scholarly journals User Experiences of the NZ COVID Tracer App in New Zealand: Thematic Analysis of Interviews (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexei Tretiakov ◽  
Inga Hunter

BACKGROUND For mobile app–based COVID-19 contact tracing to be fully effective, a large majority of the population needs to be using the app on an ongoing basis. However, there is a paucity of studies of users, as opposed to potential adopters, of mobile contact tracing apps and of their experiences. New Zealand, a high-income country with western political culture, was successful in managing the COVID-19 pandemic, and its experience is valuable for informing policy responses in similar contexts. OBJECTIVE This study asks the following research questions: (1) How do users experience the app in their everyday contexts? and (2) What drives the use of the app? METHODS Residents of New Zealand’s Auckland region, which encompasses the country’s largest city, were approached via Facebook, and 34 NZ COVID Tracer app users were interviewed. Interview transcripts were analyzed using thematic analysis. RESULTS Interviews ranged in duration from 15 to 50 minutes. Participants ranged in age from those in their late teens to those in their early sixties. Even though about half of the participants identified as White New Zealanders of European origin, different ethnicities were represented, including New Zealanders of South Pacific, Indian, Middle Eastern, South American, and Southeast Asian descent. Out of 34 participants, 2 (6%) identified as Māori (Indigenous New Zealanders). A broad range of careers were represented, from top-middle management to health support work and charity work. Likewise, educational backgrounds ranged broadly, from high school completion to master’s degrees. Out of 34 participants, 2 (6%) were unemployed, having recently lost their jobs because of the pandemic. The thematic analysis resulted in five major themes: perceived benefits, patterns of use, privacy, social influence, and need for collective action. Benefits of using the app to society in general were more salient to the participants than immediate health benefits to the individual. Use, however, depended on the alert level and tended to decline for many participants at low alert levels. Privacy considerations played a small role in shaping adoption and use, even though the participants were highly aware of privacy discourse around the app. Participants were aware of the need for high levels of adoption and use of the app to control the pandemic. Attempts to encourage others to use the app were common, although not always successful. CONCLUSIONS Appeals to civic responsibility are likely to drive the use of a mobile contact tracing app under the conditions of high threat. Under the likely scenario of COVID-19 remaining endemic and requiring ongoing vigilance over the long term, other mechanisms promoting the use of mobile contact tracing apps may be needed, such as offering incentives. As privacy is not an important concern for many users, flexible privacy settings in mobile contact tracing apps allowing users to set their optimal levels of privacy may be appropriate.


Author(s):  
Zixue Tai ◽  
Xiao Yu ◽  
Bai He

During the COVID-19 pandemic, China has implemented the most stringent lockdown measures across major cities during moments of heightened risk of infection. This mechanism is aided by the mandated Health QR Code to surveil and contain spread of the virus. This research scrutinizes the varying degrees and forms of disconnect in the context of the Health Code mandate. Informed by extensive focus group interviews of diverse resident groups, supplemented with thematic analysis of 136 newspaper news stories covering the enforcement of the Health Code, the research results offer insight over the multiplicity of voluntary and involuntary disconnective practices at both the individual/internal and societal/external level. These findings are contextualized for their theoretical relevance towards the overall line of inquiry into information technology non-use, and the pragmatic implications of the Health Code are discussed for contact tracing app design and utility in general.



2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Lucy Moss-Mason

<p>This thesis explores the experiences of New Zealanders who order illicit drugs from cryptomarkets, with particular attention to their perspectives on New Zealand’s conventional illicit drug market, the negatives and positives of drug cryptomarkets, and their notable insights and features. Internationally, research on engagement with drug cryptomarkets is emergent. However, peer-reviewed research on New Zealand drug cryptomarket users remains absent. This thesis attempts to begin to fill this gap, exploring the experiences and viewpoints of New Zealand drug cryptomarket users within the context of existing international literature. The study utilised qualitative, semi-structured interviews with 12 New Zealanders who have accessed drug cryptomarkets. The data from the interviews were interpreted through thematic analysis using constructivist grounded theory.  The research found that the constraints of New Zealand’s conventional drug market push some drug consumers to use cryptomarkets to access illicit drugs. Although drug cryptomarkets have various pull factors that attract participants to them, they also have negative aspects which influence participants’ choices and behaviours when accessing cryptomarkets. The findings that are presented give voice to the lived experiences of New Zealanders who access drug cryptomarkets, extend scholarly knowledge of cryptomarket users, and highlight further avenues for research.</p>



