Quantitative approaches to content analysis : identifying conceptual drift across publication outlets

Unstructured text data, such as emails, blogs, contracts, academic publications, organizational documents, transcribed interviews, and even tweets, are important sources of data in Information Systems research. Various forms of qualitative analysis of the content of these data exist and have revealed important insights. Yet, to date, these analyses have been hampered by limitations of human coding of large data sets, and by bias due to human interpretation. In this paper, we compare and combine two quantitative analysis techniques to demonstrate the capabilities of computational analysis for content analysis of unstructured text. Specifically, we seek to demonstrate how two quantitative analytic methods, viz., Latent Semantic Analysis and data mining, can aid researchers in revealing core content topic areas in large (or small) data sets, and in visualizing how these concepts evolve, migrate, converge or diverge over time. We exemplify the complementary application of these techniques through an examination of a 25-year sample of abstracts from selected journals in Information Systems, Management, and Accounting disciplines. Through this work, we explore the capabilities of two computational techniques, and show how these techniques can be used to gather insights from a large corpus of unstructured text.

Safety culture research in the construction sector : interlocked projects in safety competency and safety effectiveness indicators

Safety culture is a concept that has long been accepted in high risk industries such as aviation, nuclear industries and mining, however, considerable research is now being undertaken within the construction sector, with varying levels of success. The current paper discusses three recent interlocked projects that have had some success in the Australian construction industry. The first project examined the development and implementation of a safety competency framework targeted at safety critical positions across first tier construction organisations. Combining qualitative and quantitative methods, the project: developed a matrix of safety critical positions (n=11) and safety managements tasks (SMTs; n=39); mapped the process steps for their acquisition and ongoing development; detailed the knowledge, skills and behaviours required for all SMTs; and outlined organisational cultural outcomes that could be anticipated in a successful implementation of the framework. The second project extended research on safety competency and leadership to develop behavioural guidelines for leaders to drive safety culture change down to second tier companies. This was designed to assist smaller construction companies to customise their own competency framework and develop implementation guidelines that match their aspirations and resources. The third interlocked project explored the use of safety effectiveness indicators (SEIs) as an industry-relevant assessment tool for reducing risk on construction sites. With direct linkages to safety competencies and safety management tasks, the SEIs are the next step towards an integrated safety cultural approach to safety and extend the concept of positive performance indicators (PPIs) by providing a valid, reliable, and user friendly measurement platform. Taken together, the results of the interlocked projects suggest that safety culture research has many potential benefits for the construction industry, particularly when research is conducted in partnership with industry stakeholders. Suggestions are made for future research, including further application and testing of the safety competency framework and aligning SEIs across construction projects of varying size, location and design.

Active ageing : developing a quantitative multi-dimensional measure

With estimates that two billion of the world’s population will be 65 years or older by 2050, ensuring that older people ‘age well’ is an international priority. To date, however, there is significant disagreement and debate about how to define and measure ‘ageing well’, with no consensus on either terminology or measurement. Thus, this chapter describes the research rationale, methodology and findings of the Australian Active Ageing Study (Triple A Study), which surveyed 2620 older Australians to identify significant contributions to quality of life for older people: work, learning, social participation, spirituality, emotional wellbeing, health, and life events. Exploratory factor analyses identified eight distinct elements (grouped into four key concepts) which appear to define ‘active ageing’ and explained 55% of the variance: social and life participation (25%), emotional health (22%), physical health and functioning (4%) and security (4%). These findings highlight the importance of understanding and supporting the social and emotional dimensions of ageing, as issues of social relationships, life engagement and emotional health dominated the factor structure. Our intension is that this paper will prompt informed debate and discussion on defining and measuring active ageing, facilitating exploration and understanding of the complexity of issues that intertwine, converge and enhance the ageing experience.

Developing a Second Life virtual field trip for university students : an action research approach

Background: Integrating 3D virtual world technologies into educational subjects continues to draw the attention of educators and researchers alike. The focus of this study is the use of a virtual world, Second Life, in higher education teaching. In particular, it explores the potential of using a virtual world experience as a learning component situated within a curriculum delivered predominantly through face-to-face teaching methods. Purpose: This paper reports on a research study into the development of a virtual world learning experience designed for marketing students taking a Digital Promotions course. The experience was a field trip into Second Life to allow students to investigate how business branding practices were used for product promotion in this virtual world environment. The paper discusses the issues involved in developing and refining the virtual course component over four semesters. Methods: The study used a pedagogical action research approach, with iterative cycles of development, intervention and evaluation over four semesters. The data analysed were quantitative and qualitative student feedback collected after each field trip as well as lecturer reflections on each cycle. Sample: Small-scale convenience samples of second- and third-year students studying in a Bachelor of Business degree, majoring in marketing, taking the Digital Promotions subject at a metropolitan university in Queensland, Australia participated in the study. The samples included students who had and had not experienced the field trip. The numbers of students taking part in the field trip ranged from 22 to 48 across the four semesters. Findings and Implications: The findings from the four iterations of the action research plan helped identify key considerations for incorporating technologies into learning environments. Feedback and reflections from the students and lecturer suggested that an innovative learning opportunity had been developed. However, pedagogical potential was limited, in part, by technological difficulties and by student perceptions of relevance.

