• Title/Summary/Keyword: attribute information

Search Result 1,564, Processing Time 0.028 seconds

An Analysis of a 100-Years-Old Map of the Heritage Trees in Jeju Island (제주도 노거수 자연유산의 100년 전과 현재 분석)

  • Song, Kuk-Man;Kim, Yang-Ji;Seo, Yeon-Ok;Choi, Hyung-Soon;Choi, Byoung-Ki
    • Journal of the Korean Institute of Traditional Landscape Architecture
    • /
    • v.37 no.2
    • /
    • pp.20-29
    • /
    • 2019
  • The purpose of this study is to verify and reconstruct the record information for big old trees of Jeju on the basis of the precise map of Jeju island in 1918 which was produced 100 years ago. For the analysis of high altitude, coordinate system and georeferencing were performed by selecting representative points using ArcGIS. We extracted digitized information by using point extraction method and extracted attribute information based on legend type and relative size in map. Based on the map of the past 100 years ago, the present situation of the big old tree in Jeju was analyzed and their characteristics were analyzed. In addition, based on the information of the protected big old trees in present, we discussed the characteristics of past tree (1918), present tree (2019), and contribution of big old tree in Jeju landscape and vegetation. As a result, 1,013 individuals were distributed in Jeju Island 100 years ago. Even when it was intensive in the use of timber, the big old trees were protected, and contributed as a representative component of Jeju's unique landscape. The remaining distribution of Jeju's big old tree is 159 trees. As in the past, distribution has been confirmed around the lowlands, but declines in numbers are found throughout the island. The major factors for the decline of individuals are large-scale development projects such as reaching the limit of life, natural disturbance (typhoon, disease, pest, drought, etc.). However, it is presumed that a large number of individuals have played a leading role in shaping the current forests as contributing to important species sources in the restoration process of Jeju vegetation. However, it is presumed that a large number of individuals (405) have played a leading role in forming the present forest by contributing to the species pool in the restoration process of Jeju vegetation.

Development of deep learning structure for complex microbial incubator applying deep learning prediction result information (딥러닝 예측 결과 정보를 적용하는 복합 미생물 배양기를 위한 딥러닝 구조 개발)

  • Hong-Jik Kim;Won-Bog Lee;Seung-Ho Lee
    • Journal of IKEEE
    • /
    • v.27 no.1
    • /
    • pp.116-121
    • /
    • 2023
  • In this paper, we develop a deep learning structure for a complex microbial incubator that applies deep learning prediction result information. The proposed complex microbial incubator consists of pre-processing of complex microbial data, conversion of complex microbial data structure, design of deep learning network, learning of the designed deep learning network, and GUI development applied to the prototype. In the complex microbial data preprocessing, one-hot encoding is performed on the amount of molasses, nutrients, plant extract, salt, etc. required for microbial culture, and the maximum-minimum normalization method for the pH concentration measured as a result of the culture and the number of microbial cells to preprocess the data. In the complex microbial data structure conversion, the preprocessed data is converted into a graph structure by connecting the water temperature and the number of microbial cells, and then expressed as an adjacency matrix and attribute information to be used as input data for a deep learning network. In deep learning network design, complex microbial data is learned by designing a graph convolutional network specialized for graph structures. The designed deep learning network uses a cosine loss function to proceed with learning in the direction of minimizing the error that occurs during learning. GUI development applied to the prototype shows the target pH concentration (3.8 or less) and the number of cells (108 or more) of complex microorganisms in an order suitable for culturing according to the water temperature selected by the user. In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed microbial incubator, the results of experiments conducted by authorized testing institutes showed that the average pH was 3.7 and the number of cells of complex microorganisms was 1.7 × 108. Therefore, the effectiveness of the deep learning structure for the complex microbial incubator applying the deep learning prediction result information proposed in this paper was proven.

