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Atkins, Richard N. "Assessing environmental, social and financial sustainability in the existing built environment." Thesis, Glasgow Caledonian University, 2017. https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.743896.
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Dimitriadou, Sylvia. "Cooperation in a dynamic social environment." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/10871/33704.
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Cooperative behaviour among unrelated individuals is an evolutionary paradox. Research suggests that an individual’s propensity to cooperate and its response to experiencing cooperation or defection from its social environment consistently varies among individuals and as a function of external factors. The biological and psychological underpinnings of such behavioural variation remain unknown; they can, however, provide more insight into the evolution and maintenance of cooperation among non-kin. This thesis explores the proximate effects of experiences of cooperation or defection from the social environment, as well as possible proximate drivers of cooperative behaviour, using the Trinidadian guppy (Poecilia reticulata) as a study system. Firstly, the behavioural rules underpinning an individual’s decision to cooperate or not with unfamiliar individuals in the presence of specific or non-specific information were explored. When fish had information about their social partner’s cooperativeness, they behaved in a manner consistent with direct reciprocity, copying their partner’s last move. When paired with an ostensibly novel partner, a different, or at least additional, behavioural rule seemed to be employed. In order to help understand the drivers of individual variation in cooperative behaviour, phenotypic selection on cooperativeness was carried out over three filial generations, resulting in fish of high cooperativeness (HC) and low cooperativeness (LC). The divergence of individual cooperativeness observed between the two phenotypic selection lines suggests that cooperative behaviour in the context of predator inspection is at least in part heritable. Cooperative behaviour of F3 fish was found not to correlate with boldness or exploratory behaviour; HC and LC fish did, however, differ in some aspects of sociability and agonistic behaviour. Possible proximate neuromodulatory mechanisms underlying these differences in cooperativeness were also explored, focusing on brain expression patterns for the isotocin receptor (itr) gene in F3 females. HC females were found to have higher mid-section itr expression levels than LC females. Finally, I explored the effects of experiencing cooperation or defection on monoaminergic neurotransmission, which is thought to instantiate the effects of such experiences on the individual’s internal state. My findings suggest that experiencing cooperation or defection from the social environment affects internal state; this phenomenon may be crucial for the appropriate adjustment of the behavioural response to such experiences, and for the emergence of behavioural rules such as generalised reciprocity. Taken together these results suggest that neuromodulatory mechanisms are pivotal for the perception of stimuli from the social environment in the tested cooperative context and that variation in cooperative behaviour may be underpinned by individual differences in the structural properties of such systems. They also provide insight into how behavioural input may affect the behavioural response to such experiences, and ultimately how such mechanisms may lead to the evolution and maintenance of cooperation.
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Dennis, Nicola Louise. "Health, pain and the social environment." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2011. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/3025/.
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Since the 1970s the number of people suffering from functional somatic syndromes such as fibromyalgia has increased dramatically. These syndromes are characterised by higher levels of incapacity and disability than can be accounted for by objective medical testing. Here the possibility that socially derived labels and health information are contributing to the incapacity experienced by these patients was investigated. Investigations conducted with healthy people found that the way people perceive themselves as behaving, and whether that behaviour is labelled as healthy, influences how satisfied people are with their own health, and their health in comparison to others. It was also found that people who are labelled as unhealthy are evaluated as having less moral worth than those who are not. Further investigations found that the labels used to understand a painful sensation alter the way people respond to that sensation. Investigations with fibromyalgia patients found that the diagnostic label of fibromyalgia changes the information patients have access to, and therefore the information available to interpret their experiences. It was concluded that incapacity in functional syndromes may be partly driven by people being encouraged by to interpret their experiences in a particularly anxiety-provoking way through information in the environment.
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Netrebo, Tamara. "DRAWING THE ENVIRONMENT : Construction of Environmental Challenges by Greenpeace and WWF via Facebook." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Medier och kommunikation, 2012. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-185592.
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Environmental challenges do not exist around by themselves. They are constructed andput in our mind by the key stakeholders, who draw public attention to certain issues. People experience the world through the words of others. Construction of environmental concerns is an ever ongoing process, and we need to be aware about things that can change. In the 60s the world was concerned about limited number of issues, whilst today the planet seems to shout from pain, though in fact amount of problems have hardly raised. It is environmental organizations’ desert that people managed to raise their awareness about the world. This study exposes social constructs of environmental challenges created and narrated through social media by two leading environmental organizations, Greenpeace and the World Wide Fund for Nature. For this purpose, theories of social constructionism and agenda setting serve as the main theoretical framework. Therefore, most actively social media used by ENGOs was identified to be Facebook. The insight to the topic was provided by the content analysis of status updates from both organizations’ fan pages for the period from September 2009 to May 2012. It showed that social constructs of environmental challenges are not equally distributed in the world and number of concerns is disregarded. ENGOs do hope that regular citizens can contribute to sustainability, by giving real support to the projects which aim to have impact on policy makers. Our awareness let changes on the governmental level happen, as ‘when ENGOs speak, people debate, and policy makershear’. Thereby, through media construction of challenges solutions to them are articulated as well.
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McFarlin, Richard G. "Ministering to the social environment of children." Chicago, Ill : McCormick Theological Seminary, 1997. http://www.tren.com.
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Liu, Yunquan. "Airbnb and social environment in big cities." Thesis, Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för design (DE), 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-76562.
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This thesis aims to increase the sensitivity of foreign tourists who want to rent a flat on Airbnb and let tourists and households take their responsibility of Airbnb through explaining the relationship between Airbnb and social environments. In recent years, Airbnb has been one of the top choices for short-term accommodation renting. However, an issue needing to be cared about is subconsciously affecting the social environment, which is contrary to sustainable development. The text can be divided into two parts. In the first part, the impact of Airbnb on the social environment of big cities will be analyzed from two aspects - sharing economy and gentrification. Social networks and the negative effects are the main content that will be discussed in sharing economy. At the same time, gentrification will respond to it through a typical case study in Barcelona. In the second part, the design project will be analyzed in order to support my theoretical part. Critical design as the core element in my design projects will be analyzed through a communication plan. This plan will become my design proposal to realize the creation of a common network platform in order to attract more attention to this issue.
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Rossman, Edwin J. (Edwin John). "Individual Resources, Social Environment, and Flood Victimization." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1990. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc330855/.
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The study is a contextual analysis of flood victimization. Victimization is defined as the social, psychological, and physiological aftermath experienced by victims of a disaster. Disaster researchers concentrate on the victims' characteristics to explain the varying degrees of their victimization, providing only ambiguous results. Theorists such as Kreps, Wildavsky, and Douglas contend that the outcomes of disasters are contingent upon social structure. This analysis treats victimization as one such outcome. The condition and behavior of individuals can be explained by the presence of disaster and the conditions of social organization. A model explains victimization based on individual's attributes (individual resources), his social environment, and the disaster characteristics. This study uses the 1984 Mingo Creek Flood Victims Survey data to test the model. The data contain information measuring victimization. The survey data are linked with 1980 Census tract data. The tract data provide indicators of the social networks. This tract information, the contextual variables, taps the social conditions, including poverty, unemployment, geographic mobility, and family patterns. This study uses factor analysis to identify the dimensions of victimization. Regression tests the relationship between the contextual variables, the individual resource variables, the disaster characteristic variables, and victimization. The results of the analysis show that victimization is multidimensional with different types of variables being significant predictors for each dimension of victimization, one variable indicating the intensity of the disaster, the dollar value of damage victims experienced, is found to be a significant predictor of the psychological, physiological, and social disruption aspects of victimization. Variables measuring the family and unemployment patterns in the victims' census tract are significant predictors of the psychological and social disruption aspect of victimization. The findings provide general support for the proposed model of victimization. However, victimization is multidimensional with each dimension having a unique set of predictors. Based on the findings, this study suggests that future research focus on measurement and conceptualization of the characteristics of disasters and the victims' social environment.
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Marshall, Harry. "Social foraging behaviour in a varying environment." Thesis, Imperial College London, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/11178.
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Social foraging behaviour has an important influence on individuals’ survival and reproduction through its role in the acquisition of food resources. It also determines the amount of foraging time required in differing environments, and so the amount of time available for other activities, such as socialising and resting, which have been implicated in an individual’s fitness, as well as the stability of the wider social group. In this thesis I explore the links between these two processes by investigating the drivers of social foraging behaviour, and how the foraging time budgets that this behaviour produces vary between environments. I do this using data collected from a wild population of chacma baboons (Papio ursinus) in Namibia, under both natural and field-experimental conditions, and through the development of an individual-based model (IBM). I show that baboon foraging decisions are influenced by social and non-social factors, but that the relative influence of these factors is dependent on the characteristics of the forager and the habitat it is in. These differences in decision-making appear to allow all individuals in a group to experience similar foraging success under natural conditions, but this pattern breaks down in extreme conditions. Using these findings to build an IBM of social foraging, I show that the time individuals need to spend foraging can increase rapidly in a deteriorating environment to the point where they are no longer able to gather enough resources. Overall, the findings of this thesis contribute to the growing appreciation that social foragers can exhibit a high degree of behavioural flexibility. These findings also emphasise the long-standing recognition that individual-level behaviours have an important influence on higher-level ecological patterns and processes and that an appreciation of this is important, not only for our understanding of these patterns and processes, but also for informing conservation and management.
