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The purpose of this dissertation is to understand why individuals enrolled in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) fail to retrieve food vouchers, miss WIC appointments, and become inactive in program components. In Kentucky, mothers who fail to pick up food instruments for 60 days are automatically terminated from the program. The specific research questions that guided this study are: (1) Which segments of enrollees are at greatest and least risks of nonparticipation in the WIC program? (2) How do predisposing, enabling and need characteristics impact WIC nonparticipation among eligible mothers? (3) How do WIC enrollees describe their experiences using WIC? (4) What do WIC enrollees report as reasons for nonparticipation while still eligible? Addressing these research questions will inform the development of practical outreach solutions specifically tailored for the purpose of mitigating nonparticipation in WIC and contribute to our understanding of the factors that deter eligible families from using government assistance programs like WIC.

This qualitative focus groups analysis examines the harmful effects of violent video games on emotions and behavior by comparing violent video game player's responses to that of non-violent video game players of the same age group. Research on the effects of video games has been done since the 70s, yet more research is needed to better understand the potentially harmful emotional and behavioral effects of playing violent games, especially from the gamers' perspectives. This thesis presents a qualitative analysis of data obtained from focus group sessions among undergraduate college students. Results of the analysis supports the presence as well as absence of violent video game effects, according to violent and non-violent video gamers' personal experiences and in their own words.

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Mobile banking is an application of mobile computing which provides customers with the support needed to be able to bank anywhere, anytime using a mobile handheld device and a mobile service such as text messaging (SMS). Mobile banking removes space and time limitations from banking activities such as checking account balances, or transferring money from one account to another. In recent research and studies it was found that while mobile banking and more specifically SMS-based mobile banking applications have become popular in some countries and regions, they were still not widely used. This study identifies and investigates the factors which influence customers’ decision to use a specific form of mobile banking, and specifically focuses on the evaluation of SMS-based mobile banking in the context of New Zealand. The research model includes the basic concepts of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), as well as some constructs derived through a focus group discussion. The model is tested to determine its predictive power with respect to individual’s behaviour when considering the use of SMS-based mobile banking. A survey questionnaire was developed and employed to collect data from 250 AUT university students in New Zealand. The results of the data analysis contributes to the body of knowledge in the area by demonstrating that context specific factors such as service quality and service awareness are influencing user perceptions about the usefulness of SMS mobile banking which in turn affect intention to use and adoption. Secondly, the study demonstrates, on the example of SMS-based mobile banking, how a hybrid approach involving qualitative data collection and a subsequent quantitative survey can help investigate how user perceptions about usefulness and ease of use are formed. Although the study has its limitations, the implications of the results allow providing practical recommendations to the banking industry, and directions for further work.

<p>The long-term goal of this project has been to help strengthen the customer focus at the product development department of Pergo. To achieve this a Kansei Engineering case study was performed, to provide information about the chosen customer group, the contract market. </p><p>Kansei Engineering is a Japanese methodology for gathering and analysing information about the relation between the customer’s impression of a product and the actual physical properties of that same product. </p><p>The results show clear differences between the flooring entrepreneurs and the architects in their average ratings. The factor analysis led to four factors that are important when this group of customers evaluates laminate flooring, namely Reliable and practical, Modern design, Classic style and Nice and solid. </p><p>The regression analysis was done both on the 17 Kansei-words and on the factors. The type of decor and surface were found to have most influence on the customer’s impressions. Among the surfaces matt oiled turned out to be most popular and for most of the Kansei-words, the unexpected combination of wood- like decor and tile-format was rated the most positive.</p>

