The Influence of Book Blogs on the Buying Decisions of German Readers

LOGOS ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-52
Author(s):  
Kim Maya Sutton ◽  
Ina Paulfeuerborn

In October 2014, over 200 million blogs were registered on the platform Tumblr alone. In 2015, hundreds of book blogs in the blogosphere concentrated on literature and published reviews, cover designs, direct insights from publishers, author interviews, and competitions. Based on the research question ‘Do literature blogs have an influence on the buying decisions of readers?’ quantitative research was carried out in Germany at the beginning of 2016. The focus of the research was book blogs targeting readers of light fiction. A survey was sent to online portals, such as Lovelybooks, and thereby distributed to readers. Literature bloggers were also asked to participate by forwarding the survey to their followers. The survey gives insight into readers’ motivation to visit literature blogs. Furthermore, it highlights what kind of information readers want to find on such blogs, and how blogs can influence readers’ buying behaviour. The findings of the survey are compared with a model for buying decisions. The findings will be helpful for publishers, self-publishers, book trade, and bloggers. The most obvious limitation of the survey is the geographic limitation to Germany and its book market; however, the survey could easily be translated and extended to include other markets.

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Colby Doyle ◽  
Matthew Gaudet ◽  
Dominic Lay ◽  
Amber McLeod ◽  
Robert Schaeffer

The primary goal of this research is to identify and examine the components of responsible drinking advertisements. We will examine industry and government related advertisements as we try to understand one of our major questions: does the source influence the validity of the message? The next group of major questions that we will be looking to answer is how are the vague quantifiers used in responsible drinking campaigns interpreted by the public?  How many drinks do people consider “too much?” What does “drink responsibly” really mean? The third major question is whether or not an individual’s current consumption patterns of alcohol have any effect on how individuals assess responsible drinking campaigns. Our qualitative research has indicated that social influences can be strongly related with drinking patterns; this will be further examined in our quantitative research. Also, we will be looking into some of the psychology behind industry and government sponsored advertisements as well as gathering and interpreting information from a sample of our target demographic. Our target demographic consists of both male and females between the ages 18-24. Our literature review and qualitative analysis gave us good insight into some of the potential answers to our questions. We will use these potential answers from our previous research to guide us as we attempt to conduct conclusive research based on a sample data of 169 individuals. Our findings will aid us in developing conclusions and recommendations for Alberta Health Services.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 7086
Author(s):  
Martina Maněnová ◽  
Janet Wolf ◽  
Martin Skutil ◽  
Jitka Vítová

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the issue of distance education in primary schools has become a much-discussed topic. It is therefore no surprise that the issues related to it have come to the forefront of many researchers. There is, however, at least one group that has stayed relatively unnoticed, and it is so-called small schools. Thus, we conducted a qualitative study based on the phenomenological approach, searching for answers to our research question: What has been the experience of the directors of small schools with distance education during the pandemic? Our findings offer an in-depth insight into the life of six schools through the eyes of their directors. Semi-structural interviews with school directors helped us reveal three key factors that, in our opinion, had the greatest influence on the form of distance education. These are (1) the factor of ICT competence of all actors, (2) the factor of organization of educational settings, and (3) the factor of the teaching methods and forms used in education. Furthermore, we conclude the result section with a subchapter that captures the positive aspects of distance education as perceived by the addressed school directors.


2021 ◽  
pp. 088626052198985
Author(s):  
Sally Marsden ◽  
Cathy Humphreys ◽  
Kelsey Hegarty

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a complex and multifaceted problem gaining increasing attention within mental health research and practice. IPV explanations focus on both individual and systemic levels; however, it is increasingly acknowledged that a single level explanation may not be sufficient. The practices of clinical disciplines may, however, still privilege an explanation at one level over another, which will influence how they work with clients. It is likely that one such clinical group, psychologists, may play a critical role in helping victim-survivors to understand and explain their experiences of IPV. However, we were unable to find any studies focusing on women’s perceptions of psychologists’ role in this. Additionally, we know little about women victim-survivors’ perceptions of why their partners use IPV. To address these gaps, the research question for this study was: What explanations resonate during counseling for women in understanding their partner’s abuse? To explore this question, 20 women who had seen psychologists after experiencing IPV participated in semi-structured interviews. The interviews were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis and three themes constructed from the data. The first two themes, narcissist description was helpful and not all bad all the time, showed that the women found it powerful in their healing processes when psychologists offered the opportunity to discuss their partners individual characteristics as explanations for their use of IPV. The third theme, structural explanations, showed that some of the women also reflected on wider structural contexts. Implications for clinical practice include the potential healing effect when practitioners can move along a continuum of explanation levels, covering both the inner and outer worlds. Implications for research into IPV perpetration are that women hold expertise and insight into individual perpetrators and could make valuable contributions to this field.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bert Schreurs ◽  
Angus Duff ◽  
Pascale M. Le Blanc ◽  
Thomas H. Stone

