Unpaid Volunteers Research Articles

Carrots and Rainbows: Motivation and Social Practice in Open Source Software Development

Open source software (OSS) is a social and economic phenomenon that raises fundamental questions about the motivations of contributors to information systems development. Some developers are unpaid volunteers who seek to solve their own technical problems, while others create OSS as part of their employment contract. For the past 10 years, a substantial amount of academic work has theorized about and empirically examined developer motivations. We review this work and suggest considering motivation in terms of the values of the social practice in which developers participate. Based on the social philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre, we construct a theoretical framework that expands our assumptions about individual motivation to include the idea of a long-term, value-informed quest beyond short-term rewards. This motivation-practice framework depicts how the social practice and its supporting institutions mediate between individual motivation and outcome. The framework contains three theoretical conjectures that seek to explain how collectively elaborated standards of excellence prompt developers to produce high-quality software, change institutions, and sustain OSS development. From the framework, we derive six concrete propositions and suggest a new research agenda on motivation in OSS.

Comparing antiretroviral treatment outcomes between a prospective community-based and hospital-based cohort of HIV patients in rural Uganda

BackgroundImproved availability of antiretroviral therapy in sub-Saharan Africa is intended to benefit all eligible HIV-infected patients; however in reality antiretroviral services are mainly offered in urban hospitals. Poor rural patients have difficulty accessing the drugs, making the provision of antiretroviral therapy inequitable. Initial tests of community-based treatment programs in Uganda suggest that home-based treatment of HIV/AIDS may equal hospital-based treatment; however the literature reveals limited experiences with such programs.The researchThis intervention study aimed to; 1) assess the effectiveness of a rural community-based ART program in a subcounty (Rwimi) of Uganda; and 2) compare treatment outcomes and mortality in a rural community-based antiretroviral therapy program with a well-established hospital-based program. Ethics approvals were obtained in Canada and Uganda.Results and outcomesSuccessful treatment outcomes after two years in both the community and hospital cohorts were high. All-cause mortality was similar in both cohorts. However, community-based patients were more likely to achieve viral suppression and had good adherence to treatment. The community-based program was slightly more cost-effective. Per capita costs in both settings were unsustainable, representing more than Uganda’s Primary Health Care Services current expenditures per person per year for all health services. The unpaid community volunteers showed high participation and low attrition rates for the two years that this program was evaluated.Challenges and successesKey successes of this study include the demonstration that antiretroviral therapy can be provided in a rural setting, the creation of a research infrastructure and culture within Kabarole’s health system, and the establishment of a research collaboration capable of enriching the global health graduate program at the University of Alberta. Challenging questions about the long-term feasibility and sustainability of a community-based ARV program in Uganda still remain.The partnershipThis project is a continuation of previous successful collaborations between the School of Public Health of Makerere University, the School of Public Health of University of Alberta, the Kabarole District Administration and the Kabarole Research and Resource Center.

Supervised collaboration for syntactic annotation of Quranic Arabic

The Quranic Arabic Corpus ( http://corpus.quran.com ) is a collaboratively constructed linguistic resource initiated at the University of Leeds, with multiple layers of annotation including part-of-speech tagging, morphological segmentation (Dukes and Habash 2010) and syntactic analysis using dependency grammar (Dukes and Buckwalter 2010). The motivation behind this work is to produce a resource that enables further analysis of the Quran, the 1,400 year-old central religious text of Islam. This project contrasts with other Arabic treebanks by providing a deep linguistic model based on the historical traditional grammar known as i′rāb (إعراب). By adapting this well-known canon of Quranic grammar into a familiar tagset, it is possible to encourage online annotation by Arabic linguists and Quranic experts. This article presents a new approach to linguistic annotation of an Arabic corpus: online supervised collaboration using a multi-stage approach. The different stages include automatic rule-based tagging, initial manual verification, and online supervised collaborative proofreading. A popular website attracting thousands of visitors per day, the Quranic Arabic Corpus has approximately 100 unpaid volunteer annotators each suggesting corrections to existing linguistic tagging. To ensure a high-quality resource, a small number of expert annotators are promoted to a supervisory role, allowing them to review or veto suggestions made by other collaborators. The Quran also benefits from a large body of existing historical grammatical analysis, which may be leveraged during this review. In this paper we evaluate and report on the effectiveness of the chosen annotation methodology. We also discuss the unique challenges of annotating Quranic Arabic online and describe the custom linguistic software used to aid collaborative annotation.

