Policies mandating HIV status disclosure to decrease incidence create ethical challenges for physicians on whether to breach or maintain infected patients' confidentiality. In Sub-Saharan Africa where HIV incidence is high, there is a need for clear guidelines/policies on making confidentiality decisions. The purpose of this quantitative quasi experiment was to determine whether the gender, gender orientation, and sexual relationship of an infected patient and physicians' demographics predicted physicians' decisions to breach confidentiality. In Plateau State, Nigeria, 222 physicians were given vignette questionnaires containing 6 different descriptions of gender, gender orientation, and sexual relationships of a hypothetical patient. Each physician decided to maintain or breach a patient's confidentiality in a variant. The utilitarian framework was applied, and data were analyzed using logistic regression models. A majority of the participants (70%) indicated a breach by directly informing sex partners or informing or referring to the health department. Only physicians' feature of previous confidentiality breach significantly predicted the decision to breach [p =.028, Exp (B) =.1.345, 95%CI (1.032, 1.753)]. The results suggested that regardless of patients' characteristics, physicians will breach confidentiality to protect sex partners potentially at risk of HIV infection. These findings may bring about positive social change by clarifying reasons for physicians' breach decisions, by informing the development of physicians' decision guidelines that would enhance physicians' practices in managing discordant couples, which could reduce HIV transmission among discordant couples leading to better and longer lives.

Even though the majority of companies have realised the benefits of implementing sustainability practices into their business strategies today, the problem is that the marketing of these activities still has a negative impact on the environment. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to examine if the impact of sustainable advertisements can influence the purchase decisions of young adults who show loyalty to another brand. In order to reach this purpose, qualitative research was conducted using an abductive approach through 23 semi-structured individual interviews with consumers between the ages of 19-30. This enabled us to get an in-depth understanding of their subjective consumption behaviour in comparison to sustainable advertisements. This report draws on existing literature which states that sustainability promotions positively impact the consumer decision process and that consumers’ rarely switch from a brand they are highly loyal to. The results show that sustainable advertisements' impact on young adults is dependent on the product-involvement category. In order for sustainable advertisements to have a chance to generate a switching behaviour among young adults for high-involvement products, the message must provide clear and transparent information regarding the product, because the perception of brands tends to be more valuable. However, this is not as important for low-involvement products since sustainable messages can provoke a switching behaviour based on emotional appeals. Therefore, this research contributes to companies which seek to use sustainable marketing for high- or low-involvement products.

Teachers' decisions are a powerful influence on student learning and it is important to fully document accomplished teachers' instructional decisions, as well as to investigate possible influences on those decisions. Shakespearean dramas are central to high school curricula across the U.S. and pose particular instructional challenges, therefore teachers' decisions about teaching these texts are of particular interest. There is limited empirical research, however, about these instructional decisions. Thus, the purpose of this study was to describe how four accomplished high school English teachers working on a single campus make instructional decisions about teaching a Shakespearean play. Specifically, research questions addressed teachers' decisions regarding the teaching of a Shakespearean play and various influences on those decisions (self-reports and inferences from the data). Case study methodology was used, including an inductive analysis of individual teacher interviews, classroom observations, focus group, instructional artifacts, and researcher's journal. The findings revealed that instructional activities described by these teachers addressed support for meaning-making during four stages of reading instruction: (a) before, during, and after; (b) before; (c) during; and (d) after. Comparison of these cases suggests that, although each teacher brings personal preferences and unique background knowledge to her instructional decisions, all make decisions to promote student engagement and student construction of meaning. Regarding influences on these teachers' decisions about teaching the Shakespearean play, four categories were identified: (a) response to students; (b) aspects of the text; (c) response to contextual constraints and supports; and (d) personal preferences and background experiences. Individual teacher differences are clearly a strong influence, even among this group of colleagues on the same campus. Also, two influences not reported explicitly by the teachers suggest a complex integration of these influences. One is their intuitive thinking, which deserves a closer investigation in future research. The other proposes that each teacher's decisions are influenced by her instructional interaction working model (IIWM), a conceptual framework that shapes each teacher's conversational patterns, non-verbal behaviors, and other interactional patterns. Further research should explore the use of such a model to describe and explain the complexity of teachers' decisions, particularly when teaching complex, challenging tasks and texts.

