According to the National Psoriasis Foundation (1976), psoriasis is a little known and poorly understood skin disease afflicting an estimated eight million victims in the United States. About fifteen thousand new cases of psoriasis are diagnosed each year. It affects men and women in equal numbers at any age, most often between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five.

Not available / text

published_or_final_version / abstract / Social Sciences / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2001. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Discourse about the human world has, since Socrates, been structured around the assumption that one view of a given matter is better than competing views, and that argumentation, if carried out correctly and systematically, will favour the view which has the preponderance of reasons and evidence on its side. If this supposition were dropped, the nature of social scientific inquiry would change significantly. For many commentators in the social sciences the ineliminable interpretative dimension of social inquiry and the standpoint-bound character of interpretation lead to the conclusion that we have to abandon any notion of objective truth in the social sciences. The central question raised in this thesis is whether this abandonment is inevitable or even plausible. Is it plausible to conflate objectivity and truth? Is objectivity a possible characteristic of the individual researcher or a characteristic of the scientific research process? Does the cultural environment of the researcher impact on the validity of research findings? If science is a social phenomenon, are scientific beliefs different from other beliefs? How do the interests of the individual researcher or the formal organisation of scientific practice impact on the validity of findings? What role does power play in the shaping of knowledge? These are the questions that will be addressed in the following thesis. The methodology of Max Weber serves as a point of departure and divergences and similarities to the work of Weber are explored in the writings of Kuhn, the Edinburgh School, Latour, Foucault, Habermas, as well as contemporary postmodernist and feminist writers. The analysis of these various concepts and approaches is not presented chronologically, but rather as an exposition of the contributors of various commentators in the fields of both the sociology of science and knowledge, and the philosophy of science. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Diskoers oor die menslike wêreld is, sedert Socrates, gestuktureer rondom die aanname dat een siening van 'n gegewe saak beter is as mededingende sienings, en dat argumentasie, indien korrek en sistematies uitgevoer, ten voordeel sal wees van die siening wat gesteun word deur die oormaat van redes en bewyse. As ons hierdie aanname sou laat vaar, sal die stand van sosiaal wetenskaplike ondersoek ingrypend verander. Vir menige kommentator in die sosiale wetenskappe lei die onafwendbare interpretatiewe dimensie van maatskaplike ondersoek, en die standpunt-gebonde aard van interpretasie, tot die gevolgtrekking dat ons enige opvatting van objektiwiteit in die sosiale wetenskappe moet laat vaar. Die kernvraag in hierdie tesis is of hierdie verskuiwing onvermydelik of selfs aanneemlik is. Is dit geldig om objektiwiteit en waarheid saam te snoer? Is objektiwiteit 'n moontlike eienskap van die individuele navorser, of 'n eienskap van die navorsingsproses? Watter impak het die kulturele omgewing van die navorser op die geldigheid van die navorsingsbevindinge? As wetenskap 'n sosiale fenomeen is, is wetenskaplike oortuigings enigsins anders as ander oortuigings? Watter impak het die belange van 'n individuele navorser, of die formele organsiasie van wetenskaplike praktyk, op die geldigheid van bevindings? Watter rol speel mag in die vorming en skepping van kennis? Hierdie is die vrae wat aangespreek word in dié tesis. Die metodologie van Max Weber dien as vertrekpunt, en ooreenkomste tot en afwykings van die sienings van Weber word ondersoek in die werk van Kuhn, die "Edinburgh School", Latour, Foucault, Habermas, sowel as kontemporêre postmoderne en feministiese skrywers. Die analise van hierdie verskeie konsepte en benaderings word nie kronologies aangebied nie, maar eerder as 'n uiteensetting van die bydraes van verskeie kommentators op die gebied van die sosiologie van die wetenskap en van kennis, sowel as die filosofie van wetenskap.

