• The Journal of Korean Academy of Prosthodontics
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• v.52 no.4
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• pp.287-297
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• 2014

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the impacts of infection control education on dental hygienists' perceptions for hepatitis B and their behaviors. Materials and methods: Study participants were chosen by random selection among dental hygienists working in Seoul, Korea. A total of 150 questionnaires were sent out for the survey from April 2013 to May 2013, of which 140-excluding incomplete responses-were used for the study. Chi-square tests and t-tests were used (SPSS 19.0), and post-hoc analysis was performed as well. The maximum significance level was 0.05. Results: Average 1.53 times infection control education was taken, but dental hygienists' perceptions for hepatitis B and their behaviors did not show statistical differences whether the education was done or not. Practices to prevent infection showed differences depending on categories, especially disinfection and sterilization were well performed by educated group. The most common reasons for not taking the education and noncompliance with infection prevention guidelines are lack of time and opportunity due to busy schedule. Conclusion: 1. The more highly educated, the greater number of patients per day, and the greater size of hospitals, the better infection control education was conducted. 2. Although hepatitis B is one of the most common chronic liver diseases in Korea, no significant correlation between perceptions of hepatitis B and infection control education was found. 3. Dental hygienists who received infection control education performed more efficient practices for protection against infections than those who did not.

• Korean journal of food and cookery science
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.542-548
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• 2001

Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point(HACCP) is becoming an important component of food safety worldwide. The aim of this study was to investigate comprehensively the education and knowledge level of food service managers on HACCP as well as applying HACCP system to industrial foodservice. Total 247 foodservice managers participated in the survey and 159 responses were used for analysis. The results were as follows: 1) 89% of foodservice managers were educated about HACCP, and 40.9% felt they did fully understand HACCP and 47.8% did half. 2) The score for the implementation of HACCP was in the order of apparatus and facility sanitation, personal sanitation, and time-temperature/etc. sanitation. 3) Foodservice managers who were taught HACCP kept a deep attention to food and personal sanitation, compared with those without education(p＜0.05). However, the education time on HACCP affected conducting safety management. The results suggest that education and understanding of HACCP are positively related, and understanding of HACCP has a positive influence on conducting safety management.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.25 no.8
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• pp.889-895
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• 2015

Endothelial dysfunction is an initial step in atherosclerosis. B vitamins (B6, B12, and folate) are important contributing factors to vascular homeostasis. Deficiencies in these B vitamins induce cardiovascular diseases by altering vascular homeostasis. Folate plays important roles in nitric oxide homeostasis in the endothelium. To determine the dose-dependent effect of dietary folate on atherosclerosis, we studied aortic relaxation and hepatic C-reactive protein (CRP) levels in C57BL/6 mice. In this study, a total of 54 male C57BL/6, 8-wk old mice were split into 2 dietary groups (control and Western style diet). Each diet group was divided into 3 subgroups according to dietary folate dosage (0.2, 2, and 8 mg/kg). After 18 months, the relaxation response seen in aortic rings from mice fed 0.2 or 2 mg folate/kg in both diet groups. However, the aortic relaxation response was not seen and no differences were observed in mice fed 8mg folate/kg in either diet group (p<0.05). Hepatic CRP levels at all folate dosages (0.2, 2, 8 mg folate/kg) were higher in the groups fed a Western style diet than in mice fed a control diet (p=0.035). CRP levels were lower in mice fed 0.2 mg folate/kg than in mice fed 2 or 8 mg folate/kg in both diet groups (p<0.05). These results indicate that in C57BL/6 mice 0.2 mg folate/kg may be enough to prevent atherosclerosis by inducing the relaxation responses of the aorta and by reducing levels of hepatic CRP, regardless of dietary style.

• Horticultural Science & Technology
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.27-33
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• 2012

This study aimed to investigate the responses of plant growth and blossom-end rot (BER) incidence to calcium (Ca) and its three kinds of antagonistic cations (K, Mg, and $NH_4$-N) with various ratios in nutrient solution for sweet paper (Capsicum annuum L. 'RZ208'). Both Ca to each cation and Ca to a series of cation combinations, such as potassium (K), ammonium nitrate ($NH_4$), or magnesium (Mg) were more influential to the fruit growth and quality than plant growth. Especially, the BER incidence was significantly influenced by the ratio treatments. For examples, when Ca:(K + Mg) or Ca:(K + Mg + $NH_4$) ratio was 1:2 the highest incident rate of BER about 70.3 or 86.3% was observed, lowering the marketable yield to 19 or 13.7% of the total yield, respectively. The correlation coefficiencies (= r) to relationships between the BER and K as well as BER and $NH_4$ were 0.82 (P < 0.05) and 0.65 (P < 0.05), respectively. Combination only with the Mg element was not correlated with the BER incidence. However, when both of the K and Mg concentrations were 0.65 (P < 0.05). The highest correlation coefficiency, 0.92 (P < 0.05), was found to a relationship between the BER and the tree elemental combination.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.57-63
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• 2009

