Of all of the desktop software available, that for the implementation of a database is some of the most complex. With the increasing number of computer users having access to this sophisticated software, but with no obvious way to learn the rudiments of data modelling for the implementation of a database, there is a need for a simple, convenient method to improve their understanding. The research described in this thesis represents the first steps in the development of a tool to accomplish this improvement. In a preliminary study using empirical research a conceptual model was used to improve novice end users’ understanding of the relational concepts of data organisation and the use of a database software package. The results showed that no conclusions could be drawn about either the artefact used or the method of evaluation. Following the lead of researchers in the fields of both education and information systems, a design research process was developed, consisting of the construction and evaluation of a training artefact. A combination of design research and a design experiment was used in the main study described in this thesis. New to research in information systems, design research is a methodology or set of analytical techniques and perspectives, and this was used to develop a process (development of an artefact) and a product (the artefact itself). The artefact, once developed, needed to be evaluated for its effectiveness, and this was done using a design experiment. The experiment involved exposing the artefact to a small group of end users in a realistic setting and defining a process for the evaluation of the artefact. The artefact was the tool that would facilitate the improvement of the understanding of data modelling, the vital precursor to the development of a database. The research was conducted among a group of novice end users who were exposed to the artefact, facilitated by an independent person. In order to assess whether there was any improvement in the novices’ understanding of relational data modelling and database concepts, they then completed a post-test. Results confirmed that the artefact, trialled through one iteration, was successful in improving the understanding of these novice end users in the area of data modelling. The combination of design research and design experiment as described above gave rise to a new methodology, called experimental design research at this early juncture. The successful outcome of this research will lead to further iterations of the design research methodology, leading in turn to the further development of the artefact which will be both useful and accessible to novice users of personal computers and database software. This research has made the following original contributions. Firstly, the use of the design research methodology for the development of the artefact, which proved successful in improving novice users’ understanding of relational data structures. Secondly, the novel use of a design experiment in an information systems project, which was used to evaluate the success of the artefact. And finally, the combination of the developed artefact followed by its successful evaluation using a design experiment resulted in the hybrid experimental design research methodology. The success of the implementation of the experimental design research methodology in this information systems project shows much promise for its successful application to similar projects.

The present study attempted to answer two questions: do academic library users have a distinctive and useful input to make to library strategic planning? If they do, what mechanisms will permit them to participate effectively in this planning process? To address these questions research was carried out in two stages at a single institutional site, the Canberra College of Advanced Education. The first of these utilised a structured group discussion process, Nominal Group Technique (NGT). This was used both as an indicator of user planning priorities and as a pilot research technique contributing to the design of a subsequent survey. This survey obtained a response rate of over 90 percent from a sample of 379. The study attempted to establish that academic staff and students do have a worthwhile input to make to planning by testing for congruence between the rankings of library planning priorities of these user groups and the rankings of planning priorities of Library staff. No strong positive correlations were established between the priorities of student groups and Library staff, although in the survey the priorities of academic staff and Library staff were found to be related. These results suggest users do have a worthwhile input to make to library strategic planning. Other tests for congruence were also applied between and within respondent groups, because if a group was found to have different priorities there would be a prima facie case for consulting members of that group as part of the planning process. Both mechanisms used in the present study were considered successful. User surveys have been employed for planning in previous studies with a future-oriented component. However, it appears that this may have been the first formally reported application of NGT to library management. Experience in the present study suggests it is a highly suitable technique for situations such as strategic planning, where generation of ideas or comment on priorities is required. However, an attempt to establish congruence between the results obtained using NGT and those obtained from the survey yielded inconclusive results. It is believed that major changes in the institutional environment were principally responsible for this, although a methodological limitation may also have contributed. The study concludes with suggestions for further research.

