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Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences50%

Selected Abstracts

Shopping for Schools: How Do Marginal Consumers Gather Information About Schools?

POLICY STUDIES JOURNAL, Issue 2 2003
Jack Buckley
The theory of the marginal consumer holds that a subset of better informed consumers can create a globally more efficient market through their purchase decisions. In the market for education created by recent school choice initiatives, these "market mavens" are essential to the successful functioning of the choice system given the empirically documented low quantity and quality of information possessed by the average consumer. Little is known, however, about the differences between how marginal consumers and average consumers of education search for information and make decisions about their children's schooling. [source]

Searching for Culture,High and Low

JOURNAL OF COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION, Issue 3 2007
Jennifer Kayahara
This article examines the link between finding out about cultural activities on the Web and finding out through other people. Using data from interviews with Torontonians, we show that people first obtain cultural information from interpersonal ties or other offline sources and only then turn to the Web to amplify this information. The decisions about what information to seek from which media can be evaluated in terms of a uses and gratifications approach; the main gratifications identified include efficiency and the availability of up-to-date information. Our findings also have implications for the model of the traditional two-step flow of communication. We suggest the existence of new steps, whereby people receive recommendations from their interpersonal ties, gather information about these recommendations online, take this information back to their ties, and go back to the Web to check the new information that their ties have provided them. [source]

Toward an epistemology of Wikipedia

JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, Issue 10 2008
Don Fallis
Wikipedia (the "free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit") is having a huge impact on how a great many people gather information about the world. So, it is important for epistemologists and information scientists to ask whether people are likely to acquire knowledge as a result of having access to this information source. In other words, is Wikipedia having good epistemic consequences? After surveying the various concerns that have been raised about the reliability of Wikipedia, this article argues that the epistemic consequences of people using Wikipedia as a source of information are likely to be quite good. According to several empirical studies, the reliability of Wikipedia compares favorably to the reliability of traditional encyclopedias. Furthermore, the reliability of Wikipedia compares even more favorably to the reliability of those information sources that people would be likely to use if Wikipedia did not exist (viz., Web sites that are as freely and easily accessible as Wikipedia). In addition, Wikipedia has a number of other epistemic virtues (e.g., power, speed, and fecundity) that arguably outweigh any deficiency in terms of reliability. Even so, epistemologists and information scientists should certainly be trying to identify changes (or alternatives) to Wikipedia that will bring about even better epistemic consequences. This article suggests that to improve Wikipedia, we need to clarify what our epistemic values are and to better understand why Wikipedia works as well as it does. Somebody who reads Wikipedia is "rather in the position of a visitor to a public restroom," says Mr. McHenry, Britannica's former editor. "It may be obviously dirty, so that he knows to exercise great care, or it may seem fairly clean, so that he may be lulled into a false sense of security. What he certainly does not know is who has used the facilities before him." One wonders whether people like Mr. McHenry would prefer there to be no public lavatories at all. The Economist (Vol. 379, April 22, 2006, pp. 14,15) [source]

Transforming an Evidence-Based Intervention to Prevent Perinatal Depression for Low-Income Latina Immigrants

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ORTHOPSYCHIATRY, Issue 1 2010
Huynh-Nhu Le
There is growing interest in examining the extent to which evidence-based interventions, found to be efficacious for majority populations, are effective for low-income, ethnically diverse populations. Yet limited attention has been devoted to documenting the specific steps taken in adapting these interventions to meet the needs of the target ethnic population. This article describes the cultural adaptation of an evidence-based cognitive,behavioral therapy intervention to prevent perinatal depression in 2 different Latina immigrant communities using a 5-step iterative process: (a) identify need; (b) gather information; (c) design adaptation; (d) implement, evaluate, and refine adaptation; and (e) replicate and disseminate. Appropriate adaptations of evidence-based interventions have the potential to reduce disparities in utilization and outcomes for high-risk populations. Researchers should document their efforts to transform services for low-income, ethnically diverse populations. [source]