• Journal of Fisheries and Marine Sciences Education
• /
• v.26 no.2
• /
• pp.296-307
• /
• 2014

As an educational trial for pursuit of educational excellence in the disadvantaged gifted, this study was to explore learning styles and task preferences by student's grade and gender. Furthermore, this study sought to present the practical basis to develop programs for disadvantaged gifted students. Total 153 disadvantage gifted students responded items of the Learning Styles Inventory-III and the Task Preferences Scale, which responses were analyzed by student's grade and gender in using MANOVA. As the results, the 1st grade disadvantaged gifted students preferred Direct instruction, Technology, and Learning games to the higher grade level students. There were significant differences in task preferences by students' grade level. The 4th grade disadvantaged gifted students preferred Creative tasks and Difficult tasks more than other grade level students.

• Journal of Information Processing Systems
• /
• v.9 no.3
• /
• pp.435-460
• /
• 2013

Recommender systems are popular applications that help users to identify items that they could be interested in. A recent research area on recommender systems focuses on detecting several kinds of inconsistencies associated with the user preferences. However, the majority of previous works in this direction just process anomalies that are intentionally introduced by users. In contrast, this paper is centered on finding the way to remove non-malicious anomalies, specifically in collaborative filtering systems. A review of the state-of-the-art in this field shows that no previous work has been carried out for recommendation systems and general data mining scenarios, to exactly perform this preprocessing task. More specifically, in this paper we propose a method that is based on the extraction of knowledge from the dataset in the form of rating regularities (similar to frequent patterns), and their use in order to remove anomalous preferences provided by users. Experiments show that the application of the procedure as a preprocessing step improves the performance of a data-mining task associated with the recommendation and also effectively detects the anomalous preferences.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
• /
• v.13 no.6
• /
• pp.2749-2752
• /
• 2012

Background: Breaking bad news to cancer patients is a delicate and challenging task for most doctors. Better understanding of patients' preferences in breaking bad news can guide doctors in performing this task. Objectives: This study aimed to describe the preferences of Malaysian cancer patients regarding the communication of bad news. Methodology: This was a cross-sectional study conducted in the Oncology clinic of a tertiary teaching hospital. Two hundred adult cancer patients were recruited via purposive quota sampling. They were required to complete the Malay language version of the Measure of Patients' Preferences (MPP-BM) with minimal researcher assistance. Their responses were analysed using descriptive statistics. Association between demographic characteristics and domain scores were tested using non-parametric statistical tests. Results: Nine items were rated by the patients as essential: "Doctor is honest about the severity of my condition", "Doctor describing my treatment options in detail", "Doctor telling me best treatment options", Doctor letting me know all of the different treatment options", "Doctor being up to date on research on my type of cancer", "Doctor telling me news directly", "Being given detailed info about results of medical tests", "Being told in person", and "Having doctor offer hope about my condition". All these items had median scores of 5/5 (IQR:4-5). The median scores for the three domains were: "Content and Facilitation" 74/85, "Emotional Support" 23/30 and "Structural and Informational Support" 31/40. Ethnicity was found to be significantly associated with scores for "Content and Facilitation" and "Emotional Support". Educational status was significantly associated with scores for "Structural and Informational Support". Conclusion: Malaysian cancer patients appreciate the ability of the doctor to provide adequate information using good communication skills during the process of breaking bad news. Provision of emotional support, structural support and informational support were also highly appreciated.

• Proceedings of the ESK Conference
• /
• 1994.04a
• /
• pp.7-18
• /
• 1994

Many office tasks have been automated by using computers to increase task productivity. The productivity of performing office tasks is dependent not only upon automating the task procedures, but also upon the usability of user interfaces. However, the literature lacks human factors research on evaluating the usability of user interface styles when they are used for performing different office tasks. This study evalu- ated the usability of user interfaces styles when performing various office tasks. User interface styles considered include menu-selection, command language, form fill-in, iconic styles, etc. A task analysis was conducted toclassify representative office tasks. A variety of analysis techniques such as brainstorming, analytic hierarchy process, prototyping, and expert opinions were used to evaluate the usability of the interfaces. The analysis procedures and results are described along with guidelines for selecting user interfaces in terms of subjective preferences and performance measures.

• Safety and Health at Work
• /
• v.12 no.2
• /
• pp.154-166
• /
• 2021

Background: Occupational health and safety (OHS) is a significant interest of all governments to prevent workplace hazards. Although appropriate legislation and regulations are essentials for the protection of workers, they are solely not enough. Application of them in practice should be secured by an efficient inspection system. Fundamental components of an inspection system are inspectors and their audit tasks. Maintaining the fair balanced task assignment among inspectors strictly enhances the efficiency of the overall system. Methods: This study proposes a two-phased goal programming approach for OHS inspectors' task assignments and presents a case study. Results: The solution approach gives the balanced assignment of inspectors to the workplaces in different cities of the country in the planning period. The obtained schedule takes into account the distances covered by the work places and the number of the workplaces' employees to be audited and pays attention to the human factors by considering the preferences of the inspectors. The comparisons between the obtained optimal schedule and the implemented one that is produced manually show that the approach not only maintains the technical requirements of the problem, but also provides social and physical balance to the task assignment. Conclusion: Both the approach and the application study are expected to offer fruitful inspirations in the area of safety management and policy and they provide a good guide for social policy and organizational aspects in the field of OHS inspectors' task assignment.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
• /
• v.32 no.2
• /
• pp.189-198
• /
• 2013

