The purpose of this study was to determine factors affecting non-adherence to Anti-retroviral therapy among AIDS patients. A cross sectional quantitative survey, was used. Structured interviews were conducted with 300 ART patients. Data were analysed using SPSS version 13 and presented in charts, graphs and frequency tables. Motivators of good adherence were identified as disclosure of HIV positive status to more than one person, frequent adherence counselling, self-efficacy to adhere to ART, positive interactions between patients and healthcare providers; and using an adherence partner. Barriers to adherence were forgetfulness, transportation costs to and from the clinic, time away from work and side effects. There was a strong positive correlation between adherence, CD4 counts and viral load. Adherence was closely tied to immunologic and virologic improvements. Respondents with poor adherence were likely to have unsuppressed viral loads (OR 12.98, 95%, CI 4.9-34). / Health Studies / Masters of Public Health

The following study was conducted at an upper secondary school in Sweden and attempts to explore the question of what influences male pupils’ reading habits. Many quantitative international studies, including PISA, PIRLS and IEA Reading Literacy, have sought to answer this question, but only partially succeeded due to the limitations of their methods. Therefore, this study seeks to explore this question in more depth using qualitative methods, including interviews and classroom observations, but also minor tests. Two facts which the previously mentioned international studies have found is that boys and particularly immigrant boys tend to have worse reading results than their counterparts. It is therefore the aim of this study to study four male students in upper secondary school; of which two are native Swedes and the other two are unaccompanied refugee children; one from Afghanistan and the other from Morocco. The findings of this study are as follows. Firstly, necessity was found to be the single most important factor for the reading habits of these four pupils; especially the two refugees. Both refugees learnt to read under harsh circumstances in madrassas in their respective home countries. Moreover, the Moroccan pupil learnt to speak and read Spanish fluently during his seven years as a homeless child. Furthermore, in the absence of necessity, interest was found to be decisive in determining the pupils’ reading habits. In addition to this, the study theorizes that an interest in reading generally arises before the ability to read and not vice versa. However, teachers can in fact affect their pupils’ reading habits even in upper secondary school.

生活於手機相機普及的今日，人們逐漸依賴隨手可得的行動裝置記錄生活，影像記錄儼然成為今日人們記錄生活的方式之一。本研究致力於提供使用者個人化之飲食管理系統，讓使用者在利用影像記錄飲食之時，改變自身的多樣性飲食攝取行為，讓個體更為健康。透過健康控制與社會認知理論，我們以影像後設資料的運用，增加自我效能，提供使用者方便的飲食記錄方式、以及更能掌握自身的營養狀況，讓使用者在記錄飲食的同時，還能改變自身飲食攝取行為，更能作為未來回憶飲食狀況之線索。在實驗設計上，我們邀請6位受試者使用本研究所開發的飲食管理系統，利用兩週的時間真實模擬生活中的飲食記錄環境。我們分析使用者實驗前後的自我效能問卷，以及所記錄的飲食記錄作為評估依據。實驗結果顯示，我們的系統能夠提升個體自我效能外，還能夠改變個體的飲食攝取行為。因此本研究有效促進自我效能感協助使用者在記錄生活，讓個體飲食更加健康 / In these days, as the popularity of smart phone grows, people tend to rely on mobile devices to record their lives. Digital photograph has become one of the ways people recording their daily lives. This research is aimed at providing users with personalized dietary management system, allowing users not only use photos to record their life, but also change their behavior to keep users in good health. Based on health control and social cognitive theory, this application utilizes the metadata of the images to enhance self-efficacy, to provide users an easier way to record their dietary and take better control of their own health. Furthermore, the data of the application allows users to recall the dietary and thus improves users’ dietary habits. For the experimental design, 6 subjects were invited to use rthis dietary management application, to record their daily dietary in two weeks. The subjects were asked to use the system, and answer a questionnaire related to the self-efficiency of their adequate dietary after using the application. Experimental results shows that this system not only helps users enhance individual self-efficacy in dietary but also change their dietary habit to achieve the goal of balanced dietary and in good health.

