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An Exploratory Study on the Components of Visual Merchandising of Internet Shopping Mall (인터넷쇼핑몰의 VMD 구성요인에 대한 탐색적 연구)

  • Kim, Kwang-Seok;Shin, Jong-Kuk;Koo, Dong-Mo
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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    • v.18 no.2
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    • pp.19-45
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    • 2008
  • This study is to empirically examine the primary dimensions of visual merchandising (VMD) of internet shopping mall, namely store design, merchandise, and merchandising cues, to be a attractive virtual store to the shoppers. The authors reviewed the literature related to the major components of VMD from the perspective of the AIDA model, which has been mainly applied to the offline store settings. The major purposes of the study are as follows; first, tries to derive the variables related with the components of visual merchandising through reviewing the existing literatures, establish the hypotheses, and test it empirically. Second, examines the relationships between the components of VMD and the attitude toward the VMD, however, putting more emphasis on finding out the component structure of the VMD. VMD needs to be examined with the perspective that an online shopping mall is a virtual self-service or clerkless store, which could reduce the number of employees, help the shoppers search, evaluate and purchase for themselves, and to be explored in terms of the in-store persuasion processes of customers. This study reviewed the literatures related to store design, merchandise, and merchandising cues which might be relevant to the store, product, and promotion respectively. VMD is a total communication tool, and AIDA model could explain the in-store consumer behavior of online shopping. Store design has to do with triggering a consumer attention to the online mall, merchandise with a product related interest, and merchandising cues with promotions such as recommendation and links that induce the desire to pruchase. These three steps might be seen as the processes for purchase actions. The theoretical rationale for the relationship between VMD and AIDA could be found in Tyagi(2005) that the three steps of consumer-oriented merchandising are a store, a product assortment, and placement, in Omar(1999) that three types of interior display are a architectural design display, commodity display, and point-of-sales(POS) display, and in Davies and Ward(2005) that the retail store interior image is related to an atmosphere, merchandise, and in-store promotion. Lee et al(2000) suggested as the web merchandising components a merchandising cues, a shopping metaphor which is an assistant tool for search, a store design, a layout(web design), and a product assortment. The store design which includes differentiation, simplicity and navigation is supposed to be related to the attention to the virtual store. Second, the merchandise dimensions comprising product assortments, visual information and product reputation have to do with the interest in the product offerings. Finally, the merchandising cues that refer to merchandiser(MD)'s recommendation of products and providing the hyperlinks to relevant goods for the shopper is concerned with attempt to induce the desire to purchase. The questionnaire survey was carried out to collect the data about the consumers who would shop at internet shopping malls frequently. To select the subject malls, the mall ranking data announced by a mall rating agency was used to differentiate the most popular and least popular five mall each. The subjects was instructed to answer the questions after navigating the designated mall for five minutes. The 300 questionnaire was distributed to the consumers, 166 samples were used in the final analysis. The empirical testing focused on identifying and confirming the dimensionality of VMD and its subdimensions using a structural equation modeling method. The confirmatory factor analysis for the endogeneous and exogeneous variables was carried out in four parts. The second-order factor analysis was done for a store design, a merchandise, and a merchandising cues, and first-order confirmatory factor analysis for the attitude toward the VMD. The model test results shows that the chi-square value of structural equation is 144.39(d.f 49), significant at 0.01 level which means the proposed model was rejected. But, judging from the ratio of chi-square value vs. degree of freedom, the ratio was 2.94 which smaller than an acceptable level of 3.0, RMR is 0.087 which is higher than