Status of current research on the implication of climate change on built environment

The cycling interaction between climate change and building performance is of dynamic nature and both are essentially the cause and the effect of each other. On one hand, buildings contribute significantly to the global warming process. On the other hand, climate change is also expected to impact on many aspects of building performance. In this paper, the status of current research on the implication of climate change on built environment is reviewed. It is found that although the present research has covered broad areas of research, they are generally only limited to the qualitative analyses. It is also highlighted that although it is widely realized that reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the building sector is very important, the adoption of complementary adaptation strategy to prepare the building for a range of climate change scenarios is also necessary. Due to the lack of holistic approach to generate future hourly weather data, various approaches have been used to generate different key weather variables. This ad hoc situation has seriously hindered the application of building simulation technique to the climate change impact study, in particular, to provide quantitative information for policy and design development.

Using mobile social media and GIS in health and place research

This paper presents new research methods that combine the use of location-based, social media on mobile phones with geographic information systems (GIS) to explore connections between people, place and health. It discusses the feasibility, limitations, and benefits of using these methods, which enable real-time, location-based, quantitative data to be collected on the recreation, consumption, and physical activity patterns of urban residents in Brisbane, Queensland. The study employs mechanisms already inherent in popular mobile social media applications (Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare) to collect this data. The research methods presented in this paper are innovative and potentially applicable to an increasing number of academic research areas, as well as to a growing range of service providers that benefit from monitoring consumer behaviour, and responding to emerging changes in these patterns and trends. The ability to both collect and map objective, real-time data about the consumption, leisure, recreation, and physical activity patterns amongst urban communities has direct implications for a range of research disciplines including media studies, advertising, health promotion, social marketing, public health inequalities, and urban design.

Doing blog research

Blogs and other online platforms for personal writing such as LiveJournal have been of interest to researchers across the social sciences and humanities for a decade now. Although growth in the uptake of blogging has stalled somewhat since the heyday of blogs in the early 2000s, blogging continues to be a major genre of Internet-based communication. Indeed, at the same time that mass participation has moved on to Facebook, Twitter, and other more recent communication phenomena, what has been left behind by the wave of mass adoption is a slightly smaller but all the more solidly established blogosphere of engaged and committed participants. Blogs are now an accepted part of institutional, group, and personal communications strategies (Bruns and Jacobs, 2006); in style and substance, they are situated between the more static information provided by conventional Websites and Webpages and the continuous newsfeeds provided through Facebook and Twitter updates. Blogs provide a vehicle for authors (and their commenters) to think through given topics in the space of a few hundred to a few thousand words – expanding, perhaps, on shorter tweets, and possibly leading to the publication of more fully formed texts elsewhere. Additionally, they are also a very flexible medium: they readily provide the functionality to include images, audio, video, and other additional materials – as well as the fundamental tool of blogging, the hyperlink itself. Indeed, the role of the link in blogs and blog posts should not be underestimated. Whatever the genre and topic that individual bloggers engage in, for the most part blogging is used to provide timely updates and commentary – and it is typical for such material to link both to relevant posts made by other bloggers, and to previous posts by the present author, both to background material which provides readers with further information about the blogger’s current topic, and to news stories and articles which the blogger found interesting or worthy of critique. Especially where bloggers are part of a larger community of authors sharing similar interests or views (and such communities are often indicated by the presence of yet another type of link – in blogrolls, often in a sidebar on the blog site, which list the blogger’s friends or favourites), then, the reciprocal writing and linking of posts often constitutes an asynchronous, distributed conversation that unfolds over the course of days, weeks, and months. Research into blogs is interesting for a variety of reasons, therefore. For one, a qualitative analysis of one or several blogs can reveal the cognitive and communicative processes through which individual bloggers define their online identity, position themselves in relation to fellow bloggers, frame particular themes, topics and stories, and engage with one another’s points of view. It may also shed light on how such processes may differ across different communities of interest, perhaps in correlation with the different societal framing and valorisation of specific areas of interest, with the socioeconomic backgrounds of individual bloggers, or with other external or internal factors. Such qualitative research now looks back on a decade-long history (for key collections, see Gurak, et al., 2004; Bruns and Jacobs, 2006; also see Walker Rettberg, 2008) and has recently shifted also to specifically investigate how blogging practices differ across different cultures (Russell and Echchaibi, 2009). Other studies have also investigated the practices and motivations of bloggers in specific countries from a sociological perspective, through large-scale surveys (e.g. Schmidt, 2009). Blogs have also been directly employed within both K-12 and higher education, across many disciplines, as tools for reflexive learning and discussion (Burgess, 2006).

