Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques

to many, however, it constantly appears as an instructional problem. The final two chapters serve as excellent summary statements. Chapter 13 emphasizes the application of previous text material to the classroom situation. Of great significance is the author's discussion of commonly defined independent, dependent, and moderator variables. The final chapter focuses on evaluation in the overall sense, particularly as it relates to programs of study. The principles of measurement and research design are applied to the evaluation process through several ex-

Educational Research: Competencies for Analysis and Application:

Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity

Qualitative Interviewing: The Art of Hearing Data

The theory of affordances

Organizations need to protect information assets against cyber crime, denial-of-service attacks, web hackers, data breaches, identity and credit card theft, and fraud. Criminals often try to achieve financial, political, or personal gain through these attacks, so the threats that their actions prompt are insidious motivators for organizations to adopt information systems security (ISS) approaches. Extant ISS research has traditionally examined ISS in e-commerce business organizations. The present study investigates ISS within government, analyzing power relationships during an ISS standards adoption and accreditation process, where a head of state mandates that all government agencies are to comply with a national de jure ISS standard. Using a canonical action research method, designated managers of ISS services across small, medium, and large agencies were monitored and assessed for progress to accreditation through surveys, interviews, participant observation at round table forums, and focus groups. By 2008, accreditation status across the 89 agencies participating in this study was approximately 33 percent fully accredited, with 67 percent partially compliant. The research uses Clegg's (1989) circuits of power framework to interpret power, resistance, norms, and cultural relationships in the process of compliance. The paper highlights that a strategy based on organization subunit size is helpful in motivating and assisting organizations to move toward accreditation. Mandated standard accreditation was inhibited by insufficient resource allocation, lack of senior management input, and commitment. Factors contributing to this resistance were group norms and cultural biases.

Circuits of power: a study of mandated compliance to an information systems security de jure standard in a government organization

As the cost of health care rises governments everywhere are examining how on-line services can replace or augment face-to-face services. Consequently, many health bodies are establishing on-line health forums where patients can share ideas with, or solicit information from, both other patients and health professionals. In the wake of this trend, many on-line forums have arisen which do not have the imprimatur of official government services but are run and managed by private individuals sharing experiences outside of the patient-clinician channel. This phenomenon creates risks and challenges for users who need to evaluate the credibility of unknown and often anonymous contributors to these forums. This paper examines how users assess the credibility of the information in these forums. Five criteria were discovered in the first stage of the work. We then quantitatively tested the relationship between those criteria based on two types of information. Our analysis shows that different criteria are used by participants in online health forums for scientific information and experiential information. We used these novel findings to develop a model for how information credibility is assessed in online health forums. These findings provide important lessons for health promotion bodies considering how to encourage the sharing of valuable health information on-line as well as guidelines for improved tools for health self-management.

Who can you trust? Credibility assessment in online health forums

This article investigates the key drivers and inhibitors for information system security and business continuity management in E-government. Based on data collected from a broad cross-section of government organizations, the key implementation issues include awareness, active management support, training, and appropriate funding.

Determining Key Factors in E-Government Information System Security

The electronic gulf between shoppers and products makes evaluating a physical product on offer at an e-store a potentially problematic activity. We propose that the outcome of the product evaluation task is determined by the fit between the type of information provided and the type of information sought by the consumer and that this, in turn, influences a consumer's attitude toward an e-store. An experiment to compare the impact of one type of advanced evaluation support technology, the virtual model, with a more basic online catalog, is then described. Results indicate that virtual models are potentially valuable when a customer is concerned with self-image and considerably less valuable when concerned with functionality. In more general terms, variation in end-user attitudes toward the object of the task (evaluative attitude) influenced how informed consumers felt about a product when using different technologies. Feeling informed, in turn, had a strong effect on consumer attitudes toward the store. Our results highlight two important issues for online stores: (1) a consumer's information requirements depend on his or her attitude to a product rather than product attributes; and (2) meeting or not meeting these information requirements affects perceptions of the store. Business success in this context therefore appears to hinge on addressing the specific functional and image-related information needs of customers rather than simply providing more interactivity or technical functionality.

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Putting Yourself in the Picture: An Evaluation of Virtual Model Technology as an Online Shopping Tool

Mobile Internet, which refers to the use of the Internet via a handheld device (such as mobile phone or PDA), has received much attention in various countries. At this stage, little is known why this technology has been used widely in some countries such as Japan and Korea, and has not been so in other countries. To enrich the existing studies in this context, which are currently limited, this paper explores the Australian consumer’s perception of mobile Internet in order to identify some factors that may foster or hinder its use. The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is employed to provide the theoretical foundation for this study. Based on the empirical data collected from a survey, the findings demonstrate the importance of functionality (usefulness), an easy-to-use interface, and social networks as critical influences on both intention to use and the extent of usage of mobile Internet in Australia.

Stephen Smith

Papers

Circuits of power: a study of mandated compliance to an information systems security de jure standard in a government organization

Who can you trust? Credibility assessment in online health forums

Determining Key Factors in E-Government Information System Security

Putting Yourself in the Picture: An Evaluation of Virtual Model Technology as an Online Shopping Tool

Consumers' perception of mobile internet in Australia