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Ramo, Keetjie Joy. "Person-environment interface as \"image\" : a new environmental-active conceptual framework for social work practice /." The Ohio State University, 1985. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1487262513407472.
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MORAIS, MARCELO ALONSO. "UMBANDA, TERRITORIALITY AND ENVIRONMENT: SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS AND SUSTAINABILITY." PONTIFÍCIA UNIVERSIDADE CATÓLICA DO RIO DE JANEIRO, 2010. http://www.maxwell.vrac.puc-rio.br/Busca_etds.php?strSecao=resultado&nrSeq=16148@1.
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PONTIFÍCIA UNIVERSIDADE CATÓLICA DO RIO DE JANEIROA Umbanda, através de seus ritos e símbolos em reuniões coletivas, promove uma integração, no plano mítico, entre todas as categorias sociais. Ao forjar a identidade umbandista, como prática social e cultural, essa religião sincrética e moderna pode manter viva a esperança de grupos marginalizados em ocupar espaços de prestígio social e criar modelos de convívio que primam pelas sustentabilidades, através da transposição do significado da natureza, de acidente geográfico, como portadora de valores culturais para a criação de um possível espaço social mais solidário. A partir da compreensão de que a RMRJ expressa pluralidade de sentidos, interrelações entre as diversas dimensões das práticas espaciais e sua aproximação com as práticas culturais, demonstra-se como a Umbanda expressa potenciais mecanismos de interpretação das representações socioespaciais de segmentos incluídos precariamente, assim como na transformação das condições socioambientais vigentes que, por sua vez, pode deslanchar um novo paradigma de educação ambiental no âmbito da gestão do território. Trata-se, antes de tudo, de resgatar a solidariedade, o cuidado e a responsabilidade dos homens sobre as coisas da Natureza, que, por sua vez, são destinadas aos mesmos homens territorializados.
The Umbanda, through its rituals and symbols in gatherings, promotes the integration of all social categories in a mythical level. By creating its own identity as a social and cultural practice, this syncretic and modern religion can help to keep alive the hope of segregated groups to occupy spaces of social prestige. Besides, it can create models of coexistence which prioritize sustainability by transposing the meaning of nature from a geographical accident that holds cultural values to the creation of a more sympathetic social space. Based on the understanding that the RMRJ expresses the plurality of meanings, of interrelations among the many dimensions of the spacial practices and their approximation to the cultural practices, it is shown how the Umbanda expresses potent mechanisms of interpreting the socio-spacial representations of segments precariously included, as well as in the transformation of the existing socio-environmental conditions raising a new paradigm of environmental education in terms of territory management. Above all, it is about restoring mankind’s solidarity, care and responsibility for everything related to nature which is designated to these same territorialized human beings.
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da, Rocha Fernandes Joao Diogo. "The Social Environment and the Health Care sector." Master's thesis, Vysoká škola ekonomická v Praze, 2012. http://www.nusl.cz/ntk/nusl-125192.
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The objective of this thesis was to defend an alternative approach by health policy makers for improving health outcomes through investing on social factors of peoples' lives, rather than by increasing health expenditures. In order to defend this theory, this master thesis addresses two research questions: Which are the social determinants of health with largest impact on health status of individuals? And what is the statistical correlation between those social determinants of health and self-reported health status, and psychological health, for Germany, Denmark, Spain and Ireland? The first question was answered by developing a comprehensive research among the mostrelevant literature in the field of social determinants of health and the second through the construction of a statistical multiple regression model. According this study the social determinants with largest impact on the health status of individuals are: physical activity, education level, the welfare state, emotional support, socio-economic status, living conditions, working conditions, and life balance. Regarding the results of multiple regression models all variables followed the expected trend and it was possible to proof significant statistical correlation in 7 of the 8 determinants chosen, especially in the cases of working conditions and life balance, where those having problems managing these aspects of life experienced 50% or in some cases 30% of the health status of individuals with positive experiences in these life dimensions.
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Jamroziak, Emilia Maria. "Rievaulx Abbey and its social environment, 1132-1300." Thesis, University of Leeds, 2001. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/425/.
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This thesis examines Rievaulx abbey's relationship with its social environment from the foundation in 1132 to 1300. In particular it analyses social networks around this institution and the types of relationships with individuals, families and tenurial groups developed over the course of the first two hundred years of Rievaulx abbey's existence. Although the work focus primarily on Rievaulx abbey, comparative material from other Yorkshire houses as well as continental Cistercian houses is discussed. The core source is the cartulary of Rievaulx abbey. By a careful analysis of the distribution of information, its hierarchy according to certain inferable rules, and the relations between individual entries in the cartulary, this thesis shows how Rievaulx abbey understood the social networks of which this monastic house became a part, and how the monastic community saw its own place among the diverse social strata of twelfth-century Yorkshire. In the first chapter, issues of religious foundations, the motivations of patrons and their interpretations currently present in scholarship are discussed before the analysis of the troubled relationship between Rievaulx abbey and its patrons. The second chapter contains an examination of the interaction of the Cistercian monasteries with lay people in the respect of fraternities, burial requests and prayers as well as the implications of the abbey's landholding for its benefactors and their heirs. The central part of the thesis, in the second chapter examines the relationship of Rievaulx abbey with its lay neighbours and benefactors. The closing parts of this chapter are devoted to the complexities of land holding and the abbey's perception of its relationship with benefactors. Chapter three presents issues of monastic co-operation, conflict and the monopolist tendencies of religious houses before examining the place of Rievaulx abbey in relation to other monasteries in Yorkshire. The next chapter discusses Rievaulx abbey's contacts with archbishops, bishops, deans, chapters and canons in the wider context of the internal Church politics. The fifth, final chapter examines Rievaulx abbey's involvement in the wool trade and the consequences of its business with the Italian merchants on the background of historiographical interpretations of Cistercian economy and its involvement in the commercial world.
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Nishizawa, Mariko. "Public participation and the social environment in technological, environmental and health risk conflict in Japan." Thesis, Imperial College London, 2003. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.401680.
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KOCERGINSKIS, TATIANA. "SOCIAL NETWORKS: THE COEXISTENCE OF DIFFERENT SOCIAL CLASSES IN THE SAME DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT." PONTIFÍCIA UNIVERSIDADE CATÓLICA DO RIO DE JANEIRO, 2012. http://www.maxwell.vrac.puc-rio.br/Busca_etds.php?strSecao=resultado&nrSeq=20998@1.
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PONTIFÍCIA UNIVERSIDADE CATÓLICA DO RIO DE JANEIROO trabalho visa levantar hipóteses sobre a convivência de diferentes classes sociais em um mesmo ambiente digital. Para isto o trabalho é divido em duas partes, sendo a primeira o referencial teórico, que busca ilustrar conceitos que serão utilizados no modelo. O estudo se inicia com um detalhamento de redes socias, mostrando sua evolução. Depois são aprofundados os seguintes construtos:a) reatância, que mostra que a perda de uma liberdade tem uma influência negativa para o consumidor; b) de demarketing, conceito que indica que algumas vezes é preciso expulsar o consumidor indesejado, para manter o desejado e por fim c) classes sociais, e a forma como as pessoas se relacionam. Após esta etapa foram realizadas entrevistas em profundidade com pessoas que utilizam redes sociais frequentemente, e que realizaram a migração do Orkut para o Facebook no período em que a baixa renda começou a utilizar a internet e as redes sociais. Ao resumir as idéias principais das entrevistas chegou-se à hipótese de que as pessoas das classes de renda mais altas têm dificuldade em conviver com outras de classes mais baixas, na mesma rede social. O sucesso das redes sociais, em especial o Facebook, estaria condicionado à sua capacidade de aprimorar as ferramentas de privacidade, criando diferentes redes sociais dentro da mesma rede social.
The work aims to raise hypotheses about the coexistence of different social classes in the same digital environment. The work is divided into two parts, the first part is the references, which illustrate concepts that are used in the model. This study begins with the explanation of social network, showing their evolution. Then, constructs are defined. They are: reactance, which shows that the loss of freedom has a negative influence for the consumer, demarketing which indicates that it is sometimes necessary to chose expel the consumer that you do not want, to maintain the desired one, and finally social classes, and how people relate. After this phase in-depth interviews were carried out with people who frequently use social networks, and that migrated from Orkut to Facebook in the period in which the poor began to use the internet and social networks, in special the Orkut. Once summarize the main ideas of the interviews the result was the hypothesis that people of higher classes have difficulty in beeing in the same social network of the one of the lower class. The success of social networks, especially Facebook, would be conditioned on its ability to enhance the privacy tools, creating different social networks in the same social network.
