• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• 제21권2호
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• pp.89-116
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• 2011

In collaborative tagging systems such as Delicious.com and Flickr.com, users assign keywords or tags to their uploaded resources, such as bookmarks and pictures, for their future use or sharing purposes. The collection of resources and tags generated by a user is called a personomy, and the collection of all personomies constitutes the folksonomy. The most significant need of the folksonomy users Is to efficiently find useful resources or experts on specific topics. An excellent ranking algorithm would assign higher ranking to more useful resources or experts. What resources are considered useful In a folksonomic system? Does a standard superior to frequency or freshness exist? The resource recommended by more users with mere expertise should be worthy of attention. This ranking paradigm can be implemented through a graph-based ranking algorithm. Two well-known representatives of such a paradigm are Page Rank by Google and HITS(Hypertext Induced Topic Selection) by Kleinberg. Both Page Rank and HITS assign a higher evaluation score to pages linked to more higher-scored pages. HITS differs from PageRank in that it utilizes two kinds of scores: authority and hub scores. The ranking objects of these pages are limited to Web pages, whereas the ranking objects of a folksonomic system are somewhat heterogeneous(i.e., users, resources, and tags). Therefore, uniform application of the voting notion of PageRank and HITS based on the links to a folksonomy would be unreasonable, In a folksonomic system, each link corresponding to a property can have an opposite direction, depending on whether the property is an active or a passive voice. The current research stems from the Idea that a graph-based ranking algorithm could be applied to the folksonomic system using the concept of mutual Interactions between entitles, rather than the voting notion of PageRank or HITS. The concept of mutual interactions, proposed for ranking the Semantic Web resources, enables the calculation of importance scores of various resources unaffected by link directions. The weights of a property representing the mutual interaction between classes are assigned depending on the relative significance of the property to the resource importance of each class. This class-oriented approach is based on the fact that, in the Semantic Web, there are many heterogeneous classes; thus, applying a different appraisal standard for each class is more reasonable. This is similar to the evaluation method of humans, where different items are assigned specific weights, which are then summed up to determine the weighted average. We can check for missing properties more easily with this approach than with other predicate-oriented approaches. A user of a tagging system usually assigns more than one tags to the same resource, and there can be more than one tags with the same subjectivity and objectivity. In the case that many users assign similar tags to the same resource, grading the users differently depending on the assignment order becomes necessary. This idea comes from the studies in psychology wherein expertise involves the ability to select the most relevant information for achieving a goal. An expert should be someone who not only has a large collection of documents annotated with a particular tag, but also tends to add documents of high quality to his/her collections. Such documents are identified by the number, as well as the expertise, of users who have the same documents in their collections. In other words, there is a relationship of mutual reinforcement between the expertise of a user and the quality of a document. In addition, there is a need to rank entities related more closely to a certain entity. Considering the property of social media that ensures the popularity of a topic is temporary, recent data should have more weight than old data. We propose a comprehensive folksonomy ranking framework in which all these considerations are dealt with and that can be easily customized to each folksonomy site for ranking purposes. To examine the validity of our ranking algorithm and show the mechanism of adjusting property, time, and expertise weights, we first use a dataset designed for analyzing the effect of each ranking factor independently. We then show the ranking results of a real folksonomy site, with the ranking factors combined. Because the ground truth of a given dataset is not known when it comes to ranking, we inject simulated data whose ranking results can be predicted into the real dataset and compare the ranking results of our algorithm with that of a previous HITS-based algorithm. Our semantic ranking algorithm based on the concept of mutual interaction seems to be preferable to the HITS-based algorithm as a flexible folksonomy ranking framework. Some concrete points of difference are as follows. First, with the time concept applied to the property weights, our algorithm shows superior performance in lowering the scores of older data and raising the scores of newer data. Second, applying the time concept to the expertise weights, as well as to the property weights, our algorithm controls the conflicting influence of expertise weights and enhances overall consistency of time-valued ranking. The expertise weights of the previous study can act as an obstacle to the time-valued ranking because the number of followers increases as time goes on. Third, many new properties and classes can be included in our framework. The previous HITS-based algorithm, based on the voting notion, loses ground in the situation where the domain consists of more than two classes, or where other important properties, such as "sent through twitter" or "registered as a friend," are added to the domain. Forth, there is a big difference in the calculation time and memory use between the two kinds of algorithms. While the matrix multiplication of two matrices, has to be executed twice for the previous HITS-based algorithm, this is unnecessary with our algorithm. In our ranking framework, various folksonomy ranking policies can be expressed with the ranking factors combined and our approach can work, even if the folksonomy site is not implemented with Semantic Web languages. Above all, the time weight proposed in this paper will be applicable to various domains, including social media, where time value is considered important.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• 제19권4호
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• pp.125-148
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• 2009

UGC(User Generated Contents) is emerging as the center of e-business in the web 2.0 era. The trend reflects changing roles of users in production and consumption of contents on websites and helps us to understand new strategies of websites such as web portals and social network websites. Nowadays, we consume contents created by other non-professional users for both utilitarian (e.g., knowledge) and hedonic values (e.g., fun). Also, contents produced by ourselves (e.g., photo, video) are posted on websites so that our friends, family, and even the public can consume those contents. This means that non-professionals, who used to be passive audience in the past, are now creating contents and share their UGCs with others in the Web. Accessible media, tools, and applications have also reduced difficulty and complexity in the process of creating contents. Realizing that users create plenty of materials which are very interesting to other people, media companies (i.e., web portals and social networking websites) are adjusting their strategies and business models accordingly. Increased demand of UGC may lead to website visits which are the source of benefits from advertising. Therefore, they put more efforts into making their websites open platforms where UGCs can be created and shared among users without technical and methodological difficulties. Many websites have increasingly adopted new technologies such as RSS and openAPI. Some have even changed the structure of web pages so that UGC can be seen several times to more visitors. This mainstream of UGCs on websites indicates that acquiring more UGCs and supporting participating users have become important things to media companies. Although those companies need to understand why general users have shown increasing interest in creating and posting contents and what is important to them in the process of productions, few research results exist in this area to address these issues. Also, behavioral process in creating video UGCs has not been explored enough for the public to fully understand it. With a solid theoretical background (i.e., theory of implementation intentions), parts of our proposed research model mirror the process of user behaviors in creating video contents, which consist of intention to upload, intention to edit, edit, and upload. In addition, in order to explain how those behavioral intentions are developed, we investigated influences of antecedents from three motivational perspectives (i.e., intrinsic, editing software-oriented, and website's network effect-oriented). First, from the intrinsic motivation perspective, we studied the roles of self-expression, enjoyment, and social attention in forming intention to edit with preferred editing software or in forming intention to upload video contents to preferred websites. Second, we explored the roles of editing software for non-professionals to edit video contents, in terms of how it makes production process easier and how it is useful in the process. Finally, from the website characteristic-oriented perspective, we investigated the role of a website's network externality as an antecedent of users' intention to upload to preferred websites. The rationale is that posting UGCs on websites are basically social-oriented behaviors; thus, users prefer a website with the high level of network externality for contents uploading. This study adopted a longitudinal research design; we emailed recipients twice with different questionnaires. Guided by invitation email including a link to web survey page, respondents answered most of questions except edit and upload at the first survey. They were asked to provide information about UGC editing software they mainly used and preferred website to upload edited contents, and then asked to answer related questions. For example, before answering questions regarding network externality, they individually had to declare the name of the website to which they would be willing to upload. At the end of the first survey, we asked if they agreed to participate in the corresponding survey in a month. During twenty days, 333 complete responses were gathered in the first survey. One month later, we emailed those recipients to ask for participation in the second survey. 