Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

All Quiet On The Digital Front: The Unseen Psychological Impacts On Cybersecurity First Responders, Tammie R. Hollis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Driven by the increasing frequency of cyberattacks and the existing talent gap between industry needs and skilled professionals, this research study focused on the crucial human element in the domain of cybersecurity incident response. The objective of this dissertation was to offer a meaningful exploration of the lived experiences encountered by cybersecurity incident responders and an assessment of the subsequent impacts on their well-being. Additionally, this study sought to draw comparisons between the experiences of cybersecurity incident responders and their counterparts in traditional emergency response roles. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a cohort of 22 individuals with first-hand experience working …

Farmer Adoption Of Advanced Technology In Agribusiness, Justin W. Belcher

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Normally, family-owned farms are slow to adopt advanced technologies though these technologies can provide several benefits to the farm and have the potential to increase farm production volumes to help meet future population growth. The goal of this study was to document the factors that influence the adoption decision of advanced technologies by family-owned farms and what strategies can be used to motivate adoption. Case study research was conducted to gather data in a more structured way from family-owned farms typically excluded from past research for the purpose of comparing similarities across similar and dissimilar farms. For generalizing similarities, a …

Designing A Messaging Strategy To Improve Information Security Policy Compliance, Federico Giovannetti

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Lack of employee compliance with information security policies is a key factor driving security incidents. Information security practitioners struggle to enforce policy compliance while employees try to curtail safeguards in favor of expediency and other perceived business goals. Several studies have shown individual and organizational factors influencing this type of employee behavior. However, few have recommended management-level interventions that can be used as a solution framework by information security practitioners.

This research utilized the Design Science Research (DSR) methodology to develop a management-level intervention based on a messaging strategy that aims to help information security practitioners improve the information security …

Pad Beyond The Classroom: Integrating Pad In The Scrum Workplace, Jade S. Weiss

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Purpose: The “story” format used in Scrum ticket writing is confusing to developers and leadsto insufficient ticket content, which lends to miscommunication between team members and administrators, and disrupts workflow from the bottom up. A burgeoning methodology in Technical Writing, Purpose, Audience, Design (PAD) is an alternative ticket format that is easier to teach developers and improves the aforementioned conditions than the existing “story” format. The goal of this paper is to lay out why and how PAD can benefit developers on smaller Scrum teams who are tasked with writing their own tickets. This paper does not offer solutions for …

Managing Incomplete Data In The Patient Discharge Summary To Support Correct Hospital Reimbursements, Fadi Naser Eddin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The patient discharge summary is a document that conveys the patient's story to other healthcare practitioners, external users, and, most importantly from a financial perspective, health insurers. A defect or incompleteness in the patient's discharge summary will result in delays in the collection process through denial of the entire or partial reimbursement claim or, in the best-case scenario, delay until the discharge summary issue is resolved. The purpose of this project is to address the issue of the incompleteness of discharge summary from the perspective of healthcare providers, with the goal of understanding, diagnosing, and intervening in the research problem. …

Residential Curbside Recycle Context Analysis, Ntchanang Mpafe

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Curbside recycling as a preferred mode of residential and municipal sustainability goals seems to have an overwhelming acceptance and adoption in the US. About 69.8 million out of 97.3 million (72%) single-family households in the United States have access to curbside recycling services (State of Curbside Recycling Report, 2020). Collectively, the programs divert about nine million tons of recyclables from landfill disposal each year (Cottom, 2019).

For a design that started in the 1980s in the US, its rapid universal adoption seems to have precluded a concerted effort in examining the coproduced nature (Households: service receptors and Municipalities: service providers) …

Informing Complexity: The Business Case For Managing Digital Twins Of Complex Process Facilities As A Valuable Asset, William Randell Mcnair

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Digital Twins of complex facilities, specifically 3D models created during their design, is a potentially valuable information asset. This three- article dissertation explores the business case for firms in the petrochemical process industry to manage throughout the facility lifecycle. A maturity model is provided to illustrate the stages of digital twin evolution and serves as a tool to help communicate each of the five levels of digital twin maturity achievable in various use cases. An industry analysis reviews existing literature and proposes a model to assess informing or insight value of digital twins from three perspectives. Next, an empirical …

Employees Breaking Bad With Technology: An Exploratory Analysis Of Human Factors That Drive Cyberspace Insider Threats, Marcus L. Green

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As implementation of computer systems has continued to grow in business contexts, employee-driven cyberspace infractions have also grown in number. Employee cyberspace behaviors have continued to have detrimental effects on company computer systems. Actions that violate company cybersecurity policies can be either malicious or unmalicious. Solutions, by and large, have been electronic and centered on hardware and software. Those proposing solutions have begun to shift their focus to human risk vulnerabilities.

