Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Negotiating research participation in community-based studies on the Kenyan coast : fieldworkers' roles, and implications for ethical practice

In this thesis, I explore the nature of research interactions between fieldworkers (FWs) and research participants in a large, long-term international collaborative centre on the Kenyan Coast. Fieldworkers are members of local communities employed in research with the main responsibilities of communicating about studies, and carrying out biomedically simple, non-invasive procedures. Being socially embedded in the communities in which research is conducted, fieldworkers can potentially strengthen studies and research ethics through their insider knowledge of local norms, and of hard-to-reach populations. Being socially embedded can also present problems on how to respond to questions and demands in a context of wealth and health inequalities. I designed a mixed methodology study, primarily qualitative, to unpack the issues that fieldworkers at the frontline of research implementation face, how they resolve these, and the implications for policy and practice. I found that fieldworkers and other research staff working in communities face considerable dilemmas including those related to household decision-making dynamics for research; and those related to types, levels and scope of research benefits given to participants and communities. The nature of pre-existing relationships within households, and of relationships developed between FWs and household members, apparently strongly influenced discussions and research participation choices. Relationships were often built and nurtured by both fieldworkers and participants. ‘Silent refusals’- a situation of inconsistent participation and reluctance to openly refuse or withdraw from research - emerged as a key challenge for fieldworkers. Negotiations were often imbued with subtle power relations across different sets of interactions; within households, between FWs and participants, and between FWs and supervisors, with potential to shift and shape the research implementation processes. There were often no easy answers to these and other issues fieldworkers faced; they appeared to draw on study guidelines, formal and informal supervision, peers and their own judgements in making choices. Drawing on these findings, I suggest that understanding and responding to the issues that fieldworkers face throughout their fieldwork is important in supporting the practical application of ethics guidelines including those related to community engagement and consent; and in contributing to normative debates.
Understanding the Decline in the Price of Oil since June 2014

There has been much interest in the causes of the steep decline in the Brent price of oil between June and December 2014. Our analysis shows that more than half of this decline was predictable in real time as of June 2014. We attribute $11 of this predictable decline to the cumulative effects of negative demand shocks prior to July 2014 which can be traced to a slowing global economy. The remaining $16 of the predictable decline is due to positive shocks to current and expected oil production prior to July 2014. The rest of the $49 cumulative decline was unpredictable and reflected a shock to oil price expectations in July 2014 which lowered the demand for oil inventories and a negative demand shock caused by an unexpected weakening of the global economy in December 2014. These two shocks lowered the price by an additional $9 and $13, respectively.
THE POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES ON STUDENTS’ LEARNING

The technology providing quick and easy online access to information and social activities has undeniable effects on academic lives and study hours of students. It was therefore important to investigate what we know about the impact of digital technologies and social networking sites (SNS) on education. This study investigates the effects of developing technologies and social media on the students’ daily life. The research was conducted with 220 university students. Data were collected using a survey designed for gathering the students’ opinions about the digital devices and social media. The students were asked some questions such as why/how long/when do they use the digital devices and social media. The results of the research indicated that the digital devices and SNS had negative impact on students’ knowledge and learning due to distraction from academic tasks. The study reveals that most of the students spent more time on social media (facebook, twitter, youtube etc.) than academic courses. Detailed results and recommendations based on the academic success are presented in the study.
Practices of community representatives in exploiting information channels for citizen democratic engagement

The purpose of the research was to investigate the practices of elected, yet unpaid, community councillors in Scotland as they exploit information channels for democratic engagement with citizens. Its focus is both novel and significant in that it considers the information literacy of a group that has not been studied before: volunteer representatives active in hyperlocal government. The primary means of data collection was semi-structured interviews of one hour in length with 19 community councillors. Research design and data analysis were informed by the SCONUL 7-Pillar Model of Information Literacy, and by Activity Theory. The main finding of the analysis is that community councillors engage with a range of information sources and tools in their work, the most important of which derives from local authorities. Three recommendations emerge from the analysis. These relate to: (1) information literacy training; (2) valuing information skills; and (3) the role of the public library service in supporting community council work.
The Factors Influencing Perceived Ease of Use of E-Learning by Accounting Lecturer

