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  • About
  • The Global ETD Search service is a free service for researchers to find electronic theses and dissertations. This service is provided by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.
    Our metadata is collected from universities around the world. If you manage a university/consortium/country archive and want to be added, details can be found on the NDLTD website.
1

The impact of visual aesthetics on the utility, affordance, and readability of network graphs

Dudas, Patrick M. 01 April 2016 (has links)
<p> The readability of networks how different visual design elements affect the understanding of network data has been central in network visualization research. However, existing studies have mainly focused on readability induced by topological mapping (based on different layouts) and overlooked the effect of visual aesthetics. Here is proposed a novel experimental framework to study how different network aesthetic choices affect users' abilities of understanding the network structures. The visual aesthetics are grouped in two forms: 1) visual encoding (where the aesthetic mapping depends on the underlying network data) and 2) visual styling (where the aesthetics are applied independent of underlying data). Users are given a simple task identifying most connected nodes in a network in a hybrid experimental setting where the visual aesthetic choices are tested in a within-subject manner while the network topologies are tested in a between-subject manner based on a randomized blocking design. This novel experimental design ensures an efficient decoupling of the influence of network topology on readability tests. The utility of different visual aesthetics is measured comprehensively based on task performance (accuracy and time), eye-tracking data, and user feedback (perceived affordance). The results show differential readability effects among choices of visual aesthetics. Particularly, node based visual encoding significantly enhances network readability, specifically glyphs based on their ability to be utilized as a means to allow participants to create more robust strategies in their utilization. The study contributes to both the understanding of the role of visual aesthetics in network visualization design and the experimental design for testing the network readability.</p>
2

Cooperative design, cooperative science| Investigating collaborative research through design with floracaching

Bowser, Anne Elizabeth 29 June 2016 (has links)
<p> This dissertation presents a case study of collaborative research through design with Floracaching, a gamified mobile application for citizen science biodiversity data collection. One contribution of this study is the articulation of collaborative research through design (CRtD), an approach that blends cooperative design approaches with the research through design methodology (RtD). Collaborative research through design is thus defined as an iterative process of cooperative design, where the collaborative vision of an ideal state is embedded in a design. Applying collaborative research through design with Floracaching illustrates how a number of cooperative techniques&mdash;especially contextual inquiry, prototyping, and focus groups&mdash;may be applied in a research through design setting. Four suggestions for collaborative research through design (recruit from a range of relevant backgrounds; take flexibility as a goal; enable independence and agency; and, choose techniques that support agreement or consensus) are offered to help others who wish to experiment with this new approach. Applying collaborative research through design to Floracaching yielded a new prototype of the application, accompanied by design annotations in the form of framing constructs for designing to support mobile, place-based citizen science activities. The prototype and framing constructs, which may inform other designers of similar citizen science technologies, are a second contribution of this research.</p>
3

Behavioural complexity theory of media selection: A proposed theory for global virtual teams

Shachaf, Pnina, Hara, Noriko January 2007 (has links)
This study proposes a behavioural complexity theory for media selection in global virtual teams. This theory captures multiple contingencies into one holistic approach to media selection. Unlike existing linear and mechanistic theories of media selection, this heuristic theory moves away from the universal models that were previously proposed. The behavioural complexity theory assumes ambiguity and complexity of the media selection process in a nonlinear, organic, and holistic way. Behavioural complexity theory of media selection emphasizes the role of media repertoire, the ability of individuals to differentiate situations according to multiple contingencies, and their flexibility to effectively use multiple media in any particular situation. This theory is examined in a context of exploratory case study of global virtual teamsâ media selection in one of the leading fortune 500 corporations.
4

What Factors Influence the Use of the Public Library for Health Information?