Background: The phenomenon of CSR has become an increasingly adopted strategy among companies, as a result of the frequent discussion on climate change. At the same time, consumers have attained further awareness regarding sustainability and how consumption impacts the environment. Further, the fast fashion industry has been highlighted as one of the most harmful and unethical industries that negatively impacts the environment and lives of all. Thus, it is interesting to explore which factors influence consumers’ purchase decisions, and determine whether sustainability and CSR are taken into consideration. Purpose: This thesis aims to explore millennial consumers’ attitudes toward Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), as well as which factors consumers take into consideration when they are making purchase decisions. Method: In order to meet the research objectives, data has been collected with exploratory and qualitative methods. The research philosophy follows interpretivism, and adopts an abductive approach. Furthermore, 13 semi- structured interviews were conducted, which aim to explore and provide and understanding for consumers’ attitudes and perception. Interview participants were selected based on a purposive sampling method, with two identified criteria. Additionally, a coding system was constructed based on the literature review, which was used to analyse the data collected from the interviews. Conclusion: The results, extracted from the empirical data and analysis, suggest that there are two categories with factors influencing millennial consumers’ purchase decisions. The first category includes product related factors, whereas the other category includes a number of consumer related factors. The empirical results further conclude that the participants generally experience positive attitudes toward sustainability and CSR, while product related factors are more influential in the decision-making process.

Background:                Diseases caused by nutrition-related factors are globally increasing. Consumers can use help making healthier food choices. Nutrition labeling, front-of-pack, in particular, is reviewed as an important policy tool to assist consumers in this matter. Research found that front-of-pack nutrition labeling is influencing consumer’s product choice but no study researched the influence on Millennials while they are the most interesting consumer group of these times due to their large size and increasing power.   Purpose:                  Explore how Front-Of-Package Nutrition Labeling (FOPNL) is influencing Millennials to make healthier food purchasing decisions.   Method:                       To attain the purpose, a qualitative study was conducted. A theoretical framework was created to evaluate excising factors related to FOPNL that are influencing consumer purchasing behaviour. To create in-depth insights on the influence of front-of-package nutrition labeling on Millennials, 18 semi-structured interviews have been conducted.   Conclusion:                 The results show that the influence of FOPNL on Millennials is dependant of the type of label. Currently, the main problem concerning all FOPNL types is the lack of believability of these claims, which makes them less influential on Millennial purchasing behavior. Even though, interpretive nutrient-specific claims are perceived as the most influential FOPNL type. Additionally, the influence varies depending on trial or repeat purchase.

Bakgrund: All professionell idrott är mer eller mindre beroende av sponsorer för att kunna bedriva en bra verksamhet. Problematiken ligger i att herridrotten får en betydligt större del av den totala sponsringssumman. Sponsring inom damidrott är ett relativt outforskat område. Leksands IF är en välkänd förening i Sverige som har ett damlag i den högsta divisionen SDHL. Syfte: Syftet med uppsatsen är att förstå och beskriva vilka faktorer som är avgörande för företag i valet av sponsring av LIF-Dam i ishockey. Teori: Vi har använt oss av teorier som är relevanta för att beskriva och förstå varför företag sponsrar LIF-Dam. Metod: En kvalitativ metod valdes för uppsatsen där intervjuer genomfördes för att få en djupare förståelse om vilka faktorer som är avgörande för sponsring av LIF-Dam. Slutsats: Det finns flera faktorer som spelar in i beslutet att sponsra LIF-Dam. Två faktorer framstår som prominenta: värderingar och samhällsansvar. Det finns fortfarande väldigt mycket kvar att forska om inom detta område. / Background: All professional sports are dependent of sponsorship to run a good operation. One main issue is that men’s sports receive far more of the funds than women’s sports. Sponsorship in women’s sports remain an unexploited area. Leksands IF is a well-known club in Sweden and their women’s team plays in the SDHL. Purpose: The purpose of this essay is to understand and describe factors that are key when a company decides to sponsor LIF-Dam. Theory: We have used theories that are relevant to understand and describe why companies choose to sponsor LIF-Dam. Method: A qualitative method was used in this essay and interviews were made to better understand the different factors that are prominent when deciding to sponsor LIF-Dam. Findings: Several factors were identified of why companies sponsor LIF-Dam. However, two of the factors are prominent: core values and social responsibilities. This area of sponsorship remains unexplored.

