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Darbo objektas: ryšys tarp senjorų fizinio aktyvumo ir su juo susijusių veiksnių. Tyrimo tikslas: nustatyti senjorų fizinį aktyvumą ir su juo susijusius veiksnius. Uždaviniai: 1. Nustatyti senjorų demografinius rodiklius, fizinį aktyvumą, kūno masės indeksą, gaunamą informaciją apie fizinį aktyvumą, fizinio aktyvumo sąlygas, fizinio aktyvumo žinias, fizinio pasyvumo priežastis, savo sveikatos vertinimą. 2. Palyginti demografinius rodiklius, fizinį aktyvumą, kūno masės indeksą, gaunamą informaciją apie fizinį aktyvumą, fizinio aktyvumo sąlygas, fizinio aktyvumo žinias, fizinio pasyvumo priežastis, savo sveikatos vertinimą lyties ir KMI aspektu. 3. Fizinio aktyvumo aspektu palyginti senjorų demografinius rodiklius, informaciją, fizinio pasyvumo priežastis, savo sveikatos vertinimą. 4. Nustatyti sąsajas tarp senjorų fizinio aktyvumo ir turimų žinių apie fizinį aktyvumą bei fizinio aktyvumo sąlygų. Hipotezės: 1. Senjorai, kurie turi daugiau žinių apie fizinį aktyvumą, yra fiziškai aktyvesni. 2. Senjorai, kurie pripažįsta, kad fizinio aktyvumo sąlygos (fizinės ir finansinės) yra geresnės, yra fiziškai aktyvesni. Tyrimo rezultatai: Išanalizavus senjorų fizinį aktyvumą ir su juo susijusius veiksnius, mūsų iškelta hipotezė pasitvirtino, kad didesnio fizinio aktyvumo senjorai turi daugiau žinių apie fizinio aktyvumo naudą sveikatai, fizinis aktyvumas nebuvo susijęs su fizinio aktyvumo sąlygomis (fizinėmis ir finansinėmis). Taip pat tyrimas parodė, kad didžiajai daliai tiriamųjų... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / The object of the thesis: the relationship between senior citizens‘ physical activity and factors related to it. The aim of the research: to determine senior citizens‘ physical activity and factors related to it. Goals: 1. To determine senior citizens‘ demographics, physical activity, body mass index, available information on physical activity, conditions of physical activity, knowledge about physical activity, causes of physical inactivity and their own health assessments. 5 2. To compare demographics, physical activity, body mass index, available information on physical activity, conditions of physical activity, knowledge about physical activity, causes of physical inactivity and their own health assessments on the aspects of sex and BMI. 3. To compare demographics, information, causes of physical inactivity and health assessments of senior citizens on the aspect of physical activity. 4. To establish links between the physical activity of senior citizens their prior knowledge about physical activity and physical activity conditions. Hypotheses: 1. Senior citizens who have more information and knowledge about physical activity are more physically active. 2. Senior citizens who acknowledge better conditions for physical activity (physical and financial) are more physically active. The results of the research: After analyzing senior citizens‘ physical activity and factors related to it, our hypothesis that senior citizens who have more information about physical activity‘s... [to full text]

This thesis studies government driven e-participation in the context of Colombia using the case of “Urna de Cristal” (Crystal Ballot box). Making use of three theoretical models it intends to answer the main research question that is: How does the government driven tool of “Urna de Cristal” relate to the concepts of participatory democracy, e-empowerment and sustainable e-participation? This research collects mainly qualitative data, collected from government representatives, civil society organizations and citizens. The findings show that “Urna de Cristal” only reaches to the level of e-engaging in Macintosh model of levels of e-participation. It is not fully sustainable according to the seven-phase model proposed by Islam (2008) since there is a special need to work on the last three phases of sustainable e-participation, which refer to promotion, participation and post-implementation analysis. The fact the “Urna de Cristal” is not e-empowering leads the analyses towards the limitations that block the e-empowerment process. From this analysis it is seen that the Government of Colombia is doing a lot to overcome the existing limitations but it is a challenging task that requires a lot of time and resources since there are entrenched limitations, coming from different stakeholders and that comprise a specific context, structures and mentalities.  Findings also show that “Urna de Cristal” is not likely to survive long after the next election (2018) because it is it is an initiative that was proposed in the electorate campaign of Juan Manuel Santos, hence an alternative design is suggested.

