South African nurses are emigrating for greater prospects abroad – a weakening of the healthcare system. Nurses play a critical role in health care globally as well as in South Africa. Work engagement or lack thereof may be the reason why so many nurses decide to emigrate. This study aimed to get a better understanding of whether nurses working more specifically with mentally and physically challenged ‘children’ experience work engagement. The focus will be on the resources and demands that nurse’s face in their work environment and whether these contribute to feelings of work engagement. A qualitative research design was used to collect data in this study. The study took the form of a cross sectional survey design with a sample of 8 nurses from a home for physically and mentally challenged individual’s in the Durban, KwaZulu-Natal region. The data was collected with the use of a biographical questionnaire and an interview schedule. The resulting data was analysed using thematic content analysis with the aid of NVIVO 9. The study found that the nurse’s do experience work engagement despite the circumstances they are exposed to. The study also found the resources the nurses were presented with aided in them experiencing work engagement. A love for their job contributed to feelings of work engagement. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2012.

Abstract This study used an exploratory research focus to investigate if making electricity consumption public and subject to social norms and networks resulted in consumption decreases for households in Milton, Ontario. In the first phase, Milton Hydro identified customers who fell within an average annual electricity consumption category and these customers were invited to participate by mail. Due to lack of participant uptake, cold-calling, targeting of service and faith groups and commuters, and snowball sampling were employed to obtain a total participant size of 17. The second phase saw participants grouped according to social network type (occupational, faith group, etc) and exposed to approval or disapproval indicators within their group about their daily electricity consumption rates via an on-line ‘energy pool’. There were five main groups: one of neighbours, one of members of a faith group, one of members of a company, one of strangers and one of a control group. Group members saw other members’ indicators with the exception of the control group, whose indicators were privately delivered. All group’s electricity consumption was tracked through daily smart meter readings. Participants also had the option of commenting on each other’s electricity use via an online ‘comment box’. In the third phase participants were asked to participate in a questionnaire to assess: 1) the perceived efficacy of the intervention; 2) perceptions of electricity consumption; and 3) the influence of the group on these perceptions. This sequential methodology was chosen for its ability to “...explain significant (or non-significant) results, outlier results, or surprising results” (Cresswell, 2006, p. 72). The findings of this exploratory research seem to suggest the following: 1) that publicity or group type does not seem to affect electricity consumption in comparative electricity consumption feedback for this study; 2) that participants used injunctive norms to comment on their electricity consumption but directed these comments solely at themselves; and 3) that the stronger the relationships in the group, the more likely participants were to engage with the website through checking it and commenting on it. This study may be useful to those in the fields of: 1) electricity conservation who wish to leverage feedback technologies; 2) social networks who wish to better understand how tie strength interacts with social norms and; 3) those in social marketing who wish to develop norm-based campaigns.

Adolescents are disproportionately affected by a wide range of STDs due to high level of personal risk behaviors and poor access to STD prevention services. As documented in numerous previous studies, STDs could lead to many serious consequences to adolescents’ health and the overall well being of society. One prominent concern is that STDs increase adolescent’s risk in acquiring HIV infection. Among all STDs, Chlamydia is the most prevalent in adolescents as well as in the general population. No previous studies have attempted to examine the social interaction of adolescent population heavily affected by Chlamydia. In this study, we would like to take a step forward to identify the difference in behavioral risk level between Chlamydia positive and negative adolescent social network and to describe any impacts of these groups on the transmission of other STDs using social network analysis of data collected from adolescent population in Dekalb County, Georgia. The results indicated highest behavioral risk in the negative girl index respondents’ contacts followed by those of positive boys, positive girls and finally negative boys. However STD prevalence in the contacts among these different groups did not follow the same pattern. Prevalence of STD is highest in the negative girls’ contact group followed by that of positive boys, negative boys; and interestingly positive boys’ contacts exhibit the lowest STD rate. As informed by the results, the presence of infection is not a sufficient indicator of risks; thus, network characteristic was also examined to accurately determine transmission dynamics in this population. Social and sexual network structures among these four different index groups and their contacts suggested low level of STD transmission.