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Kosse, Fabian [Verfasser]. "Individual Heterogeneities, Social Environment and Life Outcomes / Fabian Kosse." Bonn : Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Bonn, 2015. http://d-nb.info/1077266774/34.
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Gallacher, David Scott. "Social learning and multimedia innovation in a corporate environment." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/24600.
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Corporate expectations for information servicing possibilities offered by Multimedia Technologies has been high. Hopes for fast adoption, encouraged by advances in networking technology and hardware processing ability, have met with frustration. Rapid technological progress within multimedia systems development coupled with the absence of established models to guide innovation has created great uncertainty. As a result organisations have made costly mistakes when selecting technological direction and engaging innovative development. This study investigates the innovation process for multimedia within an organisation to gain insight into its operation and factors that impact on its trajectory. The isolated case study method, dominant in this study area, was abandoned. Instead, a participant observer with access to a series of linked projects including the pre-project phases was used. The case studies follow an organisation navigating complex technological choices requiring readjustment of the application of expertise and reconsideration of the technology supply model. The first case study covers the successful testing of the Bank’s network capability to evaluate its potential to handle rich multimedia applications. This is followed by involvement in the assessment of the technology group’s pilot intranet prior to its rollout to the wider organisation. The third case study sees both initiatives combined to provide a distributed Training and Communications Network for the corporation. Interdisciplinary consideration of multimedia innovation was required due to the range of social, political and economic factors that combined to impact technological decisions. The use of Actor Network theory enabled the mapping of relations between the variety of actors aligned around shared agendas for multimedia innovation. Technological convergence resulted in actors from previously disparate groups being drawn into a new relationship model. Organisational theory aided the assessment of the emerging tensions and dynamics. The revised relationship model extended across intra-organisational units, lines of responsibility and additionally interactions with external suppliers. Here the model of technology supply was reconsidered in light of the componentised standards based aspects of multimedia. During the study we are presented with evidence that social and technical factors are intertwined and require joint consideration throughout the innovation process. The pre-project phase plays a crucial role in the alignment and initiation of innovative activity an operation strongly dependent on the activities of the project leaders. Through appreciation of the process across project we are able to define areas of focus for the successful management of multimedia innovation and offer insight into how the technology department’s role has altered to meet this set of challenges.
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Patterson, Kali R. "The social environment and myocardial infarction (MI) symptom knowledge." Thesis, Northern Arizona University, 2013. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=1537800.
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The social environment is hypothesized to broadly influence health by facilitating the distribution of health-promoting resources (e.g., health knowledge; Berkman, Glass, Brissette, & Seeman, 2000). One important health-related resource, knowledge of acute myocardial infarction (MI) symptoms, is theoretically expected to be stratified by social relationships. Like the social environment, socioeconomic status is also associated with multiple health outcomes and is involved in the stratification of health resources (SES; Marmot et al., 1991; Pappas, Queen, Hadden, & Fisher, 1993; Berkman et al., 2000; Oakes & Rossi, 2003), and in turn markers of SES (i.e., income and education) are related to MI symptom knowledge (Dubard, Garrett, & Gizlice, 2006; Lutfiyya, Lipsky, Bales, Cha, & McGrath, 2008). The present study examined the relationship between MI symptom knowledge and functional and structural measures of the social environment in a large U.S. representative sample (N = 33,326). In addition, this study examined the relative contribution of social environment measures in the relationship between SES (income and education) and MI symptom knowledge. A functional measure was defined using a single item assessing perceived emotional support with answers ranging from never to always. Structural measures were obtained by summing responses to 7 items assessing number of frequent social contacts within past two weeks. MI symptom knowledge was defined by the summation of correct answers to 6 questions assessing knowledge of MI symptom categories and the appropriate emergency response. Continuous MI symptom knowledge scores ranged from 0 to 6 with higher values indicating higher knowledge. In the primary multivariate analysis, both dummy-coded social environment measures were associated higher MI symptom knowledge scores after controlling for sociodemographic, health status and SES covariates. Having emotional support usually and always was associated with a .27 and .22 (SE = .05, p < .001; SE = .05, p < .001) increase in MI symptom knowledge scores compared to those reporting never/rarely having emotional support respectively. Also, having 7 social contacts within the past two weeks was associated with a .47 (SE = .08, p < .001) increase in MI symptom knowledge scores compared to having 0/1 social contacts. Emotional support and social contacts explained 5% to 24% (SE = .01, p < .001; SE = .02 p < .001) and 9% to 19% (SE = .02, p < .001; SE = .03, p < .001) of the relationship between MI symptom knowledge and the two SES measures (education and income) respectively. By demonstrating a social environment stratification of a health resource, these findings demonstrate the broad health influence of social ties in a large nationally representative sample (Berkman et al., 2000; House, 2001).
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Monahan, Ronda. "Job satisfaction among social workers in a correctional environment." Thesis, McGill University, 2002. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=78186.
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This study examined job satisfaction among social workers in a correctional environment. A model was derived that defines job satisfaction as an attitude based on environmental and personal factors. The purpose of this research project was to examine what factors based on the model, lead to job satisfaction within the Ministry of Public Safety and Security using the Job Satisfaction Survey (Spector, 1997). Questionnaires and surveys were sent to all social work and psychology staff employed in a correctional institution across Ontario. Results support the model that both environmental and personal factors influence the perception and assessment of job satisfaction. Overall the majority of social workers working within the Ministry reported being satisfied (M = 115.0, SD = 27.3); however, psychology staff reported greater job satisfaction (M = 137.9, SD = 21.3). For social workers, supervision, co-workers and the work itself were the factors that related to job satisfaction. Working conditions, communication, contingent rewards and opportunities for promotions were related to dissatisfaction. The proposed model offers suggestions to human service organizations that wish to improve recruiting and retention of social workers.
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Yang, TienYu Owen. "The social environment of asthma management in early adolescence." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2009. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:ee6e9881-f85a-4e57-b046-f56aa53a28b3.
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For adolescents with asthma, adhering to asthma regimes implies not only taking medications to relieve asthma attacks, but also adjusting their life styles in order to prevent asthma attacks. These life style modifications, such as avoiding allergens or having to limit physical activity, sometimes force adolescents to compromise their social life. On the other hand, the impact of such life style modifications on their social life may in turn force adolescents to give up adhering to asthma regimes. Indeed, adolescents are learning to be more independent while they enjoy a more complicated social life at home and at school than previously, and this rapid social development may thus be a great life challenge to adolescents with asthma. This thesis reports four studies which investigated the relationship between multi-dimensional asthma management (in medication and life style regimes) and the social life of young people with asthma at the transitional age from childhood to adolescence (or early adolescence, age 9-14), which also marks the transition from primary school to secondary school. In line with the literature on other adolescent chronic illnesses, study 1 demonstrated a downward trend of multi-dimensional asthma management in early adolescence. This developmental change was further investigated in study 2, 3 and 4, in which theories in behavioural psychology were followed to emphasise human behaviour influenced by the social activities and social relationships in the living environment, or the social environment. This was supplemented by theories in developmental psychology to identify relevant aspects of the social environment in early adolescence, especially the social relationships with parents, school staff and peers. Using quantitative and qualitative approaches, the studies not only supported the direct influence of asthma-specific social support, but also explored some mechanisms with which social relationships influenced asthma management in a more subtle and context-dependent way. By approaching asthma management behaviour with theories from behavioural and developmental psychology, it is also hoped that this thesis could be an example that shows the importance of recognising and to understanding the social life of young adolescents when adolescent behaviour is concerned.
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Baccan, Davi D'Andréa. "Coffee Machine: a social virtual environment for informal collaboration." Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica, 2005. http://www.bd.bibl.ita.br/tde_busca/arquivo.php?codArquivo=261.
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Human beings need to collaborate with each other whether the goal is to develop a jointly collaborative task, to maintain existing social relationships or to provide opportunities to create new ones. These collaborations can be essentially classified either in formal or informal collaborations. These are two distinct but complementary forms of collaborations. When participants are engaged in a formal collaboration they explicitly agree in advance what will be discussed, when, and where it will take place. On the other hand, informal collaboration consists in spontaneous and not planned collaborations that occur countless times and in a transparent way in the everyday life. In addition, informal collaboration is intimacy related to physical proximity. Indeed, the opportunities for informal collaboration rely on the physical proximity of its participants. In this context, the main goal of this research is to investigate what features of informal interactions in the everyday life could be used to build a social virtual environment in order to provide, foster and mediate informal collaboration between participants of geographically distributed groups. Therefore, this research presents an investigation of what are the features of informal collaborations, including the understanding of awareness, public and private spaces, and how to deal with the tradeoff between providing awareness information and securing the privacy of individuals. In addition, it discusses how people interact with each other in the everyday life by presenting what is the importance of physical spaces not only for the informal collaboration but also in general, what are the features of spaces, and what it offers for informal collaborations. Based on these understandings, a PrAPI (Presence, Awareness, Privacy, Interactivity) model was conceived to address the problem. Furthermore, to provide a deeper investigation, a prototype version called Coffee Machine environment was designed and developed in accordance with this model. Finally, this prototype was tested and evaluated by participants of geographically distributed groups.
