• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.27-55
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• 2008

Due to the increasing and intensifying competition in the Internet shopping market, it has been recognized as very important to develop an effective policy and strategy for acquiring loyal customers. For this reason, web site designers need to know if a new Internet shopping mall(ISM) will be accepted. Researchers have been working on identifying factors for explaining and predicting user acceptance of an ISM. Some studies, however, revealed inconsistent findings on the antecedents of user acceptance of a website. Lack of consideration for individual differences in user ability is believed to be one of the key reasons for the mixed findings. The elaboration likelihood model (ELM) and several studies have suggested that individual differences in ability plays an moderating role on the relationship between the antecedents and user acceptance. Despite the critical role of user ability, little research has examined the role of user ability in the Internet shopping mall context. The purpose of this study is to develop a user acceptance model that consider the moderating role of user ability in the context of Internet shopping. This study was initiated to see the ability of the technology acceptance model(TAM) to explain the acceptance of a specific ISM. According to TAM. which is one of the most influential models for explaining user acceptance of IT, an intention to use IT is determined by usefulness and ease of use. Given that interaction between user and website takes place through web interface, the decisions to accept and continue using an ISM depend on these beliefs. However, TAM neglects to consider the fact that many users would not stick to an ISM until they trust it although they may think it useful and easy to use. The importance of trust for user acceptance of ISM has been raised by the relational views. The relational view emphasizes the trust-building process between the user and ISM, and user's trust on the website is a major determinant of user acceptance. The proposed model extends and integrates the TAM and relational views on user acceptance of ISM by incorporating usefulness, ease of use, and trust. User acceptance is defined as a user's intention to reuse a specific ISM. And user ability is introduced into the model as moderating variable. Here, the user ability is defined as a degree of experiences, knowledge and skills regarding Internet shopping sites. The research model proposes that the ease of use, usefulness and trust of ISM are key determinants of user acceptance. In addition, this paper hypothesizes that the effects of the antecedents(i.e., ease of use, usefulness, and trust) on user acceptance may differ among users. In particular, this paper proposes a moderating effect of a user's ability on the relationship between antecedents with user's intention to reuse. The research model with eleven hypotheses was derived and tested through a survey that involved 470 university students. For each research variable, this paper used measurement items recognized for reliability and widely used in previous research. We slightly modified some items proper to the research context. The reliability and validity of the research variables were tested using the Crobnach's alpha and internal consistency reliability (ICR) values, standard factor loadings of the confirmative factor analysis, and average variance extracted (AVE) values. A LISREL method was used to test the suitability of the research model and its relating six hypotheses. Key findings of the results are summarized in the following. First, TAM's two constructs, ease of use and usefulness directly affect user acceptance. In addition, ease of use indirectly influences user acceptance by affecting trust. This implies that users tend to trust a shopping site and visit repeatedly when they perceive a specific ISM easy to use. Accordingly, designing a shopping site that allows users to navigate with heuristic and minimal clicks for finding information and products within the site is important for improving the site's trust and acceptance. Usefulness, however, was not found to influence trust. Second, among the three belief constructs(ease of use, usefulness, and trust), trust was empirically supported as the most important determinants of user acceptance. This implies that users require trustworthiness from an Internet shopping site to be repeat visitors of an ISM. Providing a sense of safety and eliminating the anxiety of online shoppers in relation to privacy, security, delivery, and product returns are critically important conditions for acquiring repeat visitors. Hence, in addition to usefulness and ease of use as in TAM, trust should be a fundamental determinants of user acceptance in the context of internet shopping. Third, the user's ability on using an Internet shopping site played a moderating role. For users with low ability, ease of use was found to be a more important factors in deciding to reuse the shopping mall, whereas usefulness and trust had more effects on users with high ability. Applying the EML theory to these findings, we can suggest that experienced and knowledgeable ISM users tend to elaborate on such usefulness aspects as efficient and effective shopping performance and trust factors as ability, benevolence, integrity, and predictability of a shopping site before they become repeat visitors of the site. In contrast, novice users tend to rely on the low elaborating features, such as the perceived ease of use. The existence