Databases and Information Systems Commons^™

Design, Programming, And User-Experience, Kaila G. Manca

Honors Scholar Theses

This thesis is a culmination of my individualized major in Human-Computer Interaction. As such, it showcases my knowledge of design, computer engineering, user-experience research, and puts into practice my background in psychology, com- munications, and neuroscience.

I provided full-service design and development for a web application to be used by the Digital Media and Design Department and their students.This process involved several iterations of user-experience research, testing, concepting, branding and strategy, ideation, and design. It lead to two products.

The first product is full-scale development and optimization of the web appli- cation.The web application adheres to best practices. It was …

Affect And Online Privacy Concerns, David Charles Castano

CCE Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of affect on privacy concerns and privacy behaviors. A considerable amount of research in the information systems field argues that privacy concerns, usually conceptualized as an evaluation of privacy risks, influence privacy behaviors. However, recent theoretical work shows that affect, a pre-cognitive evaluation, has a significant effect on preferences and choices in risky situations. Affect is contrasted with cognitive issues in privacy decision making and the role of affective versus cognitive-consequentialist factors is reviewed in privacy context.

A causal model was developed to address how affect influences privacy concerns and …

Theory Development And Pilot Testing Of A New Survey Instrument On Usability By Older Adults, Meriam Caboral-Stevens

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

An aging population and the use of technology are two pervasive phenomena that are burgeoning simultaneously. The confluence of these phenomena may present challenges for the older adults that could prevent a successful interface. Barriers and challenges can be addressed by examining the interface between older adults and technology. Usability is described as how well and how easily a user without formal training can interact effectively with the system. A review of the literature shows paucity in nursing theories on usability and the use of technology among older adults. This paper describes the development of a conceptual model - Use …

An Investigation Of The Factors Contributing To The Development Of Poorly Defined Is Strategies For Firms In The United States, Karen B. Lacaden

CCE Theses and Dissertations

Although empirical research has shown that a clearly defined information system (IS) strategy has a positive impact to a firm’s performance and a poorly defined IS strategy has a negative impact to a firms’ performance, firms still develop poorly defined IS strategies. Further compounding the problem, research has revealed that 87% of the business executives believe information systems are a critical enabler to their firms' strategic realization, yet only 33% of business executives involve the Chief Information Officer (CIO) in their firm’s business strategy development. The main goal of this research study is to empirically identify factors which impact development …

An Empirical Investigation Into The Role That Boredom, Relationships, Anxiety, And Gratification (Brag) Play In A Driver’S Decision To Text, Nathan White

CCE Theses and Dissertations

Texting while driving is a growing problem that has serious, and sometimes fatal, consequences. Despite laws enacted to curb this behavior, the problem continues to grow. Discovering factors that can reduce such risky behavior can significantly contribute to research, as well as save lives and reduce property damage. This study developed a model to explore the motivations that cause a driver to send messages. The model evaluates the effects that boredom, social relationships, social anxiety, and social gratification (BRAG) have upon a driver’s frequency of typing text messages. In addition, the perceived severity of the consequences and the presence of …

Police Opinions Of Digital Evidence Response Handling In The State Of Georgia: An Examination From The Viewpoint Of Local Agencies’ Patrol Officers, Tanya Macneil

CCE Theses and Dissertations

This research examined opinions of local law enforcement agencies’ patrol officers in the State of Georgia regarding preparedness and expectations for handling of digital evidence. The increased criminal use of technology requires that patrol officers be prepared to handle digital evidence in many different situations. The researcher’s goal was to gain insight into how patrol officers view their preparedness to handle digital evidence as well as their opinions on management expectations regarding patrol officers’ abilities to handle digital evidence. The research focused on identifying whether a gap existed between patrol officers’ opinions of digital evidence and the patrol officers’ views …

Motivating The Solicited And Unsolicited Sharing Of Tacit Knowledge Through The Process Of Externalization, Sheila Yvonne Sorensen