The way to make training data for deep learning model to recognize keywords in product catalog image at E-commerce (온라인 쇼핑몰에서 상품 설명 이미지 내의 키워드 인식을 위한 딥러닝 훈련 데이터 자동 생성 방안)

  • Kim, Kitae;Oh, Wonseok;Lim, Geunwon;Cha, Eunwoo;Shin, Minyoung;Kim, Jongwoo
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
    • /
    • v.24 no.1
    • /
    • pp.1-23
    • /
    • 2018
  • From the 21st century, various high-quality services have come up with the growth of the internet or 'Information and Communication Technologies'. Especially, the scale of E-commerce industry in which Amazon and E-bay are standing out is exploding in a large way. As E-commerce grows, Customers could get what they want to buy easily while comparing various products because more products have been registered at online shopping malls. However, a problem has arisen with the growth of E-commerce. As too many products have been registered, it has become difficult for customers to search what they really need in the flood of products. When customers search for desired products with a generalized keyword, too many products have come out as a result. On the contrary, few products have been searched if customers type in details of products because concrete product-attributes have been registered rarely. In this situation, recognizing texts in images automatically with a machine can be a solution. Because bulk of product details are written in catalogs as image format, most of product information are not searched with text inputs in the current text-based searching system. It means if information in images can be converted to text format, customers can search products with product-details, which make them shop more conveniently. There are various existing OCR(Optical Character Recognition) programs which can recognize texts in images. But existing OCR programs are hard to be applied to catalog because they have problems in recognizing texts in certain circumstances, like texts are not big enough or fonts are not consistent. Therefore, this research suggests the way to recognize keywords in catalog with the Deep Learning algorithm which is state of the art in image-recognition area from 2010s. Single Shot Multibox Detector(SSD), which is a credited model for object-detection performance, can be used with structures re-designed to take into account the difference of text from object. But there is an issue that SSD model needs a lot of labeled-train data to be trained, because of the characteristic of deep learning algorithms, that it should be trained by supervised-learning. To collect data, we can try labelling location and classification information to texts in catalog manually. But if data are collected manually, many problems would come up. Some keywords would be missed because human can make mistakes while labelling train data. And it becomes too time-consuming to collect train data considering the scale of data needed or costly if a lot of workers are hired to shorten the time. Furthermore, if some specific keywords are needed to be trained, searching images that have the words would be difficult, as well. To solve the data issue, this research developed a program which create train data automatically. This program can make images which have various keywords and pictures like catalog and save location-information of keywords at the same time. With this program, not only data can be collected efficiently, but also the performance of SSD model becomes better. The SSD model recorded 81.99% of recognition rate with 20,000 data created by the program. Moreover, this research had an efficiency test of SSD model according to data differences to analyze what feature of data exert influence upon the performance of recognizing texts in images. As a result, it is figured out that the number of labeled keywords, the addition of overlapped keyword label, the existence of keywords that is not labeled, the spaces among keywords and the differences of background images are related to the performance of SSD model. This test can lead performance improvement of SSD model or other text-recognizing machine based on deep learning algorithm with high-quality data. SSD model which is re-designed to recognize texts in images and the program developed for creating train data are expected to contribute to improvement of searching system in E-commerce. Suppliers can put less time to register keywords for products and customers can search products with product-details which is written on the catalog.

Context Prediction Using Right and Wrong Patterns to Improve Sequential Matching Performance for More Accurate Dynamic Context-Aware Recommendation (보다 정확한 동적 상황인식 추천을 위해 정확 및 오류 패턴을 활용하여 순차적 매칭 성능이 개선된 상황 예측 방법)

