Organizational research frequently involves seeking judgmental response data from informants within organizations. This article discusses why using rnultiple informants improves the quality of response data and thereby the validity of research findings. The authors show that when there are multiple informants who disagree, responses aggregated with confidenceor competence-based weights outperto...

We propose a network-based method to monitor health behaviors and point out the general conditions for it to work effectively. The method helps to identify effective informants for monitoring future health behaviors and to triangulate self-reports of sensitive health behaviors. We demonstrate the method by studying the smoking behaviors of over 4000 middle school students in China. Using studen...

BACKGROUND Little is known about women's expectations, needs, and experiences with abortion counseling and the factors that influence their experiences. METHODS This study sought to investigate individual- and facility-level factors that influenced women's reports of receiving abortion counseling and the helpfulness of counseling. Data were drawn from quantitative interviews with 718 patients...

An attractive feature of Prediction Markets (PMs, also called information markets or virtual stock markets) is that they provide economic incentives for informants to share unique information, i.e., information that no other informants possess. This feature and the broad availability of the Internet have lead to applications of prediction markets in a number of fields. Most reported application...

In this paper we define a trust-based argumentative reasoning formalism where the source of the received information is used to decide the warranted conclusions. In the proposed formalism, the agent’s tentative conclusions are supported by arguments, and these conclusions can in turn be attacked by other arguments, referred to as counter-arguments. The inference mechanism compares arguments and...

Cambodian refugee women frequently face the cumulative trauma of war experiences and cultural adaptation to the American inner-city environment. This qualitative study investigated cultural beliefs, coping strategies, and management of family stress among Cambodian refugee women living in the inner-city environment. Focused and open-ended interviews were conducted in the informants' homes using...

objectives: this study designed to detect the prevalence of ovarian and/or adrenal hyperandrogenism in women with polycystic ovary syndrome (pcos).materials: one hundred pcos women included in this cross sectional study after informed consent and approval of the study by local institute ethical committee. diagnosis of pcos based on the rotterdam eshre criteria. studied women underwent complete ...