The Internet is growing in popularity as a health information sourceespecially among young adults. Interactivity has been pinpointed as the keyfeature that makes the Internet a potentially powerful health communicationtool. It is being heralded as a hybrid channel that has the capacity not only todisseminate health information to mass audiences both asynchronously andsynchronously, but also has the capacity to provide an engaging and stimulatingenvironment that can promote exploratory learning and active processing ofinformation. Despite these exciting claims, there is still a dearth of theoreticallydrivenempirical studies providing support for or against these assumptions. Westill know very little about how interactive technologies actually influenceinformation use, learning and motivational processes.A popular view is that the communicative efficacy of interactivetechnologies is influenced more with their match with comprehension processesand individual differences than with the level of interactivity itself. This studywas designed to tease out the potential effects of different levels of interactivityon comprehension and to determine whether individual differences in need forcognition would moderate such effects. About 441 young adults (ages 18-26)from the University of Kentucky participated in a 2 by 2 factorial experimentdesigned to test the effects of two levels of interactivity and two levels of needfor cognition on the comprehension of a health website on skin cancer.Results showed a significant main effect for level of interactivity oncomprehension scores holding the covariates, time on task and reading style,constant. Those exposed to the high interactivity site had significantly highercomprehension scores than those exposed to the low interactivity site. Therewas, however, no significant main effect for need for cognition, neither was therea significant interaction effect between level of interactivity and need forcognition on comprehension scores. Implications of these results and suggestionsfor future research are also discussed.

The purpose of the current study was to combine the factors previously determined to be related to African American help seeking into a single path model and, using structural equation modeling (SEM), determine the relative influence of each factor in the attitudes toward seeking mental health services (see Figure 2.2) among a community sample of African American adults from several metropolitan areas in the US. As such, SEM was utilized to compare the relative fit of two opposing models within this sample, one where a path from economic barriers to help-seeking attitudes was estimated freely and one where that path was constrained. Many have argued that for African Americans, economic constraints are barriers to seeking help. While existing literature fails to consistently support this contention, the current study does suggest that social status does carry significant weight in predicting attitudes toward seeking mental health services. Acculturation was not as strong of a predictor. Limitations , including the use of an abbreviated help-seeking scale, were discussed. In addition, implications for African Americans seeking services were also discussed.

<p>This thesis analyzes the relationship between trade restrictiveness and corruption levels in Europe and tests the robustness of the results using two different measures of corruption; Corruption Perceptions Index constructed by Transparency International and World Governance Indicators; Control of Corruption constructed by the World Bank. The results show that the outcome differs among the two indices and that previous results found in studies may be subject to data choice and measurement errors. A majority of previous studies have used trade openness in the form of imports share in GDP, or trade openness indices as variables that explain corruption levels. This thesis focuses on trade restrictiveness. It also investigates the differences between restrictiveness and openness in their impacts on corruption. The author of this thesis finds a weak relation between trade restrictiveness and corruption on one hand and an even weaker relation between trade openness and corruption on the other hand when controlling for other variables that may have an impact on corruption. The limited time-frame could be an explanation for this result, i.e. trade policy effects. A longer time-frame would have probably resulted in a bigger difference between variables for trade openness and trade restrictiveness. It is found that the variables showing to have the largest impact on corruption levels in Europe are those associated with historical dimensions such as whether the country has had a tradition of the church being separated from the state or whether being a previously planned economy. Most importantly, the thesis presents suggestive evidence on the fact that not all government involvement increases corruption. Rather, it is regulations that limit internal competition have a large impact on corruption levels in Europe. It has also been found that not all government involvement in the economy implies higher corruption levels. The findings outlined are in line with the common perception that corruption is highly dependent on previous values of corruption and that radical policy interventions are needed to curb corruption.</p>

This paper argues that the distinction between grey and non-grey (or white) literature will become less relevant over time, as online discovery options proliferate. In the meantime, the political success of the open access publishing movement has valuable lessons for proponents of increasing access to grey literature.

