This study aimed to investigate the role of academic libraries in Saudi higher education in supporting distance learning (DL) in the country. Two cases, known for their history of offering DL programmes in the country, were selected. These were Imam Mohammad Bin Saud Islamic University (IMBSIU) in Riyadh and King Abdul-Aziz University (KAU) in Jeddah. A mixed methodology, which included both qualitative and qualitative approaches, was used. Triangulation of data collections methods was achieved by implementing a document analysis, interviews and questionnaires. The results indicated that DL in the country is transforming traditional approaches into fully automated techniques through the implementation of e-learning via the Internet; the Saudi government is supporting this approach. However, the results also showed that policies of academic libraries lack rules which recognise DL stakeholders right to be served and supported. Little or no co-operation was found to exist between academic libraries and DL deanships in both case studies; this could hinder the efforts made by academic libraries to serve and support DL stakeholders. In addition, textbooks were found to be the main source of learning and teaching in DL, thus reducing the desire of DL stakeholders to use their academic library. The lack of DL guidelines was found to be responsible for making distance learners less likely to use information resources other than textbooks. Official interactions were weak between DL stakeholders, especially learners with their instructors, and with academic and non-academic support such as academic library services. This was found to be responsible for a lack of academic library support specifically designed for DL stakeholders, and many other factors relating to the existing condition of academic libraries were also found to be significant in failing to recognize the right of DL stakeholders to be served. However, overall, participants attitudes toward the importance of academic libraries in supporting DL stakeholders were positive. Moreover, participants expressed a desire to find solutions as soon as possible to overcome the current lack of information services designed for DL stakeholders. According to this study s results, several recommendations have been formulated related mainly to the importance of building co-operation between academic libraries and DL deanships in the country. It is concluded that there is an urgent need for DL stakeholders needs and rights to be recognised and supported by any means in order to improve the quality of DL. Hence, several models/solutions, which can be implemented in either the short or the long term, are proposed here in order to provide solutions for the current lack of information services being offered to DL stakeholders by both academic libraries and DL deanships.

Context: The aim of the proposed research is to investigate autism early intervention in Saudi Arabia, taking into account the reality that such services are in a relatively early stage of development in Saudi Arabia due to the current limited experience in the autism domain generally and in early intervention programmes specifically. As such, this study was intended to act as a basis for gaining a greater understanding about how such services could be developed in Saudi Arabia in the future. Indeed, special attention was given to the cultural specifications to see if such programmes can be implemented and adapted to fit the needs of the families in Saudi Arabia. Objective: The aim is to develop the parental training programme that emerges from parents‟ needs in relation to their children with autism in which a parental training programme can be developed that leads to the establishment of a home-based intervention programme. Method: The constructivist grounded theory approach used to identify programme components, their implementation and effectiveness. Data collected from (20 interviews, 251questionnaires, 8 programme evaluation sheets, parental stress index short form (PSI-SF). Results: The present study suggested a parental training course framework with a detailed description of its components, delivery approach and evaluation process. This study also provided clear evidence that the current suggested parental training framework targeted the participants' needs and provided them with the support, the information and the skills that they needed at the post diagnosis stage. Conclusion: This result can sensitise services providers in establishing a parental training programme to help empower parents to administer some of the therapies to their autistic children that are needed on a day to day basis, with the minimal amount of stress to the parental life style.