This study was novel in that its focus was identification of individual, cultural, and technological risk factors that drive cyberspace insider threat activities. Identifying factors that reduce insider threat …

Managing Health Locus Of Control In Patient-Provider Relationships, James Wallace

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Patient locus of control is a strong determinant of health outcomes, yet health care professionals do not typically address it in care plans. In fact, management of most medical conditions is hindered because the treating physician has little information about the patient’s locus of control. This research addresses the question “How can locus of control be used to enable health care practitioners to improve medical outcomes?”

Research Methodology. Using an engaged scholarship approach incorporating the Elaborated Action Design Research methodology, the research drives the guided, emergent design of a novel protocol and two separate artifacts for management of health locus …

The Is Social Continuance Model: Using Conversational Agents To Support Co-Creation, Naif Alawi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With the rise of Agentic IS Artifact and the increasing integration of this technology within organizations, our understanding of the impact of this technology on individuals remains limited. Although IS use literature provides important guidance for organization to increase employees’ willingness to work with new technology implementations, the utilitarian view of prior IS use limits its application in light of the new evolving social interaction between humans and Agentic IS Artifacts. To that end, we contribute to the IS use literature by implementing a social view to understand the impact of Agentic IS Artifacts on an individual’s perception and behavior. …

Designing A Health Coach-Augmented Mhealth System For The Secondary Prevention Of Coronary Heart Disease, Avijit Sengupta

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presents research that employs design science research (DSR) methodology to develop and evaluate a high-fidelity prototype of a home-based cardiac rehabilitation (HBCR) system to support self-management of chronic cardiovascular diseases like coronary heart disease (CHD) and to offer secondary prevention against other chronic diseases with similar risk factors. While the population of coronary heart disease (CHD) patients requiring cardiac rehabilitation (CR) continues to expand, lack of access and other barriers to center based cardiac rehabilitation (CBCR) presents a huge challenge. A mobile phone and wearable device based technological system can offer an HBCR program for CHD. By following …

Designing Targeted Mobile Advertising Campaigns, Kimia Keshanian

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With the proliferation of smart, handheld devices, there has been a multifold increase in the ability of firms to target and engage with customers through mobile advertising. Therefore, not surprisingly, mobile advertising campaigns have become an integral aspect of firms’ brand building activities, such as improving the awareness and overall visibility of firms' brands. In addition, retailers are increasingly using mobile advertising for targeted promotional activities that increase in-store visits and eventual sales conversions. However, in recent years, mobile or in general online advertising campaigns have been facing one major challenge and one major threat that can negatively impact the …

Digital Identity: A Human-Centered Risk Awareness Study, Toufic N. Chebib

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cybersecurity threats and compromises have been at the epicenter of media attention; their risk and effect on people’s digital identity is something not to be taken lightly. Though cyber threats have affected a great number of people in all age groups, this study focuses on 55 to 75-year-olds, as this age group is close to retirement or already retired. Therefore, a notable compromise impacting their digital identity can have a major impact on their life.

To help guide this study, the following research question was formulated, “What are the risk perceptions of individuals, between the ages of 55 and 75 …

Complexities Of Data, Tasks And Workflows In Health It Management, Gaurav Jetley

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on three key aspects in health IT management: (1) Complexities in the collection of health data in electronic health record (EHR) systems and the use of EHR data in research, (2) Complexities of collaboration between physicians and AI for improving healthcare delivery, and (3) Complexities of workflows and collaborations between healthcare organization (HCO) staff during the delivery of care. The first dissertation essay (Chapter 1) examines the key data quality issues that arise in recorded health information in EHR systems, provides quality thresholds that the data needs to meet for mitigating errors and increasing reproducibility of downstream …

Developing Agent-Based Models To Study Financial Markets, Saurav Chakraborty

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presents research that employs agent-based modelling to provide a framework to support simulation as a complement to traditional economic models for policy evaluation. It consists of three studies. The first study employs cluster analysis to capture the different types of banks and the associated business models that define their decision-making. The results from study one will help us get an understanding of how different banks behave and provide an insight into their lending practices. Hence, it would be very helpful in evaluating and analyzing the impact of future policies. Study two develops a fine-grained interbank lending model based …

Algorithms To Profile Driver Behavior From Zero-Permission Embedded Sensors, Bharti Goel

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, we design algorithms to profile driver behavior from zero-permission sensors embedded in modern smartphones and wearables. These sensors are typically the accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, pressure sensor and a few more than are now available in most modern smartphones and wearables. In order to profile driving behavior, we devised algorithms for detecting distraction while driving due to the use of modern-day smartphones (e.g., calling, texting and reading while driving) in real-time.

