• 한국방사선학회논문지
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• 제10권4호
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• pp.255-261
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• 2016

PET/CT 촬영에서 정량분석에 영향을 주는 다양한 인자 중 현재 상품화된 CT 조영제와 MRI 조영제의 종류별 각 성분의 특성에 따른 SUV의 변화를 비교 분석하고자 하였다. 실험장비는 Discovery 690 PET/CT(Ge)와 NEMA NU2-1994 PET phantom를 이용하였고, 팬텀에 증류수 2/3를 채워 넣은 후 방사성동위원소(18F-FDG 37 MBq)와 각각의 CT와 MRI 조영제를 순차적으로 주입하여 팬텀을 고르게 교반하고 다시 증류수를 가득 채운 후 기포가 생기지 않게 하였다. 방출스캔은 FDG 또는 FDG와 혼합한 조영제를 넣고 40분에 15분 동안 스캔하였으며, 투과스캔은 CT로 관전압 120 kVp, 관전류 40 mA, 회전시간 0.5 sec, 단면두께 3.27 mm, DFOV 30 cm의 조건으로 스캔하였다. 분석방법으로 정량분석은 각각 10, 15, 20, 25, 30번째 slice에서 region of interest (ROI)를 설정하여 각각 SUVmean, SUVmax를 구하였다. 결과적으로 순수 FDG 영상과 비교에서 MRI 조영제를 혼합한 3종류의 영상 모두에서 SUVmean가 높게 측정되었으나 통계적 유의성은 없었고, SUVmax 에서는 유의한 결과를 얻었다. 또한 4종류의 CT 조영제 영상은 SUVmean, SUVmax 모두 유의한 결과를 얻었다. PET/CT는 영상의 정확도를 위해 감쇠 보정은 다양한 방법으로 시행되고 있지만 CT와 MRI 조영제는 감쇠보정 시 영상의 왜곡에 의한 진단적 가치를 저하시킬 수 있다. 이러한 이유로 진료 당일 여러 종류의 검사를 시행하기 전 반드시 선행되어야 할 검사를 선별하여 서로 영향을 주지 않도록 함으로서 고객에게 차별화된 양질의 의료서비스를 제공해야 한다.

• 대한소아치과학회지
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• 제28권4호
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• pp.600-612
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• 2001

본 연구는 소아의 외상에 관한 실태를 파악하여 외상의 예방 및 치료법을 확립하고자 전북 대학교병원 소아치과에 1998년 4월 1일부터 2000년 3월 31일까지 2년간 외상을 주소로 내원한 212명(치아수:431개)의 환자를 대상으로 설문지 및 구강검사를 통하여 연령, 성별분포, 발생원인, 초진시 처치, 치아외상의 세부항목을 조사, 분류하여 다음과 같은 결론을 얻었다. 첫째, 모든 나이군을 통해, 남아가 여아보다 치아외상의 더 높은 빈도를 보인다. 둘째, 환자방문이 가장 높은 나이는 유치에서는 1-2세, 영구치에서는 8-9세이다. 셋째, 외상원인으로 유치는 넘어짐, 추락, 충돌이고, 영구치는 넘어짐, 충돌, 사고, 타박 등이다. 외상빈도는 계절적으로 유치는 5월, 영구치는 3월에 가장 많으며, 유치에서는 수요일에, 영구치는 화요일과 목요일에 많다. 치아외상은 주로 오전에 발생한다. 넷째, 어린아동들은 넘어지거나 가구에 부딪혀서 가정에서 주로 손상을 받는다. 나이든 아동들은 가정밖인 학교등에서 스포츠나 사고등에 의해 외상이 증가한다. 다섯째, 가장 흔히 손상받는 부위는 상악유중절치, 상악중절치이다. 유치에서 손상은 동요 진탕이 많고, 영구치는 치관파절이 많고 또한 동요 진탕도 많다. 여섯째, 상하순 및 상악치은 열상이 가장 흔한 연조직 손상으로 나타난다. 일곱째 초진시 처치는 유치에서 경과관찰과 발치가 가장 흔한 치료법이며, 영구치에서는 주로 수복처치와 정복고정이 시행된다.