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Reading, Jessica. "Initiating and sustaining social projects in a college environment." Miami University Honors Theses / OhioLINK, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=muhonors1240930356.
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Wickham, Sophie. "The social environment and psychosis : search for symptom specificity." Thesis, University of Liverpool, 2014. http://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/2007509/.
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Research with clinical and nonclinical samples has linked multiple psycho-social risk factors with psychosis. There has since been an emphasis on the importance of investigating specific symptoms experienced within the psychosis spectrum to better understand the psychological processes involved. The studies included in this doctoral thesis used cross sectional methods to explore relationships between specific social adversities and specific symptoms within the psychotic domain and also depression, using a number of different samples (students, client groups and general population). This thesis also explores mediating mechanisms between adversities and specific symptoms, paying particular attention to the role of specific adversities in paranoid ideation. I found that perceived childhood inequality, neglect and adulthood social deprivation and insecure attachment styles predicted paranoid thoughts in student, epidemiological and clinical samples. In my student study I further developed and validated a tool to measure perceived relative deprivation. I then used this tool and found that personal perceptions of injustice and low social rank mediated the relationship between perceived relative deprivation and paranoia. In my epidemiological study I found that experiences of discrimination, lack of trust and stress partially explained the relationship between current social disadvantage and paranoia. In my two clinical studies I found that negative self-esteem explained the association between insecure attachment dimensions and paranoia, and strong perceptions of injustice and an over perception of justice in the world explained the association between childhood emotional neglect and paranoia. Considering hallucinations, I found specific associations between perceived childhood deprivation and hallucinations in my student sample and between sexual abuse and hallucinations in my patient sample, although none of the mediating variables tested in this thesis accounted for these associations, suggesting other mechanisms may be important. The findings of the current studies suggest that it is possible to identify specific associations between adversity and psychotic symptoms in general, and highlight the need to develop a science of public mental health, which at present barely exists as a discipline. In the future, more complex and imaginative designs examining specific environments, specific outcomes, and specific mediating mechanisms will be required if this is to be achieved.
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Poppleton, Lawrence. "Qualitative social inquiry and state of the environment reporting : can qualitative social inquiry make a contribution to the state of the environment reporting? /." Title page, contents and abstract only, 1998. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09ENV/09envp831.pdf.
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Alshuaib, Anwar. "Promoting social presence in a social networking environment in a Kuwaiti higher education context." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10871/15389.
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Recently, the numbers of Higher Education institutions that are using Web 2.0 technologies and social networking sites are increasing dramatically. These sites offer unique and diverse learning opportunities. There is evidence that a sense of community can be created online and that this community is connected with perceived learning. Garrison, Anderson and Archer (2000) introduced and developed the Community of Inquiry framework as a dynamic process model and a comprehensive framework to guide the research and practice of online learning communities, and to describe and measure elements supporting the development of these communities. This framework consists of three elements - social, teaching and cognitive presence - as well as categories and indicators to define each presence and guide the coding of transcripts. The categories of social presence are affective responses, open communication and group cohesion. The categories of teaching presence are instructional design and organisation, facilitating discourse and direct instruction. Previous studies suggest that a positive social climate on an online learning community is important as it can improve learning experience and cognitive presence. This study aims to explore and understand the nature of Community of Inquiry presences, in particular teaching presence and social presence. The aim of the study is to understand the influence of a different teaching presence on students’ development of social presence. This study provides a more comprehensive picture of developing students’ social presence over changing teaching presence in a social network environment in a Kuwaiti higher education context. In order to achieve the purpose of this study, the following research questions are explored: 1- How does a students’ sense of social presence change with a different teaching presence in the social network environment within a Kuwaiti higher education context? a. Does a students’ sense of social presence (affective responses, open communication and group cohesion) change as a result of a different teaching presence (facilitating discourse - direct instruction) in the social network environment in a Kuwaiti higher education context? b. Why do participants maintain or change their social presence level during the course? 2- How does the use of teaching presence promote the development of students’ social presence in a Kuwaiti higher education context within the social network environment? The study was conducted in the second semester of 2010/2011 at The Education Technology Department - The College of Basic Education - The Public Authority for Applied Education and Training (PAAET), within the State of Kuwait. The study was carried out on the Educational Communication module and involved 46 male participants. This study uses the equivalent of mixed methods design to answer research questions. The sequential explanatory strategy is embedded within an applied quasi-experimental approach. Quantitative data is collected and analysed, which is then followed by the collection and analysis of qualitative data. The researcher used a messages analysis and a content analysis approach to reveal the level of social presence in an online community and then develop stimulated recall interview questions. A combination of individual interviews and focus group interviews were used. Garrison et al.’s (2000) social presence coding schemes were developed to make them more suitable in the study context. Quantitative and qualitative data show that there is no significant difference between the effects of facilitating discourse and direct instruction in terms of students’ social presence level. Stimulated recall interviews reveal that most participants cannot distinguish between facilitating discourse and direct instruction. The participants believe that facilitating discourse and direct instruction are similar. The participants’ responses lead the researcher to search for other motives that could promote the development of students’ social presence in the higher education context in the social network environment. The study concludes that there are two factors that could promote the development of students’ social presence. First, instructional design and organisation, such as web design satisfaction, network effect, instructor responsiveness, the nature of the task and awarding degrees. Second, learner-specific matters, such as previous experience, peer influence, friendship, attitude, self-esteem and self-confidence and something I refer to as the Wave Effect.
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Smith, Bethany Virginia. "Use of Online Educational Social Networking in a School Environment." NCSU, 2009. http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/theses/available/etd-03252009-104050/.
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The purpose of this mixed-methods research study was to investigate the use of a closed social network, utilizing Ning, in an online educational environment. The research question driving this study was, does a student-centered online tool, such as Ning, foster knowledge construction through discussion boards more than a class-focused online tool, such as a traditional CMS? The participants were students enrolled in one of two online graduate education courses, one in a traditional Course Management System (CMS), and another class that utilized Ning for their discussions. Discussion Board postings from the Ning group were categorized based on the Interaction Analysis Model (IAM) developed by Gunawardena, C. N., Lowe, C., & Anderson, T. (1997), to assess knowledge construction. Survey instruments and interviews were conducted to provide additional insight into the use of a social network in an educational context.
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Duncan, Kirk A. "Assessing the use of social media in a revolutionary environment." Monterey, California: Naval Postgraduate School, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10945/34660.
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Approved for public release; distribution is unlimitedSocial media garnered much attention from the Arab Spring uprisings where activists took advantage of computer and mobile phone technologies to organize the collective actions of thousands of citizens. The influence and power of social media are only likely to increase. According to eMarketer (2012), by 2014, over one-fourth of the worlds population will be using social media technology. However, military planning has not fully harnessed this powerful tool. In trying to understand how this technology should be utilized by special operations forces (SOF), this thesis examines the role that social media plays in various forms of conflict across the globe. Specifically, this research assesses and identifies what types of social media should be used to support a range of special operations objectives, from strategic influence to disruption, coercions, and regime overthrow. Additionally, a social media assessment methodology is provided that can be used by strategists to evaluate the most appropriate use of social media technology to support special operations.
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Stroh, Matthew John. "Social construction of green : accessing popular attitudes towards the environment." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 1999. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.364697.
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Huang, Junjie. "Spatial affordances for preschool children's social interactions in childcare environment." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 2017. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/18259/.
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Iraola, Miguel Igor. "Urban marketplace : an evaluation of the social and retail environment." Kansas State University, 1988. http://hdl.handle.net/2097/17960.
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Goldwire, Ida W. "Social Environment as Related to School Achievement in Early Childhood." UNF Digital Commons, 1985. http://digitalcommons.unf.edu/etd/326.
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Social environment as related to school achievement was investigated. It was found that the importance of the model which the parent sets for the child in addition to the role assumed by the teacher play an important part in the development of the early childhood student. The environment in which a child lives and the person with whom the child interacts both affect the child in complex ways to influence the child's development and life chances. Research also shows that academic and intellectual gains are produced during the Head Start program year and that children who attend Head Start programs do perform better than their disadvantaged peers on such global measures of school success as passing each grade, staying in regular school tracks, and graduating from high school.
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Hession, Peter. "Social authority and the urban environment in nineteenth century Cork." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2018. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/280597.
