Single and joint inclusion probabilities are generally available and known for complex survey designs up to the point where survey weights are modified due to nonresponse and population controls. Best practice by sophisticated survey practitioners generally includes weight modifications, first by calibration, ratio adjustment or raking to correct for nonresponse, next by further steps to impose...

Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) is a potentially powerful tool for improving the management of the complex social systems aspect of Information Systems. Yet if it is to be employed effectively IS managers need to understand the theory of social systems that makes SSM a meaningful practical approach. However finding out about that social theory is not straightforward. It is 20 years since the fir...

The term “Digital Divide” refers to the gap between people and communities who have access to the information resources and those who have not. As with any complex issue, there are several approaches to the problem, and several stakeholders trying to design interventions to close the gap. The present paper uses a combination of the conceptualization tools proposed by Soft Systems Methodology an...

Renfrewshire Council for Voluntary Services (RCVS) is involved in a large-scale project to investigate and develop a wireless network in Paisley and its environs. This exciting project has implications for many different actors and stakeholders, not the least, RCVS itself as its members contemplate its future possible practices, processes and services that a successful wireless network may enab...

The complex relationship between organizations, information technology (IT) and information systems (IS) indicates that changes to the organization are likely to have an effect on the usefulness of existing IS and the success of IS projects. Information needs of new and existing users have to be assessed and organizational IS evaluated for their capability to satisfy these needs. This paper des...

e-Government systems present new challenges for user involvement in the design process. Existing user-centred and participatory design methodologies were mainly developed for situations where a user is in the workplace. In e-government applications the user population is heterogeneous and numerous; the increasing ubiquity of e-government systems also questions the concept of “the interface”. Th...

This paper offers an alternative method for conceptualising and presenting an information systems literature review, based on Checkland’s Soft Systems Method (SSM). We apply this approach to service quality research in the Information Systems (IS) field. Despite a large volume of existing literature, the number of new articles published in this area continues to increase, without achieving a co...

This paper presents a soft systems evaluation of two multi-objective genetic algorithms (mGAs) applied to land use planning. These mGAs search for a set of alternative solutions de ning the structure of the relationship between two or more objectives. To investigate the usefulness of the mGAs for decision support the sets of solutions found by the mGAs are compared with allocations made by prof...

This paper is concerned with a development of a theory on probabilistic models, and in particular Bayesian networks, when handling continuous variables. While it is possible to deal with continuous variables without discretisation, the simplest approach is to discretise them. A fuzzy partition of continuous domains will be used, which requires an inference procedure able to deal with soft evide...

A vast number of different methodologies for developing computer-based information systems are available. They form a motley spectrum in the sense that they apply to different parts of the development process and to different modes of thinking and acting. At a meta-level relative to methodologies is the discipline that deals with these differences and the applicability of methodologies in diffe...