• 대한소아치과학회지
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• 제37권1호
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• pp.65-72
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• 2010

전신마취는 치과치료시 일반적인 방법으로 행동조절이 불가능한 환자 및 별도의 의학적 처치가 필요한 환자를 위한 행동조절법 중 하나로 연구, 발전되어 왔다. 이 중 통계적 연구는 치과치료를 위한 전신마취를 받는 환자들에게 보다 양질의 진료를 공하기 위한 기초 자료를 제공하는데 그 의의가 있다. 따라서 이에 대한 연구가 지속적으로 이루어져 왔으나, 아직 국내에 서는 다수의 환자를 대상으로 한 장기간의 연구가 부족한 실정이다. 이에 1997년 1월부터 2008년 8월말까지 연세대학교 치과병원 소아치과 및 장애인 클리닉에서 시행된 치과치료를 위한 전신마취 1196례(1135명) 중 기록이 양호한 1126례(1065명)를 대상으로 자료를 수집하여 다음과 같은 결과를 얻었다. 1. 연령범위는 1~66세로 5세 미만이 410명(38.5%)으로 가장 많았으며, 성별은 남성이 695명(65.3%)으로 여성보다 더 많았다. 2. 치료 내용은 통계상의 평균치로 볼 때 수복치료가 1인당 5.6개, 유치 및 영구치에 대한 치수치료와 근관치료가 2.3개, 기성금관이 2.5개, 발치가 1.6개였으며, 치료 시간은 평균 100분이었다. 3. 576명(53.3%)의 환자가 6개월 미만으로 재내원하였으며, 내원 횟수는 평균 4.3회였다. 4. 치과치료를 위한 전신마취를 받은 횟수는 1022명(95.9%)이 전신마취를 1회 받았으며 43명(4.1%)의 환자가 2회 이상 전신마취를 받았다. 따라서 전신마취하의 치과치료는 대부분의 치과치료를 한번에 시행할 수 있고 환자와 보호자의 스트레스를 최소화 할 수 있으며, 양질의 진료 환경을 제공함으로서 만족스러운 치료결과를 기대할 수 있는 장점이 있다. 그러나 구강 질환의 특성상 적절한 사후 관리가 이루어지지 않는다면 적절한 구강 건강을 유지하기 어렵다. 따라서 앞으로의 연구를 통해 전신마취하 과치료의 효율성을 향상시키고 그 이후의 체계적인 검진 계획을 확립하는 것이 중요하다.

• 해양환경안전학회지
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• 제29권2호
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• pp.197-206
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• 2023