Purpose This article aims to provide prospective authors guidelines that will hopefully enable them to submit more competitive manuscripts to journals publishing careers research.Design/methodology/approach Based on their experience as an author, reviewer and editorial team member, the authors identify the main criteria that a quantitative study must meet to be considered for publication in international peer-reviewed journals covering career-related topics. They emphasize the importance of contributing to the careers literature and of designing the study in accordance with the research question.Findings Manuscripts are rejected because they are insufficiently innovative, and/or because sample, instruments and design are not appropriate to answer the research question at hand. Cross-sectional designs cannot be used to answer questions of mediation but should not be discarded automatically since they can be used to address other types of questions, including questions about nesting, clustering of individuals into subgroups, and to some extent, even causality.Originality/value The manuscript provides an insight into the decision-making process of reviewers and editorial board members and includes recommendations on the use of cross-sectional data.


2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emmanuelle Bélanger ◽  
Anna Towers ◽  
David Kenneth Wright ◽  
Yuexi Chen ◽  
Golda Tradounsky ◽  
...  

ObjectivesIn 2015, the Province of Quebec, Canada passed a law that allowed voluntary active euthanasia (VAE). Palliative care stakeholders in Canada have been largely opposed to euthanasia, yet there is little research about their views. The research question guiding this study was the following: How do palliative care physicians in Quebec position themselves regarding the practice of VAE in the context of the new provincial legislation?MethodsWe used interpretive description, an inductive methodology to answer research questions about clinical practice. A total of 18 palliative care physicians participated in semistructured interviews at two university-affiliated hospitals in Quebec.ResultsParticipants positioned themselves in opposition to euthanasia. Their justifications were framed within their professional commitment to not hasten death, which sat in tension with the value of patients’ autonomy to choose how to die. Participants described VAE as unacceptable if it impeded opportunities to evaluate and alleviate suffering. Further, they contested government rhetoric that positioned VAE as a way to improve end-of-life care. Participants felt that VAE would diminish the potential of palliative care to relieve suffering. Dilemmas were apparent in their narratives, about reconciling respect for patient autonomy with broader palliative care values, and the value of accompanying and not abandoning patients who make requests for VAE while being committed to neither prolonging nor hastening death.ConclusionsThis study provides insight into nuanced positions of experienced palliative care physicians in Quebec and confirms expected tensions between an important stakeholder and the practice of VAE as guided by the new legislation.


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 147
Author(s):  
Yvonne Sedelmaier ◽  
Dieter Landes

Good requirements are commonly viewed as a key success factor for IT (and non-IT) projects, but still there seems to be insufficient insight into which competences requirements engineers need to have these days. Digitalization is likely to pose new challenges to requirements engineering. Chances are that digitalization will change the competences that are necessary for successful requirements engineering. This paper proposes a research design that will be used for clarifying which competences requirements engineers need nowadays and how these competences change due to digitalization. To that end, qualitative and quantitative research methods will be combined for developing a comprehensive competence profile for requirements engineering on a scientific basis. The resulting competence profile constitutes a starting point for devising competence-oriented learning settings. Thus, our research contributes to a better understanding of competences for requirements engineering and improves education of future requirements engineers, in particular for coping with challenges posed by digitalization.