The aim of this study is to assess the extent to which the Saudi Arabia National Dialogue and activities of King Abdulaziz Center for National Dialogue (KACND) represent a viable attempt to address socio-political issues; whether the ongoing National Dialogue process accurately reflects the aspirations and concerns of contemporary Saudi society; what its impact on socio-political development may be; and how it relates to wider regime strategies and to the evolution of the Saudi polity. The thesis examines KACND’s institutions, practices and impacts, as well as Saudis’ perceptions of all these. It does so by embedding the analysis in a survey of the evolution of broader Saudi socio-political dynamics; drawing in particular on Gramsci, it asks whether the system is moving from a form of patrimonial state to one of ideological hegemony, and whether the KACND is a catalyst in this transition or may even be part of the apparatus that is driving this transition, including its indirect or unintended effects. To that end, the thesis examines the mutual relationship between KACND and the key Saudi social constituencies, with their attendant issues. In particular, it explores the extent to which the KACND’s activities directly and indirectly impact on internal cross-constituency communication and discourse in the Kingdom. The thesis explores the legitimisation of state-society dialogue in Saudi Arabia, focusing on the direct and indirect consequences of the National Dialogue process with reference to the role and activities of KACND. It examines the expanding activities of KACND, including the evolving range of issues discussed as part of the institution’s activities, and the scope of participants. It highlights the shift from ideology-based National Dialogue Meetings such as on national unity and women’s rights, to service-based National Dialogues such as on employment and health. It also examines the newly established Cultural Discourse and assesses the impact of this initiative as a space for ideological debate. The study is based on extensive fieldwork in Saudi Arabia from 2009 to 2011, referencing information and official documentation not previously available, and drawing on findings from a wide range of focus groups, interviews, and participant observation with National Dialogue participants, KACND officials, government ministers, lawyers, journalists, scholars and members of minority constituencies

This thesis identifies the relationship between economic factors and non-economic factors, and the relative weight of each, in the conduct of Middle East foreign policies but with special reference to Saudi Arabia and Iran between 2001 and 2012. In the Saudi case, economic factors are contextualized within its traditional themes of maintaining security and stability through international alliances and promoting stable and long term energy export markets. In the case of Iran, economic factors such as the role of sanctions in facilitating closer ties with a range of anti-western states are put into perspective by other factors such as national security issues and emerging splits in the decision making elite. The research draws on a conceptual hybrid of constructivism and omni-balancing and by doing so pays particular attention to the perceptions of foreign policy decision makers in their assessments of the domestic, regional and international environments. The conceptual framework therefore accounts for historical events such as the Islamic revolution and perceived hostility to it, and enduring Saudi-Iranian tensions based on sectarian and ideological struggles for dominance across the Middle East. Oil policy, including oil production, pricing and security of supply and demand, is found to be the paramount economic factor in the foreign policies of Saudi Arabia and Iran, but weighted in favour of the former. As swing producer in OPEC, Saudi Arabia needs to maintain sustainable oil supplies to its allies in the West, and increasingly East, whilst leveraging its oil reserves against adversaries such as Iran. In contrast, Iran has the incentive, but a dwindling capability, to maximise its oil revenues to fund the national budget amid tightening U.S.-led sanctions designed to curb its nuclear programme. The thesis also finds that economic factors such as ‘riyal politik’ as well as non-oil trade and investment deals are less effective in Saudi and Iranian foreign policy. This is because they tend to be offered or utilised as short-term leveraging mechanisms in new or unstable bilateral relationships with a variety of state or nonstate actors which do not always share their ideological perspective or interests. To overcome significant geo-strategic and ideological incompatibilities, reciprocal confidence building measures and active engagement on a broad set of contentious issues is prescribed.

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This thesis explores Shi’a-Sunni relations in Gulf politics during a period of regional upheaval, starting with the 2003 invasion of Iraq through the Arab revolts of early 2011. It seeks to understand the conditions under which sectarian distinctions become a prominent feature of the Gulf political landscape, focusing on the three Gulf countries that have been affected most by sectarian tensions: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. The study analyzes the contagion effect of the civil war in Iraq, the 2006 war in Lebanon, and the Arab Spring on local sectarian dynamics in the three states. Specifically, it explores the role of domestic institutions—parliaments and other quasi-democratic structures, the media, and clerical establishments—in tempering or exacerbating sectarianism. It finds that the maturity and strength of participatory institutions in each state played a determinant role in the level of sectarianism resulting from dramatic shifts in the regional environment since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. I conclude, therefore, that the real roots of the so-called “rise of the Shi’a” phenomena lie in the domestic political context of each state, rather than in the regional policies of Iran or the contagion effect of events in Iraq or Lebanon. Although the Gulf Shi’a took a degree of inspiration from the actions of their co-religionists in Iraq, Iran and Lebanon, they ultimately strove for greater rights in a non-sectarian, nationalist framework. The rise of sectarianism in the Gulf has been largely the product of excessive alarm by entrenched Sunni elites or the result of calculated attempts by regimes to discredit Shi’a political actors by portraying them as proxies for Iran, Iraq, or the Lebanese Hizballah. What is qualitatively different about the post-2003 period is not the level of mobilization by the Shi’a, but rather the intensity of threat perception by Gulf regimes and Sunni Islamists.