This study has contributed to two areas of growing interest and involvement: the knowledge base of public participation in community workshops for design practitioners and Muncie's White River project.Two community workshops were conducted and compared to study their processes and end results. All variables were constant between both workshops with the exception of a video, When the Wind Stops by Dianne Haak and Bernard Wilets, shown at the beginning of only one workshop. The group dynamics of the workshops were reviewed to understand their influence. It was determined that group size, persons conducting the workshops, the video, and the composition of the participants all affected the workshops' process and results.Focusing on the proposed White River Corridor Greenway, participants generated 183 ideas for increasing use and extending ownership of the river to the community. Participants produced 51 benefits, 85 potential physical development, and 47 programs and activities for improving connections to the creation and use of the river greenway. / Department of Landscape Architecture

Video game journalism has been accused for lack in journalistic legitimacy for decades. The historical relation between video game journalists and video game publishers has always been problematic from an objective point of view, as publishers have the power to govern and dictate journalistic coverage by withdrawing financial funding and review material. This has consequently lead to lack in journalistic legitimacy when it comes to video game coverage. However, as the grass roots media movement gained popularity and attention in the mid 2000s, a new more direct and personal way of coverage became evident. Nowadays, grass roots media producers operate within the same field of practice as traditional journalists and the difference between entertainment and journalism has become harder than ever to distinguish. The aim of this master thesis is to discover if grass roots media is more critical than traditional video game journalism regarding industry coverage. The study combines Communication Power theory, Web 2.0 and Convergence Culture, as well as Alternative Media and Participatory Journalistic theory, to create an interdisciplinary theoretical framework. The theoretical framework also guides our choice in methodology as a grounded theory study, where the aim of analysis is to present or discover a new theory or present propositions grounded in our analysis. To reach this methodological goal, 10 different grass roots media producers were interviewed at 6 different occasions. The interviewees were asked about their opinions regarding grass roots media production, their own contribution, as well how they identified journalistic coverage. It was discovered that the grass roots media producers were not more critical than traditional video game journalists. This was because grass roots media producers operate under the rules of entertainment production. It was discovered that if grass roots media producers break out of the normative rules of entertainment production, they would either loose their autonomous freedom or funding, resulting in a catch-22 situation. Furthermore, it was found that grass roots media producers did not identify themselves as journalists; rather they identified themselves as game critics or reviewers. Thus, a video game journalist is categorised as an individual that report writes or edits video game news as an occupation, with formal journalistic training. However, since neither grass roots media producers nor industry veterans in general have journalistic training, it is still unclear who is a video game journalist. Lastly, we found that grass roots media producers have little possibility to influence traditional video game journalism. The only way to increase the status of journalistic legitimacy is by encouraging journalism itself, to engage in critical media coverage. As there is a public demand for industry coverage, and journalistic legitimacy is grounded on the normative democratic self-descriptions of the profession, video game journalism needs to move beyond entertainment and engage in democratically, constructive and critical coverage.

Every healthcare system faces unlimited demands and limited resources, creating a need to make decisions that may limit access to some new, potentially effective technologies. It has become increasingly clearer that such decisions are more than technical ones. They require social value judgements - statements of the publics distributive preferences for healthcare across the population. However, these value judgements largely remain ill-defined. The purpose of this thesis was to explicate distributive preferences of the public to inform funding/coverage decisions on new health technologies. It contains six papers. The first comprises a systematic review of current coverage processes around the world, including value assumptions embedded within them. The second paper presents findings from an expert workshop and key-informant interviews with senior-level healthcare decision-makers in Canada. A technology funding decision-making framework, informed by the results of the first paper and the experiences of these decision-makers, was developed. Their input also highlighted the lack of and need for information on values that reflect those of the Canadian public. The third paper provides a systematic review of empirical studies attempting to explicate distributive preferences of the public. It also includes an analysis of social value arguments found in appeals to negative coverage decisions. From the results of both components, possible approaches to eliciting social values from the public and a list of factors around which distributive preferences may be sought were compiled. Such factors represented characteristics of unique, competing patient populations. Building on findings from the third paper, the fourth paper describes a citizens jury held to explicate distributive preferences for new health technologies in Alberta, Canada. The jury involved a broadly representative sample of the public, who participated in decision simulation exercises involving trade-offs between patient populations characterized by different combinations of factors. A list of preference statements, demonstrating interactions among such factors, emerged. The fifth and sixth papers address methodological issues related to citizens juries, including the comparability of findings from those carried out in the same way but with different samples of the public, and the extent to which they changed the views of individuals who participate in them.

