Wednesday, July 31, 2019

24th Amendment

The amendment was one of the last legal vestiges of segregation that tried to keep the black population and the poor people from participating in the vote. As today, the 24th Amendment to the Constitution guarantees that no person can be denied the right to vote due to an inability to pay a tax prior to voting. The â€Å"poll tax† is now considered unconstitutional. The poll tax was levied on an individual used as a prerequisite for voting. Poll taxes are the same for all persons subject to them, regardless of their income, property or other taxes paid.It was grateful that this amendment is in the constitution. It was needed because the poll tax was keeping certain individuals from voting because of their income and/or their race, and that is unconstitutional according to the Fourteenth Amendment. It is so ridiculous to have to pay to vote for something especially when you are voting to see who is going to run your own country. Voting is one of the many rights of every America n citizen and as long as you are an American citizen you should be able to vote without paying. This amendment is a step forward in equal rights and you can really see that today.Without the Twenty-fourth Amendment the Americans citizen cannot vote regardless of his or her race or financial status. Therefore, we need to thanks for this amendment. As today, every American citizen is allowed to vote as long as he/or she are eighteen and registered. I do not think that this amendment could go much further. I think it has gone as far as it cans because nobody has had to pay to vote for an election since. I am a USA citizen and I did not realize that in the old days the poll tax was based on racism and that you could be barred from voting because you did not pay taxes.I have read articles on men and women that have never been able to vote until this amendment was passed because they were poor and could not afford it. Some people were in their forties before they could vote and it would n ot surprise me if there were people that had not been able to vote until they were much older or someone who never have a chance to vote at all. I think today the younger population is taking advantage of being able to vote at eighteen and not having to pay a tax to do so.Hopefully with time my generation will see the importance of voting and will do so in the future. It is a great honor and privilege to vote and to have the freedom to voice your opinion in a free election. I love my country because every four years we have a mini revolution where the powers of the white house are either changed or stayed the same without a single shot being fired, without a single life being sacrificed, without races, religion, ethnic background, political stance and social status being road blocks to keep us from voting backed by the Constitution and this amendment.In conclusion, it is a shame that so many people do not realize the value of voting. It’s sad that they do not exercise their r ight to vote. Just imagine that we still have the poll tax, I believe that we would be right where we are today. On the other hand, I know that the poll tax to me was unconstitutional and that no matter what, the Twenty-Fourth Amendment was a must to bring American civilization together. In some way, that makes us all equal. This is what this country has been trying to do for a long time.

Thus I Refute Beelzy

Group Assessment and Self-Assessment During this project I learned a lot about my group members but even more about myself. I discovered that I am not very detailed oriented and that I really need to work on my communication skills. A lot of the time I assumed that we were all on the same page when we weren’t. If I had to redo this I would have made sure that we started selling our cards earlier and would have worked on getting bigger business on our cards so that more people would want to buy them.Marise: Maurice did a lot for the group. She was the most responsible out of all of us and the most realistic. Though she was quiet she silently took charge. She helped keep the boys focused when they started to go astray. Andrew: Andrew really took leadership during this project. Though he may have slacked at times, all in all he did a lot. He and Max were the two who came up with our idea. He brought a lot of ideas to the table however he didn’t really like listening to oth er people’s ideas. Max: Max worked really hard on this.Though he may have been quiet he organized a lot of the stuff and he also came up with our idea with Andrew. I can’t really say much about Max because he was really quiet but he contributed a lot. He also put a lot of time and effort into the cards. Trenton: Trenton worked really hard on this and was really dedicated. However he was really close-minded and wasn’t very open to new ideas. I feel as though if Trenton would have been more willing to venture we could have done a lot more with the cards. But he really took charge and accomplished a lot. He also has excellent communication skills.

Tuesday, July 30, 2019

Competition Is Healthy.