of moderating effects suggests the fact that different individuals evaluate an ISM from different perspectives. The expert users are more interested in the outcome of the visit(usefulness) and trustworthiness(trust) than those novice visitors. The latter evaluate the ISM in a more superficial manner focusing on the novelty of the site and on other instrumental beliefs(ease of use). This is consistent with the insights proposed by the Heuristic-Systematic model. According to the Heuristic-Systematic model. a users act on the principle of minimum effort. Thus, the user considers an ISM heuristically, focusing on those aspects that are easy to process and evaluate(ease of use). When the user has sufficient experience and skills, the user will change to systematic processing, where they will evaluate more complex aspects of the site(its usefulness and trustworthiness). This implies that an ISM has to provide a minimum level of ease of use to make it possible for a user to evaluate its usefulness and trustworthiness. Ease of use is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the acceptance and use of an ISM. Overall, the empirical results generally support the proposed model and identify the moderating effect of the effects of user ability. More detailed interpretations and implications of the findings are discussed. The limitations of this study are also discussed to provide directions for future research.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.85-107
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• 2019

Online consumers browse products belonging to a particular product line or brand for purchase, or simply leave a wide range of navigation without making purchase. The research on the behavior and purchase of online consumers has been steadily progressed, and related services and applications based on behavior data of consumers have been developed in practice. In recent years, customization strategies and recommendation systems of consumers have been utilized due to the development of big data technology, and attempts are being made to optimize users' shopping experience. However, even in such an attempt, it is very unlikely that online consumers will actually be able to visit the website and switch to the purchase stage. This is because online consumers do not just visit the website to purchase products but use and browse the websites differently according to their shopping motives and purposes. Therefore, it is important to analyze various types of visits as well as visits to purchase, which is important for understanding the behaviors of online consumers. In this study, we explored the clustering analysis of session based on click stream data of e-commerce company in order to explain diversity and complexity of search behavior of online consumers and typified search behavior. For the analysis, we converted data points of more than 8 million pages units into visit units' sessions, resulting in a total of over 500,000 website visit sessions. For each visit session, 12 characteristics such as page view, duration, search diversity, and page type concentration were extracted for clustering analysis. Considering the size of the data set, we performed the analysis using the Mini-Batch K-means algorithm, which has advantages in terms of learning speed and efficiency while maintaining the clustering performance similar to that of the clustering algorithm K-means. The most optimized number of clusters was derived from four, and the differences in session unit characteristics and purchasing rates were identified for each cluster. The online consumer visits the website several times and learns about the product and decides the purchase. In order to analyze the purchasing process over several visits of the online consumer, we constructed the visiting sequence data of the consumer based on the navigation patterns in the web site derived clustering analysis. The visit sequence data includes a series of visiting sequences until one purchase is made, and the items constituting one sequence become cluster labels derived from the foregoing. We have separately established a sequence data for consumers who have made purchases and data on visits for consumers who have only explored products without making purchases during the same period of time. And then sequential pattern mining was applied to extract frequent patterns from each sequence data. The minimum support is set to 10%, and frequent patterns consist of a sequence of cluster labels. While there are common derived patterns in both sequence data, there are also frequent patterns derived only from one side of sequence data. We found that the consumers who made purchases through the comparative analysis of the extracted frequent patterns showed the visiting pattern to decide to purchase the product repeatedly while searching for the specific product. The implication of this study is that we analyze the search type of online consumers by using large - scale click stream data and analyze the patterns of them to explain the behavior of purchasing process with data-driven point. Most studies that typology of online consumers have focused on the characteristics of the type and what factors are key in distinguishing that type. In this study, we carried out an analysis to type the behavior of online consumers, and further analyzed what order the types could be organized into one another and become a series of search patterns. In addition, online retailers will be able to try to improve their purchasing conversion through marketing strategies and recommendations for various types of visit and will be able to evaluate the effect of the strategy through changes in consumers' visit patterns.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.49-58