90年代的後期，敏捷式系統發展方法開始被倡導。相對於傳統的系統發展方法，敏捷式系統發展方法著重於回饋機制而非事前的計畫、以人為中心而非以流程為中心。這樣的方法希望能助於提高組織對回應市場、客戶的效率，進而提高效益。目前在商場中使用此方法做為開發工具的企業仍是少數，本研究希望透過探討敏捷式系統發展方法論的使用時機來進行教學，進而得知系統開發人員對於接受敏捷式系統發展方法的關鍵因素，並藉此了解該如何在企業中導入此方法。本研究發現除了使用此方法的能力會影響影響使用意圖之外，在內在因素方面也包含了公司結構與團隊因素，外部因素則包含了顧客與成功案例因素，這些都是接受敏捷式系統發展方法的關鍵因素。本研究希望根據以上的分析結果，提出敏捷式系統發展方法導入之建議，提供組織做為參考用。 / Awareness of agile system development methodologies (SDM) has grown among information systems development community in recent years. Many of their advocates consider the agile and the plan-driven SDMs polar opposites. Indeed there are circumstances where agile SDMs are more suitable than plan-driven SDMs. Yet, there have been few studies on understanding developers’ adoption intention. This paper takes an initial attempt to gauge new generation of software developers’ intention to select agile SDMs. To many of these developers, agile SDMs are relatively new if not unheard of, in order to assess their intention to choose such category of methodologies, this research first introduced the methodologies to a group of 21 IS-major graduate students and discussed how and when to use agile SDMs. Then a survey was conducted, which was comprised of two parts of questions: agile SDM self-efficacy and intention to use. PLS analysis results showed that agile SDM self-efficacy influence the intention to use through performance outcome expectation, personal outcome expectation, and affect. Although the relationship between self-efficacy and anxiety was not confirmed, anxiety does affect intention to use. The fact that direct relationships between all four emotive variables and the intention to use are established implies that in order to encourage the use of agile SDMs, the focus should be emotive variables, and that self efficacy may be just one of various ways to promote the favorable emotional states. In addition, these participates were invited to a three-round Delphi test and analytic hierarchy process to retrieved their concerns about accepting or rejecting agile SDMs. Ten key factors were extracted and categorized. Adding up the pros and cons, team dimension is the most important dimension, which explains individual first concerns about how the collaboration when using agile SDMs. Other than team dimension, customer, corporate structure, project, success cases and methodology dimensions were consistent with the literatures. Thus our study provides a critical understanding of the factors that affect new generation of software developers’ intention to select agile SDM.

本研究之目的在於探討線上社群協作與其前置因素之關係，並且檢驗社群投入度之中介效果。首先，本研究應用角色內與角色外行為分類，提出角色內與角色外線上社群協作之類型。其次，依據社會認知理論與社會交換理論，本研究提出線上社群協作之前置因素，包括對個人之結果預期、對社群之結果預期、知覺社群信任、知覺社群規範、知覺社群支持與知覺社群認同。最後，本研究基於投入度觀點，檢驗社群投入度對於線上社群協作及其前置因素之中介效果。 本研究之研究情境為玩家公會社群，本研究自一知名大型多人線上遊戲中收集340份有效問卷進行資料分析與假設檢驗，研究結果顯示：(1) 除社群禮貌外，社群投入度對於社群合作行為、助人行為與運動家精神皆有正向影響；(2) 對個人之結果預期與線上社群協作行為之關係，會受到社群投入度所中介；(3) 對社群之結果預期與線上社群協作行為之關係，會受到社群投入度所中介；(4) 知覺社群信任與線上社群協作行為之關係，會受到社群投入度所中介；(5) 知覺社群規範與線上社群協作行為之關係，會受到社群投入度所中介，但社群規範對於運動家精神亦有直接負向效果；(6) 知覺社群認同與線上社群協作行為之關係，會受到社群投入度所中介，但社群認同亦會直接正向影響社群合作與助人行為；(7) 然而，知覺社群支持與線上社群協作行為之關係，並不會受到社群投入度所中介。針對上述之研究結果，本研究進一步闡述其學術研究意涵、實務管理意涵，以及研究限制與未來研究方向。 / The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationships between online community collaboration and its antecedents by examining the mediating effect of community engagement. First, this study proposes a classification of online community collaboration by following the typology of in-role and extra-role behaviors. Accordingly, this study will further examine some of online community collaboration behaviors, including community cooperation, helping behavior, community courtesy, and sportsmanship. Second, drawing upon social cognitive theory and social exchange theory, this study identifies several antecedents of online community collaboration, including person-relevant outcome expectancy, community-relevant outcome expectancy, perceived community trust, perceived community norms, perceived community support, and perceived community identification. Finally, from the perspective of engagement, this study will examine the mediating effect of community engagement on the proposed model. The research setting of this study is online gaming communities. After collecting 340 valid responses from a famous Massive Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG), our results show that (1) community engagement affects community cooperation, helping behavior and sportsmanship positively, but does not have a significant effect on community courtesy; (2) the relationships between person-relevant outcome expectancy and three online community collaboration behaviors are mediated by community engagement; (3) the relationships between community-relevant outcome expectancy and three online community collaboration behaviors are mediated by community engagement; (4) the relationships between perceived community trust and three online community collaboration behaviors are mediated by community engagement; (5) the relationships between perceived community norms and three online community collaboration behaviors are mediated by community engagement, but perceived community norms also has a direct and negative impact on sportsmanship; (6) the relationships between perceived community identification and three online community collaboration behaviors are mediated by community engagement, but perceived community identification also has direct and positive impacts on community cooperation and helping behavior; (7) the relationships between perceived community support and online community collaboration behaviors are not mediated by community engagement. According to these findings, this study concludes with research implications, managerial implications, research limitations and future research directions.