Magistro baigiamojo darbo tikslas – remiantis e-verslo aspektais įvertinti, kaip virtualios bendruomenės nulemia interneto vartotojų vartojimo įpročius. Tokia tema yra aktuali, nes sparčiai didėjant interneto vartotojų skaičiui Lietuvoje, atsiranda vis daugiau galimybių kurtis lietuviškoms virtualioms bendruomenėms ir plėtotis e-verslui. Šiame darbe išanalizuotos ir ištirtos pasaulio ir Lietuvos virtualios bendruomenės, įvertinta, kaip ir kokį poveikį tos bendruomenės daro paprastam interneto vartotojui ir e-verslo organizacijoms, iškeltos pagrindinės virtualių bendruomenių ir interneto svetainių teikiamų paslaugų naudingumo problemos bei pateikti siūlymai, kaip šias problemas spręsti. Tyrimo metu buvo atlikta lietuviškų virtualių bendruomenių internetinių puslapių turinio analizė, kurios metu nustatytos ir įvertintos populiariausių lietuviškų virtualių bendruomenių internetinės svetainės bei tų svetainių naudojamos priemonės, skirtos pritraukti interneto vartotojų dėmesį. Taip pat tyrimo metu buvo atlikta Lietuvos interneto vartotojų apklausa, kurios metu tirta kaip virtualios bendruomenės nulemia interneto vartotojų vartojimo įpročius. Atlikus minėtus tyrimus paaiškėjo, kad virtualios bendruomenės stipriai įtakoja interneto vartotojus dalyvauti virtualiose bendruomenėse bei pirkti prekes ir paslaugas internetu. Pagrindinės to priežastys yra internetinė reklama ir diskusijų forumų dalyvių reiškiama nuomonė. Be to, tyrimo metu ištirta, kad kuo labiau lankytojai pasitiki... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / This Master's final work aim - according to e-business aspects of the virtual community determines the consumption habits of Internet users. This topic is timely, because the rapidly increasing number of Internet users in Lithuania, there are more opportunities for the creation of Lithuanian virtual communities and the development of e-business. The paper was examined, the most popular virtual communities, establishes the basic building-up of their tendencies. The study was carried out in the Lithuanian virtual community web site content analysis, which identified and assessed the most popular Lithuanian virtual community web sites and the use of measures designed to attract the attention of Internet users. As well as the study was conducted Lithuanian Internet users in the survey, which was studied as a virtual community determines the consumption habits of Internet users. After those tests showed that the virtual community to strongly influence Internet users participate in virtual communities and the purchase of goods and services. The main reasons is an online advertising and discussion forums, participants in that opinion. In addition, the study examined, the more the visitors on the security of the Internet, the more and more often they buy on-line. Therefore, in order to continue the successful development of e-business in virtual space, it is necessary to take measures to ensure the security of Internet users purchase online and in settlement.

Social networking extending the social circle of people has already become an important integral part of our daily lives. As reported by ComScore, social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter have reached 82 percent of the world's online population, representing 1.2 billion users around the world. In the meantime, fueled by the dramatic advancements of smartphones and the ubiquitous connections of Bluetooth/WiFi/3G/LTE networks, social networking further becomes available for mobile users and keeps them posted on the up-to-date worldwide news and messages from their friends and families anytime anywhere. The convergence of social networking, advanced smartphones, and stable network infrastructures brings us a pervasive and omnipotent communication platform, named mobile social network (MSN), helping us stay connected better than ever. In the MSN, multiple communication techniques help users to launch a variety of applications in multiple communication domains including single-user domain, two-user domain, user-chain domain, and user-star domain. Within different communication domains, promising mobile applications are fostered. For example, nearby friend search application can be launched in the two-user or user-chain domains to help a user find other physically-close peers who have similar interests and preferences; local service providers disseminate advertising information to nearby users in the user-star domain; and health monitoring enables users to check the physiological signals in the single-user domain. Despite the tremendous benefits brought by the MSN, it still faces many technique challenges among of which security and privacy protections are the most important ones as smartphones are vulnerable to security attacks, users easily neglect their privacy preservation, and mutual trust relationships are difficult to be established in the MSN. In this thesis, we explore the unique characteristics and study typical research issues of the MSN. We conduct our research with a focus on security and privacy preservation while considering human factors. Specifically, we consider the profile matching application in the two-user domain, the cooperative data forwarding in the user-chain domain, the trustworthy service evaluation application in the user-star domain, and the healthcare monitoring application in the single-user domain. The main contributions are, i) considering the human comparison behavior and privacy requirements, we first propose a novel family of comparison-based privacy-preserving profile matching (PPM) protocols. The proposed protocols enable two users to obtain comparison results of attribute values in their profiles, while the attribute values are not disclosed. Taking user anonymity requirement as an evaluation metric, we analyze the anonymity protection of the proposed protocols. From the analysis, we found that the more comparison results are disclosed, the less anonymity protection is achieved by the protocol. Further, we explore the pseudonym strategy and an anonymity enhancing technique where users could be self-aware of the anonymity risk level and take appropriate actions when needed; ii) considering the inherent MSN nature --- opportunistic networking, we propose a cooperative privacy-preserving data forwarding (PDF) protocol to help users forward data to other users. We indicate that privacy and effective data forwarding are two conflicting goals: the cooperative data forwarding could be severely interrupted or even disabled when the privacy preservation of users is applied, because without sharing personal information users become unrecognizable to each other and the social interactions are no longer traceable. We explore the morality model of users from classic social theory, and use game-theoretic approach to obtain the optimal data forwarding strategy. Through simulation results, we show that the proposed cooperative data strategy can achieve both the privacy preservation and the forwarding efficiency; iii) to establish the trust relationship in a distributed MSN is a challenging task. We propose a trustworthy service evaluation (TSE) system, to help users exchange their service reviews toward local vendors. However, vendors and users could be the potential attackers aiming to disrupt the TSE system. We then consider the review attacks, i.e., vendors rejecting and modifying the authentic reviews of users, and the Sybil attacks, i.e., users abusing their pseudonyms to generate fake reviews. To prevent these attacks, we explore the token technique, the aggregate signature, and the secret sharing techniques. Simulation results show the security and the effectiveness of the TSE system can be guaranteed; iv) to improve the efficiency and reliability of communications in the single-user domain, we propose a prediction-based secure and reliable routing framework (PSR). It can be integrated with any specific routing protocol to improve the latter's reliability and prevent data injection attacks during data communication. We show that the regularity of body gesture can be learned and applied by body sensors such that the route with the highest predicted link quality can always be chose for data forwarding. The security analysis and simulation results show that the PSR significantly increases routing efficiency and reliability with or without the data injection attacks.