a generally acceptable level of 0.08. GFI and AGFI is turned out to be 0.90 and 0.84 respectively. Both NFI and NNFI is 0.94, and CFI 0.95. The major test results are as follows; first, the second-order factor analysis and structural equational modeling reveals that the differentiation, simplicity and ease of identifying current status of the transaction are confirmed to be subdimensions of store design and to be a significant predictors of the dependent variable. This result implies that when designing an online shopping mall, it is necessary to differentiate visually from other malls to improve the effectiveness of the communications of store design. That is, the differentiated store design raise the contrast stimulus to sensory organs to promote the memory of the store and to have a favorable attitude toward the VMD of a store. The results that navigation which means the easiness of identifying current status of shopping affects the attitude to VMD could be interpreted that the navigating processes via the hyperlinks which is characteristics of an internet shopping is a complex and cognitive process and shoppers are likely to lack the sense of overall structure of the store. Consequently, shoppers are likely to be alost amid shopping not knowing where to go. The orientation tool enhance the accessibility of information to raise the perceptive power about the store environment.(Titus & Everett 1995) Second, the primary dimension of merchandise and its subdimensions was confirmed to be unidimensional respectively, have a construct validity, and nomological validity which the VMD dimensions supposed to have a positive correlation with the dependent variable. The subdimensions of product assortment, brand fame and information provision proved to have a positive effect on the attitude toward the VMD. It could be interpreted that the more plentiful the product and brand assortment of the mall is, the more likely the shoppers to favor it. Brand fame and information provision as well affect the VMD attitude, which means that the more famous the brand, the more likely the shoppers would trust and feel familiar with the mall, and the plentifully and visually presented information could have the shopper have a favorable attitude toward the store VMD. Third, it turned out to be that merchandising cue of product recommendation and hyperlinks affect the VMD attitude. This could be interpreted that recommended products could reduce the uncertainty related with the purchase decision, and the hyperlinks to relevant products would help the shopper save the cognitive effort exerted into the information search and gathering, which could lead to a favorable attitude to the VMD. This study tried to sheds some new light on the VMD of online store by reviewing the variables mentioned to be relevant with offline VMD in the existing literatures, and tried to link the VMD components from the perspective of AIDA model. The effect size of the VMD dimensions on the attitude was in the order of the merchandise, the store design and the merchandising cues.It is said that an internet has an unlimited place for display, however, the virtual store is not unlimited since the consumer has a limited amount of cognitive ability to process the external information and internal memory. Particularly, the shoppers are likely to face some difficulties in decision making on account of too many alternative and information overloads. Therefore, the internet shopping mall manager should take into consideration the cost of information search on the part of the consumer, to establish the optimal product placements and search routes. An efficient store composition would be possible by reducing the psychological burdens and cognitive efforts exerted to information search and alternatives evaluation. The store image is in most part determined by the product category and its brand it deals in. The results of this study support this proposition that the merchandise is most important to the VMD attitude than other components, the manager is required to take a strategic approach to VMD. The internet users are getting more accustomed and more knowledgeable about the internet media and more likely to accept the internet as a shopping channel as the period of time during which they use the internet to shop become longer. The web merchandiser should be aware that the product introduction using a moving pictures and a bulletin board become more important in order to present the interactive product information visually and communicate with customers more actively, therefore leading to making the quantity and quality of product information more rich.