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• 2010

Corporate social responsibility has become a very important issue for researchers (Greenfield, 2004; Maignan & Ralston, 2002; McWilliams et al., 2006; Pearce & Doh 2005), and many consider it necessary for businesses to define their role in society and apply social and ethical standards to their businesses (Lichtenstein et al., 2004). As a result, a significant number of retailers have adopted CSR as a strategic tool to promote their businesses. To this end, this study sought to discover U.S. consumers' attitudes and behavior in ethical purchasing and consumption based on their subjective perception and evaluation of a retailer. The objectives of this study include: 1) determine the participants awareness of retailers corporate social responsibility; 2) assess how participants evaluate retailers corporate social responsibility; 3) examine whether participants evaluation process of retailers CSR influence their attitude toward the retailer; and 4) assess if participants attitude toward the retailers CSR influence their purchase behavior. This study does not focus on actual retailers' CSR performance because a consumer's decision making process is based on an individual assessment not an actual fact. This study examines US college students' awareness and evaluations of retailers' corporate social responsibility (CSR). Fifty six college students at a major Southeastern university participated in the study. The age of the participants ranged from 18 to 26 years old. Content analysis was conducted with open coding and focused coding. Over 100 single-spaced pages of written responses were collected and analyzed. Two steps of coding (i.e., open coding and focused coding) were conducted (Esterberg, 2002). Coding results and analytic memos were used to understand participants' awareness of CSR and their ethical purchasing behavior supported through the selection and inclusion of direct quotes that were extracted from the written responses. Names used here are pseudonyms to protect confidentiality of participants. Participants were asked to write about retailers, their aware-ness of CSR issues, and to evaluate a retailer's CSR performance. A majority (n = 28) of respondents indicated their awareness of CSR but have not felt the need to act on this issue. Few (n=8) indicated that they are aware of this issue but not greatly concerned. Findings suggest that when college students evaluate retailers' CSR performance, they use three dimensions of CSR: employee support, community support, and environmental support. Employee treatment and support were found as an important criterion in evaluation of retailers' CSR. Respondents indicated that their good experience with a retailer as an employee made them have a positive perception and attitude toward the retailer. Regarding employee support four themes emerged: employee rewards and incentives based on performance, working environment, employee education and training program, and employee and family discounts. Well organized rewards and incentives were mentioned as an important attribute. The factors related to the working environment included: how well retailers follow the rules related to working hours, lunch time and breaks was also one of the most mentioned attributes. Regarding community support, three themes emerged: contributing a percentage of sales to the local community, financial contribution to charity organizations, and events for community support. Regarding environments, two themes emerged: recycling and selling organic or green products. It was mentioned in the responses that retailers are trying to do what they can to be environmentally friendly. One respondent mentioned that the company is creating stores that have an environmentally friendly design. Information about what the company does to help the environment can easily be found on the company’s website as well. Respondents have also noticed that the stores are starting to offer products that are organic and environmentally friendly. A retailer was also mentioned by a respondent in this category in reference to how the company uses eco-friendly cups and how they are helping to rebuild homes in New Orleans. The respondents noticed that a retailer offers reusable bags for their consumers to purchase. One respondent stated that a retailer uses its products to help the environment, through offering organic cotton. After thorough analysis of responses, we found that a participant's evaluation of a retailers' CSR influenced their attitudes towards retailers. However, there was a significant gap between attitudes and purchasing behavior. Although the participants had positive attitudes toward retailers CSR, the lack of funds and time influenced their purchase behavior. Overall, half (n=28) of the respondents mentioned that CSR performance affects their purchasing decisions making when shopping. Findings from this study provide support for retailers to consider their corporate social responsibility when developing their image with the consumer. This study implied that consumers evaluate retailers based on employee, community and environmental support. The evaluation, attitude and purchase behavior of consumers seem to be intertwined. That is, evaluation is based on the knowledge the consumer has of the retailers CSR. That knowledge may influence their attitude toward the retailer and thus influence their purchase behavior. Participants also indicated that having CSR makes them think highly of the retailer, but it does not influence their purchase behavior. Price and convenience seem to surpass the importance of CSR among the participants. Implications, recommendations for future research, and limitations of the study are also discussed.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.149-161