Tyrimo tikslas yra aptarti vaiko teisių galimus pažeidimus ir prevenciją internetiniuose socialiniuose tinkluose. Magistro darbe analizuojamas vaiko teisių pažeidimų internetiniuose socialiniuose tinkluose prevencijos organizavimas ir įgyvendinimas gimnazijoje, siekiant išsiaiškinti esamą situaciją, kad būtų imtasi konkrečių veiksmų plano. Tyrimas buvo organizuojamas 2012 metų gruodžio 17-21 dienomis. Anketinės apklausos metodu ištirti 170 gimnazijos I ir II klasės mokiniai (iš jų 88 pirmokai ir 82 antrokai) bei 35 pedagogai ir kiti gimnazijos darbuotojai, dirbantys šioje gimnazijoje. Tyrimo rezultatai parodė, jog gimnazistai suvokia internetinių socialinių tinklų grėsmes, dažnai su jomis susiduria pažeisdami savo teises. Šios grėsmės internete juos neramina, o susidūrę su jomis jie linkę apie tai niekam nepasakoti. Mokiniai jaučiasi turį pakankamai žinių ir įgūdžių bendravimui internete, gebėjimų siekiant užtikrinti saugų darbą internete. Atlikta tyrimų rezultatų analizė atskleidė šiuos vaiko teisių pažeidimų internetiniuose socialiniuose tinkluose prevencijos gimnazijoje organizavimo ypatumus: gimnazijoje vis dėlto nepakankamai vykdoma įtaigi prevencinė veikla, gimnazijos bendruomenė šviesdama mokinius apie jų saugų darbą internete apsiribojama gimnazistų paviršutinišku informavimu ir švietimu, ne visi pedagogai šviečia ir informuoja mokinius apie jų saugų darbą internete. Aktyviausiai prevenciją vykdo dalykų pedagogai, integruotų pamokų ir klasės auklėtojai organizuotų... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Research objective is to review violations of children’s rights in online social networks. In MA thesis there is being analysed the prevention management and implementation of violations of children‘s rights in gymnasium having the aim to clarify a present situation in order the efficient action plan to be created. The research was conducted 17-21 December in 2012. Using the method of questionnaire survey there were interviewed 170 gymnasium‘s first and second graders (out of them 88 first graders and 82 second graders), 35 teachers and other employees who work in this gymnasium. Research outcome showed that gymnasium students realise threats of social networks and face them violating their rights. These threats on the Internet make them feel anxious and while facing them they are tend not to talk to anybody. Students feel quite confident in having knowledge and skills to communicate on the Internet and abilities to ensure safe work online. The analysis of research findings revealed particularities of prevention management in the gymnasium concerning violations of children‘s rights in social networks: impellent prevention activity is not sufficient enough in the gymnasium; the gymnasium community educating students about their safe work online narrow to shallow spreading of information and education; not all teaching staff educate and inform students about their safe work online. The most active prevention is organised by subjects’ teachers during integrative lessons and... [to full text]