<p>This thesis examines and measures differences in effciency between L1- and L2 language use for solving referential problems. Quantitative measures used in the study were time and error frequency. Qualitative measures, such as how the tasks and the participants own performance were experienced, were measured by an post interview and two questionaires. </p><p>Two different tasks, a sorting task and a construction task, in which each informant was given the role as a constructor or instructor, were used for data gathering. A total of 20 dyads, divided in two language groups (English and Swedish) participated in the study. </p><p>The results show large differences between the two language groups in respect to time for solving the two tasks. For the construction task, these were mainly due to different communication strategies used for error handling. In the sorting task a clear learning effect can be observed for the L2-groups which, in effect, makes the L2 users solve the sorting task almost as fast as the L1 groups, after an initial learning period. However, the informants in the L2 groups generally referred to the objects used in this task by describing peripheral characteristics of these objects. They also showed more signs of uncertainty and hesitation in the actual dialogue situation. However, no differences in error frequency could be found between the two language groups. </p><p>Differences in role-taking between the language groups were also made apparent in the study. These differences became especially clear for the L2 groups in the construction task.</p>

<p>The purpose of this Master’s thesis is to study how well the online catalogue of The Music Library of Sweden works when ordinary users are searching for sheet music. The issues studied are: Why do the users fail to find the sheet music they are looking for? Do the users take advantage of the possibilities that the classification codes of the SAB system offer? If not, why?</p><p>The source material of the study is 144 comments from a user questionnaire about the online catalogue and, in addition, the search log for one day (513 queries). The comments were sorted into seven groups depending on the type of information need, for example searches for certain instrumentation or genres and problems with spelling. Each analysis ends with suggestions for improvements of the catalogue and its instructions.</p><p>The thesis show, according to the Zipf’s principle of least effort, that sheet music searching in the online catalogue is demanding too much effort and knowledge of the users. Searching with SAB classification codes is too complicated which may be the explanation why only 2 percent of the queries in the log are code searches. In 51 of the 76 cases where users failed to find sheet music the queries would have succeeded if the patrons had used classification codes. The SAB system is thus not used as often as it deserves.</p><p>The variety and amount of failed queries in the material show that sheet music is difficult to search, for several reasons, for example the complex construction of uniform titles of musical works and that the searchable vocabulary of the online catalogue often differ from the users’ own.</p>

<p>This study aimed at identifying the factors contributing towards work related neck pain amongst university administrative staff, its impact on everyday life activities and in turn its prevalence. A quantitative descriptive cross sectional study design was used amongst the administrative staff at the University of The Western Cape, South Africa. Data collection was carried out with the help of a questionnaire which was administered by the researcher in person. Data was analysed with both descriptive and inferential statistics using SPSS and SAS for windows. Chi-square test and logistic regression analysis was done. The results of this study revealed a very high prevalence of work related neck pain amongst university administrative staff. </p>

Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka hur människor upplever att ständigt vara tillgänglig med sin mobiltelefon och/eller Internet. En kvalitativ metod med semistrukturerade intervjuer har använts, där tolv personer, sex gymnasieungdomar och sex vuxna personer, har intervjuats. Hälften av de intervjuade bor i södra Sverige, hälften i norra. För analysen har McQuails grupperingar inom Uses and gratifications-teorin använts, liksom cultural studies teorier. Resultatet visar att de intervjuade ser det både som en möjlighet och ett krav att vara tillgängliga och uppkopplade, att Internet och mobiltelefon verkar bidra till att arbete/skola och fritid flyter ihop samt att de äldre intervjuade i något högre grad än de yngre upplever negativa aspekter av att vara ständigt tillgänglig. Vi har inte kunnat urskilja några skillnader mellan de intervjupersoner som bor i södra Sverige och de som bor i norra. När vi med utgångspunkt från McQuails kategorier inom Uses and gratifications-teorin har grupperat de belöningar som de intervjuade kan tänkas uppnå, har vi funnit exempel på belöningar inom samtliga kategorier; avkoppling, personlig identitet, personliga relationer och bevakning. / The purpose of this essay is to examine how people experience always being available on their mobile phone and/or Internet. A qualitative method of semi structured interviews has been used, where twelve respondents, six students in upper secondary school and six adults, have been interviewed. Half of the respondents live in southern Sweden, half in northern. The clusters that McQuail developed within the uses and gratifications theory, as well as cultural studies theories, have been used for analyzing our findings. The results show that the respondents see it both as a possibility and a demand to always be available and online, that Internet and/or mobile phones seem to contribute to the merging of work/school  and leisure time, and that the adult respondents to a greater degree than the younger respondents experience negative effects of always being available. We have not been able to distinguish any differences between respondents living in southern Sweden and those living in the north. When grouping our respondents’ obtained gratifications according to McQuails clusters within the uses and gratifications theory, we have found examples in all the categories; entertainment, personal identity, integration and social interaction, and information.