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Transformation of Nitrogen Derived from Solid Piggery Manure in Soil under Aerobic or Anaerobic Incubation Condition (혐기(嫌氣) 및 호기조건하(好氣條件下)에서 토양처리(土壤處理)된 돈분(豚糞) 중(中) 질소형태변화(窒素形態變化))

  • Yun, Sun-Gang;Jung, Kwang-Yong;Yoo, Sun-Ho
    • Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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    • v.26 no.2
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    • pp.121-126
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    • 1993
  • The behaviors of inorganic nitrogen derived from solid animal waste in soil has been received too much concern partly because nitrate which occurred from nitrification can act as a pollutant to soil and groundwater and partly because the loss of nitrogen from surface soil by downward movement of water is disadvantageous in the view of plant nutrient. This present study was conducted to get fundamental imformations on nitrogen behavior and to provide improved basical concepts on the management of animal waste. Fresh or fermented pig manure was mixed with a sandy loam soil in the ratio of 2:1(soil:pig manure), packed into test tube and incubated at $30^+/-1^{\circ}C$ for 8 weeks under aerobic- or anaerobic condition. Sample tubes were taken at the one week interval and analyzed on pH, the amount of $CH_4$ produced under anaerobic condition and inorganic nitrogen. The pH of soil treated with fresh pig manure under anaerobic condition was lowered by 1.87 unit compared to that of under aerobic condition, but at the treatment with fermented pig manure, pH change was very little between aerobic and anaerobic condition. The coefficients of regressional equations which were obtained from pH and incubation time were -0.114 in fresh pig manure and -0.089 in fermented pig manure, and the extent of pH decrease due to incubation was greater in fresh pig manure than that of fermented pig waste. No differences in the amounts of $CH_4$ produced under anaerobic condition between fresh and fermented pig manure was observed until 3 weeks of incubation, however, after that the amount of $CH_4$ produced in fresh pig manure was abruptly increased and cumulative amont of $CH_4$ was reached 8.6 mole/g. K values on $CH_4$ production in fresh and fermented pig manure was 0.211 mole/g/day and 0.046 mole/g/day, respectively, for 5 weeks from the 3rd to the 8th week. $NH_4-N$ concentration at aerobic condition with fresh pig manure treatment was lowered by passing time of incubation, but $NO_3-N$ concentration was elevated from 11.2 ppm at initial state to 67.3 ppm after incubation and this trend on $NH_4-N$, $NO_3-N$ concentration was very similar to the treatment of fermented pig manure. While $NH_4-N$ concentration under anaerobic condition was greatly increased. $NO_3-N$ concentartion was not only very low but also no great changes, that was ranged from 4 to 8 ppm.

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EFFECT OF METHYLPHENIDATE ON FUNCTIONAL CEREBRAL LOCALIZATION DURING ATTENTIONAL TASKS IN BOYS WITH ATTENTION-DEFICIT/HYPERACTIVITY DISORDER (주의력결핍 과잉운동장애 남아에서 중추신경자극제가 주의력과제 수행 중의 대뇌 기능적 국소화에 미치는 효과)

  • Shin, Dong-Won;Yook, Ki-Hwan;Jon, Duk-In;Kim, Kyung-Hee;Min, Sung-Kil;Song, Dong-Ho
    • Journal of the Korean Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
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    • v.9 no.2
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    • pp.218-226
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    • 1998
  • This study aims at investigating the effects of psychostimulant on functional cerebral localization during the attentional tasks in ADHD. Inclusional subjects were 13 boy between 6-12 years old who met the DSM-IV criteria for ADHD. In each patient, there was a drugfree period(without methyphenidate) and a drug-loaded period(with oral methylphenidate administration), and within each period there was a resting state and a stimulated state with TOVA. Comparisons were made by measuring the amplitudes of four bands(${\alpha}$, ${\beta}$, ${\delta}$, ${\theta}$) of quantitative EEG to see if there were any differences between the drug-free period(resting and stimulated) and the drug-loaded period(resting and stimulated). In the resting state, there was no difference between the drug-free and drug-loaded periods. In the stimulated state with TOVA, the presence of methylphenidate induced significant changes in the theta to beta ratio(${\theta}/{\beta}$) in the right frontal, right parieto-occipital, and left temporal-parietal areas in contrast to the drugf-ree period. These data suggest that methylphenidate shows electrophysiological influences on cerebral topographical activities during the attentional tasks in ADHD.

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The Study of Metrics development for Entrepreneurial Program Effectiveness (청소년 창업교육프로그램 효과성 측정지표 개발 연구)