최근 국제해사기구(IMO)를 비롯한 국제사회에서 선박의 대기오염 배출 규제를 강화하고 있으며, 배기가스 배출을 줄이기 위한 친환경 선박 개발이 활발하게 이루어지고 있다. 그중에서도 풍력 보조 선박추진 시스템 중 하나인 로터 세일(Rotor Sail, RS)이 다시금 주목받고 있다. RS는 선박 데크에 설치되는 원통형 실린더 장치로 마그누스 효과를 사용하여 유체 동역학적 양력을 생성하는 장치이다. 이는 차세대 친환경 보조 추진 기술 중 하나이며, RS 적용 선박을 개발한 Enercon 사(社)에서는 약 30% 이상의 연료 절감이 가능하다고 발표했다. 본 연구에서는 다중 RS를 선박에 설치할 경우 RS 간격 및 배열 형태와 같은 최적의 설치 조건을 선정하고자 하였으며, RS 배열에 따른 유동특성을 확인하기 위하여 AR(Aspect Ratio) = 5.1, SR(Spin Ratio) = 1.0 및 로터세일 지름과 엔드 플레이트 지름 비(D_e/D)= 2.0 로 고정하고 자유 유속 U = 5 m/s로 풍향은 +y 축 단방향에 대한 조건만 고려하였다. 배열 조건은 횡방향 거리는 +x 축 방향으로 3D ~ 15D까지 3D 간격으로 총 5가지 조건을, 종방향 거리는 +y 축 방향으로 5D ~ 25D까지 5D 간격으로 총 5가지 조건을 설정하였으며, 사각 형태(□)와 마름모 형태(◇) 배열에 따른 양력계수(C_L), 항력계수(C_D)와 공기역학적 효율(C_L/C_D)을 비교하였다. 결과적으로 종방향 간격에 따른 RS의 영향은 크게 차이가 없었으나, 횡방향 간격에 따른 RS 유동특성의 경우 두 RS가 바람 방향에 거의 일치할 때 RS의 상호작용 효과가 가장 크게 나타났다. 배열에 따른 RS 유동특성의 경우, 전방(0°) 방향에서 바람이 불 때 마름모 형태(◇) 배열이 RS 간의 후류 영향을 가장 덜 받는 것으로 나타났다.

• 한국터널지하공간학회 논문집
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• 제19권1호
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• pp.95-107
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• 2017

본 논문에서는 제도적으로 운영 중인 터널내 CCTV들로부터 실시간으로 들어오는 영상들을 최신 딥러닝 알고리즘을 이용, 학습시켜 다양한 조건의 터널환경에서 돌발 상황을 감지하고 그 돌발 상황의 종류들을 분류해 내는 시스템 개발을 위한 사전검토 연구를 수행하였다. 사전검토 연구를 위해, 2개의 도로현장의 교통류 CCTV영상 일부를 이용하여 가용한 전통적인 영상처리기법으로 영상내부로 집입하는 차량을 감지하고, 이동경로를 추적하여 일정 시간간격의 이동 차량의 좌표와 시간정보를 추출하고 학습자료를 구성하였다. 각 차량의 이동정보는 차선변경, 정차 등 6가지의 이벤트 정보와 연계된다. 차량 이동정보와 이벤트로 구성된 학습자료는 레질리언스(resilience) 기계학습 알고리즘을 이용하여 학습하였다. 2개의 은닉층을 설정하고, 각 은닉층의 노드수에 대한 9개의 은닉구조 모델을 설정하여 매개변수 연구를 수행하였다. 본 사전검토의 경우에는 첫 번째, 두 번째 은닉층 노드수가 각각 300개와 150개로 설정된 모델이 합리적으로 가장 추론정확도가 높은 것으로 평가되었다. 이로부터 일반화되기 매우 힘든 복잡한 교통류 상황을 기계학습을 이용하여 어떠한 사전 규칙설정 없이도 교통류의 특징들을 정확히 자동으로 감지할 수 있는 가능성을 보였다. 본 시스템은 시스템의 운용을 통해 지속적으로 교통류 영상과 이벤트 정보가 늘어난다면, 자동으로 그 시스템의 인지능력과 정확도가 자동으로 향상되는 효과도 기대할 수 있다.

• 한국병원경영학회지
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• 제8권1호
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• pp.135-164
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• 2003

