Protecting Privacy on Mobile Apps: A Principal–Agent Perspective

Although individuals increasingly use mobile applications (apps) in their daily lives, uncertainty exists regarding how the apps will use the information they request, and it is necessary to protect users from privacy-invasive apps. Recent literature has begun to pay much attention to the privacy issue in the context of mobile apps. However, little attention has been given to designing the permission request interface to reduce individuals’ perceived uncertainty and to support their informed decisions. Drawing on the principal–agent perspective, our study aims to understand the effects of permission justification, certification, and permission relevance on users’ perceived uncertainty, which in turn influences their permission authorization. Two studies were conducted with vignettes. Our results show that certification and permission relevance indeed reduce users’ perceived uncertainty. Moreover, permission relevance moderates the relationship between permission justification and perceived uncertainty. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Ensemble Metropolis Light Transport

This article proposes a Markov Chain Monte Carlo ( MCMC ) rendering algorithm based on a family of guided transition kernels. The kernels exploit properties of ensembles of light transport paths, which are distributed according to the lighting in the scene, and utilize this information to make informed decisions for guiding local path sampling. Critically, our approach does not require caching distributions in world space, saving time and memory, yet it is able to make guided sampling decisions based on whole paths. We show how this can be implemented efficiently by organizing the paths in each ensemble and designing transition kernels for MCMC rendering based on a carefully chosen subset of paths from the ensemble. This algorithm is easy to parallelize and leads to improvements in variance when rendering a variety of scenes.

Tutorial for Abstract Semantic Associative Network Training (AbSANT): Theoretical Rationale, Step-by-Step Protocol, and Material Resources

Purpose: The availability of evidence-based therapies for abstract words is limited. Abstract Semantic Associative Network Training (AbSANT) is theoretically motivated and has been shown to not only improve directly trained abstract words, such as the word emergency in the category hospital, but also promote generalization to related concrete words, such as the word doctor . Method: This tutorial provides step-by-step instructions, including cueing strategies, and material resources for conducting AbSANT. Importantly, this tutorial also explains the theoretical motivation behind AbSANT, as well as information regarding the population, dose, and environment characteristics of effective trials, to help clinicians make informed decisions regarding the applicability of this approach and to guide decision-making throughout the steps of therapy. Conclusions: AbSANT is an effective, theoretically based treatment for abstract words. This tutorial provides all of the resources needed to conduct AbSANT with clients with aphasia. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.17776211

The Role of Program Evaluation in Keeping Army Health “Army Strong”: Translating Lessons Learned Into Best Practices

ABSTRACT Service Members and military beneficiaries face complex and ill-structured challenges, including suicide, sexual violence, increasing health care costs, and the evolving coronavirus pandemic. Military and other government practitioners must identify effective programs, policies, and initiatives to preserve the health and ensure the readiness of our Force. Both research and program evaluation are critical to identify interventions best positioned to prevent disease, protect the public’s health, and promote health and well-being within our ranks to retain a medically ready force and reduce the global burden of disease. While military and medical leaders are typically well versed in research and understand the role of research in evidence-informed decisions, they may be less aware of program evaluation. Program evaluation is the systematic application of scientific methods to assess the design, implementation, improvement, or outcomes of a program, policy, or initiative. Although program evaluators commonly utilize scientific or research methods to answer evaluation questions, evaluation ultimately differs from research in its intent. Several recently published federal and Department of Defense policies specifically reference program evaluation, emphasizing its importance to the military and government as a whole. The Army is uniquely positioned to conduct medical and public health evaluation activities and there are several Army organizations and entities that routinely perform this work. For example, the United States Army Public Health Center (APHC) is among recognized military experts in public health assessment and program evaluation. Given the breadth of our work, the APHC understands the challenges to conducting evaluation studies in the Army and we have thoughtfully examined the conditions common to successful evaluation studies. In this commentary, we share our lessons learned to assist military colleagues, potential partners, and others in successfully evaluating the programs, policies, and initiatives necessary to keep our Service Members and beneficiaries healthy and ready. There are several challenges to executing evaluation studies in the Army that may be relevant across all Services. These include but are not limited to frequent Army leadership transitions, urgency to report study results, lack of program documentation and adequate planning for evaluation, expectation management to ensure stakeholders are well-informed about the evaluation process, and a disorganized data landscape. These challenges may hinder the successful execution of evaluation studies, or prevent them from being attempted in the first place, depriving Army leaders of quality, actionable information to make evidence-informed decisions. Despite the aforementioned challenges, we have identified a number of best practices to overcome these challenges and conduct successful evaluation studies. These facilitators of successful evaluations can be summarized as: collaboration with engaged stakeholders who understand the value of evaluation, evaluation studies aligned with larger strategic priorities, agile methodology, thoughtful evaluation planning, and effective communication with stakeholders. We wholeheartedly recommend and encourage program evaluation at every opportunity, and we anticipate the call for evaluation and evidence-informed decisions to continually increase. Our hope is that others – to include partners and stakeholders within and external to the military – will be able to leverage and apply this information, especially the identified best practices, in their evaluation efforts to ensure success.