<p>  </p> <p>The transportation sector is witnessing rapid development of autonomous vehicle (AV) technology. While an AV can be more energy efficient than a conventional human-driven vehicle, their environmental impacts at the fleet and city level could be either significantly better or worse than the traditional systems, depending on how people use them – adopting AVs as privately-owned AVs (PAV) or centrally-managed shared AVs (SAV) will result in very different fleet size, vehicle-miles-travelled (VMT), and carbon emissions. To understand the environmental impacts of AVs at the city level, it is critical to consider who are likely to adopt which types of AVs, their travel demands, and the associated AV operation. Previous studies evaluating the potential impacts of AVs on the environment are limited by the existing travel demand models, which do not have sociodemographic information linked to the travel demands to support modeling of AV adoption or only generate trip origin and destination at the zonal level that is insufficient to support modeling of shared AV use. Additionally, existing research mainly focused on SAV systems and did not consider the potential competition between SAV and PAV. It is necessary to compare the system performance between the privately-owned AV system and the centrally-managed shared AV system and under the scenarios that both systems co-exist to inform AV system development. Furthermore, although AVs can help reduce fleet size through shared use, each vehicle will be used more intensively due to empty VMT, resulting in acceleration of vehicle replacement and increased need for vehicle production. To fully quantify the environmental impacts of a city’s AV system, it is also important to take a life-cycle perspective, considering not only vehicle use but also upstream vehicle manufacturing and downstream vehicle disposal with fleet replacement. </p> <p>To address these gaps, this work proposed an integrated agent-based model to quantify the environmental impacts of PAV and SAV. The integrated model includes four key components: 1) a travel demand generation model that links high resolution individual and household travel demand with socio-demographics information, 2) an AV adoption model that evaluates individual’s and household’s likelihood to accept AV and preference to use PAV, SAV or conventional vehicle, 3) an AV operation model to simulate the system performance of different AV fleets, and 4) an AV life cycle model that assesses different AV systems’ emissions considering vehicle replacement. Applying the proposed integrated model to a case study of Miami, the results have presented that the existing studies may overestimate AV systems’ environmental benefits, due to lack of travel demand data that can support the proposed integrated modeling, inconsideration of individual and household AV adoption decisions, and/or biased evaluation that does not account for all phases in AV system’s life-cycle. Case study results have showed that SAVs are more environmentally beneficial than PAVs but are less likely to be adopted by travelers and households, due to low cost of PAV use based on existing AV survey findings and current AV pricing knowledge. To promote SAV adoption to gain more positive environmental impacts, it is crucial to optimize SAV’s vehicle and system design to reduce service fee, waiting time, and in-vehicle value of time. The case study also found that due to more frequent vehicle replacement resulted from more intensively vehicle utilization, an AV systems’ environmental benefits from the operation phase can be counterbalanced by the impacts from other life-cycle phases. To achieve a life-cycle emission breakeven point, SAVs and PAVs need to improve fuel efficiency during the operation phase by 5% and 16% or reduce per-vehicle manufacture and disposal emissions by 36% and 5%. The proposed models and findings of this work can inform decision making for SAV operators, policy makers, and transportation planners. </p>