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• 2014

The export of domestic public services to overseas markets contains many potential obstacles, stemming from different export procedures, the target services, and socio-economic environments. In order to alleviate these problems, the business incubation platform as an open business ecosystem can be a powerful instrument to support the decisions taken by participants and stakeholders. In this paper, we propose an ontology model and its implementation processes for the business incubation platform with an open and pervasive architecture to support public service exports. For the conceptual model of platform ontology, export case studies are used for requirements analysis. The conceptual model shows the basic structure, with vocabulary and its meaning, the relationship between ontologies, and key attributes. For the implementation and test of the ontology model, the logical structure is edited using Prot$\acute{e}$g$\acute{e}$ editor. The core engine of the business incubation platform is the simulator module, where the various contexts of export businesses should be captured, defined, and shared with other modules through ontologies. It is well-known that an ontology, with which concepts and their relationships are represented using a shared vocabulary, is an efficient and effective tool for organizing meta-information to develop structural frameworks in a particular domain. The proposed model consists of five ontologies derived from a requirements survey of major stakeholders and their operational scenarios: service, requirements, environment, enterprise, and county. The service ontology contains several components that can find and categorize public services through a case analysis of the public service export. Key attributes of the service ontology are composed of categories including objective, requirements, activity, and service. The objective category, which has sub-attributes including operational body (organization) and user, acts as a reference to search and classify public services. The requirements category relates to the functional needs at a particular phase of system (service) design or operation. Sub-attributes of requirements are user, application, platform, architecture, and social overhead. The activity category represents business processes during the operation and maintenance phase. The activity category also has sub-attributes including facility, software, and project unit. The service category, with sub-attributes such as target, time, and place, acts as a reference to sort and classify the public services. The requirements ontology is derived from the basic and common components of public services and target countries. The key attributes of the requirements ontology are business, technology, and constraints. Business requirements represent the needs of processes and activities for public service export; technology represents the technological requirements for the operation of public services; and constraints represent the business law, regulations, or cultural characteristics of the target country. The environment ontology is derived from case studies of target countries for public service operation. Key attributes of the environment ontology are user, requirements, and activity. A user includes stakeholders in public services, from citizens to operators and managers; the requirements attribute represents the managerial and physical needs during operation; the activity attribute represents business processes in detail. The enterprise ontology is introduced from a previous study, and its attributes are activity, organization, strategy, marketing, and time. The country ontology is derived from the demographic and geopolitical analysis of the target country, and its key attributes are economy, social infrastructure, law, regulation, customs, population, location, and development strategies. The priority list for target services for a certain country and/or the priority list for target countries for a certain public services are generated by a matching algorithm. These lists are used as input seeds to simulate the consortium partners, and government's policies and programs. In the simulation, the environmental differences between Korea and the target country can be customized through a gap analysis and work-flow optimization process. When the process gap between Korea and the target country is too large for a single corporation to cover, a consortium is considered an alternative choice, and various alternatives are derived from the capability index of enterprises. For financial packages, a mix of various foreign aid funds can be simulated during this stage. It is expected that the proposed ontology model and the business incubation platform can be used by various participants in the public service export market. It could be especially beneficial to small and medium businesses that have relatively fewer resources and experience with public service export. We also expect that the open and pervasive service architecture in a digital business ecosystem will help stakeholders find new opportunities through information sharing and collaboration on business processes.