Unknown Date (has links)
The purpose of this study is to understand public library users' health information seeking behaviors and what factors may influence the intention of an individual to use the public library as their health information resource. This study used the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) as the theoretical framework, which provided essential motivation and behavior factors, including Attitude toward seeking health information at the public library (ATT), Subjective Norm (SN), and Perceived Behavior Control (PBC). This study expanded on TPB to add the perceptions of the quality of health information and an individual's health literacy level. These factors may indicate an individual's intention to use the public library as a primary health information source. In this study, five hypotheses were measured and analyzed. Attitude (H1), Subjective Norm (H2), Perceived Behavior Control (H3), Perception of health information quality (H4), and Health literacy (H5) will independently influence the behavior intention to use the public library for health information. After IRB approval, a pilot study was conducted to determine the reliability and validity of the survey questions. The survey consisted of three parts: (1) questions about public library users' behavior; (2) measurement of health information seeking behavior, questions related to the TPB variables and questions about the perception of the quality of health information, and health literacy; and (3) demographic information. A purposive sampling method was used to select participants at public libraries. Based upon a population and racial balance, residents of five counties in Florida were selected to participate in a print survey that was administered at public libraries. A total of 247 public library users participated in this study. There were 83 males (34%) and 164 females (66%). Participants' ages ranged from 18 to 82 years old with an average age of 42. The majority of participants were non-Hispanic White (n=117, 44%) and non-Hispanic Black (n=94, 35%). That reflects the racial composition of the five counties. Hispanic (n=13, 5%) and Asian (n=15, 6%) were followed. Structural Equation Modeling with Mplus (version 5) was used to analyze the five hypotheses. The construct and validation of the SEM model showed the adequacy of the model. Goodness-Fix-Index, such as Comparative Fit Index (CFI), and Normed Fit Index (NFI) showed higher than .90. These GFI close to 1 indicated a good fit to the data. Badness-Fit-Index (BFI), such as Root Mean Square Error Approximation (RMSEA =.07), and Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR= .04) indicate this instrument is a good fit. Overall two hypotheses were accepted. Subjective Norm (R2 = .39, p<.01) (H2) and Perceived Behavior Control (R2 = .43, p<.01 (H3) were supported. The Subjective Norm and Perceived Behavior Control influence the intention to use public library as individual's health information sources. This means an individual's family, friend, or co-worker may influence their intention and wiliness to use public library for their health information needs. Public library users also recognize that searching for health information is easy to do and they are confident about using health-related information services at the public library. Therefore, the public library may to promote their health information sources to the community more actively to introduce such resources. This outreach may increase the social aspect of health information at the public library. If more people believe the public library is a good place to seek health information, public library usage will grow. / A Dissertation submitted to the School of Information in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester 2015. / November 19, 2015. / Health information, Health information seeking behavior, Public library, SEM, Theory of planned behavior / Includes bibliographical references. / Kathleen Burnett, Professor Directing Dissertation; Robert Glueckauf, University Representative; Mia Liza A. Lustria, Committee Member; Sanghee Oh, Committee Member.
5

VIDEO TELECONFERENCING: AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF THE EFFECT OF USING A VIDEO TELECONFERENCE MEETING CONDITION ON GROUP PROBLEM-SOLVING ABILITY