2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Lucy Moss-Mason

<p>This thesis explores the experiences of New Zealanders who order illicit drugs from cryptomarkets, with particular attention to their perspectives on New Zealand’s conventional illicit drug market, the negatives and positives of drug cryptomarkets, and their notable insights and features. Internationally, research on engagement with drug cryptomarkets is emergent. However, peer-reviewed research on New Zealand drug cryptomarket users remains absent. This thesis attempts to begin to fill this gap, exploring the experiences and viewpoints of New Zealand drug cryptomarket users within the context of existing international literature. The study utilised qualitative, semi-structured interviews with 12 New Zealanders who have accessed drug cryptomarkets. The data from the interviews were interpreted through thematic analysis using constructivist grounded theory.  The research found that the constraints of New Zealand’s conventional drug market push some drug consumers to use cryptomarkets to access illicit drugs. Although drug cryptomarkets have various pull factors that attract participants to them, they also have negative aspects which influence participants’ choices and behaviours when accessing cryptomarkets. The findings that are presented give voice to the lived experiences of New Zealanders who access drug cryptomarkets, extend scholarly knowledge of cryptomarket users, and highlight further avenues for research.</p>



Author(s):  
Peter Hoar

Kia ora and welcome to the second issue of BackStory. The members of the Backstory Editorial Team were gratified by the encouraging response to the first issue of the journal. We hope that our currentreaders enjoy our new issue and that it will bring others to share our interest in and enjoyment of the surprisingly varied backstories of New Zealand’s art, media, and design history. This issue takes in a wide variety of topics. Imogen Van Pierce explores the controversy around the Hundertwasser Art Centre and Wairau Māori Art Gallery to be developed in Whangarei. This project has generated debate about the role of the arts and civic architecture at both the local and national levels. This is about how much New Zealanders are prepared to invest in the arts. The value of the artist in New Zealand is also examined by Mark Stocker in his article about the sculptor Margaret Butler and the local reception of her work during the late 1930s. The cultural cringe has a long genealogy. New Zealand has been photographed since the 1840s. Alan Cocker analyses the many roles that photography played in the development of local tourism during the nineteenth century. These images challenged notions of the ‘real’ and the ‘artificial’ and how new technologies mediated the world of lived experience. Recorded sound was another such technology that changed how humans experienced the world. The rise of recorded sound from the 1890s affected lives in many ways and Lewis Tennant’s contribution captures a significant tipping point in this medium’s history in New Zealand as the transition from analogue to digital sound transformed social, commercial and acoustic worlds. The New Zealand Woman’s Weekly celebrates its 85th anniversary this year but when it was launched in 1932 it seemed tohave very little chance of success. Its rival, the Mirror, had dominated the local market since its launch in 1922. Gavin Ellis investigates the Depression-era context of the Woman’s Weekly and how its founders identified a gap in the market that the Mirror was failing to fill. The work of the photographer Marti Friedlander (1908-2016) is familiar to most New Zealanders. Friedlander’s 50 year career and huge range of subjects defy easy summary. She captured New Zealanders, their lives, and their surroundings across all social and cultural borders. In the journal’s profile commentary Linda Yang celebrates Freidlander’s remarkable life and work. Linda also discusses some recent images by Friedlander and connects these with themes present in the photographer’s work from the 1960s and 1970s. The Backstory editors hope that our readers enjoy this stimulating and varied collection of work that illuminate some not so well known aspects of New Zealand’s art, media, and design history. There are many such stories yet to be told and we look forward to bringing them to you.



Author(s):  
Liana MacDonald ◽  
Adreanne Ormond

Racism in the Aotearoa New Zealand media is the subject of scholarly debate that examines how Māori (Indigenous Peoples of New Zealand) are broadcast in a negative and demeaning light. Literature demonstrates evolving understandings of how the industry places Pākehā (New Zealanders primarily of European descent) interests at the heart of broadcasting. We offer new insights by arguing that the media industry propagates a racial discourse of silencing that sustains widespread ignorance of the ways that Pākehā sensibilities mediate society. We draw attention to a silencing discourse through one televised story in 2018. On-screen interactions reproduce and safeguard a harmonious narrative of settler–Indigenous relations that support ignorance and denial of the structuring force of colonisation, and the Television Code of Broadcasting Practice upholds colour-blind perceptions of discrimination and injustice through liberal rhetoric. These processes ensure that the media industry is complicit in racism and the ongoing oppression of Indigenous peoples.