Objective: This research was carried out to study the menu type design of instrument cluster IVIS(In Vehicle Information System) for efficient navigation under deconcentrated situations. Background: A driver controls the IVIS menu using the rest of cognitive resources while driving a car. Although a driver controls the IVIS using extra cognition resources, his or her distraction can still cause some safety problems while driving. Menu type design of instrument cluster is absolutely important for safe and efficient navigation. Method: Four menu types including paging, flow, icon, and list type were identified through reviewing the existing IVIS of vehicle and the menu structure of cellular phone. Four menu types were evaluated through experiment. The experiment consisted of primary and secondary task, which the primary task was to simulate a driving and the secondary task was to control an IVIS menu prototype. Task performances, menu type preferences, and eye-movement patterns were measured in this experiment. Results: The result shows that icon type was the best design in aspect of task performance and preference. A clue for next menu item provided a positive effect for efficient menu navigation. It was identified that most of subjects gazed the middle-top area of IVIS screen from eye-movement pattern. Conclusion: A basic design of Instrument Cluster IVIS was proposed considering the result of this study in the final. Application: The results of this study can be effectively used in the design of Instrument Cluster IVIS.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
• /
• v.23 no.1
• /
• pp.1-24
• /
• 2017

This article aimed to test whether specific social values (i.e., achievement vs. benevolence) could cause changes in decision making on bio-ethical issues. Study 1 investigated value preferences among young Korean college students according to Schwartz's (1992) model of social values. According to the results, the preference for achievement value was correlated negatively with the preference for benevolence value. In Study 2, following a sentence completion task which was conducted to trigger specific values, the participants had to indicate their ethical decisions regarding animal experiment, euthanasia, organ transplantation, biotechnology, sex selection and human cloning, Irrespective of the value priming (achievement vs. benevolence), there were more utilitarian decisions about animal experiment, euthanasia and organ transplantation. In contrary, there were more deontological decisions about sex selection and human cloning. Study 3 introduced a word completion task to assess implicit value preferences. The results showed that the participants with implicit preferences for the benevolence value in the condition of benevolence value priming were more frequently against animal experiments and organ transplantation than those with implicit value preferences for the achievement value. Social values are discussed for understanding one's bioethical decision making.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
• /
• v.1 no.2
• /
• pp.23-46
• /
• 2010

Despite the explosive growth of no-frill airline industry, very little is known about how consumers make purchase decision in such settings. Today's airline industry requires choice models consistent with consumers' true preference sets. This study used conjoint analysis to identify these ideal choice models. 38 percent of the subjects were found to use compensatory and 62 percent non-compensatory models. Our findings suggest a need to base choice-making promotions on ideal choice models if the promotion is to lead consumers to decisions consistent with true preferences.

• Korean Journal of Child Studies
• /
• v.36 no.6
• /
• pp.85-100
• /
• 2015

This study divided elementary school 6th graders of into a higher academic achievement group (n=19) and a lower academic achievement group (n=19) in order to examine the tendency of left and right hemisphere preferences, characteristics and relationships of learning ability factors by means of EEG. For this purpose, brain waves in performing higher cognitive tasks for 5 min. were measured with a two-channel (Fp1, Fp2) EEG measurement system and hemisphere preference was measured by means of a questionnaire. Our results were as follows. First, hemisphere preference indicated that the higher group showed a left hemisphere tendency and the lower group indicated a right hemisphere tendency. Second, the first learning ability test found that the higher group performed its task rapidly with higher levels of concentration and cognitive strength and lower loading and the lower group conducted its task more slowly with lower levels of concentration and cognitive strength and higher loading. The second test showed that the higher group performed its task rapidly with lower levels of concentration.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
• /
• v.17 no.9
• /
• pp.2436-2457
• /
• 2023

The elderly population is rapidly increasing worldwide, but many face challenges in using digital tools like the Internet due to health and incapacity issues. Existing online search user interfaces (UIs) often overlook the specific usability needs of the elderly. This study proposes an adaptable web search UI model for the elderly, based on their perspectives, to enhance search performance and usability. The proposed UI model is evaluated through comparative usability testing with 20 participants, comparing it to the Google search UI. Effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction are measured using task completion time, error rate, and subjective preferences. The results show significant differences (p > 0.05) between the proposed web search UI model and the Google search UI. The proposed UI model achieves higher subjective satisfaction levels, indicating better alignment with the needs and preferences of elderly users. It also reduces task completion time, indicating improved efficiency, and decreases the error rate, suggesting enhanced effectiveness. These findings emphasize the importance of considering the unique usability needs of the elderly when designing search UIs. The proposed adaptable web search UI model offers a promising approach to enhance the digital experiences of elderly users. This study lays the groundwork for further development and refinement of adaptable web search UI models that cater to the specific needs of elderly users, enabling designers to create more inclusive and user-friendly search interfaces for the growing elderly population.