This research aims at analyzing the influence of one’s anxiety in using computer (computer anxiety), age and gender on perceived ease of use of e-learning by accounting lecturers through their self-efficacy in using computer (computer self-efficacy). The population used in this research is all 34 lecturers at accounting department in X University and the sample is taken using saturated sampling technique since the number of respondents is limited. The data are collected by distributing questionnaire to lecturers. The hypotheses are tested using path analysis test. The research results indicate that: (1) Computer anxiety has insignificant influence on perceived ease of use through computer self-efficacy. (2) Respondent’s age has insignificant influence on perceived ease of use through computer self-efficacy. (3) Respondent’s gender has insignificant influence on perceived ease of use through computer self-efficacy.
Robust data representations for visual learning

of the Dissertation ROBUST DATA REPRESENTATIONS FOR VISUAL LEARNING by SHENG LI Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Engineering Northeastern University, April 2017 Dr. Yun Fu, Advisor Extracting informative representations from data is a critical task in visual learning applications, which mitigates the gap between low-level observed data and high-level semantic knowledge. Many traditional visual learning algorithms pose strong assumptions on the underlying distribution of data. In practice, however, the data might be corrupted, contaminated with severe noise, or captured by different types of sensors, which violates these assumptions. As a result, it is of great importance to learn robust data representations that could effectively and efficiently handle the noisy visual data. Recent advances on low-rank and sparse modeling have shown promising performance on recovering clean data from noisy observations, which motivate us to develop new models for robust visual learning. This dissertation focuses on extracting mid-level feature representations from visual data such as images and videos. The research goals of this dissertation are twofold: (1) learning robust data representations from visual data, by exploiting the low-dimensional subspace structures; (2) evaluating the performance of the learned data representations on various analytics tasks of images and videos. Three types of data representations are studied in this dissertation, including graph, subspace, and dictionary. First, two novel graph construction schemes are proposed, by integrating the low-rank modeling with graph sparsification strategies. Each sample is represented in the low-rank coding space. And it is revealed that the similarity measurement in the low-rank coding space is more robust than that in the original sample space. The proposed graphs could greatly enhance the performance of graph based clustering and semi-supervised classification. Second, low-dimensional discriminative subspaces are learned in single-view and multi-view scenarios, respectively. The single-view robust subspace discovery model is motivated from low-rank modeling and Fisher criterion, and it is able to accurately classify the noisy images. The multi-view subspace learning model is designed for extracting compact features from multimodal time series data, which leverages
Influence of Need for Cognition and Need for Cognitive Closure on Information Behaviour: Qualitative Results

This project studies the influence of two traits, Need for Cognition and Need for Cognitive Closure, on information behaviour. Qualitative analysis of 40 critical incidents collected through semi-structured interviews with undergraduate students demonstrates four distinct profiles: inquisitive enthusiasts, pragmatic enthusiasts, indifferent minimalists and concerned minimalists.Ce projet etudie l'influence de deux traits, le besoin de cognition et le besoin de cloture cognitive, sur le comportement informationnel. L'analyse qualitative de 40 incidents critiques recueillis au moyen d'entrevues semi-structurees avec des etudiants de premier cycle met en evidence quatre profils distincts : l’enthousiaste curieux, l’enthousiaste pragmatique, le minimaliste indifferent et le minimaliste preoccupe.
CLASSROOM LEARNERS’ ACQUISITION OF THE SPANISH COPULA WITH ADJECTIVES

Abstract Research on the second language (L2) acquisition of the Spanish copulas has been central to our understanding of key concepts and issues in the field of SLA such as stages of development and variability in L2s. However, this research has focused nearly exclusively on native English-speaking learners. The present study examined native Korean-speaking learners’ acquisition and use of the Spanish copulas with adjectives in oral production. Analyses of the range and frequency of copula forms produced across four levels of Spanish language study revealed an increase in ser and estar use and a decrease in developmental omission as learner level increased. Predicate type, resultant state, and Spanish grammar score significantly influenced use of estar over ser. Comparison with native English-speaking learners revealed differences between first language groups in terms of rates of form use, but similar developmental trends and predictors of estar use overall.
A Document Recommender Based on Word Embedding