  • Byun, Youngjo;Kim, Myung Seuk;Yang, Young Seok
    • Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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    • v.9 no.4
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    • pp.77-85
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    • 2014
  • A goal of Bizcool entrepreneurship education targeting on the youth falls on letting understand the process of starts-up, enhance entrepreneurship will and their business creativities rather than training trivial starts-up skills such as writing business plan for successful starts-up. The effects of education enable Bizcoo students to recognize rightly the concept of starts-up training and lead to spread out demand for entrepreneurship education. The feedback check-up for how entrepreneurship education affects students getting through of it is necessary and possible to bring its' improvement alternatives. Despite of such highlight, not many measuring tools and indexes of evaluating an effectiveness of entrepreneurship education are developed and studied up until. This research suggests for the optimal indexes for them. In specific, this research 49 the first question sets of evaluating an effectiveness of entrepreneurship education classified 3 large categories and 11 following sub categories each of them such as entrepreneurship orientation, creativity, entrepreneurship preparing activities etc,. representing embedding education effects though entrepreneurship education. This research carry out the empirical survey research utilizing driven question sets against 5 different Bizcools sampling 287 students. The survey research delivers the final 3 large categories and 8 following sub categories(Innovativeness, risk-taking, problem-solving potent, cooperative decision-making potent, efficient behavior capacity, data collecting potent, career search, starts-up search and preparation), and 38 measuring indexes by search and confirming factor analysis. This research never drop the confidence test over each indexes and obtain the proper figures. Last but not least, this research confirm the gap between starts-up club members and non members as to an effectiveness of entrepreneurship education and 9 different indexes.

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A Comparative Study of the Foreign Trade Strategies of Gaisong Merchants and Modern Companies in Korea. (현대기업과 개성상인의 해외진출전략의 비교분석)

  • Park, Sang-Gyu
    • Korean Business Review
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    • v.17
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    • pp.153-183
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    • 2004
  • The Gaisong Merchants can be regarded to playa pioneering role to activate the Korea's trade with foreign countries. In the early period of Yi-Dynasty, the Gaisong Merchants focused on personal trade, but in the middle period of Yi-Dynasty, they entered to the realm of governmental trade. Furthermore, their business activities widened to various forms of trades, for example, smuggling. Utilizing accumulated capital, Gaisong merchants expanded their trading activities to their neighboring countries such as Japan and China. In recent times, it is necessary for modem Korean companies to diversify risks through the establishment of corporations for production, marketing and R&D abroad or through joint venture, M&A and strategic alliance with foreign companies in order to reduce the risks originated from volatile economic and political situations. In this study, we utilize tools of comparative study to compare Gaisong Merchants' foreign trade strategies with those of modem companies such as AMOREPACIFIC, HANILCEMENT and SHINDORICO. The purpose of the paper is to test the hypothesis that modem Korean companies grew up by following the cases of Gaisong Merchants' business activities. We summarize our main findings as follows. First, both Gaisong Merchants and modem Korean companies have common functional core capability in the field of marketing, manufacturing technology, R&D, and human resources development. Second, both Gaisong Merchants and modem Korean companies have common organizational core capability. Third, both Gaisong Merchants and modem Korean companies have common infrastructures such as planning, finance, accounting and MIS. It constitutes the infrastructure of Korea's foreign trade sector. Fourth, both Gaisong Merchants and modem companies have common organizational culture in the field of management policy and philosophy. Actually, those factors are evaluated to be driving forces of Koera's success in foreign trade. In conclusion, the business activities of Gaisong Merchants who represented the peculiarity of Korean business spirit are partially inherited to current Korean business management. The value system and behavior pattern of modern Korean companies is succeeded from the spirit of Gaisong Merchants and it playa major role to specify the identity of Korean business administration.

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The Relationship between Dementia and Oral Health in Some Elderly in Daejeon (대전 일부 노인의 치매와 구강건강의 관계)