  • Kwon, Oh-Byung
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
    • /
    • v.19 no.3
    • /
    • pp.51-67
    • /
    • 2009
  • Developing an agile recommender system for nomadic users has been regarded as a promising application in mobile and ubiquitous settings. To increase the quality of personalized recommendation in terms of accuracy and elapsed time, estimating future context of the user in a correct way is highly crucial. Traditionally, time series analysis and Makovian process have been adopted for such forecasting. However, these methods are not adequate in predicting context data, only because most of context data are represented as nominal scale. To resolve these limitations, the alignment-prediction algorithm has been suggested for context prediction, especially for future context from the low-level context. Recently, an ontological approach has been proposed for guided context prediction without context history. However, due to variety of context information, acquiring sufficient context prediction knowledge a priori is not easy in most of service domains. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to propose a novel context prediction methodology, which does not require a priori knowledge, and to increase accuracy and decrease elapsed time for service response. To do so, we have newly developed pattern-based context prediction approach. First of ail, a set of individual rules is derived from each context attribute using context history. Then a pattern consisted of results from reasoning individual rules, is developed for pattern learning. If at least one context property matches, say R, then regard the pattern as right. If the pattern is new, add right pattern, set the value of mismatched properties = 0, freq = 1 and w(R, 1). Otherwise, increase the frequency of the matched right pattern by 1 and then set w(R,freq). After finishing training, if the frequency is greater than a threshold value, then save the right pattern in knowledge base. On the other hand, if at least one context property matches, say W, then regard the pattern as wrong. If the pattern is new, modify the result into wrong answer, add right pattern, and set frequency to 1 and w(W, 1). Or, increase the matched wrong pattern's frequency by 1 and then set w(W, freq). After finishing training, if the frequency value is greater than a threshold level, then save the wrong pattern on the knowledge basis. Then, context prediction is performed with combinatorial rules as follows: first, identify current context. Second, find matched patterns from right patterns. If there is no pattern matched, then find a matching pattern from wrong patterns. If a matching pattern is not found, then choose one context property whose predictability is higher than that of any other properties. To show the feasibility of the methodology proposed in this paper, we collected actual context history from the travelers who had visited the largest amusement park in Korea. As a result, 400 context records were collected in 2009. Then we randomly selected 70% of the records as training data. The rest were selected as testing data. To examine the performance of the methodology, prediction accuracy and elapsed time were chosen as measures. We compared the performance with case-based reasoning and voting methods. Through a simulation test, we conclude that our methodology is clearly better than CBR and voting methods in terms of accuracy and elapsed time. This shows that the methodology is relatively valid and scalable. As a second round of the experiment, we compared a full model to a partial model. A full model indicates that right and wrong patterns are used for reasoning the future context. On the other hand, a partial model means that the reasoning is performed only with right patterns, which is generally adopted in the legacy alignment-prediction method. It turned out that a full model is better than a partial model in terms of the accuracy while partial model is better when considering elapsed time. As a last experiment, we took into our consideration potential privacy problems that might arise among the users. To mediate such concern, we excluded such context properties as date of tour and user profiles such as gender and age. The outcome shows that preserving privacy is endurable. Contributions of this paper are as follows: First, academically, we have improved sequential matching methods to predict accuracy and service time by considering individual rules of each context property and learning from wrong patterns. Second, the proposed method is found to be quite effective for privacy preserving applications, which are frequently required by B2C context-aware services; the privacy preserving system applying the proposed method successfully can also decrease elapsed time. Hence, the method is very practical in establishing privacy preserving context-aware services. Our future research issues taking into account some limitations in this paper can be summarized as follows. First, user acceptance or usability will be tested with actual users in order to prove the value of the prototype system. Second, we will apply the proposed method to more general application domains as this paper focused on tourism in amusement park.

Database Security System supporting Access Control for Various Sizes of Data Groups (다양한 크기의 데이터 그룹에 대한 접근 제어를 지원하는 데이터베이스 보안 시스템)