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The history of nineteenth-century Ireland has traditionally been understood in terms of resistance to state coercion imposed ‘at the point of a bayonet’. This thesis offers an alternative approach by shifting focus away from metropolitan centres of power (Westminster, Dublin Castle) and the state's formal apparatus, toward an understanding of power as environmentally constructed. Using the case of Cork, the thesis traces the emergence of a non-sectarian ethos of urban ‘politeness’ rooted in middle-class reactions to the violent upheavals of the 1790s. Here, I argue a range of new public spaces emerged to ‘moralise’ the masses, anticipating state legislation by decades. In chapters on the spread of time-keeping technology and the reform of market spaces, the thesis argues effective authority inhered as much in clocks and weights as ‘at the point of a bayonet’. The corresponding rise of the ‘private sphere’, materialising the ideology of ‘separate spheres’ in the city’s first suburbs, provided an alternative pole of moral reform. Here, the invisible agency of pipes and sewers helped to privatize the burden of ‘healthy living’, severing the link between poverty and disease long before ‘Famine fever’ ravaged the city. And when it hit, John Stuart Mill was not alone in dreaming of a ‘tabula rasa’; the ‘Father of Temperance’ Theobald Mathew and his allies expressed precisely this view, ‘feminizing’ the catastrophe as a moment to ‘cleanse’ the city of morally ‘diseased’ prostitutes. Free from such ‘contamination’, new spaces devoted to recreation – parks, theatres, and racecourses – were engineered as arenas ‘free’ from state oversight, with citizens instead positioned to survey one another. The thesis concludes with a call to reinterpret resistance to the state in terms of the ‘rule of freedom’ as much as that of force. The seven chapters and conclusion of the thesis are divided into three parts: ‘The Polite City’, ‘The Purified City’ and ‘The Liberal City’. These overarching themes provide a framework to the chronological and thematic development of the thesis as a whole. The first three chapters explore the rising ethos of ‘politeness’ as an ‘improving’ ideology which sought to engineer certain forms of conduct – domestic, social, and commercial – into the fabric of everyday urban life. Crucial to this was the notion of non-coercive governance aimed at securing ‘the right disposition of things, arranged ... to a convenient end’. ‘The Purified City’ explores ways in which the Famine helped to ‘naturalise’ the alienation of certain classes of deviant from the ‘social body’ of the urban community. ‘The Liberal City’ looks at how mid-Victorian city also invited the consent of the governed by creating spaces where citizenship could be performed in acts of leisure and recreation. It was in this sense that fin de siècle cultural nationalists saw the greatest threat to a revival of Irish popular culture as arising not from police stations or military barracks, but from the respectable world of suburban ‘politeness’.
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Visagie, Sonja. "Using a social network environment for information systems group work." Diss., University of Pretoria, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/2263/24597.
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Group work and online discussions are not new terms in education and are important activities for Information Systems students. It has become important because it encourages creative thinking and provides more efficient problem-solving approaches. Online social networking sites, like Facebook, have pedagogical potential and the consideration of its academic application should not be ignored by lecturers or students. The main problem identified in this thesis is that the awareness and application of the emerging pedagogical potential of online social networking sites, like Facebook, especially for the purpose of group work and online discussions, is limited among Information Systems lecturers and students. The purpose of this study is to determine the level of awareness and application of Facebook as an academic tool by Information Systems lecturers and students, and whether it can enhance the learning experience of students, related to the effectiveness of group work and online discussions. The perceptions of both Information Systems lecturers and students were recorded by means of questionnaires and interviews. It was found that most lecturers and students were aware of Facebook’s pedagogical potential. However, the consideration and application of Facebook as an academic tool, by lecturers and students, are limited. From a cultural perspective, it was found that students from a private institution, where no Learning Management System was implemented, as well as black students, showed increased levels of utilisation and performance, in terms of enhanced learning experienced, on the academic groups on Facebook. The researcher developed a model for the academic application of Facebook for Information Systems students, based on the Task-Technology Fit and the Social Software Performance Model theories. This study concludes with the recommendation that Information Systems lecturers and students should become increasingly aware of and consider the pedagogical potential of Facebook as a supplementary tool and with suggestions for future research.Dissertation (MCom)--University of Pretoria, 2010.
Informatics
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Henderson, Janis L. "A Social Justice Framework Design an Optimal Learning Environment Model." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2020. https://dc.etsu.edu/secfr-conf/2020/schedule/8.
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Optimal learning environments designs that move beyond traditional pedagogical considerations to include Social Justice concepts can be a challenge for educators in academic and practice contexts. The workshop promotes learning environments designs reflective of inclusiveness and members’ psychosocial safety. Inclusiveness reflects sensitivity to learner diversity and promotive of psychosocial safety, a term coined by the workshop facilitator. Psychological safety is operationalized as the offering and receiving of respect despite and because of one’s differences, a knowing uniqueness will be honored as will beliefs and course content understanding. Psychosocial safety flourishes in strengths-based, trauma-informed atmospheres. Additionally addressed are barriers to designing optimal learning environments, including solution strategies.
Experiential Learning Theory informs the workshop; experiential learning devices (e.g., reflexive activities, group discussions) encourage defining and refining workshop skills and strategies. The sensitive and culturally bound nature of social justice suggests use of scaffolding of strategies by educators to aid integration of learning.
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Pullin, Allison Nicole. "The Effect of Environment and Social Dynamics on Lamb Behavior." The Ohio State University, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1492511346580333.
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Zischka, L. "The link between 'giving' behaviours and a healthy social environment." Thesis, University of Reading, 2016. http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/66399/.
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This thesis explores the role of prosocial considerations in society. It suggests that a willingness to take other persons into consideration in one’s resource allocation decisions is an essential element of social cohesion which, in the civic sector, is manifest in giving. An inclination to give is influenced by one’s wider social environment (norms, pressures and incentives) and also by one’s own values and attitudes, which sometimes motivate a person to act for the good or bad of others independently of her social environment. The combination of these factors drives prosocial behaviours like giving to positively impact the wider social environment and the prosocial inclinations of others. The altered social environment then feeds back to the prosocial motivation of the individual. This response and counter-response as people interact determines whether social cohesion expands or contracts over time. Giving behaviours then comprise one, easy-to-measure flow from a highly complex social stock. By monitoring giving behaviours we gain insight into civic sector pro-sociality and the way that the civic sector is contributing to social cohesion. Civic sector cohesion is valuable, and thus I find that giving is associated with a host of better welfare outcomes: improved life-satisfaction, improved trust, improved incomes, improved neighbourhood ratings, improved sense of security and reduced crime and deprivation: In some ways, giving interacts with these factors on a scale comparable to the big social drivers like education, health and wealth, and predicts welfare outcomes better than incomes can. I find that giving within one’s close social circle and giving outside of it both have their own significance. By monitoring giving behaviours then, governments and development agents gain insight into a community’s social strengths and weaknesses, and the way that their interventions are influencing these vital attributes. This provides them with a basis for policy evaluation and adjustment.
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Schuett, Jessica Lynn. "Effects of Social Networks and Media on Pro-Environment Behaviors." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2011. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc68044/.
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In this study, pro-environmental behaviors are investigated by studying if one's primary information sources about environmental issues either from their social network or the media influence this behavior. Data was collected from the 2002 Detroit Area Study with a total of 267 respondents. Three indexes were constructed to separately measure all seven pro-environment behavioral items, five conservation behavioral items, and two consumption behavioral items. A complex sample model was utilized in these analyses. Findings suggest that information sources are correlated to self-reported environmental behavior. As predicted, the people whose primary information source was social network were more likely to obtain higher scores on all three separate indexes than those individuals who primarily received information about environmental issues from the media.
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Andersson, Emelie. "Social environment influences impulsivity in red junglefowl (Gallus gallus) chicks." Thesis, Linköpings universitet, Institutionen för fysik, kemi och biologi, 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-160093.
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Cognition (i.e. how individuals perceive, process and react to environmental cues) is fundamental to all animals’ life. Despite this, what explains variation in cognitive abilities is still mainly unclear. Environment is assumed to influences cognitive variation, but the mechanisms for this are still unknown. According to the social intelligence hypothesis, living in a group with a rich social environment, generate challenges that can enhance cognitive abilities. Impulsivity (to not be able to inhibit impulses), one aspect of cognition, may be influenced by the social environment, however this has not yet been experimentally tested. Impulsivity can complicate life, both for humans and animals. In humans, high levels of impulsivity and lack of self-control are associated with addictions and psychiatric disorders, thus is considered to be maladaptive. In animals, impulsivity correlates with stereotypies. To improve our understanding of impulsivity, I experimentally investigated how early social environment affects individual variation in impulsivity. To test this, red junglefowl chicks were used because their group living nature, and our accumulated knowledge on their cognition and behaviour. To manipulate the social environment, chicks either grew up in larger groups (with 17 individuals) or smaller groups (with 7 individuals). During the chicks’ first five weeks of life, three aspects of impulsivity were tested; impulsive action, persistence (in a detour reaching test) and routine formation (in a reversal learning test). Chicks that grew up in larger groups tended to perform less impulsive actions, while social environment did not explain variation in persistence. Chicks from larger groups had less strong routine formation compared to chicks raised in smaller groups. This partially supports the social intelligence hypothesis, and suggest that early social life can affect cognitive traits and explain individual variation in such.
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McBrien, Brandon James. "Social Architecture: A Study of Society & the Built Environment." Thesis, The University of Arizona, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/244434.