With an exponential increase in electronic commerce (e-commerce), marketers are attempting to gain a competitive advantage by emphasizing service quality and post interaction service aspects, which leads to customer satisfaction or behavioral consequence. Particularly for apparel, service quality is one of the key determinants in encouraging customer e-loyalty, and hence the success of apparel retailing in the context of electronic commerce. Therefore, this study explores e-service quality (E-SERVQUAL) factors and their unique effects on e-loyalty for apparel online shopping based on Parasuraman et al' s (2005) framework. Specific objectives of this study are to identify underlying dimension of E-SERVQUAL, and analyze a structural model for examining the effect of E-SERVQUAL on e-loyalty for online apparel shopping. For the theoretical framework of service quality in the context of online shopping, literatures on traditional and electronic service quality factors were comparatively reviewed, and two aspects of core and recovery services were identified. This study hypothesized that E-SERVQUAL has an effect on e-loyalty; customer satisfaction has a positive effect on e-service loyalty for apparel online shopping; and customer satisfaction mediates in the effect of E-SERVQUAL on e-loyalty for apparel online shopping. A self-administered questionnaire was developed based on literatures. A total of 252 usable questionnaires were obtained from online consumers who had purchase experience with online shopping for apparel products and reside in standard metropolitan areas, in the United States. Factor analysis (e.g., exploratory, confirmatory) was conducted to assess the validity and reliability and the structural equation model including measurement and structural models was estimated via LISREL 8.8 program. Findings showed that the E-SERVQUAL of shopping websites for apparel consisted of five factors: Compensation, Fulfillment, Efficiency, System Availability, and Responsiveness. This supports Parasuraman (2005)'s E-S-QUAL encompassing two aspects of core service (e.g., fulfillment, efficiency, system availability) and recovery related service (e.g., compensation, responsiveness) in the context of apparel shopping online. In the structural equation model, there are five exogenous latent variables for e-SERVQUAL factors; and two endogenous latent variables (e.g., customer satisfaction, e-loyalty). For the measurement model, the factor loadings for each respective construct were statistically significant and were greater than .60 and internal consistency reliabilities ranged from .85 to .88. In the estimated structural model of the e-SERVEQUAL factors, the system availability was found to have direct and positive effect on e-loyalty, whereas efficiency had a negative effect on e-loyalty for apparel online shopping. However, fulfillment was not a significant predictor for explaining consequences of E-SERVQUAL for apparel online shopping. This finding implies that perceived service quality of system available was likely to increase customer satisfaction for apparel online shopping. However, it was not supported that e-loyalty was determined by service quality, because service quality has an indirect effect on e-loyalty (i.e., repurchase intention) by mediating effect of value or satisfaction in the context of online shopping for apparel. In addition, both compensation and responsiveness were found to have a significant impact on customer satisfaction, which influenced e-loyalty for apparel online shopping. Thus, there was significant indirect effect of compensation and responsiveness on e-loyalty. This suggests that the recovery-specific service factors play an important role in maximizing customer satisfaction levels and then maintaining customer loyalty to the online shopping site for apparel. The findings have both managerial and research implications. Fashion marketers can establish long-term relationship with their customers based on continuously measuring customer perceptions for recovery-related service quality, such as quick responses to problem and returns, and compensation for customers' problem after their purchases. In order to maintain e-loyalty, recovery services play an important role in the first choice websites for consumers to purchase clothing. Given that online consumers may shop anywhere, a marketing strategy for improving competitive advantages is to provide better service quality, maximize satisfaction, and turn to creating customers' e-loyalty for apparel online shopping. From a researcher's perspective, there are some limitations of this research that should be considered when interpreting its findings. For future research, findings provide a basis for the further study of this important topic along both theoretical and empirical dimensions. Based on the findings, more comprehensive models for predicting E-SERVQUAL's consequences can be developed and tested. For global fashion marketing, this study can expand to a cross-cultural approach into e-service quality for apparel by including multinational samples.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.19-38
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• 2017