  • Jeong, Min-A;Kim, Jung-Ja;Won, Yong-Gwan;Bae, Suk-Chan
    • The KIPS Transactions:PartD
    • /
    • v.10D no.7
    • /
    • pp.1149-1154
    • /
    • 2003
  • Due to various requirements for the user access control to large databases in the hospitals and the banks, database security has been emphasized. There are many security models for database systems using wide variety of policy-based access control methods. However, they are not functionally enough to meet the requirements for the complicated and various types of access control. In this paper, we propose a database security system that can individually control user access to data groups of various sites and is suitable for the situation where the user's access privilege to arbitrary data is changed frequently. Data group(s) in different sixes d is defined by the table name(s), attribute(s) and/or record key(s), and the access privilege is defined by security levels, roles and polices. The proposed system operates in two phases. The first phase is composed of a modified MAC (Mandatory Access Control) model and RBAC (Role-Based Access Control) model. A user can access any data that has lower or equal security levels, and that is accessible by the roles to which the user is assigned. All types of access mode are controlled in this phase. In the second phase, a modified DAC(Discretionary Access Control) model is applied to re-control the 'read' mode by filtering out the non-accessible data from the result obtained at the first phase. For this purpose, we also defined the user group s that can be characterized by security levels, roles or any partition of users. The policies represented in the form of Block(s, d, r) were also defined and used to control access to any data or data group(s) that is not permitted in 'read ' mode. With this proposed security system, more complicated 'read' access to various data sizes for individual users can be flexibly controlled, while other access mode can be controlled as usual. An implementation example for a database system that manages specimen and clinical information is presented.

Are you a Machine or Human?: The Effects of Human-likeness on Consumer Anthropomorphism Depending on Construal Level (Are you a Machine or Human?: 소셜 로봇의 인간 유사성과 소비자 해석수준이 의인화에 미치는 영향)

  • Lee, Junsik;Park, Do-Hyung
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
    • /
    • v.27 no.1
    • /
    • pp.129-149
    • /
    • 2021
  • Recently, interest in social robots that can socially interact with humans is increasing. Thanks to the development of ICT technology, social robots have become easier to provide personalized services and emotional connection to individuals, and the role of social robots is drawing attention as a means to solve modern social problems and the resulting decline in the quality of individual lives. Along with the interest in social robots, the spread of social robots is also increasing significantly. Many companies are introducing robot products to the market to target various target markets, but so far there is no clear trend leading the market. Accordingly, there are more and more attempts to differentiate robots through the design of social robots. In particular, anthropomorphism has been studied importantly in social robot design, and many approaches have been attempted to anthropomorphize social robots to produce positive effects. However, there is a lack of research that systematically describes the mechanism by which anthropomorphism for social robots is formed. Most of the existing studies have focused on verifying the positive effects of the anthropomorphism of social robots on consumers. In addition, the formation of anthropomorphism of social robots may vary depending on the individual's motivation or temperament, but there are not many studies examining this. A vague understanding of anthropomorphism makes it difficult to derive design optimal points for shaping the anthropomorphism of social robots. The purpose of this study is to verify the mechanism by which the anthropomorphism of social robots is formed. This study confirmed the effect of the human-likeness of social robots(Within-subjects) and the construal level of consumers(Between-subjects) on the formation of anthropomorphism through an experimental study of 3×2 mixed design. Research hypotheses on the mechanism by which anthropomorphism is formed were presented, and the hypotheses were verified by analyzing data from a sample of 206 people. The first hypothesis in this study is that the higher the human-likeness of the robot, the higher the level of anthropomorphism for the robot. Hypothesis 1 was supported by a one-way repeated measures ANOVA and a post hoc test. The second hypothesis in this study is that depending on the construal level of consumers, the effect of human-likeness on the level of anthropomorphism will be different. First, this study predicts that the difference in the level of anthropomorphism as human-likeness increases will be greater under high construal condition than under low construal condition.Second, If the robot has no human-likeness, there will be no difference in the level of anthropomorphism according to the construal level. Thirdly,If the robot has low human-likeness, the low construal level condition will make the robot more anthropomorphic than the high construal level condition. Finally, If the robot has high human-likeness, the high construal levelcondition will make the robot more anthropomorphic than the low construal level condition. We performed two-way repeated measures ANOVA to test these hypotheses, and confirmed that the interaction effect of human-likeness and construal level was significant. Further analysis to specifically confirm interaction effect has also provided results in support of our hypotheses. The analysis shows that the human-likeness of the robot increases the level of anthropomorphism of social robots, and the effect of human-likeness on anthropomorphism varies depending on the construal level of consumers. This study has implications in that it explains the mechanism by which anthropomorphism is formed by considering the human-likeness, which is the design attribute of social robots, and the construal level of consumers, which is the way of thinking of individuals. We expect to use the findings of this study as the basis for design optimization for the formation of anthropomorphism in social robots.