<p>The aim of this thesis was to identify important aspects of surgical nursing care, designing strategic and clinical quality indicators in postoperative pain management, investigate content validity, develop and evaluate psychometric properties of an instrument to measure the indicators, test the applicability of the instrument and investigate patient and nurse assessment.</p><p>To identify the important aspects of nursing care which might impact on quality of care in surgical wards, it was conducted 4 focus group interviews with clinical nurses (n=20). A tentative model with 15 categories in 2 dimensions, elements of performance and prerequisites, emerged from the data analysis. The categories were, e.g. detecting and acting on signs and symptoms, informing and educating, promoting relationships, responsibility and attitudes. The model was used as a foundation for developing indicators in postoperative pain management, one in each category, each supported by a literature review. To assess the content validity of the indicators, a questionnaire was compiled and sent to registered nurses with a special interest in pain (n=210) and to a random sample of clinical nurses working in surgical wards (n=321). The groups assessed the indicators as essential for achieving high quality, realistic to carry out and possible for nurses to influence management. The first group validated 14 of the 15 indicators and the second group validated 12 as “major” factors in terms of being essential to achieve high quality of care. The remaining factors were classified as “supportive”. No indicator was discarded.</p><p>To measure the indicators, an instrument was developed and psychometric properties were evaluated. The indicators were converted to statements suitable for a patient questionnaire and were scored on a 5-point scale with higher values indicating higher quality of care. Patients (n=198) answered the questionnaire on their second postoperative day. The inter-item and item-total correlation coefficients were in a satisfactory range, and Cronbach’s coefficient alpha (0.84) supported internal consistency reliability. Four sub-scales, entitled communication, action, trust and environment emerged from the factor analysis with a total variance of 61.4%. The total scale correlated (rs=0.53) with the single item pain-relief-satisfaction question. The patients who reported more pain than expected scored lower on the total scale and the patients who received epidural analgesia reported higher scores on the total scale. A nurse questionnaire, similar to the patient questionnaire, was compiled. The responsible nurse at the time (n=63) answered 196 questionnaires paired with the individual patient. The new instrument appeared to be useful in identifying important areas for improvement both from the patients’ and nurses’ perspectives, based on the number of disagreements (1 and 2). Differences were found among departments. The patients’ assessments on the environment sub-scale and the overall satisfaction question were higher than the nurses’ assessments. The findings suggest initial support for the instrument as a means to measure the quality of nursing care in postoperative pain management. Key words: quality indicators; health care, pain; postoperative, focus groups, psychometrics, questionnaires, nursing care.</p> / On the day of the public defence of the doctoral thesis the status of the articles III was: Accepted; article IV and V was: Accepted for publishing.

There is general consensus that context can be a rich source of information about an object's identity, location and scale. In fact, the structure of many real-world scenes is governed by strong configurational rules akin to those that apply to a single object. Here we introduce a simple probabilistic framework for modeling the relationship between context and object properties based on the correlation between the statistics of low-level features across the entire scene and the objects that it contains. The resulting scheme serves as an effective procedure for object priming, context driven focus of attention and automatic scale-selection on real-world scenes.

The present research tested whether and how regulatory focus as a motivational variable influences the ways in which people appraise, process, and react to events in romantic relationships. Regulatory focus theory distinguishes between (1) a prevention focus, which emphasizes the fulfillment of security needs, duties and obligations, and is associated with heightened sensitivity to aversive outcomes, and (2) a promotion focus, which emphasizes the fulfillment of nurturance needs, accomplishments and aspirations, and is associated with heightened sensitivity to rewarding outcomes. Based on regulatory focus theory, it was assumed that promotion and prevention focused people would appraise, react to, and process interpersonal events involving a romantic partner in different ways. In addition, it was expected that the distinct ways of experiencing such events are reflected in differences in relationship quality. Three studies using college student samples were conducted to test these notions. Evidence was found that individual differences in chronic prevention focus affect the ways in which people react to aversive events in relationships. No support was obtained for regulatory focus theory??s predictions regarding prevention focus processes in association with rewarding outcomes, and predictions related to the promotion focus system were also not supported. As expected, chronic promotion focus was related to higher relationship quality, and chronic prevention focus was associated with lower relationship quality. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

This paper investigates the nature of the attraction of XPs to clauseinitial position in German (and other languages). It argues that there are two different types of preposing. First, an XP can move when it is attracted by an EPP-like feature of Comp. Comp can, however, also attract elements that bear the formal marker of some semantic or pragmatic (information theoretic) function. This second type of movement is driven by the attraction of a formal property of the moved element. It has often been misanalysed as “operator” movement in the past. Japanese <i>wh</i>-questions always exhibit focus intonation (FI). Furthermore, the domain of FI exhibits a correspondence to the <i>wh</i>-scope. I propose that this phonology-semantics correspondence is a result of the cyclic computation of FI, which is explained under the notion of <i>Multiple Spell-Out</i> in the recent Minimalist framework. The proposed analysis makes two predictions: (1) embedding of an FI into another is possible; (2) (overt) movement of a <i>wh</i>-phrase to a phase edge position causes a mismatch between FI and <i>wh</i>-scope. Both predictions are tested experimentally, and shown to be borne out.