The behavior and patterns of recovery and processing of digital information by users is a recurring theme in the literature. The study of these behaviors are carried out through observation techniques and analysis of processes, actions and decisions undertaken by users in different situations. This paper presents the data resulting from the study of patterns of recovery and management of reference information of three consecutive courses of a specialized subject. The findings obtained showed a clear difference between patterns of information retrieval and obtained prior to the end of the training process, but there has been a significant change in the ultimate goal of users or appreciable changes in their prospects for application in other environments.

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which women seeking services of a shelter for battered women in the Southwestern United States were similar to the existing picture of battered women. Supplemental questions were asked concerning the effects of substance abuse, marital status, and child abuse. Information was gathered from records of a sample of 100 women who sought shelter between September 1984 and August 1987. Results were compared with previous studies by Gayford (1975), Giles-Sims (1983), and Walker. Results suggested women in this study were similar to battered women who had been studied previously. No significant relationship was found between the use of drugs and/or alcohol and the type of abuse a woman experienced, between marital status and employment status, nor between the occurrence of child abuse and a woman's willingness to involve the police. Implications and recommendations for future research were presented.

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Increasingly, workplace information seeking takes place in digital information environments and is reliant upon search systems. Existing systems are designed to retrieve information that is relevant to the query, but are not capable of identifying information that is well-suited to the context and situation of a search. This is a problem for professionals who often are searching for a small amount of useful information that can be applied to a problem or task, and have limited time to browse through large sets of results. This inability of search systems to discriminate between relevant and useful documents is one of the core problems in information retrieval. In this dissertation, I address this problem by studying the role that contextual factors play in determining how a group of professionals searches for and selects information. The central question concerns the nature of the relationships between these contextual factors, specifically between the genres in the document collection and the tasks of the searcher, with an aim to exploit such relationships to improve workplace information retrieval. Research was conducted through multiple studies in three phases, moving from an exploratory study of workplace information behaviour to a controlled experimental user study. Findings confirm that workplace context shapes search behaviour. This relationship is modeled as a set of key contextual factors and sets of context-dependent access constraints, preferred document characteristics, and search strategies. Among the contextual factors identified, work tasks and information tasks were found to be significantly associated with document genres. This task-genre relationship was modeled as a matrix of associations between domain-specific task and genre taxonomies and successfully implemented as a filtering component in a workplace search system. This is the first major study of the relationship between task and genre in information seeking and of its application to information retrieval systems.

This article reports the findings of a grounded theory study of the processes involved in adherence and treatment seeking delay for febrile neutropenia in chemotherapy patients. Interviews were conducted with 12 patients. Six theoretical constructs were generated, namely ‘Recall of Treatment Advice’, ‘Impact of Emotions’, ‘Influence of Social Networks’, ‘Symptom Monitoring Behaviour’, ‘Symptom Interpretation’, and ‘Preparation and Journey Time’. A model was developed to reflect the complex interplay between these theoretical constructs. Data extracts are presented to illustrate the grounding of the model in patients’ accounts, and the model is discussed with reference to previous theory and research.

The effectiveness of an educational psychotherapy presentation on Asians' therapy expectations and help-seeking attitudes was investigated. Subjects were foreign-born Asian university students. Compared to a non-Asian American normative sample, the Asian group demonstrated significantly less accurate expectations about therapy and less positive attitudes about seeking help for psychological problems. A psychotherapy presentation was used to modify expectations and attitudes. It consisted of an audiotaped lecture on therapist and client roles and the types of problems discussed in therapy. It also included a written transcript of therapist-client dialogues for subjects to read. The experimental group, which received the presentation, was compared to placebo control and delayed-treatment control groups. The psychotherapy presentation did not modify Asians' expectations or attitudes more than the control groups. Instead, all three groups showed improvement at posttest. Because there is a clear need to assess further the therapy expectations and attitudes of Asians, future research was recommended.