With the booming development of information technology, text information is not only remained in paper-based forms, but also in digital forms which have been distributed all over internet. Massive information on the internet provides us so many options while at the same time makes it hard for us to choose which detail information we exactly need. The appearance of media monitoring is going to change the situation and help solve the problem. Meltwater group as a media monitoring company provides a service of tracking and sorting information to enterprises and help them to achieve business goals. These goals may include finding the best time or place to do business campaign and knowing the dynamic information about the competitors.There is a recommender system in Meltwater. When a query has been searched, the corresponding documents which are searched from the database will be presented. The problem for the system is that some of the documents have beenturned out to be misclassified and the correctness rate for the recommendation isnot that high. To help solve this problem and make the search better, this paper will introduce a new algorithm which is based on word embedding approach and users’ supervision. The background information of Meltwater group and its existing frame of recommender system will be specifically illustrated at the beginning of the paper. Followed by it will be the exploration of background methods which include LSA (Latent Semantic Analysis), Random Indexing and Word2vec. Besides, the necessary tools such as T-SNE, K-means clustering and hierarchy clustering will also be mentioned in this part.The data sets that are going to be used in this paper will be described after thepart of background methods. Information such as the introduction of the data and the dealing of it will be mentioned in a detail way. The description of the algorithm will appear in the middle of the paper with detail steps. Followed by it is the evaluation. The algorithm will be evaluated by using several different data sets and the confusion matrix will be used as a means of measurement. Finally, a summary of the method as well as future suggestions will be made at the end of the paper.
The evolution of LGBT labelling words

Semantic shifts have been explored via a range of methods (Allan & Robinson 2012). Typically, semantic shifts were usually noted or described with methods such as a literature review or dictionary checking (e.g. Blank & Koch, 1999; Stockwell & Minkova, 2001; Williams, 1976), which are very labour-intensive and time-consuming methods. Other more recently developed methods involve sociolinguistic interviews (Robinson, 2012; Sandow & Robinson, 2018). However, with the development of large-sized corpora and computational semantics, diachronic semantic shifts have started to be captured in a data-driven way (Kutuzov et al., 2018). Recently, the word embeddings technique (Mikolov et al., 2013) has been proven to be a promising tool for the tracking of semantic shifts (e.g. Hamilton, Leskovec & Jurafsky, 2016a, 2016b; Kulkarni et al., 2015; Kutuzov et al., 2017). For example, Hamilton et al. (2016b) exemplified how to use the technique to capture the subjectification process of the word ‘actually’ during the 20th century.
Prediksi Volatilitas Saham Perusahaan Pertambangan Batu Bara Dengan Metode Artificial Neural Network - Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity

Saham adalah salah satu jenis surat berharga yang digunakan sebagai tanda penyerta modal seseorang atau badan usaha dalam suatu perusahaan. Sebelum berinvestasi, penting bagi investor untuk mengetahui seberapa besar risiko dan return dari saham tersebut. Volatilitas adalah sebuah metode statistik untuk mengukur fluktuasi harga saham dalam periode tertentu. Salah satu model time-series terbaik dalam memprediksi volatilitas harga saham adalah Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity (GARCH). Pengoptimasian metode dilakukan untuk meningkatkan prediksi volatilitas. Metode yang digunakan untuk mengoptimasi model GARCH adalah model Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). Pada Tugas Akhir ini menentukan akurasi model digunakan metode RMSE dan MAE. Berdasarkan hasil analisis model ANN-GARCH lebih baik dibandingkan model GARCH(1,1) dalam akurasi model. Hasil RMSE dan MSE dengan model GARCH adalah RMSE = 2.4867e-06 dan MAE = 7.9885e-08, sedangkan dengan model ANN-GARCH mendapatkan hasil terbaik RMSE = 3.5016e-07 dan MAE = 1.1249e-08. Kata kunci : Saham, Volatilitas, Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity, Artificial Neural Networks, ANN-GARCH
Effect of abusive supervision on subordinates’ discretionary behaviors

Abstract Although previous studies provide diverse perspectives on subordinate's deviant behavior as a reaction to abusive supervision (ABS), the influence of ABS on subordinates’ inter-personal relations received little attention. Grounded on social exchange theory, this study proposes that subordinates who are being abused by the same supervisor develop a bond among each other. That further provides strength to each of the abused group member to exhibit deviant behaviors against supervisor and non-abused peer group. Data were collected and analyzed through mediation analysis using AMOS. Using a sample of 920 employees from multi-sector organizations it was found that abused employees show citizenship behavior toward other abused peer-group members and counter-productive behavior toward supervisor and non-abused peer-group members. Moreover, citizenship behaviors created among the abused peer-group members partially mediate the relationship of ABS and counter-productive work behavior.
MEANINGFULNESS OF WORK AND PERCEIVED ORGANIZATIONAL PRESTIGE AS PRECURSORS OF ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIOR

Purpose of the study: The present study explores the impact of meaningfulness of work and perceived organizational prestige on organizational citizenship behavior of managerial employees. Methodology: The study was conducted on 75 mid-level managerial employees working in various organizations in India with the help of convenient sampling method. Standardized questionnaires were used to complete this research. Bivariate Correlation analysis was performed to assess the relationship between meaningfulness of work, perceived organizational prestige, and organizational citizenship behavior. Linear Regression analysis was used to determine the direct contribution of meaningfulness of work and perceived organizational prestige in organizational citizenship behavior of managerial employees. Main findings: The results showed that the meaningfulness of work and perceived organizational prestige were positively correlated. The outcomes explained the significant positive variance in organizational citizenship behavior and described how important it is to focus on these two constructs. The originality of the study: The results contribute to the concerned literature by explaining and emphasizing the importance of meaningfulness of work and perceived organizational prestige and facilitate a reflection on the links that motivate employees to work beyond their prescribed duties. Organizations and management should focus on and align their policies to create and maintain conditions responsible for nurturing the habit of organizational citizenship behavior among their employees.
Exploring The Presence of N2pc and CDA in Attribute Amnesia

L'amnesie de l'attribut a lieu quand on rapporte plusieurs fois un attribut d'une cible et on ne se rappelle pas d'un autre de ses attributs quand on nous le demande dans un essai surprise. Nous avons conduit cette etude EEG sur un groupe experimental et un groupe controle d'etudiants pour savoir si l'amnesie de l'attribut est due a un manque de consolidation en memoire de travail. Ainsi, nous nous attendions a voir une difference d'amplitude au niveau de la CDA entre les essais pre-surprise et les essais post-surprise, mais pas au niveau de la N2pc. Les resultats ont montre que l'amnesie de l'attribut n'a pas eu lieu et ont montre une N2pc et une CDA de meme amplitude entre la phase pre-surprise et post-surprise.
Gender stereotypes in original digital video advertising

ABSTRACT This exploratory study looks into gender stereotypes in original digital video advertising as an independent trend in the advertising industry worthy of a new avenue of research. Content analysis is performed on a judgemental sample of 324 original digital videos that have won awards from professional marketers. The results show that there is no statistically significant association between gender and any of the ten studied attributes (mode of presentation, credibility, role, age, argument type, reward type, product type, background, setting, and end comment). Although previous studies depicted men in male-authored science roles and with muscular physiques and women as objectified and a hypersexualized subordinate to the male, this research shows that women and men are equally portrayed in non-stereotypical activities and roles, However, central figures are more likely to be men than women, indicating a gender difference in terms of the assignment of main roles. This paper highlights the change in women’s roles as well as advertisers’ and marketers’ criteria for the content of original digital videos.
Completing Studies in Alternative Ways in Adult Education. ‘Who has told me that I cannot ...?’

Every fourth young adult in Sweden leaves upper secondary school without complete grades (Statistiska Centralbyran, 2017). These young adults without a diploma are at risk of being marginalized (Hugo, 2007; Lundahl et al. 2015). Therefore, all attempts to support these students’ needs using alternative methods to help them complete their studies are of great importance for both society and the individuals. With this study, we aim to shed light on how participants with different functional variations and overall unfavourable school experiences in a project-based alternative study program in upper secondary education perceive the factors of success. Moreover, we want to understand the project’s outcome based on contextual factors. To do this, we use an abductive content analysis of project documents, field notes, and interviews with five students. Our analysis follows three steps. Firstly, we identify three major themes expressed by the participants as success factors concerning ways to attend and complete their secondary education. Secondly, we identify how contextual factors can explain the project’s outcome. Finally, we draw conclusions on how motivation theory, motivation strategies, and factors in the learning environment can explain the project’s outcome. The overall conclusions are (a) students in this target group need to participate in negotiations concerning their adaptation in their studies, (b) a symmetrical interpersonal relationship between teachers and students is a necessity, and (c) beneficial learning environments are essential for these students’ learning. https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.18. 7. 10
Personality Variables and Marital Satisfaction:A Systematic Review

The aim of the present paper is to examine and explore the research status, trom the relevant research literature, on the relationship between personality variables and marital satisfaction. It further contributes our knowledge of understanding by reviewing scientific research literature published over the last thirteen years. Review papers, articles and empirical studies were searched trom eleven scientific database. The methodological assessments of each paper were examined using six parameters viz., research design, validity coetficient of criterion measure on own data, reliability coefficients of criterion measure on own data, validity or reliability coefficients of different predictor measure, statistical analyses and reported etfect size. The most trequently predictors included neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientious, extraversion, openness to experience, impulsivity, immature defense mechanism, communication, attachment, emotional stability and spousal support. There have been many problems with the theory and empirical work in this area. The critical review includes both theoretical and empirical implication.