With the current technological trends pointing to people having more capabilities to independently manage their financial future, the financial knowledge a person possesses will become evermore essential to create a sustainable financial future. Simultaneously, the growth of social media platforms and users have substantially increased over the past ten years, which has allowed people to find and create countless types of content. The potential problem culminating from these trends is that people who do not have the necessary financial knowledge to make educated investment decisions will have the opportunity to do so. Furthermore, if people have a lack of understanding about financial concepts, supplementing their lack of knowledge with information and recommendations from social media could lead to people making investment decisions based on unknown individuals' opinions. As a result, this study aims to determine if there is a connection between the financial literacy a person possesses and the usage of social media. We found that the financial literacy of university students in Sweden was not a determinant of social media influences on their investment decisions. Despite this overall conclusion, it was apparent that every participant in this study had been influenced by social media in some capacity when making investment decisions whether they intentionally or unintentionally used social media as a reference or unexpected circumstance.

Early-stage investors increasingly impact the surging video game industry. Thus, understanding their thought processes provides vital insight for entrepreneurs. This thesis explores how early-stage investors assess investment opportunities in the Swedish game industry by presenting semistructured interviews with three prominent angel investors. Thematic analysis was performed on the interview data to extract significant themes regarding investors’ thought processes. Themes were then contrasted with previous research on investor decision-making to establish emergent patterns in the game industry. Results indicate that investors regard the composition and reliability of the team and pursue long-term involvement in companies. It is particularly important for teams to inspire trust. If investors can connect to teams personally, it facilitates successful long-term collaboration. Future research should focus on interviewing investors in other flourishing game markets, such as the U.S. or Chinese. Congruent results may lay the foundation for a framework to aid developers with acquiring funds in the broader game industry.

Since the emergence of big data, traditional business intelligence systems have been unable to meet most of the information demands in many data-driven organisations. Nowadays, big data analytics is perceived to be the solution to the challenges related to information processing of big data and decision-making of most data-driven organisations. Irrespective of the promised benefits of big data, organisations find it difficult to prove and realise the value of the investment required to develop and maintain big data analytics. The reality of big data is more complex than many organisations’ perceptions of big data. Most organisations have failed to implement big data analytics successfully, and some organisations that have implemented these systems are struggling to attain the average promised value of big data. Organisations have realised that it is impractical to migrate the entire traditional business intelligence (BI) system into big data analytics and there is a need to integrate these two types of systems. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate a framework for creating a hybrid data-driven decision support system that combines components from traditional business intelligence and big data analytics systems. The study employed an interpretive qualitative research methodology to investigate research participants' understanding of the concepts related to big data, a data-driven organisation, business intelligence, and other data analytics perceptions. Semi-structured interviews were held to collect research data and thematic data analysis was used to understand the research participants’ feedback information based on their background knowledge and experiences. The application of the organisational information processing theory (OIPT) and the fit viability model (FVM) guided the interpretation of the study outcomes and the development of the proposed framework. The findings of the study suggested that data-driven organisations collect data from different data sources and process these data to transform them into information with the goal of using the information as a base of all their business decisions. Executive and senior management roles in the adoption of a data-driven decision-making culture are key to the success of the organisation. BI and big data analytics are tools and software systems that are used to assist a data-driven organisation in transforming data into information and knowledge. The suggested challenges that organisations experience when they are trying to integrate BI and big data analytics were used to guide the development of the framework that can be used to create a hybrid data-driven decision support system. The framework is divided into these elements: business motivation, information requirements, supporting mechanisms, data attributes, supporting processes and hybrid data-driven decision support system architecture. The proposed framework is created to assist data-driven organisations in assessing the components of both business intelligence and big data analytics systems and make a case-by-case decision on which components can be used to satisfy the specific data requirements of an organisation. Therefore, the study contributes to enhancing the existing literature position of the attempt to integrate business intelligence and big data analytics systems. / Dissertation (MIT (Information Systems))--University of Pretoria, 2021. / Informatics / MIT (Information Systems) / Unrestricted