The role of education and awareness in workplace alcohol and drug use in the Australian construction industry : proposed program of research and preliminary results

The main aim of this paper is to outline a proposed program of research which will attempt to quantify the extent of the problem of alcohol and other drugs in the Australian construction industry, and furthermore, develop an appropriate industry-wide policy and cultural change management program and implementation plan to address the problem. This paper will also present preliminary results from the study. The study will use qualitative and quantitative methods (in the form of interviews and surveys, respectively) to evaluate the extent of the problem of alcohol and other drug use in this industry, to ascertain the feasibility of an industry-wide policy and cultural change management program, and to develop an appropriate implementation plan. The study will be undertaken in several construction organisations, at selected sites in South Australia, Victoria and Northern Territory. It is anticipated that approximately 500 employees from the participating organisations across Australia will take part in the study. The World Health Organisation’s Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) will be used to measure the extent of alcohol use in the industry. Illicit drug use, ‘‘readiness to change’’, impediments to reducing impairment, feasibility of proposed interventions, and employee attitudes and knowledge regarding workplace AOD impairment, will also be measured through a combination of interviews and surveys. Among the preliminary findings, for 51% (n=127) of respondents, score on the AUDIT indicated alcohol use at hazardous levels. Of the respondents who were using alcohol at hazardous levels, 76% reported (n97) that they do not have a problem with drinking and 54% (n=68) reported that it would be easy to ‘‘cut down’’ or stop drinking. Nearly half (49%) of all respondents (n=122) had used marijuana/cannabis at some time prior to being surveyed. The use of other illicit substances was much less frequently reported. Preliminary interview findings indicated a lack of adequate employee knowledge regarding the physical effects of alcohol and other drugs in the workplace. As for conclusions, the proposed study will address a major gap in the literature with regard to the extent of the problem of alcohol and other drug use in the construction industry in Australia. The study will also develop and implement a national, evidence-based workplace policy, with the aim of mitigating the deleterious effects of alcohol and other drugs in this industry.

The SAGE Handbook of Criminological Research Methods

Conducting research into crime and criminal justice carries unique challenges. This Handbook focuses on the application of 'methods' to address the core substantive questions that currently motivate contemporary criminological research. It maps a canon of methods that are more elaborated than in most other fields of social science, and the intellectual terrain of research problems with which criminologists are routinely confronted. Drawing on exemplary studies, chapters in each section illustrate the techniques (qualitative and quantitative) that are commonly applied in empirical studies, as well as the logic of criminological enquiry. Organized into five sections, each prefaced by an editorial introduction, the Handbook covers: • Crime and Criminals • Contextualizing Crimes in Space and Time: Networks, Communities and Culture • Perceptual Dimensions of Crime • Criminal Justice Systems: Organizations and Institutions • Preventing Crime and Improving Justice Edited by leaders in the field of criminological research, and with contributions from internationally renowned experts, The SAGE Handbook of Criminological Research Methods is set to become the definitive resource for postgraduates, researchers and academics in criminology, criminal justice, policing, law, and sociology.

Qualitative and quantitative analysis of six sigma in service organizations

The concept of Six Sigma was initiated in the 1980s by Motorola. Since then it has been implemented in several manufacturing and service organizations. Till now Six Sigma implementation is mostly limited to healthcare and financial services in private sector. Its implementation is now gradually picking up in services such as call center, education, construction and related engineering etc. in private as well as public sector. Through a literature review, a questionnaire survey, and multiple case study approach the paper develops a conceptual framework to facilitate widening the scope of Six Sigma implementation in service organizations. Using grounded theory methodology, this study develops theory for Six Sigma implementation in service organizations. The study involves a questionnaire survey and case studies to understand and build a conceptual framework. The survey was conducted in service organizations in Singapore and exploratory in nature. The case studies involved three service organizations which implemented Six Sigma. The objective is to explore and understand the issues highlighted by the survey and the literature. The findings confirm the inclusion of critical success factors, critical-to-quality characteristics, and set of tools and techniques as observed from the literature. In case of key performance indicator, there are different interpretations about it in literature and also by industry practitioners. Some literature explain key performance indicator as performance metrics whereas some feel it as key process input or output variables, which is similar to interpretations by practitioners of Six Sigma. The response of not relevant and unknown to us as reasons for not implementing Six Sigma shows the need for understanding specific requirements of service organizations. Though much theoretical description is available about Six Sigma, but there has been limited rigorous academic research on it. This gap is far more pronounced about Six Sigma implementation in service organizations, where the theory is not mature enough. Identifying this need, the study contributes by going through theory building exercise and developing a conceptual framework to understand the issues involving its implementation in service organizations.