185 of the 333 recipients (about 56 percentages) answered in the second survey. Personalized questionnaires were provided for them to remind the names of editing software and website that they reported in the first survey. They answered the degree of editing with the software and the degree of uploading video contents to the website for the past one month. To all recipients of the two surveys, exchange tickets for books (about 5,000~10,000 Korean Won) were provided according to the frequency of participations. PLS analysis shows that user behaviors in creating video contents are well explained by the theory of implementation intentions. In fact, intention to upload significantly influences intention to edit in the process of accomplishing the goal behavior, upload. These relationships show the behavioral process that has been unclear in users' creating video contents for uploading and also highlight important roles of editing in the process. Regarding the intrinsic motivations, the results illustrated that users are likely to edit their own video contents in order to express their own intrinsic traits such as thoughts and feelings. Also, their intention to upload contents in preferred website is formed because they want to attract much attention from others through contents reflecting themselves. This result well corresponds to the roles of the website characteristic, namely, network externality. Based on the PLS results, the network effect of a website has significant influence on users' intention to upload to the preferred website. This indicates that users with social attention motivations are likely to upload their video UGCs to a website whose network size is big enough to realize their motivations easily. Finally, regarding editing software characteristic-oriented motivations, making exclusively-provided editing software more user-friendly (i.e., easy of use, usefulness) plays an important role in leading to users' intention to edit. Our research contributes to both academic scholars and professionals. For researchers, our results show that the theory of implementation intentions is well applied to the video UGC context and very useful to explain the relationship between implementation intentions and goal behaviors. With the theory, this study theoretically and empirically confirmed that editing is a different and important behavior from uploading behavior, and we tested the behavioral process of ordinary users in creating video UGCs, focusing on significant motivational factors in each step. In addition, parts of our research model are also rooted in the solid theoretical background such as the technology acceptance model and the theory of network externality to explain the effects of UGC-related motivations. For practitioners, our results suggest that media companies need to restructure their websites so that users' needs for social interaction through UGC (e.g., self-expression, social attention) are well met. Also, we emphasize strategic importance of the network size of websites in leading non-professionals to upload video contents to the websites. Those websites need to find a way to utilize the network effects for acquiring more UGCs. Finally, we suggest that some ways to improve editing software be considered as a way to increase edit behavior which is a very important process leading to UGC uploading.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• 제20권1호
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• pp.141-170
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• 2010

User created content (UCC) is created and shared by common users on line. From the user's perspective, the increase of UCCs has led to an expansion of alternative means of communications, while from the business perspective UCCs have formed an environment in which an abundant amount of new contents can be produced. Despite outward quantitative growth, however, many aspects of UCCs do not meet the expectations of general users in terms of quality, and this can be observed through pirated contents and user-copied contents. The purpose of this research is to investigate effective methods for fostering production of creative user-generated content. This study proposes two core elements, namely, reward and motivation, which are believed to enhance content creativity as well as the mediating factor and users' committement, which will be effective for bridging the increasing motivation and content creativity. Based on this perspective, this research takes an in-depth look at issues related to constructing the dimensions of reward and motivation in UCC services for creative content product, which are identified in three phases. First, three dimensions of rewards have been proposed: task dimension, social dimension, and organizational dimention. The task dimension rewards are related to the inherent characteristics of a task such as writing blog articles and pasting photos. Four concrete ways of providing task-related rewards in UCC environments are suggested in this study, which include skill variety, task significance, task identity, and autonomy. The social dimensioni rewards are related to the connected relationships among users. The organizational dimension consists of monetary payoff and recognition from others. Second, the two types of motivations are suggested to be affected by the diverse rewards schemes: intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation occurs when people create new UCC contents for its' own sake, whereas extrinsic motivation occurs when people create new contents for other purposes such as fame and money. Third, commitments are suggested to work as important mediating variables between motivation and content creativity. We believe commitments are especially important in online environments because they have been found to exert stronger impacts on the Internet users than other relevant factors do. Two types of commitments are suggested in this study: emotional commitment and continuity commitment. Finally, content creativity is proposed as the final dependent variable in this study. We provide a systematic method to measure the creativity of UCC content based on the prior studies in creativity measurement. The method includes expert evaluation of blog pages posted by the Internet users. In order to test the theoretical model of our study, 133 active blog users were recruited to participate in a group discussion as well as a survey. They were asked to fill out a questionnaire on their commitment, motivation and rewards of creating UCC contents. At the same time, their creativity was measured by independent experts using Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. Finally, two independent users visited the study participants' blog pages and evaluated their content creativity using the Creative Products Semantic Scale. All the data were compiled and analyzed through structural equation modeling. We first conducted a confirmatory factor analysis to validate the measurement model of our research. It was found that measures used in our study satisfied the requirement of reliability, convergent validity as well as discriminant validity. Given the fact that our measurement model is valid and reliable, we proceeded to conduct a structural model analysis. The results indicated that all the variables in our model had higher than necessary explanatory powers in terms of R-square values. The study results identified several important reward shemes. First of all, skill variety, task importance, task identity, and automony were all found to have significant influences on the intrinsic motivation of creating UCC contents. Also, the relationship with other users was found to have strong influences upon both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Finally, the opportunity to get recognition for their UCC work was found to have a significant impact on the extrinsic motivation of UCC users. However, different from our expectation, monetary compensation was found not to have a significant impact on the extrinsic motivation. It was also found that commitment was an important mediating factor in UCC environment between motivation and content creativity. A more fully mediating model was found to have the highest explanation power compared to no-mediation or partially mediated models. This paper ends with implications of the study results. First, from the theoretical perspective this study proposes and empirically validates the commitment as an important mediating factor between motivation and content creativity. This result reflects the characteristics of online environment in which the UCC creation activities occur voluntarily. Second, from the practical perspective this study proposes several concrete reward factors that are germane to the UCC environment, and their effectiveness to the content creativity is estimated. In addition to the quantitive results of relative importance of the reward factrs, this study also proposes concrete ways to provide the rewards in the UCC environment based on the FGI data that are collected after our participants finish asnwering survey questions. Finally, from the methodological perspective, this study suggests and implements a way to measure the UCC content creativity independently from the content generators' creativity, which can be used later by future research on UCC creativity. In sum, this study proposes and validates important reward features and their relations to the motivation, commitment, and the content creativity in UCC environment, which is believed to be one of the most important factors for the success of UCC and Web 2.0. As such, this study can provide significant theoretical as well as practical bases for fostering creativity in UCC contents.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• 제23권4호