The operating room is the major facility that costs the highest investment per unit area in a hospital. It requires commitment of hospital resources such as manpower, equipments and material. The quantity of these resources committed actually differs from one type of operation to another. Because of this, it is not an easy task to allocate the operating cost to individual clinical departments that share the operating room. A practical way to do so may be to collect and add the operating costs incurred by each clinical department and charge the net cost to the account of the corresponding clinical department. It has been customary to allocate the cost of the operating room to the account of each individual department on the basis of the ratio of the number of operations of the department or the total revenue by each operating room. In an attempt to set up more rational cost allocation method than the customary method, this study proposes a new cost allocation method that calls for itemizing the operation cost into its constituent expenses in detail and adding them up for the operating cost incurred by each individual department. For comparison of the new method with the conventional method, the operating room in the main building of hospital A near Seoul is chosen as a study object. It is selected because it is the biggest operating room in hospital A and most of operations in this hospital are conducted in this room. For this study the one-month operation record performed in January 2001 in this operating room is analyzed to allocate the per-month operation cost to six clinical departments that used this operating room; the departments of general surgery, orthopedic surgery, neuro-surgery, dental surgery, urology, and obstetrics & gynecology. In the new method(or method 1), each operation cost is categorized into three major expenses; personnel expense, material expense, and overhead expense and is allocated into the account of the clinical department that used the operating room. The method 1 shows that, among the total one-month operating cost of 814,054 thousand wons in this hospital, 163,714 thousand won is allocated to GS, 335,084 thousand won to as, 202,772 thousand won to NS, 42,265 thousand won to uno, 33,423 thousand won to OB/GY, and 36.796 thousand won to DS. The allocation of the operating cost to six departments by the new method is quite different from that by the conventional method. According to one conventional allocation method based on the ratio of the number of operations of a department to the total number of operations in the operating room(method 2 hereafter), 329,692 thousand won are allocated to GS, 262,125 thousand won to as, 87,104 thousand won to NS, 59,426 thousand won to URO, 51.285 thousand won to OB/GY, and 24,422 thousand won to DS. According to the other conventional allocation method based on the ratio of the revenue of a department(method 3 hereafter), 148,158 thousand won are allocated to GS, 272,708 thousand won to as, 268.638 thousand won to NS, 45,587 thousand won to uno, 51.285 thousand won to OB/GY, and 27.678 thousand won to DS. As can be noted from these results, the cost allocation to six departments by method 1 is strikingly different from those by method 2 and method 3. The operating cost allocated to GS by method 2 is about twice by method 1. Method 3 makes allocations of the operating cost to individual departments very similarly as method 1. However, there are still discrepancies between the two methods. In particular the cost allocations to OB/GY by the two methods have roughly 53.4% discrepancy. The conventional methods 2 and 3 fail to take into account properly the fact that the average time spent for the operation is different and dependent on the clinical department, whether or not to use expensive clinical material dictate the operating cost, and there is difference between the official operating cost and the actual operating cost. This is why the conventional methods turn out to be inappropriate as the operating cost allocation methods. In conclusion, the new method here may be laborious and cause a complexity in bookkeeping because it requires detailed bookkeeping of the operation cost by its constituent expenses and also by individual clinical department, treating each department as an independent accounting unit. But the method is worth adopting because it will allow the concerned hospital to estimate the operating cost as accurately as practicable. The cost data used in this study such as personnel expense, material cost, overhead cost may not be correct ones. Therefore, the operating cost estimated in the main text may not be the same as the actual cost. Also, the study is focused on the case of only hospital A, which is hardly claimed to represent the hospitals across the nation. In spite of these deficiencies, this study is noteworthy from the standpoint that it proposes a practical allocation method of the operating cost to each individual clinical department.

• 한국환경교육학회지:환경교육
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• 제7권1호
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• pp.46-87
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• 1994