Thesis (MSocialWork)--Stellenbosch University, 2002. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The aim of this study was the formulation of guidelines for the organising of developmental partnerships, of which the key components may be seen as: • the corporate sector; • the State; and • the non-profit or non-Governmental sector. A literature study was completed, focusing on the partnership strategy within the context of the social developmental approach. In-depth focus was placed on the elements of an effective developmental partnership, as well as the manner in which such a partnership should be organised. An empirical study was completed in order to investigate the nature of the developmental partnership strategy; the characteristics of an effective strategy; and the nature of the various and distinctive organisational components. Data was gathered from a study sample determined by means of purposive selection of developmental partnerships in the Western Cape. This sample comprised four (4) representatives each of the corporate sector, the State and the non-Governmental sector. Three (3) different self-administered questionnaires were used for data-gathering - one type of questionnaire for each of the sectors mentioned. The questionnaires were distributed amongst the twelve (12) respondents - thus, in total comprising four (4) distinctive developmental partnerships. The findings primarily relate to the following three aspects: • the nature of the developmental partnership strategy within the current social developmental context; • the requisite elements necessary for effective developmental partnerships; and • the organisation of these partnerships. Of the various findings, the following may be considered to be of primary significance. A developmental partnership is possible between all the parties, irrespective of the sector where they are involved. The partnerships are, however, increasingly being regulated by means of policy and are thus consequently becoming increasingly formal and institutionalized. All parties are active participants in the developmental partnerships, and contributions by each of the parties are usually made in the form of service provisions or service-producing activities. The parties, however, do attach value or importance to certain specific elements of the partnership - which in tum have a significant influence on determining the effectiveness of that partnership. It is on these principles that the organising of the developmental partnership is based. There are diverse reasons for the concluding of a developmental partnership which generally differ from one partner to the next. The partners in such a developmental partnership are selected according to specific criteria. Certain criteria are of greater significance for certain partners than for others. However, a key element does appear to be a sufficient degree of "cultural fit" between the partners. Certain mechanisms are utilized in order to promote this "fit". Despite the structure of the developmental partnership being adaptable and flexible, there appears to be a strong indication that the partnership is control-assured. The nature of this control is facilitative. The control varies amongst the partners, depending on the current nature of the partnership activities; the competencies of the partners; and the need for growth within the partnership in order to realise its objectives. A further finding concerns the need for clarity regarding the division of tasks or functions and for co-ordination within the partnership in order to ensure its effectiveness. Resources are contributed by the various partners, and thereby any resources, risks and benefits inherent to the partnership are shared amongst its members. The principle of exchange is an integral factor for the success of the partnership. It is this idea of exchange that provides the general framework within which it is determined what each of the partners contribute to the partnership, and what benefits they derive from the partnership. On the basis of these conclusions, as well as the findings made in the literature study, recommendations have been made focusing on the elements that will give rise to effective developmental partnerships and how they should be organised in order to promote the desired success. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die doel van die studie was om riglyne op te stel vir die organisering van ontwikkelingsvennootskappe. Die korporatiewe sektor, die Staat en die nie-winsgewende of nie-staatsektor is by hierdie unieke vennootskappe betrokke. Ten einde hierdie riglyne op te stel is 'n literatuurstudie gedoen oor die vennootskapstrategie binne die konteks van die maatskaplike ontwikkelingsbenadering. In die literatuurstudie is elemente van 'n effektiewe vennootskap, asook die wyse om so 'n vennootskap te organiseer, indringend ondersoek. 'n Empiriese ondersoek is ook gedoen om die aard van die vennootskapstrategie, die kenmerke van 'n effektiewe vennootskap en die aard van organiseringskomponente te bepaal. Die steekproef vir die ondersoek is bekom deur 'n doelbewuste seleksie van ontwikkelingsvennootskappe in die Wes-Kaap provinsie. Hiervolgens is vier (4) verteenwoordigers van die korporatiewe sektor, die Staat en die nie-staatsektor onderskeidelik by die studie betrek. Daar is gebruik gemaak van drie verskillende selfgeadministreerde vraelyste, een vir elke sektor onderskeidelik. Hierdie vraelyste is versprei na die twaalf respondente. Die twaalf respondente het bestaan uit vier verteenwoordigers van elk van die drie partye betrokke en het dus vier (4) verskillende ontwikkelingsvennootskappe behels. Die bevindings wat gemaak is, hou hoofsaaklik verband met die volgende drie aspekte: • die aard van die vennootskapstrategie binne die huidige maatskaplike ontwikkelingskonteks; • elemente noodsaaklik vir 'n effektiewe vennootskap; en • die organisering van 'n vennootskap. Die belangrikste bevindings was die volgende. 'n Vennootskap is moontlik tussen al die partye, ongeag die sektor waarby hulle betrokke is. Hierdie vennootskappe word toenemend deur beleid gerig, en gevolglik is dit toenemend formeel en geïnstitusionaliseerd. Al die partye is aktief betrokke by die vennootskappe. Bydraes word deur die vennote gelewer in die vorm van diensvoorsienings- of diensproduseringsaktiwiteite. Die vennote heg waarde aan sekere spesifieke elemente in die vennootskap. Hierdie elemente het 'n beduidende invloed op die bevordering van effektiwiteit. Die organisering van die vennootskap wentel om hierdie beginsels. Daar is verskillende redes vir die aangaan van die vennootskap. Hierdie redes kan verskil van vennoot tot vennoot. Vennote vir die vennootskap word volgens spesifieke kriteria geselekteer. Sekere kriteria is meer belangrik vir sommige vennote as vir ander. Wat veral belangrik is, is 'n bevredigende kulturele passing ("cultural fit") tussen die vennote. Sekere meganismes word benut om hierdie passing of verenigbaarheid te bevorder. Alhoewel die struktuur van die vennootskap aanpasbaar en buigsaam is, is daar egter 'n sterk aanduiding dat die vennootskapsbeheer verseker is. Die aard van die vennootskapsbeheer is fasiliterend. Die beheer wissel van vennoot tot vennoot, afhangende van die aard van die aktiwiteite, die bevoeghede van die vennote en die behoefte binne die vennootskap om te groei en sy doelwitte te bereik. 'n Verdere bevinding wat gemaak is, is dat duidelike werkverdeling en -koördinering in die vennootskap noodsaaklik is vir effektiewe samewerking. Die hulpbronne word bygedra deur die onderskeie vennote. Sodoende word hulpbronne, risiko's en voordele wat verbonde is aan die vennootskap tussen die vennote verdeel. Die beginsel van uitruiling is 'n sleutelfaktor vir die sukses van 'n vennootskap. Die idee van uitruiling verskaf die algehele raamwerk vir die analisering van wat partye bydra en voordele wat die vennote uit die vennootskap kry. Op grond van hierdie afleidings en gevolgtrekkings asook die bevindings gemaak in die literatuurondersoek is sekere aanbevelings gemaak. Die aanbevelings fokus op die elemente wat aanleiding sal gee tot 'n effektiewe vennootskap en hoe hierdie ontwikkelingsvennootskappe georganiseer moet word om effektief te wees.

Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2001. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: It is widely accepted that the Internet has become a valuable resource for social scientists, not just for the purpose of information exchange; via e-mail, discussion groups and electronic journals, but also as a medium for data collection. Its global nature gives a researcher access to a vast range of individuals located around the world. It also opens up access to difficult to hitherto penetrate study areas, such as sensitive research on deviant behaviour. Further, it is claimed that considerable savings to both research budgets and time frames are made possible with the new technology. It is not surprising, therefore, that a substantial body of research, employing the Internet as the primary means of data collection, already exists. This raises a number of questions as to how the Internet fares as a research tool. Are there any important methodological issues that this new approach raises? Do the traditional research methods suffice? Or are adaptations to existing methods necessary when difficulties are encountered? Does such changes affect the more fundamental question of the research design? These questions are considered in this thesis. To answer them, I consider two different types of empirical research designs. The first,' survey research, is a quantitative, numerical design that traditionally has a high level of control. I consider in detail issues of sampling, including non-response, and questionnaire design. The second design examined, ethnographic research, is qualitative, textual and generally has a low level of researcher control. I address the methods used in cyber ethnography and then discuss the considerable ethical concerns that feature in such research. I conclude that, on the whole, the existing methods can be transferred to Internet research. Indeed, some of the problems faced in traditional research are also considerations in Internet studies and can be overcome by employing similar techniques, such as using incentives to reduce non-response rates. However, a number of new problems emerge, such as the lack of paralinguistic cues, which require adaptations to the existing methods in order to produce results that can be considered valid and reliable. However, I also argue that these necessary adaptations to the methods do not affect the underlying principles found in the research design. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Dit word algemeen aanvaar dat die Internet In waardevolle hulpmiddel is vir sosiaalwetenskaplikes; nie net vir die uitruil van inligting deur middel van e-pos, besprekingsforums en elektroniese joernale nie, maar ook as In instrument om inligting te versamel. Die globale aard van die internet gee die navorser toegang to In wye spektrum individue internasionaal. Dit verleen ook toegang tot moeilike navorsingsareas, soos sensitiewe navorsing oor afwykende gedrag. Verder word beweer dat dit aansienlike besparings moontlik kan maak vir beide die navorsingsbegroting en tydraamwerk. Dit is dus nie verbasend dat In substansiële hoeveelheid van navorsing, wat die Internet as die primêre bron van dataversameling gebruik, reeds bestaan nie. Dit laat verskeie vrae ontstaan oor hoe die Internet vaar as In navorsingshulpmiddel. Is daar enige belangrike metodologiese kwessies wat hierdie nuwe metode aanraak? Is die tradisionele metodes voldoende? Of moet daar veranderinge aan die huidige metodes aangebring word wanneer probleme ontstaan? Sal hierdie veranderinge die fundamentele aspekte van navorsingsontwerp beïnvloed? Die vrae saloorweeg word in hierdie tesis. Ek gebruik twee empiriese navorsingsontwerpe om die vrae te beantwoord. Die eerste, steekproefnavorsing, is In kwantitatiewe ontwerp wat tradisioneel In hoë vlak van beheer toon. Ek ondersoek in detail kwessies van steekproewe, insluitend geen respons en vraelysontwerp. Die tweede ontwerp wat ondersoek word, etnografiese navorsing, is kwalitatief, tekstueel en toon in die algemeen In lae vlak van navorser beheer. Ek ondersoek die metodes wat gebruik word in kuberetnografie en bespreek dan die etiese vraagstukke wat hierdie navorsing kenmerk. Ek kom tot die gevolgtrekking dat oor die algemeen die huidige metodes toegepas kan word op Internetnavorsing. Inderdaad kan van die probleme wat ondervind word in tradisionele navorsing ook ondervind word in Internet studies en ook hier kan dit oorkom word deur die gebruik van soortgelyke tegnieke, soos om aansporingsbonusse om geen responskoerse te verminder, hoewel daar nuwe probleme opduik, soos die gebrek aan para-taalkundige wenke. Dit noodsaak veranderinge aan die huidige metodes om resultate te lewer wat geldig en betroubaar is. Ek redeneer egter ook dat hierdie nodige veranderinge aan die metodes nie onderliggende beginsels van navorsingsontwerp verander nie.