Optimistiese self-evaluasies oor die vermoë om take uit te voer is belangrik vir sukses in verskeie aspekte van menswees. Wanneer mense sulke self-evaluasies doen en selfdoeltreffendheids-persepsies vorm maak hulle van inligting uit verskeie bronne gebruik. Volgens teorieë wat spesifiek verband hou met self-evaluasie is mense tydens die vorming van sulke persepsies omtrent die self veral afhanklik van inligting bekom deur sosiale vergelyking. Hierteenoor beklemtoon teorieë wat meer met selfdoeltreffendheid verband hou, die belangrikheid van self-verwysende inligting soos gevorm tydens prestasie-ervarings. Die doel met hierdie navorsing is om die ordening van die bronne van inligting, wat tydens die vorming van selfdoeltreffendheids-persepsies gebruik word, te ondersoek. Die resultate sal bydra om belangrike vrae te beantwoord oor die voorbereiding van mense vir die uitvoering van uitdagende take. In 'n eksperiment (N=1 723) wat op 'n Solomon-vier-groep-ontwerp geskoei is, is drie vorme van inligting wat persepsies kan beïnvloed aan drie eksperimentele groepe verskaf terwyl daar vyf kontrolegroepe was. Die effek van die ingrepe is met 'n vraelys gemeet. Die resultate toon dat selfdoeltreffendheidspersepsies meer deur selfverwysende inligting as deur sosiale vergelykings-inligting beïnvloed word. Dit is ook bevind dat die verskaffing van addisionele inligting nie 'n kumulatiewe effek tydens die vorming van selfdoeltreffendheidspersepsies het nie. Die implikasies van die resultate ten opsigte van die praktyk en teoretiese beskouinge is in die laaste instansie bespreek. / Optimistic self-evaluation regarding the ability to cany out tasks is important for success in various fields ofhuman endeavour. When people do such self-evaluations and fmm self-efficacy perceptions, they make use of information from various sources. According to theories related to self-evaluation, people engaged in forming such perceptions about themselves largely depend on information gained through social comparison. However, theories of self-efficacy emphasize the importance of self-referenced information, such as those formed through enactive attainments. The purpose of this research is to examine the collation of sources of information used in forming self-efficacy perceptions. The results will help to answer important questions about preparing people to perform challenging tasks. In an experiment (N=l 723) modelled on the Solomon Four Group Design, three types of information likely to influence perceptions were supplied to three experimental groups, while there were five control groups. The effects of the interventions were measured by means of a questionnaire. Results confirmed that perceptions of self-efficacy are more profoundly influenced by self-referenced information than by social comparisons. It was also found that additional information did not have a cumulative effect dming the forming of self -efficacy perceptions. The implications of the results with respect to practical and theoretical viewpoints are discussed in the final instance. / Psychology / D.Litt. et Phil. (Sielkunde)

This study aims at exploring the social, affective and cognitive variables that would be related to the use of the address form usted in Chilean Spanish. Specifically, we refer to the use that can be observed in interactions between Chileans residing in Sweden. A particular aspect of this situation is that, while the majority group almost exclusively use the form that is commonly associated with solidarity (in this case the Swedish pronoun du), the minority group referred to maintains the pronoun that normally is associated with power, distance, formality and politeness: usted. In other words, while the equivalent in Swedish of usted (ni) is seldom used in majority language, the opposite is observed in the minority language object of study. We believe that the motives for the use of usted in this minority context are more complex than they appear to be. Consequently, an alternative hypothesis has been worked out with reference to theories within the area of Social Psychology. On this basis the following main hypothesis was formulated: Individuals representing the minority group in ethnic contact situations tend to increase their identification with the minority group in order to be admitted by and adhere to this group, if they feel that they are rejected by the majority group. The form usted is not the result of a fortuitous situation, nor can it be explained by the fact that it is the normal usage in the native country, but that it fulfils a strategic objective: to mark the affiliation with the minority group. The method has consisted in grouping together and correlating factors pertaining to the environment, the agent and the guest according to the Ecological Triad, the interaction of which contributes to the appearance of the observed behaviour that underlies this study. The statistical analysis enabled us to verify what was put forward in the hypothesis.