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In 2009, the American Community Survey revealed that social equality gaps in the US had reached the highest on record. Never has there been more need for social equality than now, and many experts predict that social divisions are only going to worsen. Furthermore, with the current state of the economy, the amount of resources available to non-profit organizations that attempt to mitigate social inequality has drastically shrunk. Organizations, such as TOMS Shoes, American Apparel, the One Percent, and many others have adopted corporate social responsibility practices into their business model to try to make a positive difference in the world. Currently, there is room in the arena of architecture to do what other industries have done in adopting socially responsible practices. The connection that the built environment and society share can offer a way unique way for architects to begin to promote social sustainability. Alain de Botton, author and philosopher, said society is, "for better or worse, different people in different places. Architecture's task is to render vivid to us who we might ideally be." This observation of the relationship that humanity and the built environment share with one another is one of extraordinary insight and attests to the fact that the built environment has the ability to establish a platform for values that become part of our culture. Botton's words illustrate the underlying premise of this capstone: to discover what architecture should and can be. Architecture for the public good must not merely stimulate but must also inspire and serve. Architecture that achieves both can exist as a beacon of hope for renewed prosperity and social equality. This project seeks to use the shared connection of society and the built environment to offer a unique approach to provide the basic human need of shelter, while simultaneously providing an innovative process for giving back to charitable human service organization. Furthermore, this project seeks to demonstrate that there is a strategic way to design and construct buildings that mitigate the social impact of new construction and, through this process, extend the scope of sustainability beyond energy savings into human equity.
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Whitmore, Alissa Marie. "Small finds and the social environment of the Roman baths." Diss., University of Iowa, 2013. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/1797.
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The public baths, functioning as a hygienic and social center, were among the most important public spaces in the Roman world. While ancient texts give scholars some indication of the social backdrop of the public baths, these records, written by upper class males, are largely silent on the activities of women, children, and the lower classes (cf. Allison 2007a:343, 346). As a result, scholars have only a partial understanding of the bath's social role in the lives of the ancient Romans.
Archaeological assemblages of objects which the Romans lost or left behind in the baths are an under-utilized resource for information on this social environment. To examine the social environment of the Roman baths, my dissertation collects published and unpublished artifact data from 27 public and military baths in Italy and the western Roman Provinces, including Britannia, Lusitania, Raetia, and Germania Superior. 13 baths, whose assemblages are definitively linked with use of the baths ("primary assemblages"), will serve as the basis for this study, while artifacts from the other 14 baths, whose contexts are less clear ("secondary assemblages"), will serve as a comparative sample. These small finds provide data on the social environment of the Roman baths, specifically the genders, ages, classes, and activities of bathers.
To interpret these finds, I turned to Roman small finds scholarship (e.g. Eckardt and Crummy 2008; Allason-Jones 2011), which together with site publications and finds catalogues, provides a starting place for determining the primary function of various objects. Studies which link artifacts with genders, ages, and classes (Nevett 1999; Allison 2004a, 2006a; Allison et al. 2005) serve as a model for my methodology for associating objects with social groups, which incorporates data from ancient texts, burials, and art. Using three different data sets to attribute a gender, age, and class to these objects helps to ameliorate the shortcomings of each, and I interpret associations between social groups and artifacts across multiple datasets as an accurate reflection of the connections that the Romans themselves saw between different objects and people.
Having associated artifacts with activities, genders, ages, and classes, I examined the primary assemblages from the main 13 baths to determine which activities took place and where, as well as the genders, ages and classes of the individuals using each bath. These artifacts, supported by the secondary assemblages, confirmed many current scholarly views on Roman baths, such as the prominence of social display and eating and drinking, and provided new information about activities, including cloth-working and medical procedures, and how these spaces were used, including room multifunctionality and the presence of women and children in military baths.
Since my sample includes a number of urban public and military baths from a variety of provinces and time periods, I also analyzed their artifact assemblages for information on temporal and geographic variations in Roman urban public and military baths. Across bath types, dates, and locations, a number of activities appear as regular parts of the bathing environment, and even less commonly represented activities are not isolated to a region, time period, or bath type. The lack of strong regional, temporal, or typological variation in artifact assemblages may indicate that the social environments of urban public and military baths differed little throughout the Roman period and across the empire.
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Manganello, Flavio. "Formalization of social knowledge through a personal learning environment approach." Doctoral thesis, Università Politecnica delle Marche, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/11566/242482.
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La “conoscenza sociale" è un aspetto importante dell’esperienza dello studente, ed è fondamentale per la creazione collaborativa di artefatti sociali. Poiché la conoscenza sociale è di solito dinamica, tacita/non dichiarativa, e costruita, individuarla e condividerla con riguardo ad un particolare contesto può diventare problematico per studenti che partecipano come novizi in una comunità o in una rete.
Questa ricerca ha lo scopo di definire una metodologia efficace per la formalizzazione della conoscenza sociale, facendo leva sulle reti sociali e sulla semantica del web che caratterizzano online l’esperienza di apprendimento dello studente. L’attenzione si concentra su un approccio del tipo Personal Learning Environment da adottarsi come ambiente dinamico in grado di sostenere lo studente nella gestione della conoscenza sociale tramite strumenti espliciti e impliciti di adattabilità e personalizzazione.
La metodologia prende in considerazione quattro dimensioni di progettazione: 1) un formato pedagogico centrato sullo studente per definire le corrette strategie di apprendimento, 2) un sistema semantico in grado di descrivere gli elementi del contesto di conoscenza; 3) un sistema semantico in grado di fornire efficaci rappresentazioni e descrizioni delle reti sociali dello studente in questione; 4) un ambiente personale per l’apprendimento e la gestione della conoscenza caratterizzato in modo dinamico per mezzo di strumenti espliciti ed impliciti, i quali permettono di abbinare in modo intelligente contenuti di apprendimento, persone e servizi.
A livello pedagogico, viene presentato un modello definito “la metafora del novizio”. Il modello utilizza le opportunità offerte dalle tecnologie di rete per migliorare l’apprendimento degli studenti. Come caso di studio, la ricerca presenta un modello di formazione integrato, testato con successo negli ultimi anni presso l’Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona (Italia). Un esame del modello pedagogico illustra importanti caratteristiche che l’architettura tecnologica deve implementare al fine di supportarlo. Come implementazione tecnologica del modello pedagogico, viene presentata e discussa una prima bozza di progettazione di un “Personal Knowledge Space”.
Gli aspetti innovativi del modello proposto, da un punto di vista pedagogico, possono essere attribuiti alle competenze acquisite dagli studenti e l’adozione da parte degli insegnanti di metodi di insegnamento che promuovono l’empowerment degli studenti. Dal punto di vista della tecnologia, l’architettura proposta permette di promuovere attività di apprendimento quali teamwork, di costruire comunità di pratica, di introdurre e integrare sia strumenti di social networking sia componenti che consentano di soddisfare le esigenze di sicurezza e il controllo delle interazioni.
I risultati ottenuti consentono di definire possibili scenari di esperienze di formazione iterabili.“Social knowledge” is an important aspect of the learner’s experience, and it is fundamental for the collaborative creation of social artifacts. Since social knowledge is usually dynamic, tacit/non declarative, and constructed, identifying and sharing it with regard to a particular context may become problematic for learners who are participating as novices in a community or a network. This research aims at defining an effective methodology for formalizing social knowledge by leveraging the social networks and the semantics of the Web around the learner. The focus is on a Personal Learning Environment approach to be adopted as a dynamic environment supporting the learner in social knowledge management by means of explicit and implicit tools for adaptivity and personalization. The methodology takes into account four design dimensions: 1) a learner-centered pedagogical format defining the proper learning strategies; 2) a semantic system able to describe the elements of the knowledge context; 3) a semantic system able to provide effective representations and descriptions of the learner’s social networks; 4) a personal learning and knowledge environment dynamically characterized by means of explicit and implicit tools that allow to intelligently match learning content, people and services. Pedagogically, a model defined “the metaphor of the novice” is presented. The model utilizes the opportunities offered by network technologies to enhance student learning. As a case study, the research presents a model of integrated education, successfully tested in recent years at Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona (Italy). An examination of the pedagogical model illustrates important features the technological framework needs to implement in order to support it. As a technological implementation of the pedagogical model, a first roughly idea of a “Personal Knowledge Space” is proposed and discussed. The innovative aspects of the proposed model, from a pedagogical point of view, can be attributed to the skills acquired by learners and the adoption by teachers of teaching methods that promote the empowerment of the learners. From the technology viewpoint, the proposed architecture allows to promote learning activities such as teamwork, to build communities of practice, to introduce and integrate tools of social networking as well as components that allow to meet the needs of security and control of interactions. The results obtained allow to define possible scenarios of iterable educational experiences.
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Laffan, Kate. "Issues relating to behaviour, wellbeing and the environment." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2017. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3709/.