To do so, we conduct an experiment with 16 subjects on a realistic driving simulator, where each subject, where each subject carries a smartphone and a wearable …

Introducing A Mobile Health Care Platform In An Underserved Rural Population: Reducing Assimilations Gaps On Adoption And Use Via Nudges, Joseph Hodges

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Rural communities are often overlooked when it comes to offering cutting edge consumer healthcare technologies. Mobile applications usually exclude populations in rural demographics due to the infrastructure requirements and available technology in the region. The population studied is a low income rural health plan in southwest Georgia. They are uniquely considered as they have the highest healthcare costs in the U.S. and are compared to healthcare costs among higher income populations like Vail, Colorado. Innovations, such as mobile healthcare applications, have the capacity to offset some of these costs, but even if adoption occurs, this does not guarantee use will …

Evaluating Conversation Agent Impact On Student Experience In A Distance Education Course, Grover Walters

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

We explore the efficacy of conversation agents operating as an instructional aid in a distance education course. Two aspects of efficacy are considered—conversation agent impact on student perceptions of the experience, and how different design features of the agent affect student perceptions of engagement. Evaluation of the agent is accomplished by collecting data from 24 undergraduate participants separated into random groups. We conduct two rounds of mixedmethod evaluation. Between the two rounds, a modification to the agent occurs based on the outcome of the first evaluation. Findings include limitations related to phrasing and data persistence features of the design that …

An Exploration Of Turkish Kindergarten Early Career Stage Teachers’ Technology Beliefs And Practices, Ozge Ozel

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore Turkish kindergarten early career stage teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs towards technology and their technology integration practices in their classrooms by answering: What are self-efficacy beliefs of Turkish kindergarten early career stage teachers towards technology? How do Turkish kindergarten early career teachers integrate technology into their classrooms’ instructions? The study was designed as a qualitative multiple case study and guided by Bandura’s (1986) social cognitive theory and Mishra and Koehler’s (2006) TPACK conceptual framework. I conducted this study in Istanbul, where is the most crowded and metropolitan city in Turkey. The schools were chosen …

Cooperation In Community Colleges, Frederic S. Gore

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With the mounting pressures on institutions of higher education to do more with limited resources, the opportunity to collaborate with other colleges has emerged as a viable tool to create efficiencies and obtain valuable knowledge otherwise unattainable by an institution, even if that collaboration takes place with a competing institution. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are critical to managing student information and college operations, but can be challenging for colleges to implement. Consortia present a unique solution to colleges to address gaps in their expertise and skills needed to achieve a successful ERP implementation. This study explores the factors that …

Improving Strategic It Investment Decisions By Reducing Information Asymmetry, Thomas P. Stablein

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The unprecedented ubiquity with which technological advancements, such as blockchain, the Internet of things (IoT), big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI), are impacting the world has forced large organizations to rethink their information technology roadmaps. Their decisions about how they invest in technology have become more important. It is against this backdrop that companies must decide how much to invest in their aging technologies versus these new potentially transformational ones. A decision is only as good as the information available to the decision-makers when they make it. This research project seeks to understand the effects that information asymmetry …

Enhancing The Design Of A Cybersecurity Risk Management Solution For Communities Of Trust, James E. Fulford Jr.

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Research into cybersecurity risks and various methods of evaluating those threats has become an increasingly important area of academic and practitioner investigations. Of particular interest in this field is enhancing the designs and informing capabilities of cybersecurity risk management solutions for users who desire to understand how organizations are impacted when such risks are exploited. Many of the cybersecurity risk management solutions are extremely technical and require their users to have a commensurate level of technical acumen. In the situation evaluated during this research project, the founders of the company being researched had created a highly technical risk management solution …

Analytics For Novel Consumer Insights (A Three Essay Dissertation), Utkarsh Shrivastava

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Both literature and practice have investigated how the vast amount of ever increasing customer information can inform marketing strategy and decision making. However, the customer data is often susceptible to modeling bias and misleading findings due to various factors including sample selection and unobservable variables. The available analytics toolkit has continued to develop but in the age of nearly perfect information, the customer decision making has also evolved. The dissertation addresses some of the challenges in deriving valid and useful consumer insights from customer data in the digital age. The first study addresses the limitations of traditional customer purchase measures …