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• pp.53-84
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• 2013

With rapid development of ICT (Information and Communications Technology), new services by the convergence of mobile network and application technology began to appear. Today, smart phone with new ICT convergence network capabilities is exceedingly popular and very useful as a new tool for the development of business opportunities. Previous studies based on Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) suggested critical factors, which should be considered for acquiring new customers and maintaining existing users in smart phone market. However, they had a limitation to focus on technology acceptance, not value based approach. Prior studies on customer's adoption of electronic utilities like smart phone product showed that the antecedents such as the perceived benefit and the perceived sacrifice could explain the causality between what is perceived and what is acquired over diverse contexts. So, this research conceptualizes perceived value as a trade-off between perceived benefit and perceived sacrifice, and we need to research the perceived value to grasp user's continuous intention to use of smart phone. The purpose of this study is to investigate the structured relationship between benefit (quality, usefulness, playfulness) and sacrifice (technicality, cost, security risk) of smart phone users, perceived value, and continuous intention to use. In addition, this study intends to analyze the differences between two subgroups of smart phone users by the degree of personal innovativeness. Personal innovativeness could help us to understand the moderating effect between how perceptions are formed and continuous intention to use smart phone. This study conducted survey through e-mail, direct mail, and interview with smart phone users. Empirical analysis based on 330 respondents was conducted in order to test the hypotheses. First, the result of hypotheses testing showed that perceived usefulness among three factors of perceived benefit has the highest positive impact on perceived value, and then followed by perceived playfulness and perceived quality. Second, the result of hypotheses testing showed that perceived cost among three factors of perceived sacrifice has significantly negative impact on perceived value, however, technicality and security risk have no significant impact on perceived value. Also, the result of hypotheses testing showed that perceived value has significant direct impact on continuous intention to use of smart phone. In this regard, marketing managers of smart phone company should pay more attention to improve task efficiency and performance of smart phone, including rate systems of smart phone. Additionally, to test the moderating effect of personal innovativeness, this research conducted multi-group analysis by the degree of personal innovativeness of smart phone users. In a group with high level of innovativeness, perceived usefulness has the highest positive influence on perceived value than other factors. Instead, the analysis for a group with low level of innovativeness showed that perceived playfulness was the highest positive factor to influence perceived value than others. This result of the group with high level of innovativeness explains that innovators and early adopters are able to cope with higher level of cost and risk, and they expect to develop more positive intentions toward higher performance through the use of an innovation. Also, hedonic behavior in the case of the group with low level of innovativeness aims to provide self-fulfilling value to the users, in contrast to utilitarian perspective, which aims to provide instrumental value to the users. However, with regard to perceived sacrifice, both groups in general showed negative impact on perceived value. Also, the group with high level of innovativeness had less overall negative impact on perceived value compared to the group with low level of innovativeness across all factors. In both group with high level of innovativeness and with low level of innovativeness, perceived cost has the highest negative influence on perceived value than other factors. Instead, the analysis for a group with high level of innovativeness showed that perceived technicality was the positive factor to influence perceived value than others. However, the analysis for a group with low level of innovativeness showed that perceived security risk was the second high negative factor to influence perceived value than others. Unlike previous studies, this study focuses on influencing factors on continuous intention to use of smart phone, rather than considering initial purchase and adoption of smart phone. First, perceived value, which was used to identify user's adoption behavior, has a mediating effect among perceived benefit, perceived sacrifice, and continuous intention to use smart phone. Second, perceived usefulness has the highest positive influence on perceived value, while perceived cost has significant negative influence on perceived value. Third, perceived value, like prior studies, has high level of positive influence on continuous intention to use smart phone. Fourth, in multi-group analysis by the degree of personal innovativeness of smart phone users, perceived usefulness, in a group with high level of innovativeness, has the highest positive influence on perceived value than other factors. Instead, perceived playfulness, in a group with low level of innovativeness, has the highest positive factor to influence perceived value than others. This result shows that early adopters intend to adopt smart phone as a tool to make their job useful, instead market followers intend to adopt smart phone as a tool to make their time enjoyable. In terms of marketing strategy for smart phone company, marketing managers should pay more attention to identify their customers' lifetime value by the phase of smart phone adoption, as well as to understand their behavior intention to accept the risk and uncertainty positively. The academic contribution of this study primarily is to employ the VAM (Value-based Adoption Model) as a conceptual foundation, compared to TAM (Technology Acceptance Model) used widely by previous studies. VAM is useful for understanding continuous intention to use smart phone in comparison with TAM as a new IT utility by individual adoption. Perceived value dominantly influences continuous intention to use smart phone. The results of this study justify our research model adoption on each antecedent of perceived value as a benefit and a sacrifice component. While TAM could be widely used in user acceptance of new technology, it has a limitation to explain the new IT adoption like smart phone, because of customer behavior intention to choose the value of the object. In terms of theoretical approach, this study provides theoretical contribution to the development, design, and marketing of smart phone. The practical contribution of this study is to suggest useful decision alternatives concerned to marketing strategy formulation for acquiring and retaining long-term customers related to smart phone business. Since potential customers are interested in both benefit and sacrifice when evaluating the value of smart phone, marketing managers in smart phone company has to put more effort into creating customer's value of low sacrifice and high benefit so that customers will continuously have higher adoption on smart phone. Especially, this study shows that innovators and early adopters with high level of innovativeness have higher adoption than market followers with low level of innovativeness, in terms of perceived usefulness and perceived cost. To formulate marketing strategy for smart phone diffusion, marketing managers have to pay more attention to identify not only their customers' benefit and sacrifice components but also their customers' lifetime value to adopt smart phone.

• 헤리티지:역사와 과학
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• 제52권3호
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• pp.172-187
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• 2019

본 논문의 목적은 무형문화유산 일반전승자의 역할을 주목하면서, 소셜 네트워크 분석을 활용해 무형문화유산 전승공동체의 연결망과 전승활동에서 발생하는 지식 흐름의 구조적 특징을 분석하는 데 있다. 이러한 연구 목적을 이루기 위해 본 논문에서는 연구 대상을 국가무형문화재 종목들 중에서 일반인의 전승활동이 활발한 '아리랑'으로 선정하였다. 아리랑은 오랜 기간 제도권 밖에서 일반대중 활동을 중심으로 자생적으로 전승되었으며, 2015년에 전문전승자 지정 없이 국가무형문화재로 지정된 최초의 사례이다. 현재 아리랑은 약 60여 종, 3,600여 곡에 이르는 것으로 추정된다. 본 논문에서는 이 중에서 전문전승자와 일반전승자의 상호교류가 활발한 향토민요 '정선아리랑'을 중심으로 연구하였다. 소셜 네트워크 분석은 사람과 사람 사이의 관계를 노드(Node)와 링크(Link)로 모델링하여 수치화 통계화 시각화하여 해석하는 방법을 말한다. 이 방법은 전통적으로 사회학에서 사회조직 및 취약계층을 연구하는 데 꾸준히 활용되었다. 최근에는 문헌정보학, 문화콘텐츠학, 경영학 등과 같은 분야에서 연구경향, 시장동향, 조직관리 등을 연구하는 데 이 방법이 활용되고 있다. 이처럼 여러 학문 분야에서 소셜 네트워크 분석을 이용한 연구가 증가하는 추세지만 문화재 분야에서는 관련 연구를 찾아보기가 어렵다. 소셜 네트워크 분석은 크게 3단계, '연결망 모델링', '데이터 수집', '데이터 분석 및 시각화'로 진행된다. 본 논문에서는 첫 번째, 2017년 기준으로 정선아리랑보존회 회원 전체를 조사 대상으로 선정하여 완전한 연결망으로 모델링하였다. 두 번째, 데이터 수집은 보존회 회원 명부를 확보해 2017년 10월 17일 면대면 조사와 2017년 12월 15일 전화 설문조사를 통해 하였다. 세 번째, 데이터 분석은 Netminer 4.0 프로그램을 이용해 중심성 분석, 구조적 등위성 분석, 커뮤니티 분석 등을 주요 지표로 하였다. 본 논문은 기존에 무형문화유산 계보조사에서 소수 사람들의 구술자료에 의존해 파악하던 방식에서 벗어나 객관적이고 계량적인 방법으로 조사할 수 있는 기반을 제공하였다는 점에서 연구 의의가 있다. 그리고 무형문화유산 전승공동체 구성원들의 관계 및 지식 흐름의 구조를 지식지도(2D Spring Map) 형태로 시각화함으로써 추상적인 내용을 직관적으로 파악할 수 있게 했다는 점에서 의미가 있다.