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As issues of environmental degradation intensify, the interdependency between humans and the natural environment is coming more and more into focus. In particular, questions about the importance of environmental quality for human wellbeing and about how to mitigate the serious negative impacts humans are having on the environment are of ever-increasing significance. The current work addresses these issues in four empirical papers, split into two separate parts. The first section focuses on the first question, exploring the links between air quality and individual wellbeing. Paper 1 presents a spatially detailed analysis of the relationship between air pollution and a range of measures of subjective wellbeing (SWB), providing a rich picture of how the air pollution individuals are exposed to relates to how they feel. Paper 2 uses mediation analysis to investigate the behavioural production process which converts air pollution into ill-being, providing insights into the role of physical activity and visits to the outdoors play as mediators. The second part of this thesis addresses the second question. Paper 3 investigates the relationship between proenvironmental behaviour (PEB) and a range of SWB measures, shedding light on the wellbeing consequences of PEB for the individual undertaking it and providing insights into strategies to encourage it. Paper 4 tests two interventions which target electricity consumption in a hall of residence in London, providing evidence of an effective approach to reduce individuals’ environmental impact. Taken together, the results of the papers present evidence of psychological and environmental win-wins which can arise from living in and helping to create a better natural environment.
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SASSON, JEAN MARC. "SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE: THE DIALOGUE BETWEEN THE RIGHT TO HOUSING AND THE RIGHT TO THE ENVIRONMENT." PONTIFÍCIA UNIVERSIDADE CATÓLICA DO RIO DE JANEIRO, 2018. http://www.maxwell.vrac.puc-rio.br/Busca_etds.php?strSecao=resultado&nrSeq=36087@1.
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O presente trabalho visa compreender a tensão existente entre o direito fundamental à moradia e o direito fundamental ao meio ambiente a partir do fenômeno das ocupações em áreas de preservação permanente. O estudo parte da análise das questões urbanas envolvidas, sobretudo os processo de urbanização brasileiro e a tutela da moradia e do ambiente no ordenamento jurídico como direitos fundamentais na Constituição de 1988. Adota a abordagem interdisciplinar para a análise de casos de referência e analisa de decisões judiciais pertinentes. Tem como pressuposto as relações de vulnerabilidade presente nos conflitos entre estes direitos, para os quais apresenta como a diretriz de harmonização para o seu equacionamento a justiça socioambiental.The present dissertation aimed to understand the tension between the fundamental right to housing and the fundamental right to the environment from the phenomenon of occupations in areas of permanent preservation. At the outset, to understand the phenomenon, was considered the essential aspects of the urban question that involves urban growth without planning, reproduction of the labor force in the capitalist market, access to urban land and private property, housing deficit, unequal allocation of public equipment and services in urban space. The urban question that arises in the context of the construction of an urban space of an essentially social character needs to be understood from the point of view of social dynamics. That is, understanding the participation, responsibilities and the way of acting of each urban actor is paramount for facing the urban question. In addition, in order to understand the tensions between urban actors and institutions, the right to the city is an effective way of harmonizing and overcoming obstacles in the dialogue between fundamental rights housing and the environment. It is still to be considered in the attempt to harmonize them, the environment has now assumed the biocentric vision, in which the protection of all forms of life prevails and not only of human life. For the purposes of equalizing the tension between rights, the environment will have its relative value recognizing and assuming the environmental damages already produced as a way to also meet the most basic human needs related to the right to housing.
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Bast, Elizabeth S. 1977. "Interpreting global justice : variations in perspectives of U.S. environmental organizations on environment, human rights, and social equity." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/17684.
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Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2004.Includes bibliographical references (p. 91-95).
Environmental movement organizations in the United States have engaged with the global justice movement differently depending on the extent to which they view human rights and social equity issues as part of their environmental work. These organizations, influenced by their organizational history and their work with international groups and coalitions, appear to view these issues and engage with the movement in distinct ways. Some organizations have concentrated on seeking out the root causes of environmental destruction, which has led them to target corporations and corporate practices. These organizations have become involved with the global justice movement from the anti-corporate point of view. Other environmental movement organizations have explicitly incorporated human rights and social equity concerns in their view of environmental problems. These organizations tend to critique international institutions for their inattention to human, as well as environmental, problems, and approach the global justice movement from a human rights and development perspective. This thesis suggests that there are nuances, even within organizations with roots in the same movement, in how organizations interpret and engage with the global justice movement. Some environmental groups may relate to the anti-corporate nature of the movement, while others are drawn more to the human rights and development components.
by Elizabeth S. Bast.
M.C.P.
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Gonzalez, Amanda, Joseph Blomqvist, and Tianchen Hu. "Opinion leaders in the new social environment : A Youtube case on social media opinion leaders." Thesis, Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för marknadsföring (MF), 2016. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-53422.
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Due to the development of new technology, there has been a shift in many communication concepts. With consumers now gaining more control in the online environment, more influential consumers, or ‘opinion leaders’, can also gain from this increase in power. However, insufficient research has been conducted regarding the concept of social media opinion leadership, and in particular what the relational nature of these new opinion leaders is. Therefore, this study aims to explore this issue within the social media opinion leadership theory. A qualitative research design was applied to get a more in depth insight to the issue, in where interviews were conducted with followers of specific opinion leader on a social media platform. The empirical data was analyzed through the means of coding and interpretation which then lead into the theory of what possible relationships can be found amongst social media opinion leaders and their followers. Conclusively, three types of relationships emerged as most dominant: the trustworthiness relationship, the friendly relationship and the passive relationship. The theoretical contributions of this paper together with practical implications and suggestion for future research are discussed based on that conclusion.
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Rodrick, Manel. "Corporate Social Responsibility - a contributor to evironmental and socital change?" Thesis, Linnéuniversitetet, Ekonomihögskolan, ELNU, 2011. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-14083.
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Abstract Disclosing how business practice can be regarded as a contributor to several forms of sustainability, this thesis is based on a minor field study enlightening how this contribution may be possible through Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR.The thesis provides the response and opinions of people who in some affirmation are engaging in or are related to social responsibility; either it may be from the academic works and earlier conducted research related to the CSR topic, or it may be from those who perform social responsibility and are the participant actors of this minor field study. These people last mentioned have all had their opinions spoken through semi – structured interviews and other data have been collected based on the methodology of Actors Approach; all empirical data is structured according to Aspers’ (2007) model of “meaning” including the tools text, visuals and practice.The analysis is divided into three parts; articulation, reconfiguration and cross-appropriation as a way to create understanding of how the study’s phenomenon can create style change (Spinosa et al 1997). Conclusions drawn from the field study are businesses implementing social responsibility do create a style change in environmental and societal aspects. Yet to what extent may differ depending on in their situation, their views of the concept, how long they have been using and promoting the concept and further in what ways their work contributes to a societal and environmental change through CSR practice. The field study has been conducted within the municipality of Kathmandu, Nepal
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Goldblatt, David Steven. "Social theory and the environment : an analysis of the writings of Giddens, Gorz and Habermas on environmental degradation and environmental politics." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1993. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/272672.
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Xu, Leilei. "Children's assessment of their neighbourhood socio-physical environment, social interactions and social capital: an interactional-constructivist approach." Thesis, The University of Sydney, 2010. https://hdl.handle.net/2123/28223.
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The main purpose of this study was to investigate the pattern of relationships
among three constructs: neighbourhood socio-physical environment, children’s social
interactions and their social capital. The research also explored how country of
residence, gender, social-economic status and ethnic background relate to the pattern
of relationships. In addition, this study was based upon and tried to corroborate the
interactional—constructivist world View and the theory of social capital.
Three bodies of research literature formed the background of the current
study: (1) the interactional—constructivist world View was the framework that shed
lights on the research questions and the research methods; (2) the theory of social
capital provided the basis for developing the scale of children’s social capital; and (3)
previous studies on children and their neighbourhood socio-physical environment
helped to develop the scale of neighbourhood socio—physical environment.
The main research question was: what is the pattern of relationships among
children’s assessment of their neighbourhood socio-physical environment, social
interactions and social capital? Other research questions investigated the differences
between children in Beijing and Sydney, boys and girls, and differences due to
family’s socio-economic background and ethnic background.
This research was carried out in two phases. Phase I included the qualitative
studies to develop a scale of neighbourhood socio-physical environment, a scale of
children’s social interactions and a scale of children’s social capital. Phase II was a
cross-national survey that used these three scales to collect information from high
school students in Beijing and Sydney. During phase I, qualitative techniques such as
interviews, walking tours and photographs were used to collect information from the
respondents. During phase II, the investigator used a self-administered questionnaire
to collect data from 166 Australian students and 234 Chinese students. Exploratory
factor analysis, analysis of variance and structural equation modeling were used to
analyse the main study data.
The main finding of the current study was that there were strong and
significant correlations between each pair of the three constructs. Children’s
assessment of their neighbourhood socio-physical environment was found to be
positively related to their social interactions and social capital, which indicated that
children who live in better neighbourhoods had more social interactions and larger
volumes of social capital. Strong positive relationship was also found between
children’s social interactions and social capital, which indicated that better—connected
children interacted with their friends more.