Prediction of Key Variables Affecting NBA Playoffs Advancement: Focusing on 3 Points and Turnover Features (미국 프로농구(NBA)의 플레이오프 진출에 영향을 미치는 주요 변수 예측: 3점과 턴오버 속성을 중심으로)

  • An, Sehwan;Kim, Youngmin
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
    • /
    • v.28 no.1
    • /
    • pp.263-286
    • /
    • 2022
  • This study acquires NBA statistical information for a total of 32 years from 1990 to 2022 using web crawling, observes variables of interest through exploratory data analysis, and generates related derived variables. Unused variables were removed through a purification process on the input data, and correlation analysis, t-test, and ANOVA were performed on the remaining variables. For the variable of interest, the difference in the mean between the groups that advanced to the playoffs and did not advance to the playoffs was tested, and then to compensate for this, the average difference between the three groups (higher/middle/lower) based on ranking was reconfirmed. Of the input data, only this year's season data was used as a test set, and 5-fold cross-validation was performed by dividing the training set and the validation set for model training. The overfitting problem was solved by comparing the cross-validation result and the final analysis result using the test set to confirm that there was no difference in the performance matrix. Because the quality level of the raw data is high and the statistical assumptions are satisfied, most of the models showed good results despite the small data set. This study not only predicts NBA game results or classifies whether or not to advance to the playoffs using machine learning, but also examines whether the variables of interest are included in the major variables with high importance by understanding the importance of input attribute. Through the visualization of SHAP value, it was possible to overcome the limitation that could not be interpreted only with the result of feature importance, and to compensate for the lack of consistency in the importance calculation in the process of entering/removing variables. It was found that a number of variables related to three points and errors classified as subjects of interest in this study were included in the major variables affecting advancing to the playoffs in the NBA. Although this study is similar in that it includes topics such as match results, playoffs, and championship predictions, which have been dealt with in the existing sports data analysis field, and comparatively analyzed several machine learning models for analysis, there is a difference in that the interest features are set in advance and statistically verified, so that it is compared with the machine learning analysis result. Also, it was differentiated from existing studies by presenting explanatory visualization results using SHAP, one of the XAI models.

Perception to the dietary guidelines for Koreans among Korean adults based on sociodemographic characteristics and lifestyle (한국 성인의 인구사회학적 특성 및 생활습관에 따른 식생활지침 인식수준)

  • Yejin Yoon;Soo Hyun Kim;Hyojee Joung;Seoeun Ahn
    • Journal of Nutrition and Health
    • /
    • v.56 no.6
    • /
    • pp.742-755
    • /
    • 2023
  • Purpose: This study aimed to investigate the perceptions of the dietary guidelines for Koreans (DGK) among Korean adults based on sociodemographic and lifestyle factors. Methods: A total of 514 Korean adults aged 19-64 years completed a self-administered online questionnaire assessing their perceptions of DGK, sociodemographic and lifestyle factors, and subjective assessments regarding the importance of 11 nutrients and 16 food groups. The differences in the perceptions of DGK according to the characteristics of the participants were analyzed using t-tests or ANOVA. Additionally, the differences in the subjective assessments of nutrients and food groups according to the perceptions of DGK were examined using t-tests. Results: The awareness of DGK was significantly higher among participants aged 50-64 years, living in single-person households, who were physically active, with a lower frequency of eating out, and with a higher interest in dietary information (p < 0.05 for all). The understanding of DGK was significantly higher among participants aged 19-29 years, females, individuals who were under or normal weight, non-smokers, those who self-evaluated their diet as healthy, and those with a high interest in dietary information (p < 0.05 for all). Additionally, the applicability of DGK was significantly higher among participants aged 50-64 years, who were physically active, who self-evaluated their diet as healthy, and who had a high interest in dietary information (p < 0.05 for all). Participants with a higher perception of DGK tended to attribute greater importance to most nutrients and food groups compared to those with a lower perception level. However, processed meat and foods, beverages, and alcoholic drinks consistently received lower importance ratings compared to other nutrients and food groups, regardless of the perception level. Conclusion: This research suggests that the perceptions of DGK among Korean adults may vary depending on sociodemographic and lifestyle factors. Consequently, there is a need to customize and diversify the methods for providing dietary guidelines.