Our country has been consuming a huge amount of energy in the course of industrialization and its demand is expected to increase enormously in the future. However, the deposits of energy resources are so limited that the settlement of energy problem comes up the essential subject. To solve the energy problem, it is requested that new resources to gain energy stably should be developed and also energy should be economized and used effectively. The effective use of energy and an the wisdom of economy in energy are requested to everybody and these things should be habitualized from very young age through education. Nevertheless, almost every school in our country hasn’t been concerned about energy education. Even though they have a concern, they are very short of the energy education materials and the quality of the materials is not so good. Therefore it is very meaningful to the settlement of energy problem of the country to make the students who will lead our country to make the students who will lead our country in the future realize the seriousness of energy problem and to provide them the necessary knowledge and methods to solve this problem so that they practice those things in everyday life. Having these necessities, this research, supported by The Korea Energy Management Corporation(KEMCO), was performed for 8 months from April 17, 1994 to December 17, 1994. Many peoples participated in this study such as 30 staffs of researchers and authors, 5 staffs of photographers and illustrators, and 3 VCR program producers developing an energy education material set for middle school students that includes a printed material for student, a diskette for computer simulation, a teacher's guidebook, VCR material and its guidebook. The following main development direction was established : First, the material for student should be consisted of units that let students know the seriousness of energy problem. Second, the focus should be put on the necessary method and practice to economize energy actually in real life based on the basic knowledge learned in elementary school. Third, material for student should be consisted of modules to be student activity-oriented teaching-learning rather than lecture-oriented one. The activity, to maximize student's interests, should be presented in various forms such as experiments, investigation, play, data interpretation, computer simulation, visits, expression and appreciation, etc. To develop the energy education materials for middle school students, a research plan was made first. After literature review about domestic and foreign energy education materials, several research trips home and abroad, and discussion meetings, the basic theory of energy education such as the principle, objective, contents, teaching-learning method, and evaluation method was established. Material for student was developed through the following procedures : The activities in the existing energy education materials were analysed and were divided into four categories related to energy using places of home, school, community, and country, and which were again divided into three categories related to time of past, present, and future, Considering these division, nine modules which are structure units of material for student were chosen, Each module comprises 2-4 activities. Totally 31 activities were designed in this way. The syllabi were made out for each activity and writing was asked for to experts related to each activity after several discussions and revision. To complement the draft, another several discussions and revision were also made on it and then pictures and illustrations were asked for. All these procedures complete the material for student, titled ; Energy Inquiry of Middle School Students', which totals 129 pages and is all in color. As the manuscript of material for student was fixed, writing for teacher's guidebook was asked for to the same writers. The draft of teacher's guidebook was also complemented through the several concentrated works and discussions. Teacher's guidebook focused on the teaching-learning principle and methods of energy education and on the concrete instruction cases for effective instruction of material for student. It is organized with two parts : the one is 'general outline' which introduces theoretical contents and the other is 'details' which are practically helpful to teaching-learning. It is totally 131 pages including both 'general outline' and 'details'. The VCR material and its guidebook consist of contents that cultivate the good attitude trying to economize energy and raise student's interests with a purpose of strong motivation to recognize the necessity of economy and practice it. After establishing development direction of VCR material through discussion meetings and research trips, its script was made by relevant experts. Then the script was also reviewed two times. The drafted VCR material made by a video material developing expert was examined and modified by previews twice. After completion of VCR material, the VCR guidebook was made. All these procedures led to the development of VCR material which runs 20 minutes in VHS type. The VCR guidebook shows a production purpose of the program, structure of contents, evaluation methods, and contents of the program in detail to give help to instructors when they use this VCR material, When these energy education materials are used, it is desirable that the VCR material should be presented first to induce student's motive, and then material for student is introduced Since the material for student is composed of activity-oriented modules and each module is independent one another in general, and each activity is, too. the necessary module or activity can be chosen and utilized in any order according to school or class conditions. This energy education materials will contribute to the development of student's ability to solve energy problem in everyday life and teacher's ability to teach the fundamental knowledge and method in solving energy problem.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• 제18권1호
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• pp.79-96
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• 2008