  • Go, Hye-Bin;Kim, Min-Gyeong;Kim, Jin-Young;Kim, Hyun-Soo;Park, Young-Seo;Seo, Seung-Hyeon;Hwang, Soo-Jeong
    • Journal of dental hygiene science
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    • v.16 no.6
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    • pp.481-487
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    • 2016
  • The elderly population with dementia is rapidly growing in South Korea. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between dementia and oral health in 197 subjects aged ${\geq}65$ years. The questionnaire included questions on subjective health status, subjective health concern, subjective oral health status and behavior, mastication ability, Oral Health Impact Profile-14 (OHIP-14), and Korean Dementia Screening Questionnaires (KDSQ). Oral examination was conducted by a single dentist to evaluate upper or lower denture use, and determine the numbers of remaining and functioning teeth, including implant and fixed prosthesis. The subjects who required a dementia test (KDSQ-C [cognition] of ${\geq}6$) had significant differences in systemic disease prevalence rate, subjective health status, subjective health concern, KDSQ-V (vascular disease) score, KDSQ-D (depression) score, subjective oral treatment need, key food mastication ability and OHIP-14 score compared to the healthy subjects. The proportion of denture wearers, total remaining teeth, total functioning teeth, toothbrushing frequency, oral pain severity, symptoms of periodontal disease, subjective oral health status, and subjective oral health concern showed no significant differences between the two groups. KDSQ-C and OHIP-14 scores showed a strong positive relationship, while KDSQ-C score and total remaining teeth or key food mastication ability showed a weak negative relationship. In the multiple regression analysis, the KDSQ-D, KDSQ-V, and OHIP-14 scores influenced the KDSQ-C scores. We suggest a relationship between oral health and cognitive impairment.

Comparisons of Health Status and Health Behaviors among the Elderly between Urban and Rural Areas (도시와 농촌지역 노인의 건강행태 및 건강수준 비교)

  • Chun, Jong-Duk;Ryu, So Yeon;Han, Mi Ah;Park, Jong
    • Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
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    • v.38 no.3
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    • pp.182-194
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    • 2013
  • Objectives: To identify and compare the health behaviors and health status of the elderly between urban and rural areas using the data of the Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES). Methods: The study population comprised 3,823 elderly people aged 65 years or older who participated in the $4^{th}$ KNHANES (2007-2009). The areas were classified into "large cities," "cities," and "rural areas" using the administrative and residential areas. The health behaviors and health status of the elderly between the rural and urban areas were compared using a complex sample design with the Rao-Scott chi-square test and weighted multiple logistic regression analysis. Results: Compared to large cities, the odds ratios (ORs) (95% confidence interval [CI]) of rural areas were as high as 1.58 (1.25-2.01) for the influenza vaccination and as low as 0.47 (0.37-0.59) for flexibility exercises, 0.56 (0.38-0.81) for muscular exercises, and 0.76 (0.62-0.92) for obesity. The ORs (CI) for osteoarthritis and diabetes mellitus were as low as 0.81 (0.66-0.99) and 0.70 (0.55-0.89), respectively. Conclusions: The health behaviors and health status of the elderly are better in rural areas than in urban areas despite the fact that the socioeconomic conditions in rural areas are poorer that those in urban areas. These findings suggest that programs suitable for residential areas should be developed and that studies to explain the differences in residential areas are needed.

ASSOCIATION STUDY OF ATTENTION-DEFICIT/HYPERACTIVITY DISORDER(ADHD) AND THE DOPAMINE TRANSPORTER(DAT1) GENE - CASE CONTROL DESIGN STUDY - (주의력결핍과잉행동 장애와 도파민 운반체 유전자간 연합연구 - 환자-대조군 디자인 연구 -)