Endogenous -Hydroxybutyric Acid Concentrations in Saliva Determined by Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry

Endogenous γ-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB) concentrations in blood and urine are well documented, but there are very little data on natural levels in saliva, a biological matrix increasingly used for drug testing. We measured endogenous GHB concentrations in 120 unpaid volunteers who also provided anonymous epidemiological data. Samples were analyzed using a rapid and reliable method, utilizing liquid-liquid extraction, silyl-derivatization, and gas chromatographic-mass spectrometric analysis. One sample, between the lower limit of quantitation (0.2 mg/L) and limit of detection (0.1 mg/L), was split to 0.15 mg/L for statistical purposes. Salivary GHB concentrations ranged from 0.15 to 3.33 mg/L (mean = 1.29; median = 1.13). Statistical analysis using the Mann-Whitney test indicated that endogenous GHB concentrations in saliva were not significantly affected by age, gender, medical conditions, use of medications, and recent food/drink consumption. Interpreting GHB concentrations in biological samples poses difficulties because of its endogenous presence and rapid elimination, and this is true for saliva as well as blood and urine. However, saliva has the merit of being easy to collect by law enforcement personnel.

Deteriorating Cost-Benefit Ratios for Ecstasy/MDMA with Repeated Usage

68 recreational Ecstasy/MDMA users were categorized into four subgroups: light versus heavy users (+20 occasions lifetime), subdivided into current and former users (usage within 6 months). Each unpaid volunteer completed a questionnaire about their personal experiences on Ecstasy/MDMA. The four questions here covered experiences the first and last times on Ecstasy. Positive effects were assessed using a ten-point rating scale from 1 (none) to 10 (maximum), while ‘negative’ effects were

Human milk banking in the volunteer sector: Policy development and actuality in 1970s Australia

Objectiveto describe the development of rigorous milk banking policies in the voluntary sector in Australia, 1975–1979, by the non-government organisation, the Nursing Mothers' Association of Australia (now the Australian Breastfeeding Association), and the eventual abandonment of milk banking by the organisation. Designhistorical article. SettingAustralia in the years 1975–1979. Conclusionsduring the period in which the policy development described here took place, conducting a milk bank to the rigorous standards set by the organisation required too heavy an investment of hours by unpaid volunteer coordinators to be sustainable. Implications for practicein establishing and continuing a successful milk bank, models which depend less on volunteer hours may be more sustainable.

CHARITIES AND TERRORIST FINANCING

A decade after the bombing of Air India Flight 182 in June 1985, many Canadians were shocked to learn that the Babbar Khalsa Society – a militant organization dedicated to the establishment of an independent state in northern India, members of which are believed to have planned the Air India bombing – had been granted charitable status in Canada. Although the organization's charitable status was revoked in 1996, reports also suggested that funds collected to support Sikh temples in Canada may have been diverted to support Sikh militancy in India. This article examines the relationship between charities and terrorist financing in Canada, reviewing Canada's legal framework in order to evaluate its adequacy to limit the use or misuse of charitable organizations for terrorist financing. This evaluation is based on two important considerations. First, as experience with the Babbar Khalsa Society and Sikh temple funds sadly demonstrates, effective supervision and regulation of charitable organizations is essential to prevent their being manipulated by individuals and groups who seek to exploit the legitimacy and fiscal benefits that these organizations enjoy in order to finance terrorism. Second, as many charities are small organizations with unpaid volunteers and very few have any connection with terrorist activities, charities should generally be viewed as allies in the struggle against terrorism rather than suspects. As a result, government supervision and regulation of the charitable sector should be proportionate and risk-based – emphasizing capacity building and best practices to prevent the use or misuse of charitable organizations for terrorist financing, ensuring transparency and self-regulation to the greatest extent possible, scrutinizing transactions and organizations that pose the greatest risks for terrorist links, and limiting more serious regulatory sanctions to the rare instances where charities provide support to terrorist organizations.