One of the roles of the Semantic Web services is to execute dynamic intra-organizational services including the integration and interoperation of business processes. Since different organizations design their processes differently, the retrieval of similar semantic business processes is necessary in order to support inter-organizational collaborations. Most approaches for finding services that have certain features and support certain business processes have relied on some type of logical reasoning and exact matching. This paper presents our approach of using imprecise matching for expanding results from an exact matching engine to query the OWL(Web Ontology Language) MIT Process Handbook. MIT Process Handbook is an electronic repository of best-practice business processes. The Handbook is intended to help people: (1) redesigning organizational processes, (2) inventing new processes, and (3) sharing ideas about organizational practices. In order to use the MIT Process Handbook for process retrieval experiments, we had to export it into an OWL-based format. We model the Process Handbook meta-model in OWL and export the processes in the Handbook as instances of the meta-model. Next, we need to find a sizable number of queries and their corresponding correct answers in the Process Handbook. Many previous studies devised artificial dataset composed of randomly generated numbers without real meaning and used subjective ratings for correct answers and similarity values between processes. To generate a semantic-preserving test data set, we create 20 variants for each target process that are syntactically different but semantically equivalent using mutation operators. These variants represent the correct answers of the target process. We devise diverse similarity algorithms based on values of process attributes and structures of business processes. We use simple similarity algorithms for text retrieval such as TF-IDF and Levenshtein edit distance to devise our approaches, and utilize tree edit distance measure because semantic processes are appeared to have a graph structure. Also, we design similarity algorithms considering similarity of process structure such as part process, goal, and exception. Since we can identify relationships between semantic process and its subcomponents, this information can be utilized for calculating similarities between processes. Dice's coefficient and Jaccard similarity measures are utilized to calculate portion of overlaps between processes in diverse ways. We perform retrieval experiments to compare the performance of the devised similarity algorithms. We measure the retrieval performance in terms of precision, recall and F measure? the harmonic mean of precision and recall. The tree edit distance shows the poorest performance in terms of all measures. TF-IDF and the method incorporating TF-IDF measure and Levenshtein edit distance show better performances than other devised methods. These two measures are focused on similarity between name and descriptions of process. In addition, we calculate rank correlation coefficient, Kendall's tau b, between the number of process mutations and ranking of similarity values among the mutation sets. In this experiment, similarity measures based on process structure, such as Dice's, Jaccard, and derivatives of these measures, show greater coefficient than measures based on values of process attributes. However, the Lev-TFIDF-JaccardAll measure considering process structure and attributes' values together shows reasonably better performances in these two experiments. For retrieving semantic process, we can think that it's better to consider diverse aspects of process similarity such as process structure and values of process attributes. We generate semantic process data and its dataset for retrieval experiment from MIT Process Handbook repository. We suggest imprecise query algorithms that expand retrieval results from exact matching engine such as SPARQL, and compare the retrieval performances of the similarity algorithms. For the limitations and future work, we need to perform experiments with other dataset from other domain. And, since there are many similarity values from diverse measures, we may find better ways to identify relevant processes by applying these values simultaneously.

• 사회복지연구
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• 제44권3호
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• pp.177-206
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• 2013