  • Kim Boong-Nyun;Cho Soo-Churl
    • Journal of the Korean Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
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    • v.16 no.2
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    • pp.199-210
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    • 2005
  • Objective : Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder(ADHD) affects $5-10\%$ of children in Korea, with more boys and girls being diagnosed. Despite seriousness of ADHD, little is known about its causes. From the current genetic epidemiologic studies, ADHD is known as a heritable disorder. Till now, however, there have been very few genetic studies about ADHD in Korea. The aim of the this study is to examine the association between dopamine transporter gone type 1 and ADHD using case-control design in Korean ADHD probands and normal controls. Materials and Method : Child Psychiatric Genetic research team in Seoul National University Hospital, Clinical Research Institute recruited the ADHD probands using clinical interview/observation, diverse rating scales, and neuropsychological tests. For eliminating phenocopy or ADHD, diagnosis of ADHD was based upon clinical data, psychometric data, and parent/teacher reports. Total 85 ADHD-probands were recruited as final study subjects and independent 100 normal adults participated in this study as control group. For all the ADHD probands, and controls, the 3'-UTR-VNTR polymorphism of DAT1 was analyzed. Based on the DAT1 allele and genotype informations, Chi-square test based on case-control design was performed. Results : As for genetic study, total of 85 probands and 100 controls were included for the genetic analysis. Four different alleles, 350bp (7repeat), 440bp (9repeat), 480bp (10repeat) and 520bp (11repeat) were found in DAT1 gene of study subjects. In case-control analysis, ADHD probands and parents have significantly more 9 repeat allele and 9/10 genotype. Also, The probands with 9repeat allele have more commission errors in ADS. Conclusion : The positive association between ADHD and DAT1 gene was replicated in this report like other previous results for caucasian children and Korean children with ADHD. There are ongoing studies on other candidate genes such as DRD4 and DRD5 and it would be required to explore the association of these candidate genes in Korean children with ADHD. These ongoing genetic research will contribute to the understanding of heterogenous genetic and environmental etiologies of ADHD phenotype, which will lead to the development of more comprehensive treatment and preventive interventions for ADHD.

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A Multimodal Profile Ensemble Approach to Development of Recommender Systems Using Big Data (빅데이터 기반 추천시스템 구현을 위한 다중 프로파일 앙상블 기법)

  • Kim, Minjeong;Cho, Yoonho
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.21 no.4
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    • pp.93-110
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    • 2015
  • The recommender system is a system which recommends products to the customers who are likely to be interested in. Based on automated information filtering technology, various recommender systems have been developed. Collaborative filtering (CF), one of the most successful recommendation algorithms, has been applied in a number of different domains such as recommending Web pages, books, movies, music and products. But, it has been known that CF has a critical shortcoming. CF finds neighbors whose preferences are like those of the target customer and recommends products those customers have most liked. Thus, CF works properly only when there's a sufficient number of ratings on common product from customers. When there's a shortage of customer ratings, CF makes the formation of a neighborhood inaccurate, thereby resulting in poor recommendations. To improve the performance of CF based recommender systems, most of the related studies have been focused on the development of novel algorithms under the assumption of using a single profile, which is created from user's rating information for items, purchase transactions, or Web access logs. With the advent of big data, companies got to collect more data and to use a variety of information with big size. So, many companies recognize it very importantly to utilize big data because it makes companies to improve their competitiveness and to create new value. In particular, on the rise is the issue of utilizing personal big data in the recommender system. It is why personal big data facilitate more accurate identification of the preferences or behaviors of users. The proposed recommendation methodology is as follows: First, multimodal user profiles are created from personal big data in order to grasp the preferences and behavior of users from various viewpoints. We derive five user profiles based on the personal information such as rating, site preference, demographic, Internet usage, and topic in text. Next, the similarity between users is calculated based on the profiles and then neighbors of users are found from the results. One of three ensemble approaches is applied to calculate the similarity. Each ensemble approach uses the similarity of combined profile, the average similarity of each profile, and the weighted average similarity of each profile, respectively. Finally, the products that people among the neighborhood prefer most to are recommended to the target users. For the experiments, we used the demographic data and a very large volume of Web log transaction for 5,000 panel users of a company that is specialized to analyzing ranks of Web sites. R and SAS E-miner was used to implement the proposed recommender system and to conduct the topic analysis using the keyword search, respectively. To evaluate the recommendation performance, we used 60% of data for training and 40% of data for test. The 5-fold cross validation was also conducted to enhance the reliability of our experiments. A widely used combination metric called F1 metric that gives equal weight to both recall and precision was employed for our evaluation. As the results of evaluation, the proposed methodology achieved the significant improvement over the single profile based CF algorithm. In particular, the ensemble approach using weighted average similarity shows the highest performance. That is, the rate of improvement in F1 is 16.9 percent for the ensemble approach using weighted average similarity and 8.1 percent for the ensemble approach using average similarity of each profile. From these results, we conclude that the multimodal profile ensemble approach is a viable solution to the problems encountered when there's a shortage of customer ratings. This study has significance in suggesting what kind of information could we use to create profile in the environment of big data and how could we combine and utilize them effectively. However, our methodology should be further studied to consider for its real-world application. We need to compare the differences in recommendation accuracy by applying the proposed method to different recommendation algorithms and then to identify which combination of them would show the best performance.