2007 ◽  
Vol 35 (103) ◽  
pp. 108-137
Author(s):  
Carsten Sestoft

Romanens status i det 17. århundredes Frankrig The hesitations of a genre: The status of the novel in seventeenth-century FranceIn answering the question: What was the novel in seventeenth-century France? – this article provides insight into some important points of the early history of the genre. The contradiction between its non-existence in official (Aristotelian) poetics and its existence as a popular commodity on the book market was, in the course of the seventeenth century, reconciled in the emergent category of belles lettres as a plurality of genres mainly defined by their public of honnêtes gens, while attempts at legitimizing the novel as belonging to such Aristotelian genres as epic or history generally failed; and at the end of the century a number of convergences – between epic and novel, between the designations roman and nouvelle, and between the ‘high’ and ‘low’ forms of the novel – seem to point to the fact that the social existence of the genre had been strengthened, even if it was the English novel of the eighteenth century that could be said to reap the profits of this stronger position. Using historical semantics and cultural sociology to study the status of the novel in seventeenth-century France thus leads to a clearer understanding of the specificity of the novel as a literary and cultural genre.


2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 198-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nomusa Nomhle Dlamini ◽  
Kevin Johnston

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present how organisations in South Africa are using social media. The paper further explores the value of social media to South African organisations and if it is important for an organisation to have a social media presence. Design/methodology/approach The study used quantitative research methods to answer the main research question and sub-questions. Findings The data collected revealed that most organisations in South Africa are using social media for free advertising, CRM and marketing. The popular social media sites used by these organisations are Facebook and Twitter, with LinkedIn increasing in popularity. The data further revealed that social media is important in organisations for relationship building, contact keeping advertising, marketing, attracting customers, brand management and information gathering. Research limitations/implications The role of social media is changing, it was initially a marketing tool, but the findings revealed that majority of organisations are using social media for free advertising, CRM and marketing. Social media is an easy CRM tool that offers effective and efficient capabilities. Practical implications It is important to use integrate social media with the organisations processes to market and advertise new products, it is an instant and cost-saving way of communicating with customers, and helps in reaching and attracting new customers. Social implications Social media is important for keeping contact and building relationships with customers, advertising and marketing, way to attract customers, brand management tool and gathering information. Originality/value The study provides guidance to how organisation can use social media, identifying the value of using social media and highlighting the importance of social media in an organisation in the South African context.


2010 ◽  
Vol 112 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
David T. Hansen

Background/ Context In recent years, scholars the world over in both the social sciences and humanities have reanimated the ancient idea of cosmopolitanism. They discern in the idea ways in which people today can respond creatively to rapid social, political, cultural, and economic transformations. Scholars in this burgeoning field have examined issues involving cultural hybridity, global citizenship, environmental justice, economic redistribution, and more. In the article, I examine from a philosophical perspective how a cosmopolitan-minded education can assist people in cultivating thoughtful receptivity to the new and reflective loyalty to the known. Purpose/ Objective/ Research Question/ Focus of Study Philosophical work has begun on possible relations between cosmopolitanism and education. However, there are virtually no published studies that deploy a systematic cosmopolitan frame of analysis in conjunction with qualitative or quantitative research. This article seeks to encourage such research by elucidating a distinctive conception of cosmopolitanism rooted in one of its long-standing strands. This strand is characterized as cosmopolitanism on the ground, and it features what has been called “philosophy as the art of living” and “actually existing cosmopolitanism.” Research Design The article is a philosophical investigation that builds an argument using the techniques of conceptual analysis, comparison, contrast, analogy, metaphor, illustration, and exegesis of texts. Conclusions/ Recommendations The long-standing strand of cosmopolitanism on the ground generates several key elements of a philosophy of cosmopolitan-minded education. These elements are (1) a recognition of the importance of local socialization as making possible education itself, (2) the recognition that a cosmopolitan outlook triggers a critical rather than idolatrous or negligent attitude toward tradition and custom, (3) the recognition that curriculum across all subjects can be understood as a cosmopolitan inheritance, and (4) the recognition that many teachers constitute an already existing cosmopolitan community and can build on their shared purposes to enhance educational practice the world over.


Author(s):  
Jessica Gurevitch

Research synthesis in ecology has typically been based on literature reviews, as is also common in other fields. That is, a search is conducted for relevant data addressing a particular research question, the utility of published and unpublished data is assessed, and the results are synthesized to address questions based on all of the available evidence. This chapter discusses the case of individual researchers who wish to combine the results of distinct experiments that they have conducted themselves or within a single research group, sometimes over the course of many years. Such efforts have many similarities with literature-based quantitative research synthesis, but differ in some important ways. It begins with several examples of such work, and investigates the challenges, potential pitfalls, advantages, and issues involved in using meta-analysis for the synthesis of such large-group collaborative experimental work.


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