우리나라는 2004년부터 정부의 재정지원 일자리사업의 하나로, 노인일자리사업을 시행하고 있다. 그러나 시행된 지 10여년이 되었고, 내년부터 본격적인 확대를 앞두고 있지만, 정책대안과 방향설정에 대한 논의가 부족하다. 이에 본 연구는 문헌연구를 중심으로 OECD 국가의 적극적 노동시장정책, 특히 직접 일자리창출 정책을 살펴보았다. 그 후 OECD 국가의 고령자 고용지원정책을 검토한 후, OECD 국가 가운데 저소득 고령자를 대상으로 고용지원정책을 실시하는 국가를 유형화한 후 이를 토대로 노인일자리사업의 발전방안을 도출하였다. 연구결과 첫째, OECD 국가의 고령자 고용정책은 연금정책을 제외하면, 노동수요 장벽제거 전략(임금보조, 사회보험료 감면 등)의 비중이 높고, 고령근로자의 고용가능성 강화전략은 상대적으로 크게 다뤄지지 않는다. 그나마도 직접 일자리창출정책은 매우 주변적인 정책으로 나타났다. 둘째, 정책목표와 사회경제적 지표를 기준으로 저소득 고령근로자를 위한 고용지원정책을 유형화하면, 저소득 노인지원형, 조기퇴직 완화형, 완전고용 지원형으로 나눌 수 있다. 우리나라는 저소득 노인지원형 가운데 직접 일자리 창출형에 속한다. 노인빈곤율이 높고, 소득보장제도가 발달하지 않아서 직접일자리사업을 수행하는 것으로 보인다. 그러나 노인일자리사업은 직접 일자리창출사업으로서의 속성을 갖추지 못했다. 사회참여와 소득보충이라는 2가지 정책목표를 추진하고 있지만 이에 적합한 체제를 구축하지 못했다. 따라서 정책목표를 더 명확히 하여, 목표달성에 적합한 사업체계를 구축해야 한다. 노인일자리사업이 일자리로서 위상을 견고히 하고자 한다면 노동시장정책 차원에서 수정해야 하고, 현재 2가지 목표를 모두 유지하고자 한다면, 소득보충과 사회참여를 위해 사업을 이원화하는 것도 고려할 필요가 있다. 혹은 미국의 SCSEP처럼 훈련을 통해 보조금을 받지 않는 일자리로 이행하도록 지원하는 고용서비스 훈련체제로 바꾸는 것도 대안이 될 것이다.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• 제19권3호
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• pp.69-98
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• 2009

