The European Nightjar is a difficult bird to observe, being mainly nocturnal but also highly mobile, often travelling several kilometres at night to feed. Despite a recent reprieve in the UK, there is international concern about its status. A non‐intrusive monitoring method using vocal individuality therefore has considerable potential. The churring song commonly supposed to mark a territory was recorded from two principal localities in North Yorkshire. A computer program was developed to measure the pulse rates and phrase lengths of the churr and these variables were subjected to discriminant analysis. The pulse rates alone were able to classify 95% of individuals and this improved to 98.5% when the phrase lengths were included. The individual characteristics have been used to suggest movements within a season and the return of one individual to the same territory in three successive years.
PurposeThis paper discusses reliability problems associated with questionnaires, commonly employed in library and information science. It focuses on the effects of "common method variance" (CMV), which is a form of bias, and ways of countering these effects. ApproachWe critically review the use of existing tools for demonstrating reliability in questionnaire-based studies. In particular we focus on Cronbach's alpha, "Harman's single factor test" and Lindell and Whitney's "marker variable" approach. We introduce an illustrative case study based on our own work on metacognition and web searching. We go on to make recommendations for researchers considering using a questionnairebased approach. FindingsCMV is a problem affecting questionnaire-based studies in different disciplines across social and information science. Where questionnaire items are more abstract, CMV has been found to be more of a problem. The widely used Cronbach alpha measure of the reliability of a questionnaire may often be affected by CMV. Where method bias dominates the results, a high alpha score may do no more than indicate that the questionnaire consistently allows participants to accede to their biases. "Harman's single factor test" is criticised as lacking sufficient foundation, and it is concluded that it should not be used. The marker variable approach is a useful option but must be applied with caution. Practical implicationsA number of practical implications for researchers are drawn. Questionnaire-based work investigating abstract constructs should be assumed to carry a high likelihood of CMV, and therefore should attempt to avoid it and demonstrate the degree of success in this regard. Otherwise, interpretation of the results should assume CMV. A number of approaches to assessing and isolating CMV are discussed. ValueThe paper draws attention to a problem that is arguably often overlooked in questionnaire-based studies, namely method bias. It discusses a number of approaches whereby it may be identified and controlled.
Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to present a study of knowledge management understanding and usage in small and medium knowledge-intensive enterprises. Design/methodology/approach -The study has taken an interpretitivist approach, using two knowledge-intensive South Yorkshire (England) companies as case studies, both of which are characterised by the need to process and use knowledge on a daily basis in order to remain competitive. The case studies were analysed using qualitative research methodology, composed of interviews and concept mapping, thus deriving a characterisation of understandings, perceptions and requirements of SMEs in relation to knowledge management. Findings -The study provides evidence that, while SMEs, including knowledge intensive ones, acknowledge that adequately capturing, storing, sharing and disseminating knowledge can lead to greater innovation and productivity, their managers are not prepared to invest the relatively high effort on long term knowledge management goals for which they have difficulty in establishing the added value. Thus, knowledge management activities within SMEs tend to happen in an informal way, rarely supported by purposely designed ICT systems. Research limitations/implications -This paper proposes that further studies in this field are required that focus on organisational and practical issues in order to close the gap between theoretical propositions and the reality of practice. Practical implications -The study suggests that in order to implement an appropriate knowledge management strategy in SMEs cultural, behavioural, and organisational issues need to be tackled before even considering technical issues. Originality/value -KM seems to have been successfully applied in large companies, but it is largely disregarded by small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). This has been attributed primarily to a lack of a formal approach to the sharing, recording, transferring, auditing and exploiting of organisational knowledge, together with a lack of utilisation of available information technologies. This paper debates these concepts from a research findings point of view.
This article reports on the development of a novel method for the analysis of Web logs. The method uses techniques that look for similarities between queries and identify sequences of "query transformation". It allows sequences of query transformations to be represented as graphical networks, thereby giving a richer view of search behavior than is possible with the usual sequential descriptions. We also perform a basic analysis to study the correlations between observed transformation codes, with results that appear to show evidence of behavior habits. The method was developed using transaction logs from the Excite search engine to provide a tool for an ongoing research project that is endeavoring to develop a greater understanding of Web-based searching by the general public. IntroductionThe research reported here is part of a larger experimental project designed to develop an understanding of howand how effectively-the general public search for information on the Web. The long-term aim of this study is to build an evidence-based model of effective searching that should inform the design of training and intelligent adaptive search interfaces. The evidence involved will include audio transcriptions, cognitive style scores, background questionnaire results, and search appraisal scores from our volunteer subjects as well as an analysis of their query transformation patterns. Query transformations are defined here as the linguistic and conceptual strategic changes searchers make as they repeatedly reformulate their search queries in response to ongoing failure and success. The rationale of the current project is based on the hypothesis that by studying query transformations in relation to other data, we can gain insights into what are the essential generic strategies that may result in more, and less, effective Web searching.In this article, we focus on the development of methods for the extraction and analysis of query transformation types and, to this end, an analysis has been conducted using transaction logs from the Excite search engine dating from 2001. Although these are not current, they represent a typical record of queries from that time period with many of the syntactic changes that will be of interest to us in our empirical studies. They are, moreover, well known and extensively studied (Spink, Wolfram, Jansen, & Saracevic, 2001). Although the lack of context places a limit on their usefulness, search logs do provide abundant data relating to syntactic changes and form an excellent training ground for the development of our analytical methods. The resulting analysis can be applied to our own empirical search data and used in conjunction with qualitative results to aid the development of our model. Related WorkA significant body of research into Web searching now exists (Spink & Jansen, 2004). The motivation for such studies includes the exploitation of generic knowledge of effective searching to provide better training and the development of intelligent search engines that will proactively assist the sear...
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