A study on knowledge, self-efficacy and compliance in Reumatic arthritis Patients (류마티스 관절염 환자의 지식, 자기효능감 및 치료이행과의 관계연구)

  • Kim, Soon-Bong
    • Journal of muscle and joint health
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    • v.5 no.2
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    • pp.238-252
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    • 1998
  • Reumatic arthritis is a disease with joint pain being one of the key symptoms. The patient suffers from the pain, stiff sensation and edema due to the inflammation taking Place In one or more joints. Accompanying these problems are fatigue, unusual exhaustion, fever, tachycardia and weakness. Inaddition, joints are often deformed and muscles shrink along with the progress of edema, coupled with depression and psychological instability resulting from the loss of the mobile function and limitations on the daily life. Some patients become fed up with the long and hard flight with the disease and just give up, which aggravates the symptoms. Others come to the hospital only when the conditions have become serious. We need to prevent these and guide the patients in the right direction. Against this backdrop, this study aims to look into the relations between the knowledge on the part of the patients together with their feeling of self-efficacy and the compliance. The results are expected to help the patients improve their life, In addition to providing useful materials for setting up appropriate plan for nursing intervention. The study was conducted by distributing questionnaire to 88 patients selected from the out-patient department of a university hospital in Inchon, from April 6 to 27, 1998. The following tools were used the yardstick of self-efficacy, developed in 1997 by the Society for the Health of Rheumatism Patients, was used for measuring the levels of knowledge and the feeling of self-efficacy. The degree of compliance was measured by the data collected from documents in addition to the results of the analysis of the interviews with the patients. The reliability of the tools was confirmed. In the analysis, the general characteristics were expressed in figures and percentages. The levels of knowledge, feeling of self-efficacy, and compliance were expressed in the average values and standard deviations. The relations among the variables following the general characteristics were analysed by the t-test and one-way ANOVA. The Pearson correction coefficient was used for the analysis of factors. Multiple-loop analysis was used to identify the variables affecting the compliance. The following are the results of this study. 1. Among the 88 patients, 18 were men and the remaining 70 were women, with a ratio 1 : 3.87. Regarding the age groups, 23 were between 50 and 59 years old, with those between 50 and 69 accounting for 51.1% of the total. High school graduates or higher amounted to 58%. Religious patients was 67% or 59 persons. Fifty nine percent were unemployed, and 58.3% (49 persons) had two children or fewer. The period of suffering from rheumatism varied between 2 months and IS years, with 70% less than years. 2. The average figure In relation to the of knowledge was 17.63 points over 30 or 58. 76%, which means a medium level. 3. The average figure of the feeling of self-efficacy was 60.06 points. 4. The level of compliance was 3.26, which was above average. 5. The relation between the feeling of self-efficacy and compliance showed an "r" value of 0.37, which was significant. It means that the higher the feeling, the greater the compliance points. 6. The analysis of the knowledge level revealed that the difference is found only between the college graduates and junior-high graduates or lower. 7. The feeling of self-efficacy varied along with the age and education level. 8. The general characteristics of patients as discussed above did not show significant difference with the compliance. 9. Regarding the elements influencing the compliance, the number of children, period of suffering, income, age, feering of self-efficacy, knowledge, and compliance had 54% of significance. In conclusion, rheumatism victims can lead a better life if they are appropriately educated, based on efficient training program from the early days of the disease ; if they become able to manage themselves thanks to the training ; and if they are helped by a program focusing on the increase of the feeling of self-efficacy aimed at changing patient's behavior.

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