Charities and Terrorist Financing

A decade after the bombing of Air India Flight 182 in June 1985, many Canadians were shocked to learn that the Babbar Khalsa Society – a militant organization dedicated to the establishment of an independent state in northern India, members of which are believed to have planned the Air India bombing – had been granted charitable status in Canada. Although the organization’s charitable status was revoked in 1996, reports also suggested that funds collected to support Sikh temples in Canada may have been diverted to support Sikh militancy in India. This article examines the relationship between charities and terrorist financing in Canada, reviewing Canada’s legal framework in order to evaluate its adequacy to limit the use or misuse of charitable organizations for terrorist financing. This evaluation is based on two important considerations. First, as experience with the Babbar Khalsa Society and Sikh temple funds sadly demonstrates, effective supervision and regulation of charitable organizations is essential to prevent their being manipulated by individuals and groups who seek to exploit the legitimacy and fiscal benefits that these organizations enjoy in order to finance terrorism. Second, as many charities are small organizations with unpaid volunteers and very few have any connection with terrorist activities, charities should generally be viewed as allies in the struggle against terrorism rather than suspects. As a result, government supervision and regulation of the charitable sector should be proportionate and risk-based – emphasizing capacity building and best practices to prevent the use or misuse of charitable organizations for terrorist financing, ensuring transparency and self-regulation to the greatest extent possible, scrutinizing transactions and organizations that pose the greatest risks for terrorist links, and limiting more serious regulatory sanctions to the rare instances where charities provide support to terrorist organizations.

The quest for an Indian blood law as of blood transfusion services regulatory framework

Background:Blood transfusion services are a vital part of the national health delivery system. The responsibility for ensuring a continuous supply of blood rests with health administrators, who need to galvanize entire communities towards regular and non-remunerated blood donation.Objective:The present study aimed to examine the prevailing global regulations and practices related to blood transfusion and press the case for a dedicated blood law in India.Materials and Methods:We attempted a comprehensive, annotated assembly of published studies on blood transfusion services in India.Data ion and Synthesis:Laws related to blood transfusion services exist in India as a part of the Drugs and Cosmetics Law. In the developed world, most blood donors are unpaid volunteers who give blood for a community supply. In order to augment safe blood transfusion services in India, we have to develop operational legal guidelines on recruitment and retention of voluntary blood donors to direct related organizations for this imperative activity.Conclusion:Several factors, such as political will and a professional and ethical approach can help in formulating a common vision, building trust, by providing optimum information towards a social movement for the rational blood transfusion services. We have to come together for a dedicated blood law in order to improve the quality of blood transfusion services in India.

Triangular Perspective on Working in a Voluntary Organisation: Volunteers, Paid Workforce, and Supervisors’ Perspective

Not-for-profit organisations struggle to work with a high percentage of unpaid volunteer workforces. Literature shows that voluntary work not only contributes to national life but also meets the needs within the community; and helps to develop and reinforce cohesion in social networks. With an aging population the need for volunteers will increase. It is imperative that leaders are able to attract and retain volunteer groups through strong leadership practices. This diversity in the workforce of not-for-profit organisations, adds complexity to the traditional diversity of gender, race, religion, and ethnicity. This paper analyses the results of face-to-face interviews with paid supervisors, volunteers and paid employees who all work for the same organisation. This pilot project provides specific insights on working in a national not-for profit organisation from a triangular perspective: volunteers, paid employees, and supervisors. Examining how supervisors, paid employees and volunteers interact with one another will assist not-for-profit organisations to manage diversity of its workforce in a more effective and efficient manner.

Creating awareness: the Ambulance Services Benevolent Fund

The Ambulance Services Benevolent Fund is a registered charity, established in 1986 to help ambulance service personnel and their dependants from all over the UK, Ireland, Channel Islands and the Isle of Man in times of genuine hardship. The Trustees are all unpaid volunteers and the assistance given to both serving and retired ambulance personnel grows year on year. Here, Simon Fermor, ASBF Secretary, discusses the fund in more detail.

