• Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.260-273
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• 2010

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to investigate the perceptions of married Korean women regarding marriage and childbirth, and their awareness of childbirth-related issues such as low birth rates, sex preferences and sex imbalances in Korea. Methods: A total of 453 married women aged 20 or older were randomly selected from four urban districts and five rural districts out of 25 districts in Gyeongju, a consolidated city located in Gyeongsangbuk-do Province, South Korea. The survey was conducted from December 2005 to February 2006. A total of 392 out of 453 questionnaires(86.5% response rate) were collected, and 44 incomplete questionnaires were excluded, leaving 348 completed questionnaires to be used for data analysis. Age was divided into three groups as below 49, 50-69, 70 or older. Results: Women's perceptions of marriage were associated with age(p<0.01). Perceptions about childbirth were also significantly related to age(p<0.01), type of residential area (p<0.01) and education level(p<0.05). Sex preferences were significantly related to age(p<0.05) and occupation(p<0.01). Of the respondents aged 49 or younger, 34.8% indicated that the ideal number of children is two, while 25.5% of respondents aged 50 to 69 and 15.3% of respondents aged 70 and 33.7% of respondents aged 70 or older considered four children to be the ideal number. Perceptions of sex imbalance were significantly related to socioeconomic status(p<0.01) and occupation(p<0.01). The largest number of respondents cited "economic burden" as the main reason for low birth rates. Multiple logistic regressions were performed for all three age groups using male sex preference as the dependent variable under the assumption that respondents can have only a single child. Socioeconomic status (p<0.01) and residential area (p<0.05) were significant variables for those aged 49 or below. Education level(p<0.05) and residential area (p<0.01) were statistically significant variables on preferring son in case of having only one child for respondents aged 50 to 69. We did not detect any significant independent variables in respondents who were 70 or older. Conclusions: Our results highlight the necessity of developing policies and public education programs to explain the consequences of low birth rates and sex imbalances in Korea. As increasing numbers of women work outside the home, it is important for the government and employers to provide social and working environments where women do not consider marriage and childbirth to be obstacles to social and business activities.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.191-204
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• 2015

According to the '2013 Performance Assessment Report on the Financial Program' from the National Assembly Budget Office, the unfilled recruitment ratio of Software(SW) Developers in South Korea was 25% in the 2012 fiscal year. Moreover, the unfilled recruitment ratio of highly-qualified SW developers reaches almost 80%. This phenomenon is intensified in small and medium enterprises consisting of less than 300 employees. Young job-seekers in South Korea are increasingly avoiding becoming a SW developer and even the current SW developers want to change careers, which hinders the national development of IT industries. The Korean government has recently realized the problem and implemented policies to foster young SW developers. Due to this effort, it has become easier to find young SW developers at the beginning-level. However, it is still hard to recruit highly-qualified SW developers for many IT companies. This is because in order to become a SW developing expert, having a long term experiences are important. Thus, improving job continuity intentions of current SW developers is more important than fostering new SW developers. Therefore, this study surveyed the job continuity intentions of SW developers and analyzed the factors associated with them. As a method, we carried out a survey from September 2014 to October 2014, which was targeted on 130 SW developers who were working in IT industries in South Korea. We gathered the demographic information and characteristics of the respondents, work environments of a SW industry, and social positions for SW developers. Afterward, a regression analysis and a decision tree method were performed to analyze the data. These two methods are widely used data mining techniques, which have explanation ability and are mutually complementary. We first performed a linear regression method to find the important factors assaociated with a job continuity intension of SW developers. The result showed that an 'expected age' to work as a SW developer were the most significant factor associated with the job continuity intention. We supposed that the major cause of this phenomenon is the structural problem of IT industries in South Korea, which requires SW developers to change the work field from developing area to management as they are promoted. Also, a 'motivation' to become a SW developer and a 'personality (introverted tendency)' of a SW developer are highly importantly factors associated with the job continuity intention. Next, the decision tree method was performed to extract the characteristics of highly motivated developers and the low motivated ones. We used well-known C4.5 algorithm for decision tree analysis. The results showed that 'motivation', 'personality', and 'expected age' were also important factors influencing the job continuity intentions, which was similar to the results of the regression analysis. In addition to that, the 'ability to learn' new technology was a crucial factor for the decision rules of job continuity. In other words, a person with high ability to learn new technology tends to work as a SW developer for a longer period of time. The decision rule also showed that a 'social position' of SW developers and a 'prospect' of SW industry were minor factors influencing job continuity intensions. On the other hand, 'type of an employment (regular position/ non-regular position)' and 'type of company (ordering company/ service providing company)' did not affect the job continuity intension in both methods. In this research, we demonstrated the job continuity intentions of SW developers, who were actually working at IT companies in South Korea, and we analyzed the factors associated with them. These results can be used for human resource management in many IT companies when recruiting or fostering highly-qualified SW experts. It can also help to build SW developer fostering policy and to solve the problem of unfilled recruitment of SW Developers in South Korea.