Nutrients ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 2299
Author(s):  
Rachael M. McLean ◽  
Zhengxiu Xie ◽  
Vicky Nelson ◽  
Vili Nosa ◽  
Hla Thein ◽  
...  

People receiving haemodialysis have considerable and complex dietary and healthcare needs, including co-morbidities. A recent New Zealand study has shown that few patients on haemodialysis are able to meet nutritional requirements for haemodialysis. This study aims to describe the perspectives and experiences of dietary management among patients on haemodialysis in New Zealand. This exploratory qualitative study used in-depth semi-structured interviews. Purposive sampling was used to recruit participants from different ethnic groups. Forty interviews were conducted, audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. An inductive approach was taken using thematic analysis. Forty participants were interviewed. Participants spoke of major disruption to their lives as a result of their chronic kidney disease and being on haemodialysis, including loss of employment, financial challenges, loss of independence, social isolation and increased reliance on extended family. Most had received adequate dietary information, although some felt that more culturally appropriate support would have enabled a healthier diet. These findings show that further support to make the recommended dietary changes while on haemodialysis should focus on socio-cultural factors, in addition to the information already provided.



Author(s):  
Shivangi Saha ◽  
Praveen Prakash ◽  
Seema Singhal ◽  
Shashank Chauhan ◽  
Maneesh Singhal ◽  
...  


1998 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Gordon

New Zealand English has evolved in the past 150 years, at a time when it is possible to find both written and spoken evidence of its development. This paper takes evidence gained from an analysis of written comments on early New Zealand English and compares this with data taken from an analysis of spoken New Zealand English obtained from recordings collected in the 1940s of old New Zealanders born in the 1850s-1890s — the period when the New Zealand accent was developing. By putting the written data beside the spoken data it is now possible to assess the accuracy of written records as a basis for the reconstruction of the earliest form of New Zealand English.



Author(s):  
Patricia McCormick ◽  
Bridget Coleman ◽  
Ian Bates

AbstractBackground Medication reviews are recognised as essential to tackling problematic polypharmacy. Domiciliary medication reviews (DMRs) have become more prevalent in recent years. They are proclaimed as being patient-centric but published literature mainly focuses on clinical outcomes. However, it is not known where the value of DMRs lies for patients who participate in them. Objective To determine the value of domiciliary medication reviews to service users. Setting Interviews took place with recipients of domiciliary medication reviews residing in the London boroughs of Islington and Haringey. Method Semi-structured interviews analysed using thematic analysis. Main outcome measure Themes and sub-themes identified from interview transcripts. Results Five themes were identified: advantages over traditional settings, attributes of the professional, adherence, levels of engagement and knowledge. Conclusion For many patients, the domiciliary setting is preferred to traditional healthcare settings. Patients appreciated the time spent with them during a DMR and felt listened to. Informal carers felt reassured that the individual medication needs of their relative had been reviewed by an expert.



During the latter part of 1902 and the early months of 1903 I resolved to take as many observations of the rates of dissipation of positive and negative electric charges as possible, and to continue them over the whole 24 hours of the day, and, when opportunity offered, over longer periods. There appeared to be little information regarding the rate of dispersion during the night hours. At about the same time that these observations were being made, Nilsson was doing similar work at Upsala, and found a noticeable maximum value for atmospheric conductivity at about midnight. The observations were made on the Canterbury Plains of New Zealand, at a station about 20 feet above sea-level and about five miles due west from the sea coast. The apparatus used was Elster and Geitel’s Zerstreuungs- apparat , and the formula of reduction used was that given by them, viz:- E = 1/ t log V 0 /V- n / t ' log V' 0 /V' . In this formula E is proportional to the conductivity of the gas surrounding the instrument—for positive or negative charges, as the case may be. The constant “ n ” = ratio of capacity without cylinder ____________________________________ capacity with cylinder was determined by me to be 0·47, as the instrument was always used, with the protecting cover. The cover was always at one height above the base of the instrument, and was set so as to be as nearly co-axial with the discharging cylinder as could be judged by eye. No attempt was made to determine the actual capacity of the condenser cylinder and protecting cover, which would be a somewhat variable quantity owing- (1) to the differences on different days in attempting to cause the two to be co-axial; (2) to a certain amount of looseness in the fit of the shank of the cylinder on to its hole. The value above given for “ n "is the mean of several deter­minations made with different settings of the cover and cylinder. The individual values of “ n ” varied over about 0.03.



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