Obstacles to local-level AIDS competence in rural Zimbabwe: putting HIV prevention in context

We explore the wider social context of an HIV-prevention programme in rural Zimbabwe. We make no comment on the programme itself, rather seeking to examine the wider community dynamics into which it was inserted, to highlight how pre-existing social dynamics may have influenced community “readiness” to derive optimal benefit from the intervention. Using the concept of “the AIDS competent community”, we analysed 44 interviews and 11 focus groups with local people. Despite high levels of HIV/AIDS-related knowledge, there were several ways gender, poverty and low literacy may have undermined its perceived relevance to peoples' lives. Lack of opportunities for dialogue in the social milieu beyond the intervention may have limited opportunities for translating factual AIDS knowledge into action plans, or sharing hidden individual experiences of HIV/AIDS-affected family members or friends, given stigma and denial. The initiative of women and young people to respond effectively to AIDS was limited in a context dominated by adult males. People spoke of HIV/AIDS in a passive and fatalistic way, expecting outsiders to solve the problem. This tendency was exacerbated given the community's previous experiences of HIV/AIDS-related NGOs, which had often regarded local people as unpaid volunteer labour rather than building their capacity to make significant decisions and play leadership roles in health programmes. Despite obstacles, however, there were many potential community strengths and resources. There were high levels of HIV/AIDS-related knowledge. Public denial of HIV/AIDS masked huge reservoirs of private support and kindness to AIDS-affected family and friends. There were many strong community organisations and clubs, potentially forming the springboard for more empowered community responses to HIV/AIDS. HIV/AIDS programmers should pay greater attention to community readiness for interventions, especially around: (1) identifying and anticipating pre-existing obstacles to programme success and (2) mobilising the social assets that exist, even in contexts of poverty and gender inequality.

Cognitive Bizarreness in the Dream and Waking Mentation of Nonpsychotic Patients With Parkinson's Disease

Cognitive Bizarreness in the Dream and Waking Mentation of Nonpsychotic Patients With Parkinson's Disease

Social Networking and Online Collaboration in the Oil and Gas Industry

Forum - Social networking and online collaboration in the oil and gas industry. “He, who owns the information, owns the world.” This famous phrase by Winston Churchill might sound like a cliché, but it is particularly relevant today. “The most important, and indeed the truly unique, contribution of management in the 20th century was the 50-fold increase in the productivity of the manual worker in manufacturing. The most important contribution management needs to make in the 21st century is similarly to increase the productivity of knowledge work and the knowledge worker,” said author Peter Drucker back in 1959. This was when the term “knowledge worker” was defined. Also, the third wave of human socioeconomic development is described in the book The Fifth Generation Management (Savage, 1996) as the Age of Knowledge. Web 2.0 and social networking platforms have revolutionized the way we collaborate and communicate with others. One prominent example of a social network service is, of course, Facebook, which boasts some 350 million users. To put that community size in perspective, if Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s third largest, superseded only by China and India. In addition, online forums allow hundreds and thousands of people to unify their efforts to discuss and solve problems. Video snippets are recorded and uploaded to YouTube. Groups are formed on Facebook unifying people with similar interests across the world. Wikipedia is growing by the minute and contains more than 15 million articles in 270 languages, with all of the content written collaboratively by unpaid Internet volunteers.

Anonymity, Social Image, and the Competition for Volunteers: A Case Study of the Online Market for Reviews

Abstract This paper takes a first step toward understanding the working of the online market for reviews. Most online review firms rely on unpaid volunteers to write reviews. Can a for-profit online review firm attract productive volunteer reviewers, limit the number of ranting or raving reviewers, and marginalize fake reviewers? This paper sheds light on this issue by studying reviewer productivity and restaurant ratings at Yelp, where reviewers are encouraged to establish a social image, and two competing websites, where reviewers are completely anonymous. Using a dataset of nearly half a million reviewer accounts, we find that the number (proportion) of prolific reviewers on Yelp is an order of magnitude larger than that on either competing site, more productive reviewers on all three websites are less likely to give an extreme rating, and restaurant ratings on Yelp tend to be much less extreme than those on either competing site.