Electronic mail, email, is one of the most widespread computer applications today.While email in general is very popular among its users, there are also drawbacks withemail usage: an increasing amount of messages that overwhelm users, systems that aretoo complex for naive users and at the same time do not support the needs of experiencedusers.In order to answer the main research question “Which design solutions couldimprove the situation of individual email users in a working context when it comes tocommunication and handling large numbers of incoming and stored email messages?”three studies conducted in email users’ working environment are described. The studiedorganisations are one academic research laboratory, one technical company, andone primary medical service organisation. The studies are focused on email usage,organisation of email messages, novice versus experienced users’ needs, managers’email usage, and information and communication overflow.The results indicate that the different strategies used to handle email are a matter ofa balance between advantages and disadvantages of these strategies. The choicebetween them is depending on the users’ total work situation and cannot be understoodby investigating the email communication alone.One advantage of email is the cognitive comfort it brings to its users by liberatingthem from thinking about tasks that can be solved by sending an email message, butthis advantage disappears when the sender cannot trust that the receiver will act uponthe message.Users develop their handling of email with experience and work position. Themedia that managers use to handle the increased communication that follows with ahigher position are email and meetings. One habit that do not change with position isto allow incoming messages to interrupt other work tasks, despite the asynchronousnature of email. This is particularly remarkable for managers who often complain thatthey need more uninterrupted time. The interruptions may partly be attributed to thelack of functionality in email systems to adapt the interfaces to the users’ work habits.In this case incoming messages result in a signal regardless the importance of them.Email is a part of an information and communication flow. Some users have problemshandling this flow. Overflow problems could be diminished by making senders ofmessages more aware of the receivers’ communicative situation. Email systems couldprovide feedback to senders of messages based on the receivers’ perception of his/hersituation.One of the studies indicates that it may be even more complicated to replace an oldemail system than introducing an email system for the first time in an organisation.The investment experienced users have made in the old system may be substantial.A model of time usage for organisation of email messages is also presented in orderto compare different strategies.Several design solutions are suggested with respect to folder usage, sorting emailmessages into folders, reducing the number of stored messages, and tailoring the emailsystem to the user’s work habits. / QC 20100524

Ontology development is a systematic technique to represent the existing and new knowledge about a specific domain by using some models to present the system in which conceptualization is involved. This thesis presents the use of ontologies to formally represent ontology-based competence model for potential users of quality registry report in a healthcare organization. The model describes the professional and occupational interests and needs of the users through structuring and describing their skills and qualifications. There are individual competences model having two main parts: general competence and occupational competence. The model is implemented in an ontology editor. Although our competence model gives the general view about all medical areas in a hospital, from implementation point of view, we have considered only Cardiology area in detail. The potential users of quality registry are medical staff, county council staff and Pharmaceutical staff. In this report we have also used different classifications of education, occupational fields and diseases. A user can get information about the patient and specific disease with treatment tips by using various organizational resources: i.e. quality registries, electronic medical reports, and online journals. Our model also provides a support of information filtering which filters the information according to the need and the competencies of the users.

