Men are less likely than women to seek help from health services providers regarding the health issues they face. In the United States, of the various race/ethnicity populations, Black American men are least likely to seek health related help, which is reflected in the substantially higher mortality and morbidity rates in Black American men compared to other populations. Guided by the social epidemiological framework, this study examined the relationship between social network measure and health help-seeking behavior among foreign-born and U.S.-born Black American men of West African descent residing in the state of Rhode Island. A cross-sectional study design with convenience sampling method was used in executing the study. A questionnaire that was developed based on validated instruments such as the General Help-Seeking Questionnaire (GHSQ) and Social Network Index (SNI) was employed in collecting data. Ordinal logistic regression and the Chi-square test of independence were used to assess the associations between health help-seeking behavior and social networks. Findings revealed a significant relationship between social network measure and selected categories of general help-seeking measures. For example, foreign-born participants compared to their U.S-born counterparts were more likely to have a high social network size, with respect to future intent to seek help from both formal and informal help sources. The results of this study may drive social change by providing evidence that is vital to our understanding of the health-related help seeking behavior of Black American men in general and Black American men of West African descent in particular.

This thesis presents work based on modeling multi-agent coalition formation in an agent organized network. Agents choose which agents to connect with in the network. Tasks are periodically introduced into the network. Each task is defined by a set of skills that agents must fill. Agents form a coalition to complete a task by either joining an existing coalition a network neighbor belongs to, or by proposing a new coalition for a task no agents have proposed a coalition for. We introduce task patience and strategic task selection and show that they improve the number of successful coalitions agents form. We also introduce new methods of choosing agents to connect to in the network and compare the performance of these and existing methods.

By using online self-report data provided by 41 undergraduate students and their dating partner(N = 82), this study examined the potential curvilinear relationship between four social network sectors (own parents, own friends, partner's parents, and partner's friends) and romantic dating partners' relationship characteristics (perceptions of partner's agreeableness, love, satisfaction, commitment, and ambivalence). After controlling for the effects of age, relationship duration, and social network overlap, the hierarchical regression analyses provided little support for the Romeo and Juliet Effect, that is, the negative association between social network approval and characteristics of the dating relationship. Instead, the study mostly replicated the positive linear relationship of social network approval with various relationship characteristics reported in the literature on social network approval. A few curvilinear relationships between social network approval and characteristics emerging from the relationship with the dating partner were found, however. A curvilinear association existed between perceptions of the partners' agreeableness and perceived social network approval from own parents, own friends, and partner's parents.

Globalization impacts the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry; customers in the AEC industry are seeking lower costs, faster construction schedules and higher quality services. In order to keep up with the changing demand and to stay competitive in the global AEC industry, firms are forming joint ventures and outsourcing design and services work.  As a result, these new trends in the AEC industry require the collaboration of widely dispersed and diverse project workers and companies.  Accordingly, it becomes increasingly important to understand the impact of diversity on performance.  In this sense, the initial aim of this study was to find empirical evidence on how differences in national culture and language may affect performance in Global Project Networks (GPNs).  According to the results of the first experiment comparing the performance of multi-cultural versus mono-cultural simulated project networks over time, I found cultural and linguistic diversity to have a negative impact on initial performance. However, culturally and linguistically diverse project networks studied achieved better adaptation performance that has long term advantages. Even though GPNs have long term performance benefits, bringing the widely dispersed project participants together is costly.  Therefore, firms are seeking ways to employ collaboration technologies to bring together the project participants.  Little research exists to examine how to increase the efficiency of GPNs that collaborate using technologies such as virtual workspaces to perform design work.  In order to examine collaboration in GPNs utilizing virtual workspaces, I conducted two experiments.  In the first study, I investigated the formation and the maintenance of Transactive Memory Systems (TMSs) and cohesive subgroups as a proxy for performance in two facilitated and two non-facilitated global virtual project networks.  I found a negative impact on collaboration effectiveness when process facilitators engaged in content facilitation in virtual project networks, which restricts the establishment of TMSs. The findings of the first study revealed inappropriate ways of facilitating GPNs collaborating in virtual workspaces, which motivated the second study.  In the second experiment, I observed two global and two domestic virtual project networks that were appropriately facilitated.  I examined the interactions between network members in order to identify whether significant differences between the collaboration approaches of global and domestic virtual project networks exist. Facilitators were utilized more frequently in global networks, particularly in the early stages of collaboration. Boundary spanning visualization technologies within the virtual workspace were also utilized more frequently by the global network members; however, this was due more to the spatial richness of the task than the maturity of the collaboration. The overall findings have significant implications in improving the effectiveness of global project network collaborations in virtual workspaces. / Ph. D.