CCE Theses and Dissertations

While several U. S. firms have invested in Knowledge Management (KM) tools and software, it has become apparent that investments must be made in additional facets of KM, such as knowledge sharing (KS), thought by many researchers to be the most important component of KM. Of the two types of KS, explicit and tacit, the sharing of tacit knowledge has been shown to contribute the most to an organization’s performance. However, since tacit knowledge is difficult to both convey and acquire, this unshared tacit knowledge may ultimately harm an organization when, without the appropriate knowledge, individuals cannot effectively perform their …

Exploring The Dimensions Of Nomophobia: Developing And Validating A Questionnaire Using Mixed Methods Research, Caglar Yildirim

Caglar Yildirim

Nomophobia is defined as the fear of being out of mobile phone contact and is considered a modern age phobia introduced to our lives as a byproduct of the interaction between people and mobile information and communication technologies, especially smartphones. This research study sought to contribute to the nomophobia research literature by identifying and describing the dimensions of nomophobia and developing a questionnaire to measure nomophobia. Consequently, this study adopted a two-phase, exploratory sequential mixed methods design. The first phase was a qualitative exploration of nomophobia through semi-structured interviews conducted with nine undergraduate students at a large Midwestern university in …

Networked Employment Discrimination, Tamara Kneese

Media Studies

Employers often struggle to assess qualified applicants, particularly in contexts where they receive hundreds of applications for job openings. In an effort to increase efficiency and improve the process, many have begun employing new tools to sift through these applications, looking for signals that a candidate is “the best fit.” Some companies use tools that offer algorithmic assessments of workforce data to identify the variables that lead to stronger employee performance, or to high employee attrition rates, while others turn to third party ranking services to identify the top applicants in a labor pool. Still others eschew automated systems, but …

[Introduction To] Identity And Leadership In Virtual Communities: Establishing Credibility And Influence, Dona J. Hickey, Joe Essid

Bookshelf

The presence and ubiquity of the internet continues to transform the way in which we identify ourselves and others both online and offline. The development of virtual communities permits users to create an online identity to interact with and influence one another in ways that vary greatly from face-to-face interaction.

Identity and Leadership in Virtual Communities: Establishing Credibility and Influence explores the notion of establishing an identity online, managing it like a brand, and using it with particular members of a community. Bringing together a range of voices exemplifying how participants in online communities influence one another, this book serves …

Three Essays On Social/Political Structures And Icts Use, Seungeui Ryu

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

My research identifies how social structures affect the use of the Internet and/or a mobile chat application and how the Internet impacts the political structure of a nation. In my first essay of the 3-essay Dissertation, I am designing three models based on social structure theory that are used to study the Internet and a popular mobile chat application's use by managers in South Korea, with the help of a survey instrument. In my first essay, the contribution is on i) testing a model of manager's personal behavior on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) use at the individual level involving …

Governing Knowledge Commons -- Introduction & Chapter 1, Brett M. Frischmann, Michael J. Madison, Katherine J. Strandburg

Book Chapters

“Knowledge commons” describes the institutionalized community governance of the sharing and, in some cases, creation, of information, science, knowledge, data, and other types of intellectual and cultural resources. It is the subject of enormous recent interest and enthusiasm with respect to policymaking about innovation, creative production, and intellectual property. Taking that enthusiasm as its starting point, Governing Knowledge Commons argues that policymaking should be based on evidence and a deeper understanding of what makes commons institutions work. It offers a systematic way to study knowledge commons, borrowing and building on Elinor Ostrom’s Nobel Prize-winning research on natural resource commons. It …

Commons At The Intersection Of Peer Production, Citizen Science, And Big Data: Galaxy Zoo, Michael J. Madison

Book Chapters

The knowledge commons research framework is applied to a case of commons governance grounded in research in modern astronomy. The case, Galaxy Zoo, is a leading example of at least three different contemporary phenomena. In the first place Galaxy Zoo is a global citizen science project, in which volunteer non-scientists have been recruited to participate in large-scale data analysis via the Internet. In the second place Galaxy Zoo is a highly successful example of peer production, sometimes known colloquially as crowdsourcing, by which data are gathered, supplied, and/or analyzed by very large numbers of anonymous and pseudonymous contributors to an …