Collaborative filtering (CF) algorithm has been popularly used for implementing recommender systems. Until now, there have been many prior studies to improve the accuracy of CF. Among them, some recent studies adopt 'hybrid recommendation approach', which enhances the performance of conventional CF by using additional information. In this research, we propose a new hybrid recommender system which fuses CF and the results from the social network analysis on trust and distrust relationship networks among users to enhance prediction accuracy. The proposed algorithm of our study is based on memory-based CF. But, when calculating the similarity between users in CF, our proposed algorithm considers not only the correlation of the users' numeric rating patterns, but also the users' in-degree centrality values derived from trust and distrust relationship networks. In specific, it is designed to amplify the similarity between a target user and his or her neighbor when the neighbor has higher in-degree centrality in the trust relationship network. Also, it attenuates the similarity between a target user and his or her neighbor when the neighbor has higher in-degree centrality in the distrust relationship network. Our proposed algorithm considers four (4) types of user relationships - direct trust, indirect trust, direct distrust, and indirect distrust - in total. And, it uses four adjusting coefficients, which adjusts the level of amplification / attenuation for in-degree centrality values derived from direct / indirect trust and distrust relationship networks. To determine optimal adjusting coefficients, genetic algorithms (GA) has been adopted. Under this background, we named our proposed algorithm as SNACF-GA (Social Network Analysis - based CF using GA). To validate the performance of the SNACF-GA, we used a real-world data set which is called 'Extended Epinions dataset' provided by 'trustlet.org'. It is the data set contains user responses (rating scores and reviews) after purchasing specific items (e.g. car, movie, music, book) as well as trust / distrust relationship information indicating whom to trust or distrust between users. The experimental system was basically developed using Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), but we also used UCINET 6 for calculating the in-degree centrality of trust / distrust relationship networks. In addition, we used Palisade Software's Evolver, which is a commercial software implements genetic algorithm. To examine the effectiveness of our proposed system more precisely, we adopted two comparison models. The first comparison model is conventional CF. It only uses users' explicit numeric ratings when calculating the similarities between users. That is, it does not consider trust / distrust relationship between users at all. The second comparison model is SNACF (Social Network Analysis - based CF). SNACF differs from the proposed algorithm SNACF-GA in that it considers only direct trust / distrust relationships. It also does not use GA optimization. The performances of the proposed algorithm and comparison models were evaluated by using average MAE (mean absolute error). Experimental result showed that the optimal adjusting coefficients for direct trust, indirect trust, direct distrust, indirect distrust were 0, 1.4287, 1.5, 0.4615 each. This implies that distrust relationships between users are more important than trust ones in recommender systems. From the perspective of recommendation accuracy, SNACF-GA (Avg. MAE = 0.111943), the proposed algorithm which reflects both direct and indirect trust / distrust relationships information, was found to greatly outperform a conventional CF (Avg. MAE = 0.112638). Also, the algorithm showed better recommendation accuracy than the SNACF (Avg. MAE = 0.112209). To confirm whether these differences are statistically significant or not, we applied paired samples t-test. The results from the paired samples t-test presented that the difference between SNACF-GA and conventional CF was statistical significant at the 1% significance level, and the difference between SNACF-GA and SNACF was statistical significant at the 5%. Our study found that the trust/distrust relationship can be important information for improving performance of recommendation algorithms. Especially, distrust relationship information was found to have a greater impact on the performance improvement of CF. This implies that we need to have more attention on distrust (negative) relationships rather than trust (positive) ones when tracking and managing social relationships between users.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.285-296
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• 2014

The impacts of high temperature and drought were studied on the seedlings of three families (superiorgangwon74, intermediate-gangwon77 and inferior-gangwon132) of P. densiflora which had been selected by the based on the growth indexes of 32-year-old. The seedlings were grown in controlled-environment growth chambers with combinations of four temperatures ($-3^{\circ}C$, $0^{\circ}C$, $+3^{\circ}C$ $+6^{\circ}C$; based on the monthly average for 30 years in Korea) and two water conditions (control, drought). The growth performance, photosynthetic parameters and photosynthetic pigment contents were measured at every 30 days under four temperatures and drought condition, and the end of each treatment. The superior family showed higher relative diameter at root collar growth rate and the dry weight than intermediate and inferior family in all treatments. Under elevated temperature and drought condition, growth rate was decreased, and seedlings showed lower growth rate than that of control in three families under low temperature. Photosynthetic rate, stomatal conductance and transpiration rate of three families decreased with the increase of temperature and drought condition, and that of seedlings under low temperature was lower than control. But under elevated temperature and drought condition, water use efficiency increased in three families. Photosynthetic pigment contents of leaves decreased under the increase of temperature and drought condition, but chlorophyll a/b ratio increased with the increase of temperature and drought condition in three families. The superior family showed higher total chlorophyll content than intermediate and inferior family in all treatments. In conclusion, P. densiflora is under changed temperature and drought condition, growth was decreased, seedlings more affected in elevated temperature than that of decreased temperature. The increase in monthly average temperature in Korea of more than $6^{\circ}C$, P. densiflora seedling growth in depending on region may decrease. In this study, the superior family(gangwon74) showed more excellent growth and physiological responses than intermediate (gangwon77) and inferior(gangwon132) family under changes temperature and drought.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.73-82
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• 2016