Unknown Date (has links)
Investigation into group problem-solving performance in video versus face-to-face meeting conditions indicated that no research had been conducted to determine if there is a significant difference in the ability of a group to solve a complex problem when employing these two media. Past research was also inconclusive as to whether subjects' initial attitudes toward these two media are significantly different from their attitudes toward these two media after experiencing them. / The purpose of this study was to review and synthesize past research on video teleconferencing; to measure quantitatively the effectiveness of participants using two-way video teleconferencing versus participants in face-to-face meetings involving a complex group problem-solving task; and to measure the attitudes of first-time users toward video teleconferencing and face-to-face meetings before and after their experiences with both media. / The primary hypotheses--stated in the null--were: (1) No significant difference will exist in the quality of a solution arrived at by participants using the two media (face-to-face and video) when a complex problem-solving task is used. (2) No significant difference between the attitudes of subjects toward using video teleconferencing and face-to-face meetings to solve a complex task will exist before and after contact with these two media. / Two complex group problem-solving tasks were used to measure group problem-solving ability in both media. An attitude questionnaire, developed by the researcher, was used to examine subjects' attitudes prior to and after experiencing both media. The subjects were 160 undergraduate communication and business students attending the Florida State University. / A pilot study was conducted to test the experimental procedures and instruments. The Cronbach Alpha Reliability Test and Kruskal-Wallis One-Way Anova were used for the pilot's data analysis. A Wilcoxon Matched Pairs Test was used to test for significance in the main study. / Analysis of the data showed that the performance in video was significantly better than in face-to-face and that subjects' attitudes did not significantly change from initial attitudes in favor of face-to-face over video. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 44-07, Section: A, page: 1959. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1983.
6

END USER SEARCHERS OF ONLINE BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATABASES IN AN INDUSTRIAL SETTING: TRAINING, USE AND PERCEIVED BENEFITS

Unknown Date (has links)
A study of potential end users of online bibliographic searches was conducted in three parts at a product development location of a consumer products company. Part one was a survey of the population. Part two included collection and analysis of search data from a sample trained to conduct online bibliographic searches in either a one-day course or a two-hour seminar. Part three consisted of interviews with the sample at the close of the data collection phase. The survey data showed that interest in learning to search was associated with highest degree earned and type of previous exposure to online searching principles. The search data could not be analyzed for statistical significance of differences between the two types of training due to uneven search activity by subjects. Approximately half of the subjects trained did not conduct searches during the nine-month study, and of the searches obtained, more than half were conducted by only two subjects. Interview data revealed that availability of intermediaries and alternative resources, the perception that needed materials would not be available online, and difficulties in using computers and telecommunications software contributed to information users' decision not to conduct online bibliographic searches. Searchers considered convenience, time saved, and convincing others to support a decision as positive attributes of online searches. Concerns about frustration in use and missed information were viewed as negative attributes. Nonsearchers considered online searches conducted for them to have the positive attribute of convenience, and the negative attributes of time used and cost. Searchers and nonsearchers considered non-online sources to have positive attributes of convenience, time saved, relevance, and expertise, and negative attributes of information overload, time used, concerns about correctness and / frustration in use. This research may be used in management decision-making regarding feasible approaches to training end users to conduct their own searches, or to communicate with intermediary searchers. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 48-02, Section: A, page: 0238. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1987.
7