• 대한간호
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• 제20권4호통권112호
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• pp.27-38
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• 1981

오늘 저희에게 주어진 주제, 내일에 타당한 간호사업 및 간호교육의 향방을 어떻게 정하여야 하는가의 논의는 오늘날 간호계 주변에 일어나고 있는 변화의 실상을 이해하는 데서 비롯되어져야 한다고 생각하는 입장에서 먼저 세계적으로 건강관리사업이 당면한 딜레마가 어떠한 것이며 이러한 문제해결을 위해 어떠한 새로운 제안들이 나오고 있는가를 개관 하므로서 그 교육적 의미를 정의해 보고 장래 간호교육이 지향해야할 바를 생각해 보려 합니다. 오늘의 사회의 하나의 특징은 세계 모든 나라들이 각기 어떻게 전체 국민에게 고루 미칠 수 있는 건강관리체계를 이룩할 수 있느냐에 관심을 모으고 있는 사실이라고 봅니다. 부강한 나라에 있어서나 가장 빈궁한 나라에 있어서나 그 관심은 마찬가지로 나타나고 있읍니다. 보건진료 문제의 제기는 발달된 현대의학의 지식과 기술이 지닌 건강관리의 방대한 가능성과 건강 관리의 요구를 지닌 사람들에게 미치는 실질적인 혜택간에 점점 더 크게 벌어지는 격차에서 발생한다고 봅니다. David Rogers는 1960년대 초반까지 갖고 있던 의료지식의 축적과 민간인의 구매력 향상이 자동적으로 국민 건강의 향상을 초래할 것이라고 믿었던 순진한 꿈은 이루어지지 않았고 오히려 의료사업의 위기는 의료지식과 의료봉사간에 벌어지는 격차와 의료에 대한 막대한 투자와 그에서 얻는 건강의 혜택간의 격차에서 온다고 말하고 있읍니다. 균등 분배의 견지에서 보면 의료지식과 기술의 향상은 그 단위 투자에 대한 생산성을 낮춤으로서 오히려 장애적 요인으로 작용해온 것도 사실이고 의료의 발달에 따른 일반인의 기대 상승과 더불어 의료를 태성의 권리로 규명하는 의료보호사업의 확대로 야기되는 의료수요의 급증은 모두 기존 시설 자원에 압박을 초래하여 전래적 의료공급체제에 도전을 가해 왔으며 의료의 발달에 건 기대와는 달리 인류의 건강 문제 해결은 더욱 요원한 과제로 남게 되었읍니다. 현시점에서 세계인구의 건강문제는 기아, 영양실조, 안전한 식수 공급 및 위생적 생활환경조성의 문제에서부터 가장 정밀한 의료기술발달에 수반되는 의료사회문제에 이르는 다양한 문제를 지니고 있으며 주로 각개 국가의 경제 사회적 여건이 이 문제의 성격을 결정짓고 있다고 볼수 있읍니다. 그러나 건강 관리에 대한 요구는 영구히, 완전히 충족될 수 없는 요구에 속한다는 의미에서 경제 사회적 발달 수준에 상관없이 모든 국가가 공히 요구에 미치지 못하는 제한된 자원문제로 고심하고 있는 실정입니다. 또 하나의 공통된 관점은 각기 문제의 상황은 달라도 오늘날의 건강 문제는 주로 의료권 밖의 유전적 소인, 사회경제적, 정치문화적인 환경여건과 각기 선택하는 삶의 스타일에 깊이 관련되어 있다는 사실입니다. 따라서 오늘과 내일의 건강관리 문제는 의학적 견지에서 뿐 아니라 널리 경제, 사회, 정치, 문화적 관점에서 포괄적인 접근이 시도되어야 한다는 점과 의료의 고급화, 전문화, 일변도의 과정에서 소외되었던 기본건강관리체계 강화에 역점을 둔 다양하고 탄력성 있는 사업전개가 요구되고 있다는 점입니다. 다양한 건강관리요구에 적절히 대처할 수 있기 위한 그간 세계 각처에서 시도된 새로운 건강관리 접근과 그 제안을 살펴보면 대체로 4가지의 뚜렷한 성격들로 집약할 수 있을 것 같습니다. 그 첫째는 건강관리사업계획 및 그 수행에 있어 지역 사회의 적극적 참여를 유도하는 일, 둘째는 지역단위의 일차보건의료에서 부터 도심지 신예 종합병원, 시설 의료에 이르기까지 건강관리사업을 합리적으로 체계화하는 일. 셋째로 의료인력이용의 효율화 및 비의료인의 훈련과 협조 유발을 포함하는 효과적인 인력관리에 대한 제안과 넷째로 의료보험 및 각양 집단 의료유형을 포함하는 대체 의료재정 운영관리에 관련된 제안들을 들 수 있읍니다. 건강관리사업에 있어 지역사회 참여의 의의는 첫째로 사회 경제적인 제약이 모든 사람에게 가능한 최대한의 의료를 모두 고루 공급하기 어렵게 하고 있다는 점에서 제한된 정부재정과 지역사회가용자원을 보다 효율적으로 이용할 수 있게 하는 자조적이고 자율적인 지역사회건강관리체제의 구현에 있다고 볼 수 있으며 둘때로는 개인과 가족 및 지역민의 건강에 영향하는 많은 요인들은 실질적으로 의료권 외적 요인들로서 위생적인 생활양식, 식사습관, 의료시설이용 등 깊이 지역사회특성과 관련되어 국민보건의 실질적 향상을 위하여는 지역 주민의 자발적인 참여가 필수여건이 된다는 점 입니다. 지역 단위별 체계적인 의료사업의 전개는 제한된 의료자원의 보다 합리적이고 효율적인 이용을 가능하게 하며 요구가 있을때 언제나 가까운 거리에서 경제 사회적 제약을 받지 않고 이용할 수 있는 일차건강관리망을 통하여 건강에 관련된 정보를 얻으며 질병예방, 건강증진 및 기초적인 진료의 도움을 얻을 수 있고 의뢰에 대한 제2차, 제3차 진료에의 길은 건강관리사업의 질과 폭을 동시에 높고 넓게 해 줄 수 있는 길이 된다는 것입니다. 인력 관리에 관련된 두가지 기본 방향으로서는 첫째로 기존보건의료인력의 적정배치 유도이고 둘째는 기존인력의 역할확대, 조정 및 비의료인의 교육훈련과 부분적 업무대체를 들수 있으며 이러한 인력관리의 기본 방향은 부족되는 의료인력의 생산성을 높이고 주민들의 자조적 능력을 강화시킨다는 데에 두고 있음니다. 대체적 의료재정운영안은 대체로 의료공급과 재정관리를 이원화하여 주민의 경제능력이 의료수혜의 장애요소로 작용함을 막고 의료인의 경제적 동기에 의한 과잉치료처치에 의한 낭비를 줄임으로써 의료재정의 투자의 효과를 증대하는 데(cost-effectiveness) 그 기본방향을 두고 있다고 봅니다. 이러한 주변의료 사회적인 동향이 간호교육의 미래상에 끼치는 영향은 지대한 것이라 봅니다. 첫째로 장래 세계인구의 건강문제는 정치, 사회, 경제, 환경적인 의료권 밖의 요인들에 의해 더욱 크게 영향 받는다고 전제한다면 건강문제해결에 있어서도 전통적인 의료사업의 접근에서 더나아가 문제발생의 근원이 되는 생활개선이라는 차원에서 포괄적 접근을 생각하여야 하고 이를 위해선 정치, 경제, 사회전반에 걸친 깊이있는 이해과 주민의 생활환경에 직접 영향하는 교통수단, 통신망 mass media, 전력문제, 농업경영방법 및 조직적 사회활동 등 폭넓은 이해가 요구된다고 봅니다. 둘째로, 지역사회참여의 의의를 인정한다면 지역민의 자발적 참여를 효과적으로 유발시킬수 있고 의료집단과 각종 주민조직과 일반주민들 사이에서 협조적으로 일할수 있는 역량을 기르기위한 교육적 준비가 요구된다고 봅니다. 셋째로, 지역주민의 건강관리 자조능력 강화를 하나의 목표로 삼는다면 치료자에서 교육자로, 지도자에서 촉진자로, 제공자에서 지원자료의 역할의 변화 내지 다양화를 요구하게 될 것이므로 그에 대처할 수 있는 준비가 필요하다고 봅니다. 넷째로, 생각되어야 할 점은 지역중심건강관리사업을 지향하는 보건의료의 이념적 방향과 그에 상응하는 구체적 접근방법을 효율적으로 적용하기 위해서는 종횡으로 연결되는 의사소통체계의 정립과 민활한 정보교환이 이루어질 수 있어야 한다는 점에서 의사소통의 구심체로서 역할할 수 있는 역량을 함양해야 할 교육적 과제가 있다고 봅니다. 마지막으로 생각되어야 할 점은 지역중심으로 전개될 건강관리사업은 건강증진 및 질병예방적 측면과 질병진료 및 회복과 재활에 이르는 종합적이고 포괄적인 사업이어야 한다는 점에서 종래 공공 의료부문과 사설의료기관 사이에 나누어져 있던 예방의학과 치료의학의 통합 뿐 아니라 정부주축으로 이루어 지고 있는 지역사회개발사업 및 농촌지도사업과 종교 및 각종 민간인 집단이 벌이고있는 사업들과의 전체적인 통합적 접근이 이루어져야 한다고 생각하는 입장에서 종래 간호교육이 강조하지 않던 진료의 의무와 대외적 조직활동에 대한 보완적인 교육조치가 요구된다고 봅니다. 간호의 학문체계로서의 입장은 오랜 역사를 두고 논의의 대상이 되어왔으나 아직까지 뚜렷이 어떤 것이 간호 특유의 지식체계이며 건강문제에 관련하여 무엇이 간호특유의 결정영역이며 이 결정과 그 결과를 어떠한 방법으로 치료적 행위로 옮길 수 있는가에 대한 확실한 답을 얻지 못하고 있는 실정이라고 봅니다. 다만 근래에 제시된 여러 간호이론들 속에서 공통적으로 이야기되어지고 있는 개념들로선 우선 간호학문을 건강과 질병에 관련된 인간의 전인적이고 전체적인 상황을 다루는 학제적 과학으로서보는 입장이 있고 따라서 생물신체적인 면 외에 정신심리적, 사회경제적, 정치문화적 환경과의 상호작용 속에서 인간의 건강과 질병문제를 생각한다는 지향을 갖고 있다고 말할 수 있겠읍니다. 간호교육은 간호계 내적인 학문적, 이론적 체계화의 요구에 못지않게 대민봉사하는 전문직으로서의 사회적 책임을 감당해야하는 중요과제를 안고있어 변화하는 사회요구에 효과적으로 대처해 나가야 할 당면문제를 안고 있읍니다. 간효역할 확대, 보건진료원훈련 등 이러한 사회적 요구에 대응하려는 조치가 되겠읍니다. 이러한 시점에서 간호계가 분명히 짚고 넘어가야 할 사실은 이러한 움직임들이 종래의 의사들의 외업무공급을 연장 확대하는 입장에 서서 간호의 특수전문직 명목을 흐리게 할수있는 위험을 감수할 것인지 아니면 가능한 대체방안을 갖고 간호전문직의 독자적인 진로를 개척하면서 다각적인 도전을 받아들일 준비를 갖추든지 그 방향을 뚜렷이 해야할 일이라 생각합니다. 저로서는 이미 잘 훈련된 간호원들과 조산원들의 교육적, 경험적 배경을 기반으로 지역사회 최일선 건강관리요원으로 사회적 효능을 다 할수 있는 일차건강관리간호조직의 구현을 대체방안으로 제시하고 싶습니다. 간호원과 조산원들의 훈련된 역량과 건강관리체제의 구조적 변화를 효과적으로 조화시킨다면 대부분의 세계인구의 건강문제는 해결가능하다고 보는 입장입니다. 물론 정책과 의료와 행정적지원이 활성화되어지는 환경속에서만 그 기대하는 결과가 확대되리라는 점 부언하는 바입니다. 마지막으로 언급하고 싶은 점은 바로 오늘의 주제 ''교육의 동역자-선생과 학생''이라는 개념입니다. 특히 상회정의적 입장에서 보는 의료사업전개에 지역민 내지 의료소비자의 참여를 강조하는 현시점에 있어 교육자와 학생이 교육의 현장에서 서로 동역자로서 학습의 책임을 나누는 경험은 아주 시기적으로 적합하여 교육적으로 지대한 의미를 갖는 것이라고 생각합니다. 이에 수반되어져야 할 역할의 변화에 수용적인 자세를 갖고 적극 실제적용하려 노력하는 선생앞에서 자주적 결정을 행사해본 학생이야말로 건강관리대상자로 하여금 같은 결정권을 행사할수 있도록 촉구하여 주민의 자조적 역량을 기르고 의료사업의 민주화, 인간화를 이룩할 수 있는 길잡이가 될 수 있으리라 믿는 바입니다.

• 한국산림과학회지
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• 제70권1호
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• pp.7-16
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• 1985

임목(林木)의 주체성인(主體成因)인 수간(樹幹)에 대한 각종(各種) 성장인자간(成長因子間)의 정준상관(正準相關)과 그의 관계적(關係的) 배경(背景) 및 수간(樹幹)의 총합적(總合的)인 변동분석(變動分析)에 의(依)한 수간적(樹幹的) 특징(特徵)을 파악(把握)함에 있어, 그의 최적기법(最適技法)을 탐색(探索)하기 위한 시도(試圖)로서 일본(日本)잎갈나무(Larix leptolepis)에 주성분(主成分) 및 정준상관분석법(正準相關分析法)을 도입적용(導入適用)하고, 얻어진 결과(結果)를 다음과 같이 요약(要約)한다. 1) 정형수(正形數)($x_8$)를 제외(除外)한 모든 성장인자(成長因子) 즉(卽), 수고(樹高)($x_1$), 지하고(枝下高)($x_2$), 망고(望高)($x_3$), 흉고직경(胸高直徑)($x_4$), 중앙직경(中央直徑)($x_5$), 수관폭(樹冠幅)($x_6$) 및 간재적(幹材積)($x_7$) 등(等)의 각(各) 인자간(因子間)에 강약간(強弱間)의 상관(相關)이 있으며, 특(特)히 흉고직경(胸高直徑), 수고(樹高) 및 중앙직경(中央直徑) 등(等)은 간재적(幹材積)과 고도(高度)의 상관(相關)이 있다(표(表) l 참조(參照)). 2) (1) 상장성장인자(上長成長因子)인 수고(樹高), 지하고(枝下高) 및 망고(望高) 등(等)의 합성변량(合成變量)과 간재적간(幹材積間), (2) 비대성장인자(肥大成長因子)인 흉고직경(胸高直徑), 중앙직경(中央直徑) 및 수관폭(樹冠幅) 등(等)의 합성변량(合成變量)과 간재적간(幹材積間), (3) 상장(上長) 및 비대성장인자(肥大成長因子)를 총망라(總網羅)한 6개인자(個因子)의 합성변량(合成變量)과 간재적간(幹材積間)의 정준상관계수(正準相關係數)와 정준변량(正準變量)이 각각(各各) $${(1)\;{\gamma}_{u1,v1}=0.82980^{**},\;\{u_1=1.00000x_7\\v_1=1.08323x_1-0.04299x_2-0.07080x_3}\\{(2)\;{\gamma}_{u1,v1}=0.98198^{**},\;\{u_1=1.00000x_7\\v_1=0.86433x_4+0.11996x_5+0.02917x_6}\\{(3)\;{\gamma}_{u1,v1}=0.98700^{**},\;\{u_1=1.00000x_7\\v1=0.12948x_1+0.00291x_2+0.03076x_3+0.76707x_4+0.09107x_5+0.02576x_6}$$ 등(等)과 같이 되어, 어느 경우(境遇)에서도 고도(高度)의 정준상관(正準相關)을 가지며, (1)의 경우(境遇)에는 수고(樹高)가, (2)의 경우(境遇)에는 흉고직경(胸高直徑)이, (3)의 경우(境遇)에는 흉고직경(胸高直徑)과 수고(樹高)가 각각(各各)의 정준상관(正準相關)에 절대적인 기여(寄與)를 하는 것으로서, 각종(各種) 질적성장(質的成長)의 총합특성(總合特性)은 이들 인자(因子)의 막강한 영향력(影響力)에 의해서 형성(形成)되며, 특(特)히 (3)의 경우에서 간재적(幹材積)과의 정준상관(正準相關)에 미치는 흉고직경(胸高直徑)의 영향력(影響力)은 기타(其他)의 인자(因子)에 비(比)하여 판이(判異)하게 큰 것으로 밝혀지고 있다(표(表) 2 참조(參照)). 