Effective decision support plays vital roles in people's daily life, as well as for professional practitioners such as health care providers. Without correct information and timely derived knowledge, a decision is often suboptimal and may result in signi cant nancial loss or compromises of the performance. In this dissertation, we study text mining and topic modeling and propose to use text mining methods, in combination with topic models, to discover knowledge from texts popularly available from a wide variety of sources, such as research publications, news, medical diagnose notes, and further employ discovered knowledge to assist social and medical decision support. Examples of such decisions include hospital patient readmission prediction, which is a national initiative for health care cost reduction, academic research topics discovery and trend modeling, and social preference modeling for friend recommendation in social networks etc. To carry out text mining, our research, in Chapter 3, first emphasizes on single document analyzing to investigate textual stylometric features for user pro ling and recognition. Our research confirms that by using properly designed features, it is possible to identify the authors who wrote the article, using a number of sample articles written by the author as the training data. This study serves as the base to assert that text mining is a powerful tool for capturing knowledge in texts for better decision making. In the Chapter 4, we advance our research from single documents to documents with interdependency relationships, and propose to model and predict citation relationship between documents. Given a collection of documents with known linkage relationships, our research will discover e ective features to train prediction models, and predict the likelihood of two documents involving a citation relationships. This study will help accurately model social network linkage relationships, and can be used to assist e ective decision making for friend recommendation in social networking, and reference recommendation in scienti c writing etc. In the Chapter 5, we advance a topic discovery and trend prediction principle to discover meaningful topics from a set of data collection, and further model the evolution trend of the topic. By proposing techniques to discover topics from text, and using temporal correlation between trend for prediction, our techniques can be used to summarize a large collection of documents as meaningful topics, and further forecast the popularity of the topic in a near future. This study can help design systems to discover popular topics in social media, and further assist resource planning and scheduling based on the discovered topics and the their evolution trend. In the Chapter 6, we employ both text mining and topic modeling to the medical domain for effective decision making. The goal is to discover knowledge from medical notes to predict the risk of a patient being re-admitted in a near future. Our research emphasizes on the challenge that re-admitted patients are only a small portion of the patient population, although they bring signficant financial loss. As a result, the datasets are highly imbalanced which often result in poor accuracy for decision making. Our research will propose to use latent topic modeling to carryout localized sampling, and combine models trained from multiple copies of sampled data for accurate prediction. This study can be directly used to assist hospital re-admission assessment for early warning and decision support. The text mining and topic modeling techniques investigated in the dissertation can be applied to many other domains, involving texts and social relationships, towards pattern and knowledge based e ective decision making. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2016. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

No âmbito das organizações empresariais, é premente a necessidade constante de lançamento de novos produtos e serviços em função da redução do time to market, o que vem requerendo maior precisão nas decisões de portfólio de oportunidades de inovação. Em específico, as questões de portfólio vêm sendo tratadas primordialmente na gestão de produtos e projetos, o que acaba por ocorrer tardiamente no Processo de Desenvolvimento de Produtos (PDP), com preocupações concentradas na revisão ou gestão do portfólio de produtos e/ou projetos. Desta forma, há um descompasso entre a geração de oportunidades de inovações e o aproveitamento destas, como produtos e projetos, o que prejudica as organizações na identificação e valoração de suas inovações; na antecipação de oportunidades que venham a se tornar inovações; no equilíbrio das escolhas dentre vários critérios inclusive não financeiros; bem como, no direcionamento do portfólio a partir de uma estratégia harmônica. Visando instrumentalizar as organizações para suprir estas dificuldades, uma vez que elas carecem de métodos e técnicas que tratem o portfólio de forma mais ampla, o objetivo da pesquisa foi propor um Método de Referência na Geração do Portfólio de Oportunidades de Inovação (MERGE-OI), o que possibilitou que organizações empresariais brasileiras gerassem e selecionassem um portfólio de oportunidades de inovações de forma mais precisa, independente de seu porte e segmentação econômica. O MERGE-OI foi aplicado em cinco empresas representativas de três segmentos econômicos: alimentos e bebidas, construção civil e eletroeletrônico. A aplicação em campo permitiu validar a sua consistência e coerência. Quanto aos métodos, esta pesquisa é primordialmente observacional e de análise de conteúdo, sendo que, os mesmos foram empregados tanto como métodos quanto técnicas, o que consolidou o desenvolvimento da pesquisa em sete grandes etapas. Foram