A Study on the Characteristics of Enterprise R&D Capabilities Using Data Mining (데이터마이닝을 활용한 기업 R&D역량 특성에 관한 탐색 연구)

  • Kim, Sang-Gook;Lim, Jung-Sun;Park, Wan
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
    • /
    • v.27 no.1
    • /
    • pp.1-21
    • /
    • 2021
  • As the global business environment changes, uncertainties in technology development and market needs increase, and competition among companies intensifies, interests and demands for R&D activities of individual companies are increasing. In order to cope with these environmental changes, R&D companies are strengthening R&D investment as one of the means to enhance the qualitative competitiveness of R&D while paying more attention to facility investment. As a result, facilities or R&D investment elements are inevitably a burden for R&D companies to bear future uncertainties. It is true that the management strategy of increasing investment in R&D as a means of enhancing R&D capability is highly uncertain in terms of corporate performance. In this study, the structural factors that influence the R&D capabilities of companies are explored in terms of technology management capabilities, R&D capabilities, and corporate classification attributes by utilizing data mining techniques, and the characteristics these individual factors present according to the level of R&D capabilities are analyzed. This study also showed cluster analysis and experimental results based on evidence data for all domestic R&D companies, and is expected to provide important implications for corporate management strategies to enhance R&D capabilities of individual companies. For each of the three viewpoints, detailed evaluation indexes were composed of 7, 2, and 4, respectively, to quantitatively measure individual levels in the corresponding area. In the case of technology management capability and R&D capability, the sub-item evaluation indexes that are being used by current domestic technology evaluation agencies were referenced, and the final detailed evaluation index was newly constructed in consideration of whether data could be obtained quantitatively. In the case of corporate classification attributes, the most basic corporate classification profile information is considered. In particular, in order to grasp the homogeneity of the R&D competency level, a comprehensive score for each company was given using detailed evaluation indicators of technology management capability and R&D capability, and the competency level was classified into five grades and compared with the cluster analysis results. In order to give the meaning according to the comparative evaluation between the analyzed cluster and the competency level grade, the clusters with high and low trends in R&D competency level were searched for each cluster. Afterwards, characteristics according to detailed evaluation indicators were analyzed in the cluster. Through this method of conducting research, two groups with high R&D competency and one with low level of R&D competency were analyzed, and the remaining two clusters were similar with almost high incidence. As a result, in this study, individual characteristics according to detailed evaluation indexes were analyzed for two clusters with high competency level and one cluster with low competency level. The implications of the results of this study are that the faster the replacement cycle of professional managers who can effectively respond to changes in technology and market demand, the more likely they will contribute to enhancing R&D capabilities. In the case of a private company, it is necessary to increase the intensity of input of R&D capabilities by enhancing the sense of belonging of R&D personnel to the company through conversion to a corporate company, and to provide the accuracy of responsibility and authority through the organization of the team unit. Since the number of technical commercialization achievements and technology certifications are occurring both in the case of contributing to capacity improvement and in case of not, it was confirmed that there is a limit in reviewing it as an important factor for enhancing R&D capacity from the perspective of management. Lastly, the experience of utility model filing was identified as a factor that has an important influence on R&D capability, and it was confirmed the need to provide motivation to encourage utility model filings in order to enhance R&D capability. As such, the results of this study are expected to provide important implications for corporate management strategies to enhance individual companies' R&D capabilities.