Prostate cancer biomarkers and the emerging proteomic techniques used in biomarker research

Prostate cancer (CaP) is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in North American males and the most common newly diagnosed cancer in men world wide. Biomarkers are widely used for both early detection and prognostic tests for cancer. The current, commonly used biomarker for CaP is serum prostate specific antigen (PSA). However, the specificity of this biomarker is low as its serum level is not only increased in CaP but also in various other diseases, with age and even body mass index. Human body fluids provide an excellent resource for the discovery of biomarkers, with the advantage over tissue/biopsy samples of their ease of access, due to the less invasive nature of collection. However, their analysis presents challenges in terms of variability and validation. Blood and urine are two human body fluids commonly used for CaP research, but their proteomic analyses are limited both by the large dynamic range of protein abundance making detection of low abundance proteins difficult and in the case of urine, by the high salt concentration. To overcome these challenges, different techniques for removal of high abundance proteins and enrichment of low abundance proteins are used. Their applications and limitations are discussed in this review. A number of innovative proteomic techniques have improved detection of biomarkers. They include two dimensional differential gel electrophoresis (2D-DIGE), quantitative mass spectrometry (MS) and functional proteomic studies, i.e., investigating the association of post translational modifications (PTMs) such as phosphorylation, glycosylation and protein degradation. The recent development of quantitative MS techniques such as stable isotope labeling with amino acids in cell culture (SILAC), isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantitation (iTRAQ) and multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) have allowed proteomic researchers to quantitatively compare data from different samples. 2D-DIGE has greatly improved the statistical power of classical 2D gel analysis by introducing an internal control. This chapter aims to review novel CaP biomarkers as well as to discuss current trends in biomarker research from two angles: the source of biomarkers (particularly human body fluids such as blood and urine), and emerging proteomic approaches for biomarker research.

Identities and transformational experiences for quantitative problem solving : gender comparisons of first-year university science students

Women are underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) areas in university settings; however this may be the result of attitude rather than aptitude. There is widespread agreement that quantitative problem-solving is essential for graduate competence and preparedness in science and other STEM subjects. The research question addresses the identities and transformative experiences (experiential, perception, & motivation) of both male and female university science students in quantitative problem solving. This study used surveys to investigate first-year university students’ (231 females and 198 males) perceptions of their quantitative problem solving. Stata (statistical analysis package version 11) analysed gender differences in quantitative problem solving using descriptive and inferential statistics. Males perceived themselves with a higher mathematics identity than females. Results showed that there was statistical significance (p<0.05) between the genders on 21 of the 30 survey items associated with transformative experiences. Males appeared to have a willingness to be involved in quantitative problem solving outside their science coursework requirements. Positive attitudes towards STEM-type subjects may need to be nurtured in females before arriving in the university setting (e.g., high school or earlier). Females also need equitable STEM education opportunities such as conversations or activities outside school with family and friends to develop more positive attitudes in these fields.

An introduction to mixed methods research for nephrology nurses

Mixed methods research is the use of qualitative and quantitative methods in the same study to gain a more rounded and holistic understanding of the phenomena under investigation. This type of research approach is gaining popularity in the nursing literature as a way to understand the complexity of nursing care and as a means to enhance evidenced-based practice. This paper introduces nephrology nurses to mixed methods research, its terminology and application to nephrology nursing. Five common mixed methods designs will be described highlighting the purposes, strengths and weaknesses of each design. Examples of mixed methods research will be given to illustrate the wide application of mixed methods research to nursing and its usefulness in nephrology nursing research.

Quantitative evaluation of matching methods and validity measures for stereo vision

The authors present a qualitative and quantitative comparison of various similarity measures that form the kernel of common area-based stereo-matching systems. The authors compare classical difference and correlation measures as well as nonparametric measures based on the rank and census transforms for a number of outdoor images. For robotic applications, important considerations include robustness to image defects such as intensity variation and noise, the number of false matches, and computational complexity. In the absence of ground truth data, the authors compare the matching techniques based on the percentage of matches that pass the left-right consistency test. The authors also evaluate the discriminatory power of several match validity measures that are reported in the literature for eliminating false matches and for estimating match confidence. For guidance applications, it is essential to have and estimate of confidence in the three-dimensional points generated by stereo vision. Finally, a new validity measure, the rank constraint, is introduced that is capable of resolving ambiguous matches for rank transform-based matching.