Purpose - Counterproductive work behavior(CWB) was typically categorized according to the behavior whether it targets other people(i.e., interpersonal CWB: I-CWB). Employing organizations(i.e., organizational CWB: O-CWB) has emerged as major concerns among researchers, managers, and the general public. An abundance of researches has informed us about the understanding for the antecedents of CWB, whereas little is known about the antecedents of CWB directed distribution service in employee's emotional labor. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to propose a research model in which surface acting enhances emotional exhaustion as an emotional labor strategy, which eventually increases counterproductive work behavior(including I-CWM and O-CWB). Research design, data, and methodology - This empirical research data were gathered from the samples of full time frontline hotel employees(including front office, call center, food/beverage, concierge, and room service) in South Korea. Six hotels were selected ranged from four to five stars, including privately owned and joint-venture properties. A convenience sampling method was used to select hotels. Full time frontline hotel employees from the six hotels were surveyed using a self-administered instrument for data collection. With the strong support of hotel managers, a total of 300 questionnaires were distributed, and 252 responses were collected indicating a response rate of 84.0%. In the process of working with the 252 samples, structural equation modeling is employed to test research hypotheses(H1: The relationship between surface acting and Interpersonal counterproductive work behavior(I-CWB) is mediated by emotional exhaustion, H2: The relationship between surface acting and organizational counterproductive work behavior(O-CWB) is mediated by emotional exhaustion). SPSS 18.0 and M-Plus 7.31 software were used for the data analysis. Descriptive statistics were used to assess the distribution of the employee profiles and correlations between factors. M-Plus 7.31 software was used to test the model fit, validity, and reliability of the factors, significance of the relationship between factors, and the effects of factors in the model. Results - To test our mediation hypotheses, we used an analytical strategy suggested by Preacher & Hayes (2008) and Shrout & Bolger (2002). This mediation approach directly tests the indirect effect between the predictor and the criterion variables through the mediator via a bootstrapping procedure. Thus, it addresses some weaknesses associated with the Sobel test. We found that surface acting was positively related to emotional exhaustion. Furthermore, emotional exhaustion was a significant predictor from the two kinds of counterproductive work behavior. In addition, surface acting was not significantly associated with the two kinds of counterproductive work behavior. These results indicated that the surface acting by frontline hotel employees was associated with higher emotional exhaustion, which is related with higher interpersonal counterproductive work behavior(I-CWB) and organizational counterproductive work behavior(O-CWB). In sum, we confirmed that the positive relationship between surface acting and the two kinds of counterproductive work behavior was fully mediated by emotional exhaustion. Conclusions - The current research broadens the conceptual work and empirical studies in counterproductive work behavior literature by representing a fundamental mechanism that how surface acting affects counterproductive work behavior.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing Administration
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.97-114
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• 1996