3) 상장성장인자(上長成長因子)인 수고(樹高), 지하고(枝下高) 및 망고(望高) 등(等)의 합성변량(合成變量)과 비대성장인자(肥大成長因子)인 흉고직경(胸高直徑), 중앙직경(中央直徑) 및 수관폭(樹冠幅) 등(等)의 합성변량간(合成變量間)의 정준상관계수(正準相關係數)와 정준변량(正準變量)이 $${\gamma}_{u1,v1}=0.78556^{**},\;\{u_1=1.20569x_1-0.04444x_2-0.21696x_3\\v_1=1.09571x_4-0.14076z_5+0.05285z_6$$와 같이 됨에 따라, 각종 상장성장인자(上長成長因子)와 비대성장인자간(肥大成長因子間)의 고도(高度)의 정준상관(正準相關)에 있어 수고(樹高)와 흉고직경(胸高直徑)만의 기여도(寄與度)가 극(極)히 현저한 것으로서, 상장성장(上長成長)의 총합특성(總合特性)은 수고(樹高)에 의해서, 비대성장(肥大成長)의 총합특성(總合特性)은 흉고직경(胸高直徑)에 의해서 각각(各各) 형성(形成)된다는 사실(事實)이 확인(確認)된 것이다. 따라서 양인자(兩因子)에 대한 간재적계측(幹材積計測)에 있어서의 필수유력인(必須有力因子)로서의 과학성(科學性)이 입증(立證)된 것이라 생각한다(표(表) 2 참조(參照)). 4) 수간(樹幹)의 8개성장인자(個成長因子) 즉(卽), 8차원(次元)의 정보(情報)(특성치(特性値))를 설정(設定)된 유효목표(有效目標) 85%에 따라 3차원(次元)으로 간략화(簡約化)된 총합특성치(總合特性値) 즉(卽), 제(第) 1 ~ 제(第) 3 주성분(主成分)은 다음과 같다. 제(第) 1 주성분(主成分)($Z_1$); $Z_1=0.40192x_1+0.23693x_2+0.37047x_3+0.41745x_4+0.41629x_5+0.33454x_60.42798x_7+0.04923x_8$ 제(第) 2 주성분(主成分)($Z_2$) ; $z_2=-0.09306x_1-0.34707x_2+0.08372x_3-0.03239x_4+0.11152x_5+0.00012x_6+0.02407x_7+0.92185x_8$ 제(第) 3 주성분(主成分)($Z_3$) ; $Z_3=0.19832x_1+0.68210x_2+0.35824x_3-0.22522x_4-0.20876x_5-0.42373x_6-0.15055x_7+0.26562x_8$ 제(第) 1 주성분(主成分)($Z_1$)은 기여율(寄與率)이 63.26%나 되는 매우 높은 정보흡수력(情報吸收力)을 가진 "크기의 인자(因子)(size factor)"로서, 그의 주성분득점(主成分得點)(principal component score)은 인자부하량(因子負荷量)이 매우 높은 간재적(幹材積), 흉고직경(胸高直徑), 중앙직경(中央直徑) 및 수고(樹高) 등(等)에 의해써 결정(決定)되며, 제(第) 2 주성분(主成分)($Z_2$)은 입체적(立體的) 형상(形狀)의 지표(指標) 즉(卽), 수간(樹幹)의 입체적(立體的) 상사성(相似性)과 완구도(完溝度)를 나타내주는 "형상(形狀)의 인자(因子)(shape factor)"로서, 그의 score는 정형수(正形數)의 절대적(絶對的)인 영향력(影響力)에 의(依)해서 형성(形成)되며, 제(第) 3 주성분(主成分)($Z_3$)은 상장성장(上長成長)과 비대성장(肥大成長)과의 역관계(逆關係)의 현상(現象) 즉(卽), 수간(樹幹)의 세장(細長)(또는 굵고 짧음)의 정도를 표시(表示)하는 성장형상(成長形狀)의 지표(指標)로서, 이는 제(第) 2의 "형상(形狀)의 인자(因子)"가 된다. 이상(以上) 3개주성분(個主成分)은 그의 누적기여율(累積寄與率)이 88.36%로서 만족스러운 정보흡수역량(情報吸收力量)을 지니고 있다(표(表) 3 참조(參照)). 5) 본(本) 연구(硏究)에 적용(適用)된 주성분(主成分) 및 정준(正準) 상관분석법(相關分析法)은 적극적(積極的)인 이용개발(利用開發)에 따라서는 삼림계측(森林計測)(임목성장(林木成長)), 지위판정분류(地位判定分類), 삼림(森林) 및 임산업(林産業)의 경영진단(經營診斷), 임산가공(林産加工)(품(品))의 생산관리(生産管理) 및 기지(其地) 총합특성치(總合特性値)의 산정(算定)을 필요(必要)로 하는 분야(分野)에 많은 기여(寄與)가 있을 것으로 사료(思料)된다.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• 제20권2호
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• pp.63-86
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• 2010

Personalized services directly and indirectly acquire personal data, in part, to provide customers with higher-value services that are specifically context-relevant (such as place and time). Information technologies continue to mature and develop, providing greatly improved performance. Sensory networks and intelligent software can now obtain context data, and that is the cornerstone for providing personalized, context-specific services. Yet, the danger of overflowing personal information is increasing because the data retrieved by the sensors usually contains privacy information. Various technical characteristics of context-aware applications have more troubling implications for information privacy. In parallel with increasing use of context for service personalization, information privacy concerns have also increased such as an unrestricted availability of context information. Those privacy concerns are consistently regarded as a critical issue facing context-aware personalized service success. The entire field of information privacy is growing as an important area of research, with many new definitions and terminologies, because of a need for a better understanding of information privacy concepts. Especially, it requires that the factors of information privacy should be revised according to the characteristics of new technologies. However, previous information privacy factors of context-aware applications have at least two shortcomings. First, there has been little overview of the technology characteristics of context-aware computing. Existing studies have only focused on a small subset of the technical characteristics of context-aware computing. Therefore, there has not been a mutually exclusive set of factors that uniquely and completely describe information privacy on context-aware applications. Second, user survey has been widely used to identify factors of information privacy in most studies despite the limitation of users' knowledge and experiences about context-aware computing technology. To date, since context-aware services have not been widely deployed on a commercial scale yet, only very few people have prior experiences with context-aware personalized services. It is difficult to build users' knowledge about context-aware technology even by increasing their understanding in various ways: scenarios, pictures, flash animation, etc. Nevertheless, conducting a survey, assuming that the participants have sufficient experience or understanding about the technologies shown in the survey, may not be absolutely valid. Moreover, some surveys are based solely on simplifying and hence unrealistic assumptions (e.g., they only consider location information as a context data). A better understanding of information privacy concern in context-aware personalized services is highly needed. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to identify a generic set of factors for elemental information privacy concern in context-aware personalized services and to develop a rank-order list of information privacy concern factors. We consider overall technology characteristics to establish a mutually exclusive set of factors. A Delphi survey, a rigorous data collection method, was deployed to obtain a reliable opinion from the experts and to produce a rank-order list. It, therefore, lends itself well to obtaining a set of universal factors of information privacy concern and its priority. An international panel of researchers and practitioners who have the expertise in privacy and context-aware system fields were involved in our research. Delphi rounds formatting will faithfully follow the procedure for the Delphi study proposed by Okoli and Pawlowski. This will involve three general rounds: (1) brainstorming for important factors; (2) narrowing down the original list to the most important ones; and (3) ranking the list of important factors. For this round only, experts were treated as individuals, not panels. Adapted from Okoli and Pawlowski, we outlined the process of administrating the study. We performed three rounds. In the first and second rounds of the Delphi questionnaire, we gathered a set of exclusive factors for information privacy concern in context-aware personalized services. The respondents were asked to provide at least five main factors for the most appropriate understanding of the information privacy concern in the first round. To do so, some of the main factors found in the literature were presented to the participants. The second round of the questionnaire discussed the main factor provided in the first round, fleshed out with relevant sub-factors. Respondents were then requested to evaluate each sub factor's suitability against the corresponding main factors to determine the final sub-factors from the candidate factors. The sub-factors were found from the literature survey. Final factors selected by over 50% of experts. In the third round, a list of factors with