QUALITY, COLLABORATION AND CITATIONS IN CANCER RESEARCH: A BIBLIOMETRIC STUDY

Unknown Date (has links)
The patterns of, and interrelationships among quality, collaboration, citations, and self-citations of cancer research were investigated using samples of 1974 papers representing three quality levels. The three samples were: a Random Sample of 315 research papers; a Second-Order Quality Sample consisting of 276 papers listed as additional references in the Yearbook of Cancer; and a First-Order Quality Sample of 279 papers that were fully abstracted in the Yearbook. Selections for the Yearbook of Cancer are based on quality and are currently made by 174 distinguished cancer researchers. / The term Collaborative Index was coined to describe the average number of authors per paper for a given set of papers and was used as a quantitative measure of collaboration. Collaborative or Authorship Level describes, for a given paper, the number of authors. Diachronous citations for each paper were obtained for the first five years following publication from the 1974 through 1978 volumes of the Science Citation Index. / The Collaborative Index for cancer was estimated to be 2.98--the highest reported for any specialty. Moreover, cancer research was found to be highly cited. The United States, Britain, Australia, France, Sweden, Canada, Japan, Denmark, Italy and West Germany account for 90 percent of all quality papers and 86 percent of the Random Sample papers. / Many hypotheses were tested using chi-square, correlation, F and t tests as appropriate. The major findings follow. / Bibliometric studies of any subject must be based on a representative bibliography of that subject and not on a selection of journals, no matter the status of the journals. / As quality increases, the extent of literature scatter among journals, and among countries decreases. / The quantity and quality of cancer research productivity of a given country are highly correlated. Countries which produce the most, also produce the best. / The greater the Collaborative Index of a set of papers, the higher is its proportion of quality papers. / A variety of data analyzed with a variety of statistical tests showed that the citations received by a set of cancer research papers increase with the quality of the set. Moreover, quality and rates of annual and continuous uncitedness were found to be negatively associated. / The relationship between citations and collaborative levels depends on the quality of the papers considered. For high quality papers, both gross citations and net citations (self-citations excluded) increase significantly as number of co-authors increases but the increase is not significant for other papers. / Cancer research conducted in the U.S. is not more collaborative than cancer research done elsewhere. / The run-of-the-mill paper based on work done in the U.S. is more frequently cited than similar papers based on work done elsewhere. However, if only high quality papers are considered, the citation rates are about the same whether or not the work was done in the U.S. / Cancer publications in English are more frequently cited than those in other languages but the latter have higher self-citation rates. / The proportion of self-citations to total citations declines with quality of papers. / Self-citation rates and mean self-citations per paper decline with age of papers. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 41-07, Section: A, page: 2809. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1980. / The higher the total citations, the lower the rate of self-citations. / The relationship between self-citation rates and collaborative levels, and between the latter and mean self-citations depend on the quality of the papers considered. / Suggested indexing terms for the dissertation are Sociology of Science; Science of Science; Medical Informatics; Bibliometrics; Cancer Research; Quality; Collaboration; Collaborative Index; Citation Analysis; Self-Citations; and Uncitedness.
8

Analysis of Search on Clinical Narrative within the EHR

Natarajan, Karthik January 2012 (has links)
Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are used increasingly in the hospital and outpatient set- tings, and patients are amassing digitized clinical information. On one hand, aggregating all the patient's clinical information can greatly assist health care workers in making sound decisions. On the other hand, it can result in information overload, making it difficult to browse for information within the health record. Considering the time constraints clinicians face, one way to reduce information overload is through a search utility. However, traditional, free-text search engines within the EHR can potentially miss documents that do not contain the query but that are relevant to the clinical user's search. This dissertation aims at addressing this gap by analyzing within-patient search of the EHR and examining various semantic search approaches on clinical narrative. Our work consists of three studies where clinical users' search needs are examined, traditional string-matching is analyzed, and semantic search approaches on clinical narrative are evaluated. The first study applied a mixed method approach in order to provide a better understanding of clinical users' search needs within the EHR. It is comprised of a retrospective log analysis of search log files and a survey that was administered to clinical professionals within our institution. The log analysis attempts to categorize how users of a search system query for information, and the survey tries to understand users' search preferences. This study showed that clinical users were very interested in search functionality within the EHR and that various types of users utilize a search utility differently. Overall, most users searched for specific laboratory tests and diseases within the health record. The last two studies rely on a gold standard, which was developed specifically for this dissertation. The gold standard contained a document collection, a set of queries, and for each document/query pair, a relevance judgment. This gold standard was used to evaluate and compare different search models on clinical narrative. The second study conducted was an error analysis of the traditional, vector-space model search approach. The study examined the false positives and false negatives of this approach and categorized the errors in order to identify gaps that semantic approaches may fill. The last study was a systematic evaluation of five different semantic search approaches. These search methods consisted of distributional semantic approaches and an ontology-based approach. The study identified that a mixed topic modeling and vector-space model approach was the best performing search algorithm on our gold standard. All of these studies lay the foundation for us to gain a deeper understanding of information retrieval methods within the electronic health record. Ultimately, this will allow health care professionals to easily access pertinent patient information, which could result in better health care delivery.
9