• The Korean Journal of Health Service Management
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.137-154
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• 2008

The increase of the supply of medical service and the increase of hospitals have intensified the competition of hospitals, and the advancement towards internationalization in the opening of medical industry has triggered the infinite competition of medical profession. In addition, the high expectation of customers and quality improvement in the medical care in accordance with the improvement of overall income, and the change of active role of medical consumers according to the popularization and the improvement of rights awareness reflect the customer needs and choice in the medical service. Customers wanted to receive the kind and pleasant service under the up-to-date medical service. Therefore, as a solution, hospital coordinators were emerged for the purpose of smooth treatment and customer satisfaction by generalizing all service of hospital. Accordingly, this thesis attempted to investigate the effect of hospital coordinator education curriculum on the education satisfaction and the quality of medical service. In order to solve the purpose of this study, I, author reviewed the existing literatures, established hypothesis, and verified hypothesis by using the variety of statistics techniques such as reliability, validity, frequency analysis, and regression analysis. The verification of hypothesis is as followings: First, among education training factors of hospital coordinators, the quality of instructor significantly affects the satisfaction of hospital coordinator education training. Second, among training factors of hospital coordinator, the attitude of trainee significantly affects the training satisfaction of hospital coordinator. Third, among education training factors of hospital coordinator, education course significantly affects the training satisfaction of hospital coordinator education. As the qualities of instructor are better equipped, the satisfaction of education becomes higher. It indicates that the education method of instructors is important as an index to represent the qualities of instructor such as the appropriateness of education method, preparation, passion, visual materials, the adequacy of education procession, and specialized knowledge, and it has important effect on the satisfaction of education. In order to enhance the satisfaction of hospital coordinator education, the creation of education environment, making trainee concentrate on the education, is required by appropriately allocating programs, arousing interest in education, based on the attitude of trainee, discussion, and preliminary programs, preparation, ahead of enforcement of education. Fourth, the satisfaction of hospital coordinator education training significantly affects the reliability among the qualities of medical service. Fifth, satisfaction of hospital coordinator education training significantly affects hospitality I kindness among the qualities of medical service. If the education satisfaction of trainee is high, it is effective in the practical application such as dealing with complaints, the duty performance for the patients, and so on in offering the medical service, related to reliability and furthermore, we can find the positive change in the attitude change of medical professions related to the reliability of hospital coordinator. In addition, in the process of offering medical services such as the kind explanation on the duty, rapid response to the customers inquiry, and tidy uniform, practical effect was verified. Sixth, the education training factor of hospital coordinator significantly affects the reliability among the quality of medical service. Seventh, the education training factors of hospital coordinator significantly affect hospitality/kindness. In the education of hospital coordinator, the methods to attract the interest of trainee by emphasizing reliability should be sought and for gaining the practical effect of hospital coordinator education, the sufficient preparation and investigation on the education curriculum should be prerequisite and under this condition, intensified discussion on the instructor and education course is needed. In the design of education course, more education hours and subjects should be allocated in the part of hospitality in order to improve the practical application of hospitality. Therefore, it is meaningful in a sense that this study newly approached the components of hospital coordinator education and the need to modify the quality components of medical service in accordance with the study subjects was raised. This study also finds its meaning in that it provides basic materials for the study of future hospital coordinator education by suggesting the system development model of hospital coordinator education through preliminary study of education training. In addition, this study is meaningful in the aspect that it suggested the direction of education training by showing how the hospital coordinator education training would applied to the hospital coordinator course of the Continuing Education Center at Pusan and Kyungnam National University to some extent. Since all investigation of this study was approached from the side of hospital coordinator, the thoughts of patients who are beneficiaries of medical service, and care givers cannot be identified. Therefore, the satisfaction of patients and care givers through the experience of medical service, which is the essential prerequisite of medical service, should be importantly considered and investigated. Accordingly, The study of comparing and analyzing the views of both patients and care givers should be carried out in the future.

• 대한공업교육학회지
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.68-87
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• 2016