corresponding questions was provided, and the respondents were requested to assess the importance of each main factor and its corresponding sub factors. Finally, we calculated the mean rank of each item to make a final result. While analyzing the data, we focused on group consensus rather than individual insistence. To do so, a concordance analysis, which measures the consistency of the experts' responses over successive rounds of the Delphi, was adopted during the survey process. As a result, experts reported that context data collection and high identifiable level of identical data are the most important factor in the main factors and sub factors, respectively. Additional important sub-factors included diverse types of context data collected, tracking and recording functionalities, and embedded and disappeared sensor devices. The average score of each factor is very useful for future context-aware personalized service development in the view of the information privacy. The final factors have the following differences comparing to those proposed in other studies. First, the concern factors differ from existing studies, which are based on privacy issues that may occur during the lifecycle of acquired user information. However, our study helped to clarify these sometimes vague issues by determining which privacy concern issues are viable based on specific technical characteristics in context-aware personalized services. Since a context-aware service differs in its technical characteristics compared to other services, we selected specific characteristics that had a higher potential to increase user's privacy concerns. Secondly, this study considered privacy issues in terms of service delivery and display that were almost overlooked in existing studies by introducing IPOS as the factor division. Lastly, in each factor, it correlated the level of importance with professionals' opinions as to what extent users have privacy concerns. The reason that it did not select the traditional method questionnaire at that time is that context-aware personalized service considered the absolute lack in understanding and experience of users with new technology. For understanding users' privacy concerns, professionals in the Delphi questionnaire process selected context data collection, tracking and recording, and sensory network as the most important factors among technological characteristics of context-aware personalized services. In the creation of a context-aware personalized services, this study demonstrates the importance and relevance of determining an optimal methodology, and which technologies and in what sequence are needed, to acquire what types of users' context information. Most studies focus on which services and systems should be provided and developed by utilizing context information on the supposition, along with the development of context-aware technology. However, the results in this study show that, in terms of users' privacy, it is necessary to pay greater attention to the activities that acquire context information. To inspect the results in the evaluation of sub factor, additional studies would be necessary for approaches on reducing users' privacy concerns toward technological characteristics such as highly identifiable level of identical data, diverse types of context data collected, tracking and recording functionality, embedded and disappearing sensor devices. The factor ranked the next highest level of importance after input is a context-aware service delivery that is related to output. The results show that delivery and display showing services to users in a context-aware personalized services toward the anywhere-anytime-any device concept have been regarded as even more important than in previous computing environment. Considering the concern factors to develop context aware personalized services will help to increase service success rate and hopefully user acceptance for those services. Our future work will be to adopt these factors for qualifying context aware service development projects such as u-city development projects in terms of service quality and hence user acceptance.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• 제19권3호
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• pp.69-98
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• 2009

We investigated what factors motivate gamers to participate in a guild and why they continue to be engaged as members of the guild. We find that, based on the result of focus group interviews with MMORPG gamers, social support and self-esteem factors play important roles. Considering both prior research and the focus group interviews we have conducted, we define social support and character control as independent variables. Character identity, guild identity, and self-esteem are proposed as mediating variables while guild flow and game loyalty as dependent variables. Accordingly, we develop the research model and hypotheses, and verify them empirically. Based on our experiences of playing the WoW game, we proposed a research model and conducted focus-group interviews (FGIs). FGIs involve formulating a hypothesis and then collecting some relevant data. FGIs were conducted face-to-face with students of C University in Korea. We formulated structured interview schedules, and the questions were based on our research variables and personal experiences. The questions for the interviews encompassed the following areas: (a) the demographic characteristics of the focus group; (b) the number of years for which respondents had played online games; (c) the motive for starting a game; (d) the number of game-characters assumed by each gamer; (e) the type of game played; and (f) other issues such as the reasons for involvement in the play, the willingness to reuse the game in case new versions were released, etc. On average, it took two hours to interview each of three groups. A primary set of FGIs was conducted with three groups on the premise that there would be some differences caused by character race (Horde vs. Alliance) or by playable server (Normal vs. Combat). With respect to the manner of playing, we found that guild members shared information, felt a sense of belonging, and played computer games for quite a long time through the guild; however, they did not undergo these experiences when playing alone. Gamers who belonged to a specific guild helped other players without expecting compensation for that, freely shared information about the game, gave away items for free, and more generous with other members who made mistakes. The guild members were aware of the existence other members and experienced a sense of belonging through interactions with, and evaluations from, other players. It was clear that social support was shown within the guild and that it played an important role as a major research variable. Based on the results of the first FGIs, a second set of in-depth FGIs was carried out with a focus on the psychology of the individual within the guild and the social community of the guild. The second set of FGIs also focused on the guild's offline