Introduction To Gis Using Open Source Software, 4th Ed, Frank Donnelly

Open Educational Resources

This tutorial was created to accompany the GIS Practicum, a day-long workshop offered by the Newman Library at Baruch College CUNY that introduces participants to geographic information systems (GIS) using the open source software QGIS. The practicum introduces GIS as a concept for envisioning information and as a tool for conducting geographic analyses and creating maps. Participants learn how to navigate a GIS interface, how to prepare layers and conduct a basic geographic analysis, and how to create thematic maps. This tutorial was written using QGIS version 1.8 "Lisboa", a cross-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux) desktop GIS software package.

Influentials, Novelty, And Social Contagion: The Viral Power Of Average Friends, Close Communities, And Old News, Nicholas Harrigan, Palakorn Achananuparp, Ee Peng Lim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

What is the effect of (1) popular individuals, and (2) community structures on the retransmission of socially contagious behavior? We examine a community of Twitter users over a five month period, operationalizing social contagion as ‘retweeting’, and social structure as the count of subgraphs (small patterns of ties and nodes) between users in the follower/following network. We find that popular individuals act as ‘inefficient hubs’ for social contagion: they have limited attention, are overloaded with inputs, and therefore display limited responsiveness to viral messages. We argue this contradicts the ‘law of the few’ and ‘influentials hypothesis’. We find that community …

Towards Self-Emancipation In Ict For Development Research: Narratives About Respect, Traditional Leadership And Building Networks Of Friendships In Rural South Africa, Kirstin Krauss

The African Journal of Information Systems

In this paper, the author contends that if the outsider-researcher involved in Information and Communication Technology for Development really wants to make a difference and honestly address the emancipatory interests of the developing community, social transformation will have to occur on both sides of the “development divide.” This statement implies both an understanding of the researcher’s own ethnocentrism, prejudice, assumptions and inabilities as well as local concerns, needs, expectations and realities. Using critical social theory as a position of inquiry and learning from the enculturation phases of critical ethnographic fieldwork in a deep rural part of South Africa, the paper …

Demographic Prediction Of Mobile User From Phone Usage, Shahram Mohrehkesh, Shuiwang Ji, Tamer Nadeem, Michele C. Weigle

Computer Science Faculty Publications

In this paper, we describe how we use the mobile phone usage of users to predict their demographic attributes. Using call log, visited GSM cells information, visited Bluetooth devices, visited Wireless LAN devices, accelerometer data, and so on, we predict the gender, age, marital status, job and number of people in household of users. The accuracy of developed classifiers for these classification problems ranges from 45-87% depending upon the particular classification problem.

Introduction To Gis Using Open Source Software, 1st Ed, Frank Donnelly

Open Educational Resources

This tutorial was created to accompany the GIS Practicum, a day-long workshop offered by the Newman Library at Baruch College CUNY that introduces participants to geographic information systems (GIS) using the open source software QGIS. The practicum introduces GIS as a concept for envisioning information and as a tool for conducting geographic analyses and creating maps. Participants learn how to navigate a GIS interface, how to prepare layers and conduct a basic geographic analysis, and how to create thematic maps. This tutorial was written using QGIS version 1.5 "Tethys", a cross-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux) desktop GIS software package.

The Potential Role Of Business Intelligence In Church Organizations, Charmaine Felder

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Business intelligence (BI) involves transforming data into actionable information to make better business decisions that may help improve operations. Although businesses have experienced success with BI, how leaders of church organizations might be able to exploit the advantages of BI in church organizations remains largely unexplored. The purpose of the phenomenological study was to explore the perceptions of pastoral leaders concerning the potential usefulness of BI in church organizations. Conceptual support for the study was based on the premise that churches may also benefit from BI that helps improve decision making and organizational performance. Three research questions were used to …