In addition, significant differences between students in Beijing and Sydney,
differences due to gender, socio-economic status and ethnic background were
revealed from the data. For example, students in Sydney rated their socio-physical
environment higher than students in Beijing; girls assessed themselves as having
smaller volumes of social capital than boys; children from better educated families
had more social capital; and Australian children with European backgrounds exercised
more often than Australian children from other ethnic backgrounds.
This study has two theoretical implications. Firstly, as the findings of this
research supported the main research hypothesis, this study corroborated the
interactional—constructivist world view. Secondly, as the data supported the ecological
model of children’s social capital, this study corroborated the theory of social capital.
The results of this study provide important information to planners, designers,
and policy makers: we can improve the socio-physical environments of
neighbourhoods to support children’s social development. This study also provides
information to help parents choose child-friendly neighbourhoods to live. It also
suggests that parents should encourage their children to interact with friends more, so
that their children may build wider and stronger friendship networks to increase their
social capital.
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Broderick, Jane Tingle. "Documentation, Materials, & Environment." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2006. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/4243.
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Roberts, Francis Charles. "Social structures, epistemology and personal identity." Thesis, Open University, 1991. http://oro.open.ac.uk/57338/.
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In this thesis a set of interlocking arguments is fashioned. Each argument serves a dual purpose: it contributes to the acceptability of the main theme developed In the thesis and it increases the acceptability of the other arguments. At all stages the price paid for refusing to accept the conclusions drawn is cited. There are two driving forces behind the construction of the set of arguments. The first involves a recognition that there is a need for some 'underiabouring' work to be done for the Social Sciences; the second, relatedly. that there is a need to relocate the current debate in Anglo-Saxon Philosophy on, the question of Personal Identity. The colligation of the arguments accomplishes an 'underlabouring' task for the Social Sciences. This task consists of the identification of some of the Implications of the acceptance (whether tacit or explicitly stated) of two notions: the notions of what constitutes a person and what constitutes society. it Is argued that Possible uses of the concept of a person, inherent in any Interpretation of social phenomena, will constrain the explanatory power of any social scientific theory (or even ofa common system of beliefs) In which the interpretation is embedded. If one accepts a social scientific theory (or any common system of beliefs) which subsumes a concept of a person which does not see persons as essentially subjective, essentially social and essentially knowledge-seeking then one has to pay a series of penalties. Foremost among the penalties Is the sacrifice of the possibility of the expansion of the understanding of social phenomena. There are two concepts of society, embedded in contrasting systems of beliefs, whose acceptance has the effect of reinforcing the constraint on the explanatory power of the systems. One concept Involves a view of society as an object with causal powers, the other sees only Individuals as social causal agents. Whether it is Implicit or explicitly stated, the acceptance of either concept of society will cement the constraint on the expansion of one's understanding of social phenomena. The arguments go on to show that only the acceptance of a concept of society seen as an ensemble (itself devoid of detectable causal power) of social structures with causal powers can induce a lifting of some of the restrictions on the expansion of one's understanding of social phenomena. At the core of the arguments lies a fundamental distinction. This is the distinction which needs to be made between the functions of epistemological and ontological concepts which underpin one's understanding of social phenomena. It Is argued that, while such a distinction needs to be made, the relationship between the two functions is a symbiotic one - neither can operate without the other. The differentiation between the two functions is achieved by focusing on the distinction between knowledge and being - encapsulated in Chapter 2 by the distinction made between 'cultural environments' and 'social environments'. Linked to, and sustaining, the distinction between social and cultural environments is a distinction between two aspects of cognitive interactions between Individuals. These two aspects Involve a contrast between an Individual's sense of 'Interacting with' and a sense of 'being with' other Individuals. The former involves individuals in operating 'social kinds' while the latter involves them in sustaining the operating parameters of social kinds. Operations of social kinds are needed for changes in states of understanding to occur (in other words the operations have epistemological significance); by contrast the sustaining of the operational parameters of social kinds is significant with respect to the functions of ontological concepts. The failure of many theories of Personal Identity to address the problems generated by conflating epistemology and ontology In the social sciences renders such theories Inadequate to the task of providing a comprehensive analysis of Personal Identity. The arguments In the thesis pinpoint the nature of this Inadequacy, and show how it might be avoided.
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Du, Toit Jacques Louis. "A typology of designs for social research in the built environment." Thesis, Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/5142.
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Thesis (PhD (Sociology and Social Anthropology))--University of Stellenbosch, 2010.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The aim of this metamethodological study was to construct a typology of designs for social research in the built environment, i.e., architecture, urban design and planning. Currently there is no such typology, while the notion of “research design” is relatively unknown in methodological literature in the built environment field. An outline of the dimensions of social research provided a theoretical lens for methodological analysis, and identified six methodological considerations as classification criteria, including (1) research context, (2) research aim, (3) research purpose, (4) methodological paradigm, (5) methodological approach, and (6) source of data. Exploratory interviews and a survey and methodological content analysis of built environment theses provided a better understanding of methodological issues in conducting social research in the built environment and the potential relevance of a typology of designs. A review of methodological literature identified 25 research design subtypes that can be clustered into 10 prototypical designs for inclusion in the typology, namely: (1) surveys, (2) experiments, (3) modelling, simulation, mapping and visualization, (4) textual and narrative studies, (5) field studies, (6) case studies, (7) intervention research, (8) evaluation research, (9) participatory action research, and (10) metaresearch. A survey and methodological content analysis of journal articles determined the extent to which these designs feature in social research in the built environment. Although all the designs and subtypes feature, metaresearch, case studies, evaluation research and surveys predominate. An initial typology classified the 10 prototypical designs in terms of the six methodological considerations. The typology was tested to see how well it classified the designs of actual studies and revised accordingly. Possible benefits of the typology include greater clarification, improved teaching and decision-making, and methodological reflection. Thus, the typology may support lecturers, students, supervisors, researchers, peer-reviewers and practitioners to have a more articulate, reflexive, and critical orientation with regard to research design to maximize the validity of findings and advance theory, methodology and practice in built environment disciplines. The study concludes that the typology may also mitigate post-modern criticisms against social research in the built environment.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die doel van hierdie metametodologiese studie was om `n tipologie van ontwerpe vir sosiale navorsing in die bou-omgewing (d.w.s. argitektuur, stadsontwerp en beplanning) te konstrueer. Tans is daar geen so tipologie nie, terwyl die nosie van “navorsingsontwerp” relatief onbekend is in metodologiese literatuur in die bou-omgewing veld. `n Uiteensetting van die dimensies van sosiale navorsing het `n teoretiese lens vir metodologiese analises verskaf en ses metodologiese konsiderasies as klassifikasie kriteria geïdentifiseer, insluitend (1) navorsingskonteks, (2) navorsingsoogmerk, (3) navorsingsdoelwit, (4) metodologiese paradigma, (5) metodologiese benadering, en (6) data bron. Verkennende onderhoude en `n opname en metodologiese inhoudsanalise van bou-omgewing tesisse het `n beter begrip van metodologiese kwessies in sosiale navorsing in die bou-omgewing en die moontlike relevansie van `n tipologie van ontwerpe verskaf. `n Oorsig van metodologiese literatuur het 25 navorsingsontwerp subtipes geïdentifiseer wat in 10 prototipe ontwerpe gegroepeer kan word vir insluiting in die tipologie, naamlik (1) opnames, (2) eksperimente, (3) modellering, simulasie, kartering en visualisering, (4) tekstuele en narratiewe studies, (5) veldstudies, (6) gevallestudies, (7) intervensie navorsing, (8) evaluasie navorsing, (9) deelnemende aksie navorsing, en (10) metanavorsing. `n Opname en metodologiese inhoudsanalise van joernaal artikels het die mate waartoe hierdie ontwerpe in sosiale navorsing in die bou-omgewing voorkom bepaal. Alhoewel al die ontwerpe en subtipes voorkom, is metanavorsing, gevallestudies, evaluasie navorsing en opnames predominant. `n Aanvanklike tipologie het die 10 prototipe ontwerpe in terme van die ses metodologiese konsiderasies geklassifiseer. Die tipologie is getoets om te sien hoe goed dit die ontwerpe van werklike studies klassifiseer en dienooreenkomstig gewysig. Moontlike voordele van die tipologie sluit in verbeterde klarifikasie, onderrig, besluitneming en metodologiese refleksie. Die tipologie kan dus dosente, studente, studieleiers, navorsers, beoordelaars en praktisyns ondersteun om `n meer geartikuleerde, refleksiewe en kritiese oriëntasie ten opsigte van navorsingsontwerp te hê om die geldigheid van bevindinge te maksimeer en teorie, metodologie en praktyk in bou-omgewing dissiplines te bevorder. Die studie kom tot die gevolgtrekking dat die tipologie ook postmoderne kritiek teen sosiale navorsing in die bou-omgewing kan mitigeer.