This paper (1) appraises The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s widely disseminated and reported indices ranking states on their relative level of charitable giving, and (2) presents a different set of rankings based on a more valid research methodology, what we call the CWP (Center on Wealth and Philanthropy) Index. Our more precise methods raise important questions for the community of nonprofit sch...

Computing with Words (CW) methodology has been used in several different environments to narrow the differences between human reasoning and computing. As Decision Making is a typical human mental process, it seems natural to apply the CW methodology in order to create and enrich decision models in which the information that is provided and manipulated has a qualitative nature. In this paper we ...

Computing with words (CWW) techniques have been shown to be useful in the management of imperfect information. From the programmer’s standpoint, new tools are necessary to ease the use of these techniques within current programming platforms. This paper presents a step in this direction by describing a general framework that supports the implementation of applications dealing with fuzzy objects...

the present study seeks to investigate users’ perception and evaluation of the function of designed environments and highlights a deeper understanding of man-environment relationship. the study tries to answer the question: “is there any relationship between the physical features of environment and users’ perception and evaluation of the environment and their spatial behaviors?” such investigat...

Motivational aspects of product use have recently attracted an increasing interest in the field of Human-Computer Interaction. This paper presents a study that explored the discrepancies between designers’ and users’ perceptions as antecedents of failures in motivating use. The study corroborates prior findings suggesting that designers often fall short in accounting for users’ views on the pro...

LibQUAL+ model is a web-based survey to measure the library service quality according to the users’ perceptions. Although it is the most popular method, it presents two major drawbacks: (i) it is devised on cardinal scale to measure the library service quality (from 1 to 9), but, due to the subjectivity, impression and vagueness of the human beings when attempting to qualify phenomena related t...

This study examined factors influencing parents' preferences and their perceptions of their children's preferences for picturebooks. First, a content analysis was conducted on a set of picturebooks (N = 87) drawn from the sample described in Wagner (2013); Then, parents (N = 149) rated the books and several content properties were examined for their ability to predict parents' preferences and t...

The present study-both qualitative and quantitative--explored fifty EFL learners’ preferences for receiving error feedback on different grammatical units as well as their beliefs about teacher feedback strategies. The study also examined the effect of the students’ level of writing ability on their views about the importance of teacher feedback on different error types. Data was gathered throug...

Peri-urban ecosystems are often managed as recreation areas or to enhance aesthetic value on the urban fringe. Scholars and land-use practitioners lack a current understanding of the supply of and the demands for these peri-urban ecosystem services (ES). In this study, we analysed the perceptions of 500 users and interest groups regarding the ES provided by the Bilbao Metropolitan Greenbelt (BM...