Doing Business in the ‘New Normal’: COVID-19 School Leaders’ Language Manners

As the not-so-new-now coronavirus pandemic has affected all walks of life, education has not been an exemption; what is more, it is one of the most severely hit sectors. The unknown crisis created unprecedented circumstances for all participants in the education process, and school leaders have had a double job: to navigate their institutions and to look after their employees. The latter is a pretty delicate task - they have had to keep doing business and running their companies while minding the language since physical distancing necessitated the use of electronic communication, thus making room for vagueness and even misinterpretations. Ten education leaders of primary and secondary schools in North Macedonia have been video-interviewed on everyday COVID-19-related situations from their workplace context. Discourse completion tasks (DCTs) have been employed as a data elicitation method. Being given the open-ended, only topically specified scenarios, the respondents are asked to recreate their language reaction to situations that have happened in their newest pandemic work life. The interviews have been transcribed, and the leaders’ language choices have been analyzed. The findings show that, luckily, the leaders have been mindful about their words and have mostly chosen to use positive, calm, and encouraging language. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

A Spatial Informance Design Method to Elicit Early Interface Prototypes for Augmented Reality

Designing for augmented reality (AR) applications is difficult and expensive. A rapid system for the early design process of spatial interfaces is required. Previous research has used video for mobile AR design, but this is not extensible to head-mounted AR. AR is an emergent technology with no prior design precedent, requiring designers to allow free speculation or risk the pitfalls of ‘path dependence’. In this paper, a participatory elicitation method we call ‘spatial informance design’ is presented. We found combining ‘informance design’, ‘Wizard of Oz’, improvisation, and ‘paper prototyping’, to be a fast and lightweight solution for ideation of rich designs for spatial interfaces. A study using our method with 11 participants, produced similar and wildly different interface configurations and interactions for an augmented reality email application. Based on our findings we propose design implications and an evaluation of our method using spatial informance for the design of head-mounted AR applications.

Evaluating Self-Presentation: Gatekeeping Recognition Work in Hiring

This study investigates how employee gatekeepers decode cultural signals applicants send out during job selection procedures. By focusing on declarative and non-declarative cultural signals such as leisure activities and presentation style, this article examines how recruiters and hiring managers do their gatekeeping recognition work. This is done by in-depth interviewing of 40 HR managers and recruiters, from the cultural and corporate sector in the Netherlands, using a video-elicitation method. The interviews revealed (1) the importance of a fun-factor, (2) that leisure activities not only serve as status markers or indicators for competence but enter as important interactional tools, (3) that gatekeepers look for authentic self-presentation but that this varies between fields and the perceived gender of the candidate. In addition, the comparative design uncovered significant sector variations. Corporate gatekeepers are characterized by the way they decoded sport activities as a signal for a work mentality, valued self-presentation in terms of representativeness and repeatedly relied on competence as an evaluative principle. Cultural gatekeepers, on the other hand, used leisure activities more often as way of cultural matching and were more drawn to a fun-factor while displaying a clear disdain for formal presentation styles.

On the value(s) of time: Workers’ value of their time depends on mode of valuation

In this paper, we investigate how individuals make time–money tradeoffs in labor contexts in which they are either asked to work to earn money or to pay money to avoid work. Theory predicts that exchange rates between time and money are invariant to the elicitation method. Results from our experiments, however, show otherwise, highlighting inconsistencies in how individuals consider their time. In the first two experiments, participants work to earn money, and we compare two incentivized elicitation methods. In the first, “Fixed-Time mode,” we fix the amount of time participants need to work and elicit the minimum dollar amount they require to do the job. In the second, “Fixed-Money mode,” we fix the amount of money we pay participants and ask for the maximum amount of time they are willing to work for that pay. We similarly vary elicitation procedures in Experiment 3 for paying money to avoid work. Translating the results into pay per hour, we find that in Fixed-Time mode, valuation of time is stable across durations, based on an analytical approach. By contrast, in Fixed-Money mode, participants increase their pay-per-hour demand when the amount of money increases, indicating a less calculated and more emotional view of time. Our results demonstrate that individuals’ value of their time of labor can be fluid and dependent on the compensation structure. Our findings have implications for theories of time valuation in the labor market.

Deterrence Effects of Enforcement Schemes: An Experimental Study

Private and public organizations are interested in finding effective ways to reduce crime and promote ethical behavior without investing heavy resources into monitoring and compliance. In this paper, we experimentally study how revealing different information about a fine distribution affects deterrence of an undesirable behavior. We use a novel incentive-compatible elicitation method to observe subjects lying (the undesirable behavior) and quantify the extent to which this behavior responds to information structures. We find that punishment schemes that communicate only partial information (the minimum fine in particular) are more effective than full information schemes at deterring lying. We explore the mechanism driving this result and link it to subjects’ beliefs about their own versus the average expected fine in treatments with partial information. This paper was accepted by Yan Chen, behavioral economics and decision analysis.

A genetic-based pairwise trip planner recommender system

The massive growth of internet users nowadays can be a big opportunity for the businesses to promote their services. This opportunity is not only for e-commerce, but also for other e-services, such as e-tourism. In this paper, we propose an approach of personalized recommender system with pairwise preference elicitation for the e-tourism domain area. We used a combination of Genetic Agorithm with pairwise user preference elicitation approach. The advantages of pairwise preference elicitation method, as opposed to the pointwise method, have been shown in many studies, including to reduce incosistency and confusion of a rating number. We also performed a user evaluation study by inviting 24 participants to examine the proposed system and publish the POIs dataset which contains 201 attractions used in this study.

Dimensions Used in Instruments for QALY Calculation: A Systematic Review

Economic assessment is of utmost importance in the healthcare decision-making process. The quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) concept provides a rare opportunity to combine two crucial aspects of health, i.e., mortality and morbidity, into a single index to perform cost-utility comparison. Today, many tools are available to measure morbidity in terms of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and a large literature describes how to use them. Knowing their characteristics and development process is a key point for elaborating, adapting, or selecting the most well-suited instrument for further needs. In this aim, we conducted a systematic review on instruments used for QALY calculation, and 46 studies were selected after searches in four databases: Medline EBSCO, Scopus, ScienceDirect, and PubMed. The search procedure was done to identify all relevant publications up to June 18, 2020. We mainly focused on the type of instrument developed (i.e., generic or specific), the number and the nature of dimensions and levels used, the elicitation method and the model selected to determine utility scores, and the instrument and algorithm validation methods. Results show that studies dealing with the development of specific instruments were mostly motivated by the inappropriateness of generic instruments in their field. For the dimensions’ and levels’ selection, item response theory, Rasch analysis, and literature review were mostly used. Dimensions and levels were validated by methods like the Loevinger H, the standardised response mean, or discussions with experts in the field. The time trade-off method was the most widely used elicitation method, followed by the visual analogue scale. Random effects regression models were frequently used in determining utility scores.

A Genetic-Based Pairwise trip Planner Recommender System

The massive growth of internet users nowadays can be a big opportunity for the businesses to promote their services. This opportunity is not only for e-commerce, but also for other e-services, such as e-tourism. In this paper, we propose an approach of personalized recommender system with pairwise preference elicitation for the e-tourism domain area. We used a combination of Genetic Agorithm with pairwise user preference elicitation approach. The advantages of pairwise preference elicitation method, as opposed to the pointwise method, have been shown in many studies, including to reduce incosistency and confusion of a rating number. We also performed a user evaluation study by inviting 24 participants to examine the proposed system and publish the POIs dataset which contains 201 attractions used in this study.