Web sites where users create and rate content as well as form networks with other users display long-tailed distributions of user activity. Using data from one such community site, Essembly, we propose and evaluate mechanisms for these distributions that rely only on information actually available to users. For Essembly, we describe the scale-free degree distribution of the social network as a ...

OBJECTIVE: To introduce a human capital approach to reduce health disparities in South Carolina by increasing the number and quality of trained minority professionals in public health practice and research. METHODS: The conceptual basis and elements of Project EXPORT in South Carolina are described. Project EXPORT is a community based participatory research (CBPR) translational project designe...

Following the goals of Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR), this paper describes how Native Hawaiian values emerged as a methodology for the conduct of a study with Native Hawaiians residing in Southern California. The equitable placing of community values side by side with scientific values show that community concepts can parallel and extend CBPR premises and are more than a variabl...

This chapter examines the defining linguistic innovations and social motivations for one of the most popular modes of computer mediated communication: the online chat. Due to its nature of being largely synchronous, anonymous, and mainly text-based, online chat offers a social interactional environment where people can experience the feeling of making new friends or acquaintances, psychological...

The term filter bubble has been coined to describe the situation of online users which—due to filtering algorithms—live in a personalised information universe biased towards their own interests. In this paper we use an agent-based simulation framework to measure the actual risk and impact of filter bubble effects occurring in online communities due to content or author based personalisation alg...

BACKGROUND Accurate tools for assessing household wealth are essential for many health studies in developing countries. Household survey and participatory wealth ranking (PWR) are two approaches to generate data for this purpose. METHODS A household survey and PWR were conducted among eight villages in rural South Africa. We developed three indicators of household wealth using the data. One i...

U.S. consumers currently hold $880 billion in revolving debt, with a mean household credit card balance of approximately $6,000. Although economic factors play a role in this societal issue, it is clear that psychological forces also affect consumers' decisions to take on and maintain unmanageable debt balances. We examine three psychological barriers to the responsible use of credit and debt. ...