Browsing by Subject "social sciences"

This chapter discusses main opportunities and challenges of assessing and utilizing personality traits in personalized interactive systems and services. This unique perspective arises from our long-term collaboration on research projects involving three groups on human-computer interaction (HCI), psychology, and statistics. Currently, personalization in HCI is often based on past user behavior, preferences, and interaction context. We argue that personality traits provide a promising additional source of information for personalization, which goes beyond context- and device-specific behavior and preferences. We first give an overview of the well-established Big Five personality trait model from psychology. We then present previous findings on the influence of personality in HCI associated with the benefits and challenges of personalization. These findings include the preference for interactive systems, filtering of information to increase personal relevance, communication behavior, and the impact on trust and acceptance. Moreover, we present first approaches of personality-based recommender systems. We then identify several opportunities and use cases for personality-aware personalization: (i) personal communication between users, (ii) recommendations upon first use, (iii) persuasive technology, (iv) trust and comfort in autonomous vehicles, and (v) empathic intelligent systems. Furthermore, we highlight main challenges. First, we point out technological challenges of personality computing. To benefit from personality awareness, systems need to automatically assess the user’s personality. To create empathic intelligent agents (e. g., voice assistants), a consistent personality has to be synthesized. Second, personality-aware personalization raises questions about user concerns and views, particularly privacy and data control. Another challenge is acceptance and trust in personality-aware systems due to the sensitivity of the data. Moreover, the importance of an accurate mental model for users’ trust in a system was recently underlined by the right for explanations in the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. Such considerations seem particularly relevant for systems that assess and utilize personality. Finally, we examine methodological requirements such as the need for large sample sizes and appropriate measurements. We conclude with a summary of opportunities and challenges of personality-aware personalization and discuss future research questions.

Ever since the new Swiss data protection law, the question of how to properly handle data has occupied most tourist destinations and service providers. Dr. Mauro Gotsch is a scientific project leader at the University of Applied Sciences of the Grisons and an expert when it comes to data strategies in tourism. In the interview, he shares the most important findings of his research and explains why a professional data strategy is especially important for tourism companies.

In the domain of education, myths and misconceptions function as invisible barriers, impeding evidence-based teaching and learning practices. Despite robust refutation, these so-called zombie concepts persist, deeply embedded within cultural and institutional frameworks, often making mythbusting seem like a Sisyphean task. This blog post, I examine the dual nature of mythbusting in education: its perceived futility and its undeniable necessity. I argue that while debunking myths is daunting and often feels akin to a battle against windmills, it remains a critical endeavor to foster evidence-informed practices. I outline some challenges involved in changing entrenched misbeliefs but at the same time propose some strategies to mythbusting, such as targeting the undecided middle, fostering mental immunity, and prioritizing the most harmful/impactful myths.

In the last two decades, economic motivation research has undergone a paradigm shift when it comes to the effect of incentive schemes on individual performance and motivation. Inspired by self-determination theory, a new branch in economics evolved called behavioral economics. Especially by evidencing the negative effect of “pay-for-performance” on intrinsic motivation, called the “crowding-out” or “overjustification” effect, it challenges the economic paradigm of the relative price-effect and its inherent belief in incentives as universal remedy for motivation and individual performance. This article reviews the findings of behavioral economics on motivation. Drawing on these results we discuss which institutional conditions strengthen rather than weaken intrinsic motivation. We demonstrate that fairness, participation, market-driven wages, and normatively affected decision-making contexts have a positive effect on intrinsic motivation.

Our attempt to describe the state of qualitative research in Switzerland starts out with an impressionist sketch which inevitably is selective, subjective and culturally biased. In order to reach a more objective stance, we gather some facts and figures and present them by means of descriptive statistics. Based on the database of the Swiss Information and Data Archive Service for the Social Sciences (SIDOS), we analyze a sample of qualitative, sociological research projects funded by national science foundations (Swiss, German and French) between 1995-2004. We compare qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods projects and try to find similarities, differences and trends: Has the ratio of qualitative research projects increased over the last ten years? Can we find cultural differences, e.g. a preference of German or French Swiss researchers for either qualitative or quantitative or mixed methods designs? Do different types of institutions, or do men and women have such different preferences? Which methods are prevailing in Swiss qualitative research? In a second data set collected by a survey of our own, we broaden the perspective to other disciplines and try to identify the most commonly used methods and theoretical approaches. But we have also obtained individual portraits of the qualitative researchers in Switzerland with their preferences of theoretical approaches and methods, their expertise, their research and their teaching courses.

The Futurist movement marked a crucial rupture within European literature and art. For all its political and cultural contradictions, Italian Futurism called into question all aspects of literary and artistic production, from the sacrality and eternalness of the work of art to the privileged role of the artist and the passivity of the reader and the spectator.

Introduction: There has been limited research investigating whether small financial incentives can promote participation, behaviour change, and engagement in physical activity promotion programs. This study evaluates the effects of two types of small financial incentives within a physical activity promotion program of a Swiss health insurance company. Study Design: Three-arm cluster-randomized trial comparing small personal financial incentives and charity financial incentives (10 Swiss Francs, equal to $10.4) for each month with an average step count of at least 10,000 steps per day) to control. Insurees' federal state of residence was the unit of randomization. We collected data in 2015 and completed the analyses in 2018. Setting/participants: We invited German-speaking insurees of a large health insurer in Switzerland. Invited insurees were aged ≥ 18 years, enrolled in complementary insurance plans and registered on the insurer's online platform. Main outcome measures: Primary outcome was the participation rate. Secondary outcomes were steps per day, participant days that more than 10,000 steps were achieved and non-usage attrition over the first three months of the program. Results: Participation rate was 5.94% in the personal financial incentive group (OR: 1.96; 95% CI: 1.55 to 2.49) and 4.98% in the charity financial incentive group (OR: 1.59; 95% CI: 1.25 to 2.01) compared to 3.23% in the control group. At the start of the program, the charity financial group had a 12% higher chance to walk 10,000 steps per day than the control group (OR: 1.68; 95% CI: 1.23 to 2.30), but this effect dissipated after three months. Steps per day and non-usage attrition did not differ significantly between the groups. Conclusions: Small personal and charity financial incentives can increase participation in physical activity promotion programs. Incentives may need to be modified in order to prevent attrition and promote behaviour change over a longer period of time.

Current teaching and learning of system dynamics is based on materials derived from the expertise of masters. However, there is little explicit reference to the stages which beginners go through to become proficient nor what is learned at each of these stages. We argue that this hinders cumulative research and development in teaching and learning strategies. We engaged 15 acknowledged masters in the field to take part in a three-round Delphi study to develop an operational representation of the competence development stages and what is learned at each stage. The resulting system dynamics competence framework consists of a qualified, expert-evaluated, empirically based set of seven skills and 265 learning outcomes. The skills provide a common orientation, in the language of current educational research, to facilitate research, course design and certification efforts to ensure quality standards. To conclude this paper provides avenues for future work.