Transportation Engineering on Social Question and Answer Websites: An Empirical Case Study

Author(s):  
Mohammad Noaeen ◽  
Zahra Shakeri Hossein Abad ◽  
Guenther Ruhe ◽  
Behrouz Homayoun Far
2014 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-159
Author(s):  
Dale Jacquette

Abstract The concept of a dialogue is considered in general terms from the standpoint of its referential presuppositions. The semantics of dialogue implies that dialogue participants must generally have a collective intentionality of agreed-upon references that is minimally sufficient for them to be able to disagree about other things, and ideally for outstanding disagreements to become clearer at successive stages of the dialogue. These points are detailed and illustrated in a fictional dialogue, in which precisely these kinds of referential confusions impede progress in shared understanding. It is only through a continuous exchange of question and answer in this dialogue case study that the meanings of key terms and anaphorical references are disambiguated, and a relevantly complete collective intentionality of shared meaning between dialogue participants is achieved. The importance of a minimally shared referential semantics for the terms entering into reasoning and argument in dialogue contexts broadly construed cannot be over-estimated. Where to draw the line between referential agreement and disagreement within any chosen dialogue, as participants work toward better mutual understanding in clearing up referential incongruities, is sometimes among the dialogue’s main points of dispute.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
PengFei Li ◽  
Lin Xu ◽  
TingT Tang ◽  
Xiaoqian Wu ◽  
Cheng Huang

BACKGROUND Social Q&A communities are playing an increasingly important role in the dissemination of health information. The identification of influencing factors of user willingness to share health information (WSHI) is very important to improve public health literacy. OBJECTIVE in order to provide a reference for the construction of high-quality health information sharing community, this paper studied the influencing factors of social question-and-answer community users sharing health information. METHODS A cross-sectional study was conducted through snowball sampling among 921 users of Zhihu in China. Structural equation analysis was used to verify the interaction and influence strength between variables in the model. Hierarchical regression was also used to test the mediating effect in the model. RESULTS Altruism (AL, β=0.264, P<0.001), Intrinsic Reward (IR, β=0.260, P<0.05), Self-Efficacy (SE, β=0.468, P<0.001) and Community Influence (CI, β=0.277, P<0.01) had a positive effect while Extrinsic Reward (ER, β=0.351, P<0.001) had a negative effect on WSHI. SE also had a mediating effect (βmediation=0.147, 29.15%, 0.147/0.505) between CI and WSHI. CONCLUSIONS Findings suggest that WSHI is simultaneously influenced by many factors such as AL, SE, CI and IR. Improving the social atmosphere of the platform is an effective method to encourage users to share health information.


Author(s):  
Lynn Batten ◽  
Lei Pan ◽  
Nisar Khan

The need for an automated approach to forensic digital investigation has been recognized for some years, and several authors have developed frameworks in this direction. The aim of this paper is to assist the forensic investigator with the generation and testing of hypotheses in the analysis phase. In doing so, the authors present a new architecture which facilitates the move to automation of the investigative process; this new architecture draws together several important components of the literature on question and answer methodologies including the concept of ‘pivot’ word and sentence ranking. Their architecture is supported by a detailed case study demonstrating its practicality.


This chapter discusses the big five qualitative traditions/designs and others. It is divided into seven sections, and the first section discusses biography design. The types and steps of undertaking projects via biography design are highlighted in detail. The second and third sections address phenomenology and grounded theory designs respectively. The case study design is exposed in Section 4 while historical design is explored in Section 5. Section 6 contains information related to ethnography design. The readers will be able to understand the data collection and analysis procedures related to each and every design and the unique characteristics of the designs are exposed in this chapter. The chapter is concluded by a question and answer section, where important questions are suggested and answered.


2012 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 111
Author(s):  
Maria Melssen

Objective – To determine what information resources undergraduate students choose to complete assignments for their courses, why they choose those resources, the process of selecting those resources and the factors that contributed to selecting the resources, and their perceptions of those resources. Design – Semi-structured information seeking diary. Setting – Private university in Seoul, Korea. Subjects – 233 undergraduate students from all majors and all years. Methods – Students selected one assignment from their elective course and recorded the following in a diary: what the assignment was, the topic they needed to research to complete the assignment, resources used, the factors that contributed to choosing the resources, and perceptions of those resources. Main Results – Data were analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. The factors that affected the students’ resource selection were analyzed qualitatively using an open coding method created by the researchers. The factors were not predetermined by the researchers, but were selected based on the factors identified by the students. Online resources (67.1%) were the most frequently selected resources by the students compared to human resources (11.5%), print materials (11.5%), and mass media (3%). Students used an average of 5.28 resources to complete one assignment. Factors that affected the students’ selection of resources were the type of information provided by the resource, the features of the resource, the search strategy used when searching in the resource, and the students’ interaction with other people when selecting and using the resource. More than one factor typically contributed to the students’ selection of the resource. The students’ perceptions of the resources they selected were analyzed quantitatively: perceptions were analyzed in six content areas using a five point scale. Correlations and similarities across the six content areas were also analyzed. Perceptions of resources were broken down into six categories and the resources were rated on a five point scale. Librarians (4.50) were the most useful resource and lecture notes (5.0) were the most credible. Family (3.29) was the least useful, and social question and answer services, such as Yahoo! Answers, (2.62) were the least credible. Family was the most accessible and familiar resource (4.90 and 4.95 respectively). Experts (2.25) were least accessible and librarians (1.50) were the least familiar. Students were most satisfied with Google Scholar (4.33) and were most likely to use an online database (4.52) again. They were least satisfied with social question and answer services (3.05) and least likely to use a report sharing site (2.93) again. The usefulness and credibility of the resource contributed most to the undergraduates’ satisfaction with the resource, while accessibility and usefulness were the major contributing factors to users intended continued use of a resource. Conclusion – There are multiple reasons that support further information literacy education. Information literacy courses would encourage and teach students how to effectively use resources that they found credible and reliable, but considered inaccessible and unfamiliar. Information literacy education would also help educate students on how to best formulate their search strategies and how to select the best resource to use based on that strategy. Students also highlighted the importance of human interaction in resource selection and utilization. This is an opportunity for librarians and professors to play a more active role in assisting students in selecting and using the best resources to complete course assignments. Due to the limitations of this study, further research is needed to investigate the factors affecting the exclusion of resources, not only the inclusion. Future study designs should address the characteristics of the study participants themselves, such as the age and gender. The impact of the research topic and subject on resource selection, as well as what resources are selected for non-academic information needs, should also be investigated.


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