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Due to the high rate of e-government projects failures occurring in developing countries and the researcher being from a developing country, an impetus to undertake this research was provided. In IS research, diffusion of e-government products and services was noted to be slow within developing countries, and most developing countries striving to adopt e-government have undertaken it under the heavy burden of gender inequalities and strong multicultural beliefs. However, these social factors were shown to liberally influence users’ perception, which in turn influences users’ intentions and usage behaviour. Although there has been much research to explain users’ perceptions, few have been conducted on e-government diffusion using developing country experiences. The identified gap prompted this research to investigate how the citizens of a country ‘Nigeria’ receive information about the egovernment products and services and how this information has influenced the way they feel, form opinions and make judgments on egovernment products and services. Therefore, the aim of this research is to examine the implication of culture and gender upon e-government diffusion within Nigeria. For this purpose, a conceptual model was formed combining social interaction, trust of egovernment delivery personnel and constructs from Roger’s theory of diffusion and Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to study e-government diffusion from the citizens’ perspective. Additionally, the culture and gender elements were considered. In turn, these elements were expected to determine and explain predictor constructs that would be used to explain, determine and predict citizen’s acceptance of e-government products and services. To acquire the data to this research, a qualitative research approach involving the case study method was employed. The data collection techniques used included interviews, personal observations, and examination of archival documents. The three main indigenous communities of Nigeria Yoruba, Ibo and Hausa were used and cross case analysis employed. This led to the findings identifying social interaction and the trust of personnel providing egovernment as the novel parts of the framework for this research. The main conclusions drawn from this research were that culture and gender were observed to have strong influences on social interaction as an e-government awareness channel; but significantly low influence on the other means of e-government awareness channels. Further, social interaction was noted to be a very strong determinant of communication within the indigenous societies. From the research findings it was learnt that for e-government to spread extensively, social interaction should be employed to improve the diffusion of e-government products and services. Future directions of this research include using a quantitative research approach to improve research findings and also investigating the relationships of trust of egovernment personnel and other forms of trust identified by previous research, i.e. the trust of government and trust in e-government. However, the view of this research is that since few studies of this kind are emphasized within IS research evaluating e-government diffusion, developing countries, culture and gender, other researchers interested in a topic similar to this research will learn of the importance of this research and these factors for other developing countries in the world. Due to the limitations of time and distance and financial constraints all the indigenous communities could not be represented. Hence, this was also considered to be a limitation to this research.

Adolescence is a time associated with increased risk taking and peer relations. Research has shown that adolescents are more vulnerable to peer pressure compared to adults, leading to exacerbated risk taking. Preclinical research suggests that these findings may also be applicable to adolescent rodents, which find social interaction rewarding and are prone to risky behavior. There is, however, little research on the effect of social interaction on rodent models of risky decision-making. This thesis utilized social chambers, which consisted of adjacent operant chambers separated by wire mesh. Adolescent rats performed a risky decision-making task in which they had a choice between a small and large reward (associated with a mild footshock, which increased in probability across the session). Experiment 1 determined if the presence of peer altered performance on the task after stability. Experiment 2 determined if the presence of a peer altered performance on the task during acquisition. Results of Experiment 1 revealed no significant changes. Results from Experiment 2 revealed a significant increase in preference for the risky reward in the group of rats that had daily exposure to a social peer. These results provide evidence that social influence on risk taking can be modeled in rodents.

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The focus of our study was to examine personal assistants and group home assistants experiences of stress at work, how they cope with stress and how it affects the relationship with the care recipient. The study is made out of a qualitative frame and based on interviews with two personal assistants and four group home assistants. Our theoretical perspectives consist of Aaron Antonovsky’s SOC theory, Richard Lazarus theory about coping and also sociologist Johan Asplund’s theory about social interaction. The result indicates that the experiences of stress are individual and varied among the participants while the presence of stress at work is a shared apprehension. The Main reasons for the emergence of stress are related to workload, diffuse information, work-tasks and staff exchange. Coping-strategies that are used to reduce the experiences of stress are spread between both problem-focused coping and emotion-focused coping while the latter is more frequently applied. Social Support has a vital part in the staff’s management of stress. Colleagues, supervisors and other people in their close environment are presented as important resources.  Our final conclusion is that stress has an impact on the relationship with the recipient of care because of the close interaction they have with each other. The close interaction with the recipient of care may however itself be a powerful stress factor due to the fact that the work itself is characterized by close interaction and it would be an impossibility to not be affected by it.

Art teachers have inherited unreconciled attitudes toward the teaching of drawing, which stem from an unresolved conflict between interventionists and non-interventionists. The resulting fragmentation of teaching practises is further confounded by consideration of the "crisis in confidence" period of drawing development that surfaces in grade four. In an effort to provide a clearer definition of the teacher's role in the drawing class, this study examined the practises of four exemplary art specialists^ Descriptive research techniques were employed in the observation of 27 drawing lessons, nine each at the grade two, four and six levels. Recorded dialogue was analyzed using Kakas' Peer Interaction Typology and Clements' Questioning Typology, and it was found that peers at all grades spoke most often about their own drawing experiences or artwork, and that teachers used mostly indirect questioning strategies when interacting with students. Data collected regarding initiators of interactions revealed that with increasing age came decreasing amounts of student initiated interaction, together with increasing amounts of teacher initiated interaction. It was also found that there was a paucity of peer interaction at the grade four level, and that in-process viewing of peers' artwork was an important component of the drawing lesson. Within a supportive environment, interaction generally ranged from neutral to positive.

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Teaching children with autism to interact with their typically developing peers can be a challenge. Previous research has documented that there are many effective ways to teach social interaction; however, these interventions were implemented almost exclusively by trained professionals. The purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness of parent-implemented contextually supported play dates. Specifically, two parents were taught to use mutual reinforcement and to design cooperative arrangements to help their child with autism to interact with a typical peer in their homes. Two independent reversal designs were used to demonstrate a functional relationship between parent-supported contextually supported play dates and an increase in synchronous reciprocal interactions for both participants. Social validity was also high for both parents; however, there was no consistent impact on participant, confederate, or parent affect. The results are discussed with reference to previous research, future directions, and implications for practice.