The purpose of this study was to determine factors affecting non-adherence to Anti-retroviral therapy among AIDS patients. A cross sectional quantitative survey, was used. Structured interviews were conducted with 300 ART patients. Data were analysed using SPSS version 13 and presented in charts, graphs and frequency tables. Motivators of good adherence were identified as disclosure of HIV positive status to more than one person, frequent adherence counselling, self-efficacy to adhere to ART, positive interactions between patients and healthcare providers; and using an adherence partner. Barriers to adherence were forgetfulness, transportation costs to and from the clinic, time away from work and side effects. There was a strong positive correlation between adherence, CD4 counts and viral load. Adherence was closely tied to immunologic and virologic improvements. Respondents with poor adherence were likely to have unsuppressed viral loads (OR 12.98, 95%, CI 4.9-34). / Health Studies / Masters of Public Health

High school students need to be equipped with the competencies that may enable them to adapt to the increasing demands of learning in the school and beyond. To this end, the main research question of this study was, namely How can the self-regulated learning of adolescents be developed at high school? The aim of the study was to design, implement and evaluate a study skills programme for high school students. The social-cognitive theory, in particular the self-regulated Learning (SRL) theory, was used as the conceptual framework on which this study was based. An explanatory, sequential, mixed-methods research design was implemented. Purposeful sampling was used to select the participants in the three phases of the research project. Two classes of Grade 10-students (an experimental and a comparison group) from one school participated in the study, as follows: (i) in the first quantitative phase both classes wrote a pre-test, using the Learning and Strategies Inventory - High School Version (LASSI-HS); (ii) this was followed by a qualitative phase over 10 weeks. During this time a programme was implemented with the experimental group, once per week for 30 minutes (during school hours), and a 30 minute session in the afternoons. Individual work was also done with eight students, who were purposefully sampled. Between one and four sessions were held with each of the eight students. During the 10 weeks data were collected continuously by means of individual interviews with the eight students, as well as from their journals. In addition, the researcher collected data by means of field-notes. (iii) After the 10 weeks, the final quantitative phase involved both the experimental and the comparison groups in the writing of a post-test. The results indicated that the programme to enhance the students’ goal-setting, self-monitoring and self-evaluation strategies was successful. The students also indicated an improvement in their attitudes, motivation, information-processing, and in selecting the main ideas in their study material. However, shortcomings were noted in certain areas. Based on the literature and the empirical findings of the study, an improved programme for the development of the adolescents’ SRL in high school was designed. The programme recommended the early commencement of the programme, and that the two problem areas that were identified, namely time-management and motivational strategies be emphasised. / Psychology of Education / D. Ed. (Psychology of Education)

Despite HIV and AIDS knowledge and attitude change programmes, workplace HIV and AIDS-related discrimination persists in workplaces in many sectors, including the education sector. This study set out to investigate why the phenomenon of workplace HIV and AIDS-related discrimination persists; and to predict which factors were responsible and how they related to HIV and AIDS-related discrimination in the workplace. A stratified random sample of 205 teachers; 123 of whom were from 10 schools of varied backgrounds in Bojanala Region of North West Province of South Africa and 82 from schools around Kampala, Central Region of Uganda was drawn. Twenty-seven respondents of the South African sample participated in both the quantitative survey and in-depth interview while the rest responded to a selfadministered questionnaire. Using a stepwise regression analysis, traditional beliefs predicted workplace HIV and AIDS-related discrimination, explained11% of variance in the second model while the third model explained only 2% more – 13% (R square of 0.136) but each of the three models was significant (p-values of 0.000). Attitudes were the second strongest predictor; and only HIV and AIDS-legal knowledge could predict discrimination but not biomedical HIV and AIDS knowledge. In the in-depth interview, incidents of discrimination were reported, possible reasons for HIV and AIDS-related discrimination were reported; and it was found that workers varied in ways of keeping secrets regarding sensitive information such as colleagues’ HIV-positive status, and cited reasons for revealing such information which included malice, jealousy, moral responsibility, anger and loose talks. There are implications for reducing workplace HIV and AIDS-related discrimination which include: Integrating HIV and AIDS-legal knowledge with biomedical HIV and AIDS knowledge, more efforts should be spent in designing and imparting information to reduce traditional beliefs, develop and evaluate instruments to measure traditional beliefs and HIV and AIDS-legal knowledge; and to study more about secret keeping, particularly in regard to workplace HIV and AIDSrelated discrimination. / Industrial and Organisational Psychology / D. Admin. (Industrial and Organisational Psychology)