It is essential to consider what new technologies mean to the people who use them and the ways in which they are experienced and used. In the context of public transit services in Saskatoon, understanding what the recent changes from a manual to an electronic/automated system means to users and the broader community is critically important to the overall assessment of the service. Investigating users’ lived experiences and interpretations of technical artifacts is valuable to understanding socio-technical relations or the embodied interactions of humans and machines as “technologies-in-practice.” Research into socio-technical relations has primarily focused on large scale technological systems and expert practices while less attention has been paid to “seemingly mundane” technologies or technical artifacts routinely used in everyday life. At the same time, this preoccupation has overshadowed or downplayed the importance of exploring users’ experiences and interpretations of technologies. The goal of this research is to contribute to the sociological understanding of mundane technologies-in-practice and socio-technical relations more broadly. In order to gain insight into this relationship, this thesis focuses on bus riders’ (users) and the community’s perceptions of the Go-Pass smartcard and electronic fare system used by the public transit service in Saskatoon. The perspectives of Go-Pass users and community stakeholders (n=15) were investigated using qualitative semi-structured interviews to gain deeper understanding into the complex relationship between users and technologies. Drawing from Science and Technology Studies (STS) and the sociology of technology literature, I propose that a sociomaterial theoretical perspective following a mutual shaping framework offers insight into socio-technical relations. Both critical and feminist technology studies literature has been helpful for developing an understanding of the wider social and political contexts of technical use which underscores this study. In particular, the conceptual insights of “socio-technical assemblages” (Suchman, 2007) and “intra-action” (Barad, 2003) have been helpful tools for exploring agency, subjectivity and power which is key to uncovering the intricacies of socio-technical relations and human-machine interaction. The four main themes emerging from this study were: 1) shifting human-machine roles and relationships; 2) the socio-technical construction of the bus rider; 3) configuring users’ and technologies; and 4) structural issues and social justice implications of technologies-in-practice. The findings demonstrate that the use of this new system is mutually co-constructed by both social and technical factors whereby both the users and the technology inform perceptions and use. There was also the unexpected connection between users’ everyday situated uses, experiences and interpretations of the Go-Pass technologies to wider social-political contexts. There were a number of issues raised in relation to the implementation of the Go-Pass system which had negative effects or unintended social and technical consequences particularly for those most marginalized economically. At the same time, there were important benefits and positive effects on riders’ quality of life and use of the service. Finally, participants’ perspectives have contributed to understanding what the Go-Pass technologies mean to them, the ways in which they are used in practice and the ways in which the mixing of people and seemingly mundane technologies shape relations in everyday settings.

The main goal is to identify the prevalence and pattern of cocaine consumption among young people. The results obtained from surveys of a sample of 2139 university students served as input to harness new results through the personal interviews of a reduced sample of young people. The 81.1% of the students have never tried cocaine, 15.1% claim to have used it without considering themselves as consumers and 2.8% say they have stopped using it. Male respondents had a more frequent pattern of experimental consumption. The influence of social siblings is a crucial factor and habitual cocaine use is more frequent among those who experimented more precociously with this drug. The sporadic use of cocaine is not perceived as problematic behaviour. These results show the need to delay the age at which young people first consume cocaine as long as possible and to properly inform them of the risks associated with cocaine consumption. / L’objectiu general és conèixer la prevalença i el patró de consum de cocaïna entre els joves. Els resultats obtinguts a traves de 2139 enquestes fetes a estudiants universitaris han servit com a input per a potenciar l’obtenció de noves dades mitjançant entrevistes realitzades a una mostra reduïda de joves. El 81.1% dels estudiants mai han provat la cocaïna, un 15,1% declaren haver-la utilitzat sense considerar-se consumidors i un 2,8% afirmen haver deixat l’ús d’aquesta substancia. S’observa un patró de consum experimental més freqüent en els nois. La influència social d’amics i germans resulta ser una variable clau en aquest tipus de consum. L’ús habitual de cocaïna és més freqüent entre aquells que la van provar per primer cop més aviat. L’ús esporàdic de cocaïna no es percep com a problemàtic. Aquests resultats mostren la necessitat de retardar l’edat del primer consum de cocaïna i informar degudament dels riscos associats al seu consum.