The shifting of asymmetric power balances in South Africa e.g. the acceleration of apartheid disintegration in the 1980s that brought to power the first black majority government in 1994 precipitated an unprecedented rise of antiforeigner attitudes and practices. Since then, spurts of aggression and violence against foreign nationals have occurred regularly. The latest outbreak in May 2008, whose images shocked many people around the world with reminiscences of ethnic cleansing, was not an isolated abnormality but a characteristic phenomenon of post-apartheid figurational trends. While xenophobia is a worldwide phenomenon, South African antiforeigner attitudes have specific cultural and historical contingencies. While all non-citizens are generally viewed negatively, African foreign nationals are more likely than other foreigners to be victims of aggressive antiforeigner attitudes and practices. This dissertation explores as a sociological problem the construction and mobilization of the figure of Makwerekwere, that is, the African foreigner through established-outsider nationalistic discourse and practices in post-apartheid South Africa. The study is based on a number of methods of investigation carried out during ten months of fieldwork between October 2006 and August 2007: Focus-group and individualized interviews; participant observation; analysis of nationalistic antiforeigner narratives from media; analysis of data from other scholars, research organizations, and human rights organizations. Figurational sociology, particularly the theory of the established and the outsiders, is the informative analytical orientation of the study. The study is organized around three sets of analysis: (1) the construction and mobilization of the figure of Makwerekwere by citizens (state agents and civil society agents); (2) the construction and mobilization of the figure of Makwerekwere as it is understood and experienced by those who are arrogated this figure and its characteristics; (3) and the concomitant structural atmosphere of the life-worlds and social spaces populated by those who are assigned the figure of Makwerekwere. These figurational dynamics suggest that although apartheid has been largely dismantled, it has left its imprints on South Africas social habitus. Thus the conclusion of the study situates post-apartheid antiforeigner sentiments and practices, particularly the anti-African orientation of the ideology of Makwerekwere, in the shadows of apartheid.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / The thesis investigates the motivations behind, the methods used in, and the results of the overseas students’ collective action contesting the measures, which the Australian government introduced from 1983 to 1996. As a group of temporary residents located outside the boundaries of domestic political systems, yet within the core of Australia’s revenue earnings, overseas students independently mobilised in an attempt to influence the Australian Government policy on education from a position of limited political, social and legal rights. As temporary residents on short-term permits fully regulated under prescribed immigration rules, overseas students employed conventional repertoires of contention— they established formal structures, adopted action tools, framed their claims, internationalised their protest, formed alliances — in an attempt to mobilise resources and access existing avenues to influence government’s export of education services policy. Their mobilisation response and campaign strategy achieved modest success in securing some policy concessions, particularly during the early stages of education aid reform. Their strategy, however had to evolve as the fledgling export of education services expanded and eventually they shifted their position to fully embrace and reinterpret the government’s own ‘language of liberalisation’, which they used to greater effectiveness in making subsequent claims. Overseas students ability to procure concessions is derived not from their political or universal rights to education, but from their ability to influence policy changes based on their importance and strategic location in the Australian economy. In other words, government, universities and industry stakeholders have increasingly become dependent on substantial revenue earnings derived from overseas students and have become susceptible to potential chaos that may be precipitated if current students withdrew from the economy, or potential students choosing alternative education service destinations.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / The thesis investigates the motivations behind, the methods used in, and the results of the overseas students’ collective action contesting the measures, which the Australian government introduced from 1983 to 1996. As a group of temporary residents located outside the boundaries of domestic political systems, yet within the core of Australia’s revenue earnings, overseas students independently mobilised in an attempt to influence the Australian Government policy on education from a position of limited political, social and legal rights. As temporary residents on short-term permits fully regulated under prescribed immigration rules, overseas students employed conventional repertoires of contention— they established formal structures, adopted action tools, framed their claims, internationalised their protest, formed alliances — in an attempt to mobilise resources and access existing avenues to influence government’s export of education services policy. Their mobilisation response and campaign strategy achieved modest success in securing some policy concessions, particularly during the early stages of education aid reform. Their strategy, however had to evolve as the fledgling export of education services expanded and eventually they shifted their position to fully embrace and reinterpret the government’s own ‘language of liberalisation’, which they used to greater effectiveness in making subsequent claims. Overseas students ability to procure concessions is derived not from their political or universal rights to education, but from their ability to influence policy changes based on their importance and strategic location in the Australian economy. In other words, government, universities and industry stakeholders have increasingly become dependent on substantial revenue earnings derived from overseas students and have become susceptible to potential chaos that may be precipitated if current students withdrew from the economy, or potential students choosing alternative education service destinations.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Toronto, 2005.