This study proposes a model of e-shopping continuance intentions that incorporate the revised technology acceptance model and expectation confirmation theory to measure continuance online shopping intentions within Saudi Arabia. Using structural equation modelling to confirm the model fit, and a 463-person sample, the author finds that perceived usefulness, enjoyment, and subjective norms determine online shopping continuance intentions, across male (30% of the sample) and female (70%) respondents. The structural weights are largely equivalent, yet the regression paths from site quality to perceived usefulness and perceived usefulness to continuation intentions are not invariant across the research sample. This research thus moves beyond consideration of online shopping intentions to include factors that may affect online shopping continuance. The research model is able to explain 61% of the variance in intentions to continue shopping online. Therefore, online strategies cannot ignore either direct or indirect differences in continuance intentions due to behaviour differences among shoppers in Saudi Arabia. With the high percentages of participants from the main populated regions in Saudi Arabia, the research model can be generalized across Saudi Arabia. Thus, the research has added to the limited literature on online repurchase intention or continuance intention by testing the proposed model in a context that has never before been tested. Furthermore, few prior studies use SEM as their methodological approach, and even fewer apply invariance analysis to verify behavioural differences based on gender, regional, education, e-shopping experience, and e-shopping spending with a sample obtained from Saudi Arabia. This study addresses these various knowledge gaps. Moreover, this thesis provides managers with useful and important information they can use to plan their Web sites and marketing strategies. The findings will help e-retailers to identify which web site attributes influence consumers’ e-shopping intentions, and thus improve the effectiveness of their e-shopping sites. A more thorough understanding of e-shopping continuance intention helps e-retailers to entice e-shoppers to shop online more, and entice non-online shoppers to shop online. Keywords: Internet shopping, e-shopping, technology acceptance, behavioural differences, continuance intentions, online shopping, Saudi Arabia.

As a result of the increasing development in the field of Information Systems (IS) in the last decades, new concepts have appeared to serve specific requirements and needs (Smith 2010; Almarabeh and AbuAli 2010). E-government is one of these concepts, which appeared in 1993 (Silva 2006) to become one of the main tools for governments around the world to enhance the services provided by governments and their agencies (Atallah 2001). Investigating the literature shows that there are common issues in all e-government implementation projects which can be summarized as follows: 1) e-government implementation projects in their nature are vast, and usually their success is critical for the country. 2) As the factors affecting the success of the implementation vary from different perspectives such technical, human, and political perspectives, many overlaps and contradictions may appear while maintaining the success factors (West 2006). 3). Despite this verity in the perspectives, e-government implementation project in general should be treated as one unit, and success factors from all perspectives should be considered together in order to have a successful project (Cater et al. 2004). 4) The size of e-government projects and the complexity resulted from perspectives verity have created the need not only for identifying the success factors related to the process of e-government implementation, but also for creating frameworks for managing the implementation process (Chen et al. 2009). In this research, a holistic framework for e-government implementation that considers the complexity of having several perspectives affecting the implementation process during its stages is proposed. We claim that this would solve the expected conflicts that may appear while considering different success factors from different perspectives, and it is supposed to be in compliance with the environment’s situation. Approaching this problem would be an added value to the literature of e-government implementation and the literature of the IS field in general because the claimed holistic framework for e-government implementation is not addressed as an academic research. Also, targeting this problem is distinguished from the sort of problem that a government agency or its consultants would themselves be working on by being a generic framework that fits all countries’ situations, and by considering all perspectives rather than focusing only on delivering the project requirements. In order to achieve this, three artifacts are proposed in this research using Design Science discipline as guidelines for designing these artifacts which are: 1) designing a model represents the success factors for e-government implementation as extracted from the literature, 2) creating a framework for the success process of e-government implementation, and 3) designing a physical instantiation for part of the project of e-government implementation in Saudi Arabia in order to evaluate the proposed framework. The findings of evaluating the proposed framework show tangible improvements in the implementation progress. Because e-government implementation projects are influenced by their environment, the results of this evaluation can be generalized only to other environments similar to Saudi Arabia, and determining the applicability of the proposed framework to other regions is left to future researches.