This research conducted a survey for total 166 teachers of schools so as to analyze validity and satisfaction for performance objectives of SMB administration subsidy the HRDP and the CEP in Specialized High School. The results of research are as follows. First, teachers recognize that purpose of HRDP is to expand employment of specialized high school and provide human resource of SMB. And, they recognize that HRDP is important to improve school outcomes and makes a positive effect on the improvement of school outcomes. Second, teachers recognize that objectives of HRDP are improvement of student's understanding for SMB, improvement of teacher's understanding for SMB, improvement of SMB's understanding of school, cultivation of student's occupational view, systematization of career guiding program based on employment process, strengthening of industry-academia cooperation education, improvement of the level of student's skill, fulfillment of workplace experience and practice focusing workplace learning, training of customized human resource for SMB, improvement of student's adaptation to the workplace, improvement of employment rate for SMB, expansion of job opportunities for students with SMB, preparation of the base of connection between school and SMB, publicity of school, expansion of opportunities to cooperate between SMB and school, establishment of cooperative system among industrial association and school, introduction and operation of the employment connective model for joint education and employment, strengthening of field professionalism of teachers. However, satisfaction for the achievement of objectives of HRDP except for strengthening of industry-academia cooperation education and improvement of employment rate for SMB is relatively lower than the validity. Third, teachers in charge of human resource training business of middle and small sized company's specialized high school recognize that objectives of CEP are expansion of job opportunities for students with SMB, excavation of good-quality SMB, expansion of opportunities to cooperate between SMB and school, fulfillment of workplace learning, improvement of student's major foundation and in-depth skill, improvement of literacy, math, teamwork and communication abilities for students' job performance, improvement of student's working attitude and student's proper career exploration decision. However, satisfaction for achievement of objectives of CEP is relatively lower than the validity.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.1-19
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• 2007

1. Purpose Rural tourism is made by individuals with different characteristics, needs and wants. It is important to have information on the characteristics and preferences of the consumers of the different types of existing rural accommodation. The stud aims to identify the determinants of consumer preference by type of accommodations. 2. Methodology 2.1 Sample Data were collected from 1000 people by telephone survey with three-stage stratified random sampling in seven metropolitan areas in Korea. Respondents were chosen by sampling internal on telephone book published in 2006. We surveyed from four to ten-thirty 0'clock afternoon so as to systematic sampling considering respondents' life cycle. 2.2 Two-step cluster Analysis Our study is accomplished through the use of a two-step cluster method to classify the accommodation in a reduced number of groups, so that each group constitutes a type. This method had been suggested as appropriate in clustering large data sets with mixed attributes. The method is based on a distance measure that enables data with both continuous and categorical attributes to be clustered. This is derived from a probabilistic model in which the distance between two clusters in equivalent to the decrease in log-likelihood function as a result of merging. 2.3 Multinomial Logit Analysis The estimation of a Multionmial Logit model determines the characteristics of tourist who is most likely to opt for each type of accommodation. The Multinomial Logit model constitutes an appropriate framework to explore and explain choice process where the choice set consists of more than two alternatives. Due to its ease and quick estimation of parameters, the Multinomial Logit model has been used for many empirical studies of choice in tourism. 3. Findings The auto-clustering algorithm indicated that a five-cluster solution was the best model, because it minimized the BIC value and the change in them between adjacent numbers of clusters. The accommodation establishments can be classified into five types: Traditional House, Typical Farmhouse, Farmstay house for group Tour, Log Cabin for Family, and Log Cabin for Individuals. Group 1 (Traditional House) includes mainly the large accommodation establishments, i.e. those with ondoll style room providing meals and one shower room on family tourist, of original construction style house. Group 2 (Typical Farmhouse) encompasses accommodation establishments of Ondoll rooms and each bathroom providing meals. It includes, in other words, the tourist accommodations Known as "rural houses." Group 3 (Farmstay House for Group) has accommodation establishments of Ondoll rooms not providing meals and self cooking facilities, large room size over five persons. Group 4 (Log Cabin for Family) includes mainly the popular accommodation establishments, i.e. those with Ondoll style room with on shower room on family tourist, of western styled log house. While the accommodations in this group are not defined as regards type of construction, the group does include all the original Korean style construction, Finally, group 5 (Log Cabin for Individuals)includes those accommodations that are bedroom western styled wooden house with each bathroom. First Multinomial Logit model is estimated including all the explicative variables considered and taking accommodation group 2 as base alternative. The results show that the variables and the estimated values of the parameters for the model giving the probability of each of the five different types of accommodation available in rural tourism village in Korea, according to the socio-economic and trip related characteristics of the individuals. An initial observation of the analysis reveals that none of variables income, the number of journey, distance, and residential style of house is explicative in the choice of rural accommodation. The age and accompany variables are significant for accommodation establishment of group 1. The education and rural residential experience variables are significant for accommodation establishment of groups 4 and 5. The expenditure and marital status variables are significant for accommodation establishment of group 4. The gender and occupation variable are significant for accommodation establishment of group 3. The loyalty variable is significant for accommodation establishment of groups 3 and 4. The study indicates that significant differences exist among the individuals who choose each type of accommodation at a destination. From this investigation is evident that several profiles of tourists can be attracted by a rural destination according to the types of existing accommodations at this destination. Besides, the tourist profiles may be used as the basis for investment policy and promotion for each type of accommodation, making use in each case of the variables that indicate a greater likelihood of influencing the tourist choice of accommodation.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.581-596