The Issue of Employees' Expression on Social Media Abstract The aim of the diploma thesis was to describe the involvement of employees in social media according to the labour legislation. The goal is to define the extent to which positive law already reflects the trend of social networks in the field of labour relations and to establish limits of the employees' private posts. These limits arise from the labor law regulation, as well as significant cases dealt with by Czech and European courts. The work is divided into four parts. The first part defines the fundamental concepts, on the basis of which the work later analyzes the nature of employees' expressions through the medium and the resulting correctives provided for by the legislation. The second and third parts of the thesis describe the law in the field of employee expression and involvement in social networks, both at international and national level. The emphasis is placed on the courts' rulings in the significant cases, which extensively complete this issue. The fourth part of the thesis is devoted to current topics that employers face in the field of involvement of their employees on social networks in their leisure time. The chapter presents model situations in which employees' contributions to to social medias concerning the employer are...

In recent years, disinformation circulating the internet and especially social media has become a widespread concern. The urgency of the fake news problem lies in the fact that decisions that are taken on false or misleading information risk impacting democratic processes negatively. This is especially true during a global health crisis when the misinformation in question concerns scientific facts and informs the way people act in society. Focusing on the relational aspect of fake news, new insight and hypothesis generation can be explored with a relatively novel method, social network analysis. This research provides with an example of the method applied to political problems by analysing the misinformation and fact-checking diffusion network on the Italian Twitterverse during the second wave of COVID19. The network shows a tight core of misinformation and a peripheral fact-checking region approximating a spanning tree. Although some levels of polarization are observed, the resulting network shows no evidence of echo chambers that hinder interaction between the misinformation and the fact-checking clusters. Actor-level analysis revealed that the majority of the users interacting in the network are humans and that influential and active users share misinformation only. The findings of this work are presented to show how network analysis can contribute both mitigation strategies in particular and to social and political sciences research in general.

Denna uppsats undersöker vilka strategier som finns i Aaron Sorkins manus The SocialNetwork som kan förmedla klippning. Texten behandlar hur Sorkin, framförallt genom enemotionell rytm i dialog respektive actiontext, kan ha influerat filmens klippning. RobertMcKees beskrivning av “beats” har utvecklas till en definition av “emotionella beats” och haranvänts tillsammans med Plutchiks känslohjul för att avgränsa varje emotionellt byte i degranskade scenerna. Den funna rytmen har sedan jämförts med hur filmens skiftar mellanbildutsnitt för att ta reda på hur väl dessa matchar. Analysen visar att Sorkins emotionellarytm i manuset till mångt och mycket stämmer överens med klippningen i filmen och att densåledes borde varit en viktig del av klipparnas arbete

Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the most deadly diseases worldwide. In the United States, TB disproportionately affects foreign-born individuals, individuals living in congregate settings, people with human immunodeficiency virus, and people who use illicit drugs. In 2005, a large homeless shelter outbreak in San Joaquin County resulted in 67 individuals diagnosed with TB with links to a homeless shelter. It is hypothesized that by using bed analysis to identify contacts that have been exposed to TB during this outbreak will allow for better identification of exposed high-risk individuals than screening alone. Demographics, exposure, screening, and QuantiFERON-Tuberculosis results were analyzed using bed assignments from the homeless shelter database and data from a homeless shelter screening (HSS) program. Individuals diagnosed with active TB disease were on average more likely to be identified through bed analysis than HSS, 95.08% versus 59.02%. Utilizing both bed analysis and HSS allows for improvement of identification and continuous testing of individuals exposed to TB.

The original study on which this study was based on was conducted by Jacob Goldenberg, Sangman Han, Donald R.Lehmann, and Jae Weon Hong and published in 2009. In a slight contrast to Goldenberg et al (2009), this study was conducted among a bottom of the pyramid (BOP) network in South Africa using one non discretionary product whilst the original study was conducted on multiple high tech products in Korea This study explores the role of hubs (people with an outstanding number of social ties) in diffusion and adoption of products. The study was conducted using data on a large network and its adoption of a product (electricity) to identify two types of hubs – innovative and follower hubs and their role in influencing adoption ala Goldenberg et al (2009). Even though hubs are not necessarily opinion leaders nor are they necessarily innovators (as described by Rogers, (1962)) they tend to adopt earlier in the diffusion process. Innovator hubs have a greater impact on speed of adoption whilst Follower hubs have greater impact on the size of the market or total number of adoptions. Interestingly and crucially this early adoption behaviour of hubs can be a useful predictor of future product success. Among BOP network nodes, relationships and trust are important in determining the amount or degree of influence one can exert on a fellow network member. Homogeneity increases trust which in turn impacts the role of a hub as a force of influence. The centrality of hubs to networks is also a factor behind their role as information to the rest of the network passes through them, to a degree giving them control over the dissemination of information. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

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