students are assessed on merit and not on cultural habitus. A qualification in IT is attainable by any interested and suitably talented individual, irrespective of race, gender or socio-economic status. Implications for practice are that IT studies need to be promoted as attainable and promising excellent career prospects. / Thesis (PhD (Information Technology))--University of Pretoria, 2020. / Informatics / PhD (Information Technology) / Unrestricted

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Medication nonadherence and lack of transition readiness are global challenges for individuals living with epilepsy and their families. Medication adherence measures the level of compliance with healthcare providers' treatment recommendations. Transition readiness is the gradual steps patients take to develop independence and self-management as they transfer from pediatric to adult healthcare models. Factors impacting medication adherence and transition readiness skills include developmental stage/age; forgetfulness; family/caregivers; socioeconomic status; knowledge/attitude about the disease; side effects; number of medications; and subjective and objective quantifications of adherence. One promising intervention for patients and families is mobile technology used for reaching, teaching, and communicating. However, no study has tested how mobile applications (m-apps) effect both medication adherence and transition readiness. This four-week study's primary aim was to test Medilepsy's (an m-app) effect on medication adherence in adolescents and young adults with epilepsy (AYA), ages 16-24, with and without caregiver support. Secondary aims were to examine Medilepsy's effect on transition readiness skills and evaluate usability, ease of use, and satisfaction. A one-group, quasi-experimental pre-post study design was used. A repeated measures test analyzed changes in medication adherence at five times. A Wilcoxon test analyzed mean pre-post transition readiness scores. There was no significant improvement in medication adherence mean scores. Significant improvement was demonstrated in self-reported pre-post transition readiness mean scores, with greatest improvement in two domains: Appointment Keeping by 13.75% and Managing Medications by 11.25%. The highest usability mean scores were 6.09 of 7 in ease of use, interface, and satisfaction. Participants scored Medilepsy 82.3% of 100%. This study contributes to chronic disease self-management science illustrating how Medilepsy reaches and engages AYA and caregivers. Future studies will expand the Medilepsy platform and include different research designs, longer study durations, younger and more diverse participants.

Research in the field of Automated Planning is largely focused on the problem of constructing plans or sequences of actions for going from a specific initial state to a goal state. The complexity of this task makes it desirable to find “generalized” plans which can solve multiple problem instances from a class of similar problems. Most approaches for constructing such plans work under two common constraints: (a) problem instances typically do not vary in terms of the number of objects, unless theorem proving is used as a mechanism for applying actions, and, (b) generalized plan representations avoid incorporating loops of actions because of the absence of methods for efficiently evaluating their effects and their utility. Approaches proposed recently address some aspects of these limitations, but these issues are representative of deeper problems in knowledge representation and model checking, and are crucial to the problem of generalized planning. Moreover, the generalized planning problem itself has never been defined in a manner which could unify the wide range of representations and approaches developed for it. This thesis is a study of the fundamental problems behind these issues. We begin with a comprehensive formulation of the generalized planning problem and an identification of the most significant challenges involved in solving it. We use an abstract representation from recent work in model checking to efficiently represent situations with unknown quantities of objects and compute the possible effects of actions on such situations. We study the problem of evaluating loops of actions for termination and utility by grounding it in a powerful model of computation called abacus programs. Although evaluating loops of actions in this manner is undecidable in general, we obtain a suite of algorithms for doing so in a restricted class of abacus programs, and consequently, in the class of plans which can be translated to such abacus programs. In the final sections of this thesis, these components are utilized for developing methods for solving the generalized planning problem by generalizing sample plans and merging them together; by using classical planners to automate this process and thereby solve a given problem from scratch; and also by conducting a direct search in the space of abstract states.

Digital platforms have significantly transformed our daily lives by offering convenience in various daily affairs. Even though the prior literature on the societal impacts of digital platforms has been steadily growing, emerging platforms have received limited attention in the information systems (IS) literature. Moreover, as some digital platforms have been related to unexpected societal issues, digital platforms and policymakers have shown increasing interest in the implications of regulating digital platforms. This dissertation aims to fill these gaps by studying emerging digital platforms with a focus on their significant societal impacts and regulatory implications. The first essay empirically examines how online grocery delivery platforms impact obesity rates and nutritional inequalities between the wealthy and the poor in the U.S. The second essay investigates how imposing regulation on data harvesting impacts social media platforms and users by developing a game-theoretic model. The third essay empirically investigates the impact of the Internet Dating Safety Act on intramarriage (i.e., marriage between two individuals with the same racial background) and intermarriage (i.e., marriage between two individuals with different racial backgrounds). Overall, this dissertation expands the body of knowledge on the societal impacts of digital platforms and provides important and timely implications for digital platforms and policymakers. / Business Administration/Management Information Systems

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Thesis (M.B.A.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2999-01-01

Thesis (M.B.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references.