Prudence, Ethics and Anticipation in Visionary Leaders

In ethics, prudence is an essential skill in making informed decisions. Although several studies in various fields have dealt with the notion, few empirical studies have addressed one of its inextricable aspects: anticipation. To gain a better understanding of the notion, this study questioned fifteen leaders whose peers consider to be “visionary” in their respective fields. The results of this qualitative study based on semi-structured interviews describe the fundamental aspects of anticipation according to three categories: reasoning and trend analysis, implementation and strategy, and personality and values.

PENERAPAN METODE SIMPLE ADDITIVE WEIGHTING UNTUK PERANGKINGAN KINERJA PEGAWAI TERBAIK DI STIKES GETSEMPENA LHOKSUKON

Employee performance appraisal in an institution is an absolute thing that needs to be done, where employees compete fiercely to get the best category in order to achieve a brilliant career in that agency. Every agency needs qualified, honest, educated, and disciplined employees to ensure good quality. Each agency has a different and selective way of determining good employees, this can also be a consideration for agency leaders to choose the best employee criteria so that they are worthy of being placed in strategic positions. From some of the descriptions above, this research needs to be carried out which aims to assist a leader in an institution in determining the best employees. This study applies the Simple Additive Weighting (SAW) method for decision making to rank the best employee performance. The steps taken are determining the criteria and attributes that will be the reference in the decision matrix assessment so that the final result obtained is the ranking of the best criteria and attribute values ​​that can help the leadership of an agency to make informed decisions in determining the best employees to be placed in strategic positions in these agencies.

New realities for Polish primary school informatics education affected by COVID-19

In the paper, the authors discuss the first research effort to explore the transition from traditional teaching into distance teaching in Polish primary schools enforced by COVID-19. The first research question was addressed to primary school students and was dedicated to furnishing them with ICT equipment for crisis-prompted distance informatics learning. According to the obtained results, almost all Polish students during the pandemic have a technical opportunity to participate in distance learning and to use digital devices to develop their digital competences. Hence the second research question was addressed to the experts, demystifies whether the accessibility and the availability of ICTs could increase students’ informatics learning outcomes in out-of-school primary education settings. The obtained results reveal the significant importance of out-of-school informatics education in pandemic time. Moreover, in the first wave of pandemic, distance informatics education had the same or similar effect as if students learn informatics by themselves, without school lessons and teachers’ support. The obtained results should strengthen teachers and school leaders in making informed decisions during the shift into distance informatics education. Also, by investigating participants’ informatics learning outcomes and teacher preparedness and choices when implementing distance education, authors hope that the study may be helpful for policy-makers with the progressive changes in education and government support for informatics, especially in Poland, in making informed decisions to aid the transition into distance education as well as developing preparedness plans for future pandemics.