From the exterior, the United States has extracted natural resources and transformed the social dynamics of those living on the periphery, contributing to the emigration from Mexico and immigration to the United States. This,in turn,creates the racialization of the Mexican immigrant, specifically the undocumented immigrant—the "illegal alien." I argue that this unilateral interaction operates with a racial formation of the Mexican immigrant created by elite white (non-Hispanic) males. The anti-Mexican immigrant subframe and "prowhite" subframe derive from the white racial frame,which racializes the undocumented immigrant in the United States. In addition, the subframes are evident in the three stages of migration. The three stages consist of threefold factors: First, the exploitation of Mexican resources (natural and human) and racialized immigration policies; second, the social networks and smugglers, called coyotes, who assist the undocumented immigrant to bypass barriers; and third, the discrimination undocumented immigrants encounter in the United States by other people of color. This dissertation relied on the migration experience of thirty Mexican male day-laborers,living in Texas, to examine the white racial framing of undocumented immigrants. The findings demonstrate how the U.S. immigration policies and members of the host society persistently exhibit the white racial frame and its subframes. This study is essential, because, aside from noting the issues of unauthorized migration, it demonstrates how elite white males shape the dialogue on the discourse and all that surrounds the migration process.

In response to the anthropological literature on old age and ageing that remains largely isolated from more contemporary anthropological theory, this thesis re-focuses anthropological attention on the experiences of ageing. Towards this end, I examine the way macro- (history, politics, economics) and micro-level processes (social relations, intergenerational relations, local contexts, individual histories) intersect to frame the cultural construction of old age, personal experiences of "being old", and the self. A central point of intersection between these processes comes from the recent history of social transformation in my fieldsite, Dodworth, a former coal-mining village. Since the late 1980s, this is an area that has been grappling with the rupturing effects of the closure of the coal-mining industry. Attending to these conditions and how they inform the everyday reality and the experiences of ageing and of the self are critical concerns in this thesis. My approach to the ageing self is one that privileges narrativity and temporality as key constitutive elements and which considers the potentially different position of older people in relation to time and to the self. Growing older is a complicated mixture of bodily and social change, and negotiating these shifts has crucial implications for one's sense of self and subjectivity. While "old age" is a category which is readily used in daily discourse and living, what old age is and who is old nevertheless resists anchoring. What old age, being old and ageing meant to my research participants are key questions in order to understand the experience of growing older in Dodworth. Throughout the thesis, I focus on the dialectics of interpersonal interactions in order to speak meaningfully about how the experience of old age is organised and constructed. Emerging in tandem with these issues is another major topic of this thesis: social memory. Talk in Dodworth about places, absences, and relations continually brought the past and present together and was involved in how a sense of self is created. What emerged was a three-dimensionality of memory, an individual and collective way of placing oneself and others in relation to spatial aspects of the villagescape.

This study examined the influence of activated and chronic interpersonal expectations on primary and secondary appraisal of a stressful life event. Fifty-one female undergraduates were asked to imagine themselves facing an unplanned pregnancy, after which affective state and coping strategies were assessed. A subliminal priming technique was used during the experimental session to activate either positive, negative or neutral interpersonal expectations. Chronic interpersonal expectations were assessed in a telephone interview, using the Collins and Read (1990) attachment scale. Activated negative interpersonal expectations reduced positive affect; chronic interpersonal anxiety heightened overall negative affect, while chronic comfort with closeness and feeling one can depend on others were associated with less feelings of depression. Both activated and chronically accessible positive interpersonal expectations increased intentions to seek emotional support. Chronic anxiety in relationships was related to hostile coping, while a lack of comfort with closeness and depending on others were conducive to self-blaming. Implications of these findings for close relationships and stressful life events and for future priming research are discussed.

<p>In the thesis, I endeavour to create a platform on which to construct an understanding of &lsquo / integration&rsquo / in a multilingual and multicultural setting, post-apartheid. I have selected UWC as the research site as it is an institution of higher education and an inherently South African one which houses a large number of diverse ethnicities, cultures and languages. I appeal to the poststructuralist approach as it is one that explores the possible sociopolitical, economic and historical influences on which I argue and which forms the backdrop to understanding integration amongst the various groups. I am especially drawn to the topic of integration as there is to date no well-defined definition of what that means in the &lsquo / new&rsquo / South Africa. Different identities are explored in relation to how students identify themselves within their social networks, across various cultures and through language choices. In particular, I look at the three dominant &lsquo / South African&rsquo / groups, namely: Indians, Blacks and Coloureds and also two international student groups, the Batswanas and Chinese. use a qualitative approach and undertake focus groups and one-to-one interviews as well as participant observations and analyzing documentation. Data analysis is achieved through Discourse Analysis of transcribed interviews. One of the conclusions is that integration will not occur overnight. However, the broadening and exercising of linguistic options could be seen as a step in right direction to integration across the various ethnic groups. The study ends with recommendations and gives an overall view of integration at UWC. One of the recommendations is that UWC needs to give students more opportunities to practice their multilinguality and thereby broaden their linguistic repertoire which could in turn facilitate integration.</p>