Delivering Public Services in the Mixed Economy of Welfare: Perspectives from the Voluntary and Community Sector in Rural England

AbstractThe voluntary and community sector in England is playing an increasingly important role in the delivery of public services to older adults and in doing so they rely on unpaid volunteers. In this article, we draw on the findings of a recent qualitative study of the impact on the voluntary and community sector of delivering ‘low-level’ public services that promote independent living and wellbeing in old age. The fieldwork focused on services that help older adults aged 70+ living in remote rural communities across three English regions. Those charged with service delivery, which is increasingly the voluntary and community sector, face particular challenges, such as uncertain funding regimes and reliance on volunteer labour.

Parish Nursing and Community Collaboration in Women's Health

P. Ann Solari-Twadell, RN, PhD, MPA, FAAN, is the director of the Accelerated Nursing Program and an associate professor at Loyola University Chicago, Marcella Niehoff School of Nursing, Chicago, IL. Parish nursing, otherwise known as ‘‘faith community nursing,’’ involves the care of patients during wellness and illness. The relationship between the parish nurse and patient is built within a particular religious tradition or through healthrelated services sponsored by a faith community. The goal of care in parish nursing is to collaborate with the patient and the community to provide continuity of care from a holistic philosophy. Parish nurses reach out to the community at large to network with other health care providers and to become familiar with community resources. Parish nurses are available free of cost to those seeking assistance, thereby becoming an important service option within health care reform and for the uninsured. Parish nurses provide health services on behalf of the faith community; some are paid fulltime or part-time, while others are in unpaid volunteers.

From the Editor’s Desk: Report for the French Review, 2009–2010

After twenty-three years on the editorial board of the French Review, it is difficult to say goodbye! It was Ron Tobin, my predecessor, who first asked me to join the board in 1987 to succeed Priscilla Clark as Review Editor for Civilization (now Society and Culture). In 1992 I became Assistant Editor for Civilization and in 1996, Managing Editor. Then Ron designated me as his successor and the Executive Council of the AATF elected me Editor in Chief in 1998. Now it is 2010 and time to turn the reigns over to my successor, Edward Ousselin of Western Washington University, Bellingham. Previously I appointed Edward/Edouard (he uses both his French and English names) as Editor for Creative Works. He has chosen Michel Gueldry of the Monterey Institute as his Managing Editor. Michel has been an Assistant Editor for Society and Culture for the past several years. Some wise person once said that one should always choose associates who are smarter than oneself if one hopes to be successful. Finding such people was never a problem for me! Indeed, I have many people to thank for helping me to serve the French Review and its readers these past twenty-three years. First and foremost are the Assistant Editors who read and evaluate many articles from among the 100 plus articles we receive every year. They and all of the members of the French Review staff are simply the best in the business. It is hard to believe that unpaid volunteers can be so unfailingly dedicated to the interests of teachers of French, all our other readers, and the profession which we share, but the members of the editorial board of the French Review are totally committed. In my professional life of over 40 years I have never seen so much good will. Along with the Assistant Editors, Review Editors must be singled out as well. They solicit reviews year round and edit them for each issue. Our Assistant Editor for Dissertations in Progress also primes the pump to keep you up to date on what prospective members of our profession are up to. Another demanding job is that of Advertising Manager, a position currently held by the recently elected president of the AATF, Ann Sunderland. In fact, Ann has succeeded in increasing the number of ads taken out in spite of the downturn in the economy. This said, as a former Managing Editor I can tell you that the hardest job of all is that of Managing Editor. The physical and interpersonal demands of this position are beyond belief. Managing Editors have had heart attacks in the middle of their tenures and several, 9 From the Editor’s Desk: Report for the French Review, 2009–2010 FR statistics for articles submitted 1 June 2009–31 May 2010 (vol. 83) Category Literature Pedagogy Civilization Film Linguistics Totals Submitted 57 (55.8%) 19 (18.7%) 12 (11.8%) 10 ( 9.8%) 4 ( 3.9%) 102 (100%) Accepted 20 (35.1%) 8 (42.1%) 7 (58.3%) 3 (30%) 1 (25%) 39 (38.2%) Rejected 23 (40.4%) 8 (42.1%) 5 (41.7%) 3 (30%) 3 (75%) 42 (41.2%) Under Evaluation 12 (21.1%) 3 (15.8%) — 3 (30%) — 18 (17.6%) No Decision 2 ( 3.4%) — — 1 (10.0%) — 3 ( 3%) including myself, suffered from double vision at times. The reason is that Managing Editors must read something on the order of 3600-4000 manuscript, galley, and page proofs (not to mention blue lines) every year. So it is more than fitting that I recognize my wonderfully talented Managing Editors: James P. Gilroy, Clyde Thogmartin, Sharon Shelly, and Wynne Wong. They carried out their duties at a very high level and several of them made innovations that have improved our journal. It is not really possible for me to express my gratitude to them in words. I must also thank the Executive Secretary of the AATF, Jayne Abrate, who took over her position when I began mine. Jayne has always supported me in my job as Editor and has served as a sounding board and confidant whenever there were difficult problems to be dealt with. She has also given...