obtidos três grandes resultados advindos da pesquisa: o método de referência MERGE-OI (diagramas de atividades, entradas, saídas, documentos e arquitetura); a validação do MERGE-OI de acordo com critérios de redução de incerteza e utilidade, bem como, o portfólio de oportunidades de inovação das cinco empresas em que se aplicou o método em campo. De forma mais ampla, esta pesquisa trouxe à tona a importância da integração entre as disciplinas de gestão de inovação, gestão de produtos e gestão de projetos. / In the context of business organizations, there is an on-going need of products and services launch on a regular basis due to time to market shortening which has been taking better choices in portfolio decisions on innovation opportunities. In particular, the issues of portfolio has been considered primarily in product and project management, which usually occurs late in the product development process (PDP) focused on reviewing and managing the portfolio of products and projects. Therefore, there is a gap between the generation of innovation opportunities and its implementation as products or projects, which affects organizations in several aspects as identifying and valuing their innovations, detecting opportunities in earlier stages such that they can be turned into innovations, balancing choices among several criteria including non-financial as well as driving portfolio decisions from strategy. In order to overcome these difficulties, since there are a lack of methods and techniques that addresses the portfolio more broadly, this research goal was to propose a reference method for portfolio generation for innovation opportunities (MERGE-OI), which has enabled business organizations to create and select a portfolio of innovation opportunities with more assertiveness, whatever the size and market segmentation. The MERGE-OI was applied in five representatives enterprises on three economic sectors: food and beverage, construction and electronics. A field survey allowed the method to be validated in terms of consistency and coherence. Regarding the research method, this research is primarily observational and content analysis, an the same methods were employed as well as techniques, which consolidated the research development in seven major steps: each of with two main phases: pre-analysis and exploration, consolidating a research corpus based on documentary and research techniques. The three main results obtained were: the reference method MERGE-OI (activity diagrams, inputs, outputs, documents and architecture), the validation of MERGE-OI according to criteria such as usefulness and precision, as well as the portfolio of innovation opportunities in the five enterprises in which MERGE-OI was applied. More broadly, this research has highlighted the importance of integration among subjects such as innovation management, product management and project management.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This thesis project aims to address the following question: How do women who were planning a vaginal birth with limited medical intervention experience an unplanned c-section? Specifically, this research project involved: completing in-depth interviews with 15 women who planned a vaginal birth with limited medical intervention but instead experienced an unplanned c-section between six months and two years ago; discovering and describing the nature of the birth the mothers originally envisioned for their child; exploring the women’s experiences with, and feelings about, the birth itself and how it might differ from what they envisioned; developing a better understanding of how these experiences and feelings affected the women during the first two years following the birth; describing any challenges they faced and how, if at all, they managed such challenges; and identifying strategies that could be used to improve the experience of women recovering from an unplanned c-section who envisioned a vaginal birth with limited medical intervention.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Chinese students are the biggest ethnic group of international students in the United States. Previous studies have identified many unique problems of Chinese students during their acculturation process and a higher level of acculturative stress than international students from other countries. A systematic review of instruments that assess acculturative stress revealed that none of the existing scales apply to Chinese students in the United States, either because of language issues or validity problems. Thus, this study aims to develop a reliable and valid scale to accurately measure the acculturative stress of Chinese students in the United States. A 72-item pool was generated by interviewing eight Chinese students and borrowing items from existing literature and scales. The item pool was sent online to 607 Chinese students and 267 of them completed the survey. Exploratory Factor Analysis was conducted to empirically derive the factor structure of the Acculturative Stress Scale for Chinese Students (ASSCS). The results produced a 32-item scale in five dimensions, which were Language Insufficiency, Social Isolation, Perceived Discrimination, Academic Pressure, and Guilt toward Family. The ASSCS demonstrated high reliability (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.939) and initial validity by predicting depression (Beta = 0.490, p<.001) and life satisfaction (Beta = -0.505, p<.001). It was the first Chinese scale of acculturative stress developed and validated among a Chinese student sample in the United States. Further studies need to be conducted to provide empirical support and confirm the validity for the scale. In the future, the scale can be used as diagnosing tool and self-assessment tool.