In recent times, higher educational institutions have faced a challenge from the radical demands of their students. With the spread of students’ use of Web 2.0 applications, educational institutions also need to move with this trend and adopt Web 2.0 applications in education. As a contribution to the field of innovation in higher education, this study explores the pedagogical affordances of a social networking site (SNS) in higher education in Saudi Arabia. A case study methodology informed by Design-Based Research DBR approach was used. This approach was characterized by iterations of design and evaluation. The study was applied in two phases: Phase One was applied in the University of Exeter to evaluate a previously designed course, “The ICT Future”, with the innovation of a social networking site. The result of this phase was a framework which was applied in Phase Two, in King Saud University, which contributed to the design of an innovative course using social networking site, on "Web design". The data were collected by mixed methods: using stimulated recall interviews, reflexive report, and observation of the interaction on the social networking site. The findings of the study were used to help revise the framework for the design of a course which utilised the social networking site. The framework developed in this study was based on the findings of the pedagogical affordances of the SNS. The study concludes that the pedagogical affordances of the social networking sites are: reflection, stimulation, content-creation, collaboration, and online discussion. These affordances support students in higher education. Some important challenges in implementing the social networking site in higher education were highlighted. The study presents the need to change pedagogical practices in universities, and discusses various ways in which these changes could be implemented.

Aim: In recent years, research has concluded that social anxiety plays a key role in quality of life. The overall aim of this research was to evaluate social anxiety in adolescents with respect to determining how social anxiety affects quality of life. Method: This study was a cross-sectional study. A pilot study was conducted to cross-culturally adapt all scales by the recommended translated and back-translated method. The correlations of socio-demographic parameters with the SAS-A scores were examined. Data from a sample of 564 students (273 boys 48.4%, 291 girls 51.6%) were analysed. Adolescents from Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom were screened and compared. Confirmatory factor analysis was utilised to build the proposed model based on prior research and theoretical findings. Finding: No significant sex difference in the SAS-A total score, fear of negative evaluation and social avoidance were found. Comparing the boys and girls on SPIN scores, Fear, Avoidance and Authority Problems, the results showed that boys reported higher in SPIN total, fear and avoidance (except authority problem subscale score) than did girls. SAS-A scores were higher in those with a low socio-economic level. Moreover, social anxiety symptoms among Saudi adolescents were more severe in boys. Results showed that adolescents without social anxiety scored higher on quality of life and its subscales than adolescents with social anxiety as measured by ASA-A. No significant difference was found in psychical health. Adolescents without social anxiety scored higher on quality of life and its subscales than adolescents with social anxiety as measured by SIAS. Adolescents without social anxiety scored on Positive Individualism more than adolescents with social anxiety. No significant difference was found in Positive Relatedness. In the cross-cultural study, the results showed no significant difference on SIAS scores for Saudi adolescents and British adolescents. However, a marginally significant differences was found on BAI scores, where Saudi adolescents reported higher level of anxiety than British adolescents. The British sample reported higher on the fear of negative evaluation than the Saudi sample. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was utilised to test hypotheses on the links between scores on the study scales. The findings indicate that the overall fit of the SAS-A model was acceptable. Direct effects between the study variables and significant positive correlation between cognitive factors and social anxiety were found. Mediation effects of SAS-A and SPIN were investigated by reporting direct effects, indirect effects and total effects. Results indicte that social anxiety significantly mediated the relationships between subjective anxiety, positive individualism, and cognitive and environmental health. Conclusion: It is therefore imperative that socially anxious students be provided with appropriate consultations and treatment so that they can improve their quality of life through integrating better with social institutions. If untreated, the impairment caused by social phobia could lead to poor academic and professional outcomes, as well as poor psychosocial outcomes.