Flash Collabs: Collaborative Innovation Networks in Online Communities of Animators

Collaborative innovation networks (COINs) and swarm creativity is often studied in a professional business context. We propose that studying COINs of amateurs and non-business contexts provides a crucial and complementary perspective on these phenomena. By broadening the scope of COINs research to encompass these edge cases, we can begin to identify patterns and trends that persist across different contexts. For the past three years, we have been studying COINs in a novel context: online communities of Flash animators who collaborate over the internet to create animated movies and games called “collabs.” From a quantitative analysis of nearly 900 collabs on Newgrounds.com, we found that these projects can be highly successful, attracting hundreds of thousands of Internet audience members to download the completed animations. Our analysis also demonstrated that is possible to predict the success potential of a collab by examining specific factors, including attributes of the leader, organizational structures, and activity patterns within a collab.Our focus in this research has been on the social dynamics within collabs, especially the role of leadership. Through in-depth interviews with collab participants, we found that collabs are typically created by groups of amateurs, or in some cases, animation students, often located around the world and speaking different languages. Their motivations tend to be socialpsychological—such as learning, reputation, social support, and self-efficacy—rather than financial, and almost everyone contributes as an unpaid volunteer. We also found that a shared goal of almost every collab participants with whom we spoke was to create something original; that is, a movie or game that audiences perceived as unique. To this end, collab participants are constantly experimenting with new processes, team compositions, and artistic styles. We have identified notable similarities and differences between collabs and other COINs involved with entertainment production. Collab participants emulate the professional filmmaking community in that they recruit mainly through social networks; in contrast to movie studios, however, collabs are organized entirely online, via discussion forums, blogs, and instant messaging. This process is facilitated by online reputation markers, such as digital histories of past contributions. Another similarity between the film set and the collab production process is that both operate in a hierarchical fashion, with one individual at the top, the “benevolent dictator,” maintaining the ultimate creative direction and authority. This finding contradicts the received wisdom of online collaborations, which holds that flattened hierarchies make decisions in a democratic or meritocratic fashion. Finally, in contrast to professional filmmaking, we found that the division of labor in collabs is often modularized, rather than specialized. Collab leaders typically assign entire scenes to individual animators to be recombined upon completion. This modularization allows animators to work independently and in parallel to sidestep some of the challenges posed by distributed collaboration.The breadth and potential of COINs, as illuminated by our ongoing study of collabs, continues to surprise and inspire us. Our future work includes (1) developing software tools to support collabs and (2) relating these findings to other forms of online creative collaboration.

Recognizing the diverse roles of community health workers in the elimination of health disparities: from paid staff to volunteers.

The community health worker (CHW) model has been successfully used to promote health and reduce adverse health outcomes in underserved communities. Although there is a general consensus that involvement of natural helpers from the targeted communities is a promising approach in the elimination of health disparities, there is less agreement on their responsibilities, scope of work, and reimbursement for their services (ranging from paid staff to unpaid volunteers). These differences in pay structure stem from philosophical differences, programmatic needs, and financial realities. Based on our experience with both the paid and volunteer approaches, we provide some lessons learned on how the CHW model can be integrated in our efforts to eliminate health disparities.