meetings. Gamers, over all, recognize the necessity of joining a community, not only off-line but also online world of the guild. They admit that the guild is important for them to easily and conveniently enjoy playing online computer games. The active behavior and positive attitudes of existing guild members can motivate new members of the guild to adapt themselves to the guild environment. They then adopt the same behaviors and attitudes of established guild members. In this manner, the new members of the guild strengthen the bonds with other gamers while feeling a sense of belonging, and developing social identity, thereby. It was discovered that the interaction among guild members and the social support encouraged new gamers to quickly develop a sense of social identity and increase their self-esteem. The guild seemed to play the role of socializing gamers. Sometimes, even in the real world, the guild members helped one another; therefore, the features of the guild also spilled over to the offline environment. We intend to use self-esteem, which was found through the second set of FGIs, as an important research variable. To collect data, an online survey was designed with a questionnaire to be completed by WoW gamers, who belong to a guild. The survey was registered on the best three domestic game-sites: 'WoW playforum,' 'WoW gamemeca,' and 'Wow invent.' The selected items to be measured in the questionnaire were decided based on prior research and data from FGIs. To verify the content of the questionnaire, we carried out a pilot test with the same participants to point out ambiguous questions as a way to ensure maximum accuracy of the survey result. A total of 244 responses were analyzed from the 250 completed questionnaires. The SEM analysis was used to test goodness-of-fit of the model. As a result, we found important results as follows: First, according to the statistics, social support had statistically significant impacts on character control, character identity, guild identity and self-esteem. Second, character control had significant effects on character identity, guild identity and self-esteem. Third, character identity shows its clear impact on self-esteem and game loyalty. Fourth, guild identity affected self-esteem, guild flow and game loyalty. Fifth, self-esteem had a positive influence on the guild flow. These days, the number of virtual community is rising along with its significance largely because of the nature of the online games. Accordingly, this study is designed to clarify the psychological relationship between gamers within the guild that has been generally established by gamers to play online games together. This study focuses on the relationships in which social support influences guild flow or game loyalty through character control, character identity, guild identity, and self-esteem, which are present within a guild in the MMORPG game environment. The study results are as follows. First, the effects of social support on character control, character identity, guild identity and self-esteem are proven to be statistically significant. It was found that character control improves character identity, guild identity and self-esteem. Among the seven variables, social support, which is derived from FGIs, plays an important role in this study. With the active support of other guild members, gamers can improve their ability to develop good characters and to control them. Second, character identity has a positive effect on self-esteem and game loyalty, while guild identity has a significant effect on self-esteem, guild flow and game loyalty. Self-esteem affects guild flow. It was found that the higher the character and guild identities become, the greater the self-esteem is established. Contrary to the findings of prior research, our study results indicate that the relationship between character identity and guild flow is not significant. Rather, it was found that character identity directly affects game players' loyalty. Even though the character identity had no direct effect on increasing guild flow, it has indirectly affected guild flow through self-esteem. The significant relationship between self-esteem and guild flow indicates that gamers achieve flow, i.e., a feeling of pleasure and excitement through social support. Several important implications of this study should be noted. First, both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to conduct this study. Through FGIs, it was observed that both social support and self-esteem are important variables. Second, because guilds had been rarely studied, this research is expected to play an important role in the online community. Third, according to the result, six hypotheses (H1, H5, H6, H7, H8, and H11) setup based on FGIs, were statistically significant; thus, we can suggest the corresponding relationships among the variables as a guideline for follow-up research. Our research is significant as it has following implications: first, the social support of the guild members is important when establishing character control, character identity, guildidentity and self-esteem. It is also a major variable that affects guild flow and game loyalty. Second, character control when improved by social support shows notable influence on the development of character identity, guild identity and self-esteem. Third, character identity and guild identity are major factors to help establish gamers' own self-esteem. Fourth, character identity affects guild flow through self-esteem and game loyalty. The gamers usually express themselves through characters; the higher character identity is, the more loyalty a gamer has. Fifth, guild identity, established within the guild, has clear effects on self-esteem, guild flow and game loyalty. Sixth, qualitative and quantitative methods are employed to conduct this study. Based on the results of focus group interviews and SEM analysis, we find that the social support by guild members and psychological factors are significant in strengthening the flow of guild and loyalty to the game. As such, game developers should provide some extra functions for guild community, through which gamers can play online games in collaboration with one another. Also, we suggest that positive self-esteem which is built up through social support can help gamers achieve higher level of flow and satisfaction, which will consequently contribute to minimizing the possibility for the players to develop negative attitude toward the guild they belong to.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• 제20권3호
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• pp.167-190
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• 2010