A Study on Qulity Perceptions and Satisfaction for Medical Service Marketing (의료서비스 마케팅을 위한 품질지각과 만족에 관한 연구)

  • Yoo, Dong-Keun
    • Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing Administration
    • /
    • v.2 no.1
    • /
    • pp.97-114
    • /
    • 1996
  • INSTRODUCTION Service quality is, unlike goods quality, an abstract and elusive constuct. Service quality and its requirements are not easily understood by consumers, and also present some critical research problems. However, quality is very important to marketers and consumers in that it has many strategic benefits in contributing to profitability of marketing activities and consumers' problem-solving activities. Moreover, despite the phenomenal growth of medical service sector, few researchers have attempted to define and model medical service quality. Especially, little research has focused on the evaluation of medical service quality and patient satisfaction from the perspectives of both the provider and the patient. As competition intensifies and patients are demanding higher quality of medical service, medical service quality and patient satisfaction has emerged as a critical research topic. The major purpose of this article is to explore the concept of medical service quality and its evaluation from both nurse and patient perspectives. This article attempts to achieve its purpose by (1)classfying critical service attibutes into threecategories(satisfiers, hygiene factors, and performance factors). (2)measuring the relative importance of need criteria, (3)evaluating SERVPERF model and SERVQUAL model in medical service sector, and (4)identifying the relationship between perceived quality and overall patient satisfaction. METHOD Data were gathered from a sample of 217 patients and 179 nurses in Seoul-area general hospitals. From the review of previous literature, 50 survey items representing various facets of the medical service quality were developed to form a questionnaire. A five-point scale ranging from "Strongly Agree"(5) to "Strongly Disagree"(1) accompanied each statement(expectation statements, perception statements, and importance statements). To measure overall satisfaction, a seven-point scale was used, ranging from "Very Satisfied"(7) to "Very Dissatisfied"(1) with no verbal labels for scale points 2 through 6 RESULTS In explaining the relationship between perceived performance and overall satisfaction, only 31 variables out of original 50 survey items were proven to be statistically significant. Hence, a penalty-reward analysis was performed on theses 31 critical attributes to find out 17 satisfiers, 8 hygiene factors, and 4 performance factors in patient perspective. The role(category) of each service quality attribute in relation to patient satisfaction was com pared across two groups, that is, patients and nurses. They were little overlapped, suggesting that two groups had different sets of 'perceived quality' attributes. Principal components factor analyses of the patients' and nurses' responses were performed to identify the underlying dimensions for the set of performance(experience) statements. 28 variables were analyzed by using a varimax rotation after deleting three obscure variables. The number of factors to be extracted was determined by evaluating the eigenvalue scores. Six factors wereextracted, accounting for 57.1% of the total variance. Reliability analysis was performed to refine the factors further. Using coefficient alpha, scores of .84 to .65 were obtained. Individual-item analysis indicated that all statements in each of the factors should remain. On 26 attributes of 31 critical service quality attributes, there were gaps between actual patient's importance of need criteria and nurse perceptions of them. Those critical attributes could be classified into four categories based on the relative importance of need criteria and perceived performance from the perspective of patient. This analysis is useful in developing strategic plans for performance improvement. (1) top priorities(high importance and low performance) (in this study)- more health-related information -accuracy in billing - quality of food - appointments at my convenience - information about tests and treatments - prompt service of business office -adequacy of accommodations(elevators, etc) (2) current strengths(high importance and high performance) (3)unnecessary strengths(low importance and high performance) (4) low priorities(low importance and low performance) While 26 service quality attributes of SERPERF model were significantly related to patient satisfation, only 13 attributes of SERVQUAL model were significantly related. This result suggested that only experience-based norms(SERVPERF model) were more appropriate than expectations to serve as a benchmark against which service experiences were compared(SERVQUAL model). However, it must be noted that the degree of association to overall satisfaction was not consistent. There were some gaps between nurse percetions and patient perception of medical service performance. From the patient's viewpoint, "personal likability", "technical skill/trust", and "cares about me" were most significant positioning factors that contributed patient satisfaction. DISCUSSION This study shows that there are inconsistencies between nurse perceptions and patient perceptions of medical service attributes. Also, for service quality improvement, it is most important for nurses to understand what satisfiers, hygiene factors, and performance factors are through two-way communications. Patient satisfaction should be measured, and problems identified should be resolved for survival in intense competitive market conditions. Hence, patient satisfaction monitoring is now becoming a standard marketing tool for healthcare providers and its role is expected to increase.

  • PDF