An Effectual Approach For The Development Of Novel Applications On Digital Platforms, Onkar Shamrao Malgonde

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The development of novel software applications on digital platforms differs from traditional software development and provides unique challenges to the software development manager and team. Application producers must achieve application-platform match, application-market match, value propositions exceeding platform’s core value propositions, and novelty. These desired properties support a new vision of the software development team as entrepreneurs with a goal of developing novel applications on digital platforms. Digital platforms are characterized by an uncertain, risky, and resource-constrained environment, where existing approaches—plan-driven, ad-hoc, and controlled-flexible—have limited applicability. Building on the theoretical basis of the theory of effectuation from the entrepreneurship domain, this …

Multi-Step Tokenization Of Automated Clearing House Payment Transactions, Privin Alexander

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Since its beginnings in 1974, the Automated Clearing House (ACH) network has grown into one of the largest, safest, and most efficient payment systems in the world. An ACH transaction is an electronic funds transfer between bank accounts using a batch processing system.

Currently, the ACH Network moves almost $43 trillion and 25 billion electronic financial transactions each year. With the increasing movement toward an electronic, interconnected and mobile infrastructure, it is critical that electronic payments work safely and efficiently for all users. ACH transactions carry sensitive data, such as a consumer's name, account number, tax identification number, account holder …

Constructing A Clinical Research Data Management System, Michael C. Quintero

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Clinical study data is usually collected without knowing what kind of data is going to be collected in advance. In addition, all of the possible data points that can apply to a patient in any given clinical study is almost always a superset of the data points that are actually recorded for a given patient. As a result of this, clinical data resembles a set of sparse data with an evolving data schema. To help researchers at the Moffitt Cancer Center better manage clinical data, a tool was developed called GURU that uses the Entity Attribute Value model to handle …

Healthcare It In Skilled Nursing And Post-Acute Care Facilities: Reducing Hospital Admissions And Re-Admissions, Improving Reimbursement And Improving Clinical Operations, Scott L. Hopes

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Health information technology (HIT), which includes electronic health record (EHR) systems and clinical data analytics, has become a major component of all health care delivery and care management. The adoption of HIT by physicians, hospitals, post-acute care organizations, pharmacies and other health care providers has been accepted as a necessary (and recently, a government required) step toward improved quality, care coordination and reduced costs: “Better coordination of care provides a path to improving communication, improving quality of care, and reducing unnecessary emergency room use and hospital readmissions. LTPAC providers play a critical role in achieving these goals” (HealthIT.gov, 2013).

Though …

Enhancing The Internet Of Things Architecture With Flow Semantics, Allen Ronald Deserranno

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Internet of Things (‘IoT’) systems are complex, asynchronous solutions often comprised of various software and hardware components developed in isolation of each other. These components function with different degrees of reliability and performance over an inherently unreliable network, the Internet. Many IoT systems are developed within silos that do not provide the ability to communicate or be interoperable with other systems and platforms. Literature exists on how these systems should be designed, how they should interoperate, and how they could be improved, but practice does not always consult literature.

The work brings together a proposed reference architecture for the IoT …

Essays On Crowdfunding: Exploring The Funding And Post-Funding Phases And Outcomes, Onochie Fan-Osuala

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the recent years, crowdfunding (a phenomenon where individuals collectively contribute money to back different goals and projects through the internet) has been gaining a lot of attention especially for its socio-economic impact. This dissertation explores this phenomenon in three distinct but related essays. The first essay explores the nature and dynamics of backers’ contributions and uses the insights generated to develop a forecasting model that can predict crowdfunding campaign outcomes. The second essay investigates how creators’ crowdfunding campaign design decisions impact their funding and post-funding outcomes. Interestingly, the essay highlights that certain crowdfunding campaign design decisions have differential effects …

Forging Blockchains: Spatial Production And Political Economy Of Decentralized Cryptocurrency Code/Spaces, Joe Blankenship

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cryptocurrencies and blockchains are increasingly used, implemented and adapted for numerous purposes; people and businesses are integrating these technologies into their practices and strategies, creating new political economies and spaces in and of everyday life. This thesis seeks to develop a foundation of geographic theory for the study of spatial production within and surrounding blockchain technologies focusing on acute studies of Bitcoin as cryptocurrency, Ethereum as digital marketplace, and their conditions of possibility as decentralized autonomous organizations. Utilizing concepts from Henri Lefebvre's Production of Space, this thesis situates blockchain technologies within the wider discussion about the political economy of …