INSTRODUCTION Service quality is, unlike goods quality, an abstract and elusive constuct. Service quality and its requirements are not easily understood by consumers, and also present some critical research problems. However, quality is very important to marketers and consumers in that it has many strategic benefits in contributing to profitability of marketing activities and consumers' problem-solving activities. Moreover, despite the phenomenal growth of medical service sector, few researchers have attempted to define and model medical service quality. Especially, little research has focused on the evaluation of medical service quality and patient satisfaction from the perspectives of both the provider and the patient. As competition intensifies and patients are demanding higher quality of medical service, medical service quality and patient satisfaction has emerged as a critical research topic. The major purpose of this article is to explore the concept of medical service quality and its evaluation from both nurse and patient perspectives. This article attempts to achieve its purpose by (1)classfying critical service attibutes into threecategories(satisfiers, hygiene factors, and performance factors). (2)measuring the relative importance of need criteria, (3)evaluating SERVPERF model and SERVQUAL model in medical service sector, and (4)identifying the relationship between perceived quality and overall patient satisfaction. METHOD Data were gathered from a sample of 217 patients and 179 nurses in Seoul-area general hospitals. From the review of previous literature, 50 survey items representing various facets of the medical service quality were developed to form a questionnaire. A five-point scale ranging from "Strongly Agree"(5) to "Strongly Disagree"(1) accompanied each statement(expectation statements, perception statements, and importance statements). To measure overall satisfaction, a seven-point scale was used, ranging from "Very Satisfied"(7) to "Very Dissatisfied"(1) with no verbal labels for scale points 2 through 6 RESULTS In explaining the relationship between perceived performance and overall satisfaction, only 31 variables out of original 50 survey items were proven to be statistically significant. Hence, a penalty-reward analysis was performed on theses 31 critical attributes to find out 17 satisfiers, 8 hygiene factors, and 4 performance factors in patient perspective. The role(category) of each service quality attribute in relation to patient satisfaction was com pared across two groups, that is, patients and nurses. They were little overlapped, suggesting that two groups had different sets of 'perceived quality' attributes. Principal components factor analyses of the patients' and nurses' responses were performed to identify the underlying dimensions for the set of performance(experience) statements. 28 variables were analyzed by using a varimax rotation after deleting three obscure variables. The number of factors to be extracted was determined by evaluating the eigenvalue scores. Six factors wereextracted, accounting for 57.1% of the total variance. Reliability analysis was performed to refine the factors further. Using coefficient alpha, scores of .84 to .65 were obtained. Individual-item analysis indicated that all statements in each of the factors should remain. On 26 attributes of 31 critical service quality attributes, there were gaps between actual patient's importance of need criteria and nurse perceptions of them. Those critical attributes could be classified into four categories based on the relative importance of need criteria and perceived performance from the perspective of patient. This analysis is useful in developing strategic plans for performance improvement. (1) top priorities(high importance and low performance) (in this study)- more health-related information -accuracy in billing - quality of food - appointments at my convenience - information about tests and treatments - prompt service of business office -adequacy of accommodations(elevators, etc) (2) current strengths(high importance and high performance) (3)unnecessary strengths(low importance and high performance) (4) low priorities(low importance and low performance) While 26 service quality attributes of SERPERF model were significantly related to patient satisfation, only 13 attributes of SERVQUAL model were significantly related. This result suggested that only experience-based norms(SERVPERF model) were more appropriate than expectations to serve as a benchmark against which service experiences were compared(SERVQUAL model). However, it must be noted that the degree of association to overall satisfaction was not consistent. There were some gaps between nurse percetions and patient perception of medical service performance. From the patient's viewpoint, "personal likability", "technical skill/trust", and "cares about me" were most significant positioning factors that contributed patient satisfaction. DISCUSSION This study shows that there are inconsistencies between nurse perceptions and patient perceptions of medical service attributes. Also, for service quality improvement, it is most important for nurses to understand what satisfiers, hygiene factors, and performance factors are through two-way communications. Patient satisfaction should be measured, and problems identified should be resolved for survival in intense competitive market conditions. Hence, patient satisfaction monitoring is now becoming a standard marketing tool for healthcare providers and its role is expected to increase.

• Sleep Medicine and Psychophysiology
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.95-99
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• 2004

Objectives: Although many studies on seasonal variations in mood and behavior have been carried out in foreign countries, no such study has previously been undertaken in Korea. The goal of this study was to estimate the frequency of seasonal variations in mood and behavior among Korean medical students. Methods: 297 medical students from Korea University College of Medicine participated in this study. The subjects were surveyed with a Korean translation of the Seasonal Pattern Assessment Questionnaire (SPAQ), and their responses were evaluated for seasonal patterns of mood and behavioral change, including seasonal affective disorder (SAD) and subsyndromal seasonal affective disorder (S-SAD), derived from the case-finding criteria of Kasper et al. Results: The mean global seasonality score was 6.6 (SD=3.6). 83.5% (N=248) of the subjects reported some changes in behavior and mood associated with the seasons. Only 3.7% (N=11) reported no behavioral changes across the seasons. Total prevalence rates were 15.2% for SAD, and 2.7% for S-SAD. The estimated frequencies were 3.0% for summer SAD, 2.7% for summer S-SAD, 11.4% for winter SAD, and 5.8% for winter S-SAD. The prevalence rates for winter SAD or S-SAD were higher than the prevalence rates for summer SAD or S-SAD. Conclusion: These results suggest that seasonal variations in mood and behavior are common among Koreans. The higher prevalence rate of winter SAD or S-SAD than summer SAD or S-SAD is consistent with most western studies and stands in contrasts to studies in other Asian countries, such as Japan and China.