Peer Production of Knowledge in Online Social Q&A Communities at Startup Stage

Unknown Date (has links)
As one of the most significant and visible examples of collective intelligence, online peer production communities, such as Wikipedia and Stack Overflow, have become critical to the Web’s knowledge infrastructure. The popularity of these communities has led to a growing body of literature regarding issues of how to encourage commitments and contributions, regulate members’ behavior, or control the quality of community outputs. However, in reality many peer production communities didn’t survive until that stage they need to deal with the above challenges—they never really get off the ground. To build successful online peer production communities, it is essential to have a good understanding of how online peer production communities are self-developed to survive the initial growing pains at startup stage, and how new communities failed, especially comparing to those successful ones. This study employed a mixed methods case study design with content analysis, social network analysis, and semi-structured interviews to examine differences between one successful and one unsuccessful online social Q&A community in the startup stage on Stack Exchange. In particular, the study examined and contrasted the two communities on how they defined their communities’ objectives and scopes; how they recruited, selected, and retained their community members; how they motivated members’ contribution, decided the community structures, and maintained the quality of community outputs. The findings indicated that compared to the failed community Q&A community, the successful Q&A community devoted more efforts to activities of quality assurance, user management, tool development, promotion, and communication between members. It also set clear rules regarding community scope management and user moderation, as well as documented instructions to implement those rules. Besides content creators and moderators, the successful Q&A community had unique user groups who were responsible for quality control, meta-content, and other community supporting work. The successful community also engaged in developing tools for question answering, content editing, searching and browsing, computation, graphic design, program, communication, moderation, and user education. The user network of the successful community was also connected and expanded largely by high-profile users such as moderators and high-reputation content contributors. Implications of this study are twofold. First, it could advance our theoretical understanding of the underlying mechanisms of successful peer production systems (especially theoretical claims of early stage community ecology and developing strategies), for example in mixed scope setting, user selection and recruitment, motivating contributions, etc. This study may also provide practical guidelines to designers of existing peer production communities and those who want to start a new one regarding policy, reputation, incentive system design as well as how socio-technical features could facilitate useful community building activities such as quality assurance, meta-content work, copy-editing, communication, user education, moderation, etc. / A Dissertation submitted to the School of Information in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester 2019. / April 8, 2019. / community survival, computer supported cooperative work, peer production, social computing, social Q&A, socio-technical systems / Includes bibliographical references. / Besiki Stvilia, Professor Directing Dissertation; Xinlin Tang, University Representative; Michelle Kazmer, Committee Member; Zhe He, Committee Member.
10

THE IMPORTANCE OF AUDIOVISUAL INSTRUCTION AS PERCEIVED BY THE DEANS AND PROFESSORS OF ALA ACCREDITED LIBRARY SCHOOLS

Unknown Date (has links)
The purpose of this study was to determine how audiovisual (AV) instruction is perceived in American Library Schools accredited by the American Library Association (ALA). This study compared the perceptions of deans and professors concerning AV instruction in their schools. Deans were selected as part of the population because of their decision-making, administrative positions in the schools. The professors, who are knowledgeable in the AV area, provided information concerning actual AV instruction. The total population was 63 deans and 120 professors. Data were collected using mailed questionnaires. The return rate was 81 percent for deans and 80 percent for professors. / This study was designed to find (1) The degree to which deans of library schools agree with their audiovisual teaching faculty on the importance of audiovisual instruction in their schools; and (2) The current issues, programs, problems, and trends of audiovisual instruction and their supporting facets. / This study found that deans' and professors' perceptions concerning audiovisual instruction differ significantly in six of the ten statements furnished. / Audiovisual instruction seems to have a number of issues; some schools have closed their audiovisual programs while others are developing new ones. There is still a lack of professional and non-professional support. There is a trend toward increasing the number of integrated audiovisual courses and decreasing the number of separate audiovisual courses. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 48-12, Section: A, page: 3001. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1987.

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