The research conducted here focuses on the effect of factors that affect the behavior of UCC (User Created Content) website users, other than user's rational recognition of how useful a UCC website can be. Most discussions in the existing literature on information systems have focused on users' evaluation how a UCC website can help to attain the users' own goals. However, there are other factors and this research pays attention to an individual's 'personality,' which is stable and biological in nature. Specifically, I have noted here that 'extroversion' and 'neuroticism,' the two common personality factors presented in Eysenck's most representative 'EPQ Model' and 'Big Five Model,' are the two personality factors that affect a site's 'usefulness,' by this I mean how useful does the user consider the website and its content. How useful a site is considered by the user is the other factor that has been regarded as the antecedent factor that influences the adoption of information systems in the existing MIS (Management Information System) research. Secondly, as using or creating a UCC website does not guarantee the user's or the creator's extrinsic motivation, unlike when using the information system within an organization, there is a greater likelihood that the increase in user's activities in relation to a UCC website is motivated by emotional factors rather than rational factors. Thus, I have decided to include the relationship between an individual's personality and what they find pleasurable in the research model. Thirdly, when based on the S-O-R Paradigm of Mehrabian and Russell, the two cognitive factors and emotional factors are finally affected by stimulus, and thus these factors ultimately have an effect on an individual's respondent behavior. Therefore, this research has presented an assumption that the recognition of how useful the site and content is and what emotional pleasure it provides will finally affect the behavior of the UCC website users. Finally, the relationship between the recognition of how useful a site is and how pleasurable it is to useand UCC usage may differ depending on certain situational conditions. In other words, the relationship between the three factors may vary according to how much users are involved in the creation of the website content. Creation thus emerges as the keyword of UCC. I analyzed the above relationships through the moderating variable of the user's involvement in the creation of the site. The research result shows the following: When it comes to the relationship between an individual's personality and what they find pleasurable it is extroverted users who have a greater likelihood to feel pleasure when using a UCC website, as was expected in this research. This in turn leads to a more active usage of the UCC web site because a person who is an extrovert likes to spend time on activities with other people, is sensitive to new experiences and stimuli and thus actively responds to these. An extroverted person accepts new UCC activities as part of his/her social life, rather than getting away from this new UCC environment. This is represented by the term 'Foxonomy' where the users meet a variety of users from all over the world and contact new types of content created by these users. However, neuroticism creates the opposite situation to that created by extroversion. The representative symptoms of neuroticism are instability, stress, and tension. These dispositions are more closely related to stress caused by a new environment rather than this creatingcuriosity or pleasure. Thus, neurotic persons have an uneasy feeling and will eventually avoid the situation where their own or others' daily lives are frequently exposed to the open web environment, this eventually makes them have a negative attitude towards the web environment. When it comes to an individual's personality and how useful site is, the two personality factors of extroversion and neuroticism both have a positive relationship with the recognition of how useful the site and its content is. The positive, curious, and social dispositions of extroverted persons tend to make them consider the future usefulness and possibilities of a new type of information system, or website, based on their positive attitude, which has a significant influence on the recognition of how useful these UCC sites are. Neuroticism also favorably affects how useful a UCC website can be through a different mechanism from that of extroversion. As the neurotic persons tend to feel uneasy and have much doubt about a new type of information system, they actively explore its usefulness in order to relieve their uncomfortable feelings. In other words, neurotic persons seek out how useful a site can be in order to secure their own stable feelings. Meanwhile, extroverted persons explore how useful a site can be because of their positive attitude and curiosity. As a lot of MIS research has revealed that the recognition of how useful a site can be and how pleasurable it can be to use have been proven to have a significant effect on UCC activity. However, the relationship between these factors reveals different aspects based on the user's involvement in creation. This factor of creationgauges the interest of users in the creation of UCC contents. Involvement is a variable that shows the level of an individual's mental effort in creating UCC contents. When a user is highly involved in the creation process and makes an enormous effort to create UCC content (classed a part of a high-involvement group), their own pleasure and recognition of how useful the site is have a significantly higher effect on the future usage of the UCC contents, more significantly than the users who sit back and just retrieve the UCC content created by others. The cognitive and emotional response of those in the low-involvement group is unlikely to last long,even if they recognize the contents of a UCC website is pleasurable and useful to them. However, the high-involvement group tends to participate in the creation and the usage of UCC more favorably, connecting the experience with their own goals. In this respect, this research presents an answer to the question; why so many people are participating in the usage of UCC, the representative form of the Web 2.0 that has drastically involved more and more people in the creation of UCC, even if they cannot gain any monetary or social compensation. Neither information system nor a website can succeed unless it secures a certain level of user base. Moreover, it cannot be further developed when the reasons, or problems, for people's participation are not suitably explored, even if it has a certain user base. Thus, what is significant in this research is that it has studied users' respondent behavior based on an individual's innate personality, emotion, and cognitive interaction, unlike the existing research that has focused on 'compensation' to explain users' participation with the UCC website. There are also limitations in this research. Firstly, I divided an individual's personality into extroversion and neuroticism; however, there are many other personal factors such as neuro-psychiatricism, which also needs to be analyzed for its influence on UCC activities. Secondly, as a UCC website comes in many types such as multimedia, Wikis, and podcasting, these types need to be included as a sub-category of the UCC websites and their relationship with personality, emotion, cognition, and behavior also needs to be analyzed.