the data for this study has been collected from a questionnaire examining the relationship between birth weight of the new born and some physical and socio-economic characteristics of the mother. between dec.1975 to jan.1976, 1553 women who had referred to two hospitals in tehran for labor: 981 to farah maternity and 572 to firoozgar hospital have been interviewed. the results of the study have...

This special socio-technical supplement of the Open Medical Informatics Journal showcases a number of innovative and unique research approaches that highlight the current scope of socio-technical perspectives in the health informatics discipline. In just three short decades the discipline of health informatics has evolved from a primary focus on the " application of computers to all fields of m...

Modeling has emerged as a key technology in analysis of socio-ecological systems. However, the tendency for modeling to focus on the mechanistic materiality of biophysical systems obscures the diversity of performative social behaviors and normative cultural positions of actors within the modeled system. The fact that changes in the biophysical system can be culturally constructed in different ...

The present study investigates a type of metaphor involving socio-cultural values in their mapping and interpretation. The linguistic data are Japanese metaphorical expressions that conceptualize women as plants or animals. First, the typology of metaphor based on previous research is discussed, focusing on conceptual, correlation, and resemblance metaphors, followed by our proposal to distingu...

We explored healthcare-related experiences of women drug court participants through combining context from the socio-ecological model with motivation needs for health behavior as indicated by self-determination theory. Five focus groups with 8 women drug court participants, 8 court staff, and 9 community service providers were examined using qualitative framework analysis. Themes emerged across...

In this paper we seek to empirically study the use of location-awareness of others in the context of mobile collaboration. We report on a field experiment carried out using a pervasive game we developed called CatchBob!. Using both quantitative and qualitative data, we show the underwhelming effects of automating location-awareness. Our results indeed shows that automating this process does not...

The aim of this paper is to provide a theory of the role trust plays in knowledge sharing processes, by exploiting a cognitive model of the goals and beliefs of an agent involved in the decision of passing and/or accepting knowledge, and a related model of the symmetrical or asymmetrical trust relationships within a group (Trust-Nets). This theory is based on the claim that trust is a fundament...

This paper defines cross-functionality as the awareness that organizational actors have of the coupled and integrated nature of processes across various business units, which allows employees to deliver products and services to customers. That the implementation of enterprise systems (ES) provides a more complete crossfunctional view of the firm has been taken for granted by managers and resear...

Socio-technical systems are social systems that incorporate technological infrastructures. At the group level of analysis, the most important question in understanding socio-technical systems is how their technological infrastructures modulate collective capacities for performance and experience. This research addresses collective capacities with respect to various sorts of communities—interest...