We investigated what factors motivate gamers to participate in a guild and why they continue to be engaged as members of the guild. We find that, based on the result of focus group interviews with MMORPG gamers, social support and self-esteem factors play important roles. Considering both prior research and the focus group interviews we have conducted, we define social support and character control as independent variables. Character identity, guild identity, and self-esteem are proposed as mediating variables while guild flow and game loyalty as dependent variables. Accordingly, we develop the research model and hypotheses, and verify them empirically. Based on our experiences of playing the WoW game, we proposed a research model and conducted focus-group interviews (FGIs). FGIs involve formulating a hypothesis and then collecting some relevant data. FGIs were conducted face-to-face with students of C University in Korea. We formulated structured interview schedules, and the questions were based on our research variables and personal experiences. The questions for the interviews encompassed the following areas: (a) the demographic characteristics of the focus group; (b) the number of years for which respondents had played online games; (c) the motive for starting a game; (d) the number of game-characters assumed by each gamer; (e) the type of game played; and (f) other issues such as the reasons for involvement in the play, the willingness to reuse the game in case new versions were released, etc. On average, it took two hours to interview each of three groups. A primary set of FGIs was conducted with three groups on the premise that there would be some differences caused by character race (Horde vs. Alliance) or by playable server (Normal vs. Combat). With respect to the manner of playing, we found that guild members shared information, felt a sense of belonging, and played computer games for quite a long time through the guild; however, they did not undergo these experiences when playing alone. Gamers who belonged to a specific guild helped other players without expecting compensation for that, freely shared information about the game, gave away items for free, and more generous with other members who made mistakes. The guild members were aware of the existence other members and experienced a sense of belonging through interactions with, and evaluations from, other players. It was clear that social support was shown within the guild and that it played an important role as a major research variable. Based on the results of the first FGIs, a second set of in-depth FGIs was carried out with a focus on the psychology of the individual within the guild and the social community of the guild. The second set of FGIs also focused on the guild's offline meetings. Gamers, over all, recognize the necessity of joining a community, not only off-line but also online world of the guild. They admit that the guild is important for them to easily and conveniently enjoy playing online computer games. The active behavior and positive attitudes of existing guild members can motivate new members of the guild to adapt themselves to the guild environment. They then adopt the same behaviors and attitudes of established guild members. In this manner, the new members of the guild strengthen the bonds with other gamers while feeling a sense of belonging, and developing social identity, thereby. It was discovered that the interaction among guild members and the social support encouraged new gamers to quickly develop a sense of social identity and increase their self-esteem. The guild seemed to play the role of socializing gamers. Sometimes, even in the real world, the guild members helped one another; therefore, the features of the guild also spilled over to the offline environment. We intend to use self-esteem, which was found through the second set of FGIs, as an important research variable. To collect data, an online survey was designed with a questionnaire to be completed by WoW gamers, who belong to a guild. The survey was registered on the best three domestic game-sites: 'WoW playforum,' 'WoW gamemeca,' and 'Wow invent.' The selected items to be measured in the questionnaire were decided based on prior research and data from FGIs. To verify the content of the questionnaire, we carried out a pilot test with the same participants to point out ambiguous questions as a way to ensure maximum accuracy of the survey result. A total of 244 responses were analyzed from the 250 completed questionnaires. The SEM analysis was used to test goodness-of-fit of the model. As a result, we found important results as follows: First, according to the statistics, social support had statistically significant impacts on character control, character identity, guild identity and self-esteem. Second, character control had significant effects on character identity, guild identity and self-esteem. Third, character identity shows its clear impact on self-esteem and game loyalty. Fourth, guild identity affected self-esteem, guild flow and game loyalty. Fifth, self-esteem had a positive influence on the guild flow. These days, the number of virtual community is rising along with its significance largely because of the nature of the online games. Accordingly, this study is designed to clarify the psychological relationship between gamers within the guild that has been generally established by gamers to play online games together. This study focuses on the relationships in which social support influences guild flow or game loyalty through character control, character identity, guild identity, and self-esteem, which are present within a guild in the MMORPG game environment. The study results are as follows. First, the effects of social support on character control, character identity, guild identity and self-esteem are proven to be statistically significant. It was found that character control improves character identity, guild identity and self-esteem. Among the seven variables, social support, which is derived from FGIs, plays an important role in this study. With the active support of other guild members, gamers can improve their ability to develop good characters and to control them. Second, character identity has a positive effect on self-esteem and game loyalty, while guild identity has a significant effect on self-esteem, guild flow and game loyalty. Self-esteem affects guild flow. It was found that the higher the character and guild identities become, the greater the self-esteem is established. Contrary to the findings of prior research, our study results indicate that the relationship between character identity and guild flow is not significant. Rather, it was found that character identity directly affects game players' loyalty. Even though the character identity had no direct effect on increasing guild flow, it has indirectly affected guild flow through self-esteem. The significant relationship between self-esteem and guild flow indicates that gamers achieve flow, i.e., a feeling of pleasure and excitement through social support. Several important implications of this study should be noted. First, both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to conduct this study. Through FGIs, it was observed that both social support and self-esteem are important variables. Second, because guilds had been rarely studied, this research is expected to play an important role in the online community. Third, according to the result, six hypotheses (H1, H5, H6, H7, H8, and H11) setup based on FGIs, were statistically significant; thus, we can suggest the corresponding relationships among the variables as a guideline for follow-up research. Our research is significant as it has following implications: first, the social support of the guild members is important when establishing character control, character identity, guildidentity and self-esteem. It is also a major variable that affects guild flow and game loyalty. Second, character control when improved by social support shows notable influence on the development of character identity, guild identity and self-esteem. Third, character identity and guild identity are major factors to help establish gamers' own self-esteem. Fourth, character identity affects guild flow through self-esteem and game loyalty. The gamers usually express themselves through characters; the higher character identity is, the more loyalty a gamer has. Fifth, guild identity, established within the guild, has clear effects on self-esteem, guild flow and game loyalty. Sixth, qualitative and quantitative methods are employed to conduct this study. Based on the results of focus group interviews and SEM analysis, we find that the social support by guild members and psychological factors are significant in strengthening the flow of guild and loyalty to the game. As such, game developers should provide some extra functions for guild community, through which gamers can play online games in collaboration with one another. Also, we suggest that positive self-esteem which is built up through social support can help gamers achieve higher level of flow and satisfaction, which will consequently contribute to minimizing the possibility for the players to develop negative attitude toward the guild they belong to.