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• 1995

Clinical practice in nursing education provides an opportunity for students, through the process of ap-plying theoretical knowledge to practice, and to learn nursing skills as well as being socialized into nursing and as such decrease the reality shock of actual nursing practice. Because of a shortage of nursing faculty, the job of achieving the objectives of the clinical practice had been turned over to the head nurses. This resulted in many problems, such as, unclear location of responsibilities and inadequate feedback from head nurses. Therefore this study was done to introduce and evaluate the use of preceptors as a way to minimize the above problems, and to maximize the achievement of the clinical practice objectives. Using an adaptation of Zerbe's (1991) three-tiered team model, clinical practice was done using a preceptor, a head nurse and a clinical instructor, each with different and well defined roles. The subjects of this study were 67 senior students of the College of Nursing of Y University in Seoul whose clinical practice in adult nursing was carried out between May 1, 1994 and December 8, 1994. There were 22 preceptors who had at least two years of clinical experience and who were recommended by their head nurses. They were given additional education on the philosophy and objectives of the College of Nursing, on communication skills, on the theory and practice of education, and on nursing diagnosis and education evaluation. The role of the preceptor was to work one-to-one with students in their practice. The role of the head nurse was to supervise and evaluate the preceptors. The role of the clinical instructor was to provide the education program for the preceptors, to provide ad-vice and suggestions to the preceptors and to maintain lines of communication with the college. With each of these roles in place, it was thought that the effectiveness and efficiency of the clinical practice could be increased significantly. To evaluate the effectiveness of the preceptorship, the three - tiered model, Lowery's Teacher Evaluation Opinion Form translated and adapted to Korea was used to measure student statisfaction. The Clinical Practice Compentency Evaluation Tool developed by Lee et ai was also used to measure student competencies. The results of this study are as follows 1. The satisfaction with clinical practice was higher with the introduction of the perceptors than it was before they were used. (t=-5.96, p=<.005) 2. The clinical practice competencies were higher with the introduction of the preceptors than it was before they were used(t=-5.l3, p<.005) 3. In order to analyze areas not measured by the quantitative tools additional analysis of the open questions was done. The results of this analysis showed that : 1) The students felt positive about their sense of security, confidence, handling of responsbility, and being systematic. They also felt positive about improvements in knowledge, opportunities for direct care, and socialization. 2) The students felt negative about the technical part of their role, lack of knowledge by the preceptor, unprofessional attitudes on the part of the preceptor, difficulty in the role of the professional nurse(student). 3) The preceptors felt positive about their responsibility, motivation, and relationship with the college. 4) The preceptors felt negative about their bur-den. Introduction of the preceptorship model will lead to change and improvement in the negative factors discussed above, solve problems in the present clinical education system, increase continuity in the education of the students, help with socialization of the students and motivation of the preceptors to up-grade their education and increase their confidence. These objectives must be obtained to further the development of professional nursing, and thus, making the preceptorship a reality is our job for the future.

• Anxiety and mood
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.61-67
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• 2019

Objective : This study aimed to investigate the general process from the symptom onset to the psychiatric treatment in Korean panic patients and the effect of improved public awareness on it. Methods : This study has a retrospective design. The subjects were the new patients with panic disorder who visited the psychiatric outpatient clinic in twelve university-affiliated hospitals all across Korea. The medical chart was reviewed retrospectively and the data were collected including chief complaints of symptoms, recent stressors, the time to visit the psychiatric outpatient clinic, and visit of other departments and diagnostic approaches for their symptoms. Results : A total of 814 participants were included in the study. The most common department other than psychiatry the panic patients visited were cardiology (28.3%), general internal medicine (16.0%) and neurology (11.4%). The most frequently used diagnostic tests were a echocardiography (17.9%), 24-hour Holter monitoring (11.2%), and brain MRI (8.2%). Only 37.3% of participants visited psychiatric clinic directly. About 80% of participants visited psychiatric department within 1 year after their first panic symptoms and it took $13.8{\pm}13.7weeks$ on average. Comparing before and after 2012, the number of participants increased who visit directly the psychiatric clinic without visiting other departments (p=0.002) and without visiting emergency room (p<0.001). Conclusions : Our results suggest that a substantial number of patients visit departments other than psychiatry when they experience first panic symptoms. However, most patients begin psychiatric treatment within 1 year after their first symptoms and the number of patient are increasing who visit psychiatric department directly without visiting other departments.