Competition: Good or Bad? Competition is something that everyone has experienced in his or her life; it is human nature. In school, students compete with classmates to finish first or to make better grades. In a workplace, colleagues compete to receive promotions and raises. In the business world, companies compete to create the top products. Competition is a part of everyday life, and it is healthy. It helps people to improve, it leads to better products and results, and it promotes growth. Competition helps people to improve.For someone to win, someone else has to lose. If a person views loss with a positive attitude, they can use that as a way to learn from their mistakes and try harder. By taking the competition out of it, it will take away a reason for a person to improve. Communism is a real example of what happens when society erases competition. Communist countries treat their people equally, and there are no social classes. The State owns everything; the people own nothing e xcept for the clothes on their back. This results in people being less goal oriented.Why work hard for something when in the end, they will earn nothing? Competition leads to better products and results. Competition between companies often leads to more options, lower prices, and better quality of products. It is good in the marketplace not only for businesses, but consumers as well. It benefits businesses by driving companies to be more creative and to make improvements. It benefits customers by keeping the prices low and the quality of the products high. Apple and Android are examples of two competing companies.Both sell phones, tablets, and other electronic devices. They are constantly trying to better their products in creative and new ways in order to sell them. As a result, consumers have more options to choose from. Competition promotes growth. Without competition and rivals, I would not have taken the chances or learned the lessons that I have. One of my favorite quotes come s from Vince Lombardi, a former football player and coach for the Green Bay Packers. He said, â€Å"Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to is. † This quote drove me to better myself in school.Before, I was careless about my grades and I waited until the last minute to do everything, but after applying that quote to my life, I am more conscientious about my grades and college. The satisfaction of getting a higher grade on a test than someone else definitely motivates me to keep working as hard as I possibly can. Many people believe that competition is bad because it leads to a focus on winning at all costs. They also believe that competition lowers self-esteem because someone has to lose. In some cases, this may be true.However, competition must be kept in perspective. It cannot get carried away with the idea of needing to win. Competition is healthy and can produce excellence, even when a person loses, but it must be kept under control. Competition helps people to be tter themselves, leads to better products and results, and promotes growth. Competition is a force that drives people to succeed. Without it, it would be harder to motivate people. When kept in perspective, competition is an amazing way to achieve goals, and it can bring out the strongest in a person.

Monday, July 29, 2019

How The Immigrants Get Success Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

How The Immigrants Get Success - Essay Example She fled from El Salvador and now she is going to study art at UC Davis. How could she experience such immense success? I think that immigrants reach their American dream because they carried out three essential tasks: finding some support, being confident, and having a firm determination. To succeed in America the first important key to success is finding some support. You may not know how valuable support can be. The truth is that an immigrant will not succeed without at least some kind of support. Let me show you how it works. First of all, there are many kinds of support, such as financial, practical, and emotional support. Support can come from family members, friends, or workmates. Most immigrants feel helpless when they first arrive in the U.S., but they are usually hopeful. In addition, building a new life in a strange and foreign country is not easy. The reality is that as the time goes by immigrants will begin to feel hopeless if they do not get the necessary support. Howev er, if you are supported then you will be strong and confident because you can overcome many difficulties and also have more time to do other things, such as building your American dream. One person who illustrates the importance of support is the young immigrant named Bich. She came from Vietnam and became a successful woman who was also very kind and knowledgeable. Through her memoir, it was revealed that her step-mother and real-father neither inculcated nor took care of her. She felt sad and even sometimes wanted to escape from the house. However, she found loving support from her grandmother Noi. Noi was a harbor of refuge for Bich, as she gave Bich food when Bich was hungry and provided privacy for Bich. Therefore, Noi made Bich’s childhood easier and much happier. This warmed Bich’s heart so that she had a higher expectation of the future. Bich has become an established writer, having published three books. It could be said that this is all due to her grandmothe r’s support. To sum up, support can act as oxygen for a new immigrant. If you already have support then you must be more confident than before. The next essential key I am going to talk about is confidence. You might find that every successful man is confident because he acts with confidence. Perhaps you are wondering how confidence can help you to be successful. Every morning you must face a mirror, and when you look at yourself in the mirror, what do you feel? If you are a confident person then you will think you look good today. This means you are happy when you are on your way to work because you believe in your abilities and trust that you can finish your work nicely. If you are confident then nobody is going to doubt your decisions or actions because they trust you due to your confident behavior. A 17-year old boy named Lester escaped from Cuba by windsurfing more than 80 miles. He planned to escape when he was a kid because he believed he had a very good skill and coul d do this thing perfectly by himself. Before he escaped, he made a detailed plan and practiced windsurfing a lot. He didn’t tell anybody before he left Cuba. He did everything by himself, and this is very confident behavior. He escaped alone yet successful, and Lester became famous after he arrived in America. Confidence is extremely important in almost every aspect of your life because it generally leads to success, and this is something that immigrants are striving for. If you have support and confidence then

Sunday, July 28, 2019

Groupthing theory research paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Groupthing theory - Research Paper Example Therefore, Janis’ theory is often reconsidered and complemented by the modern researchers and scientists, who are focused on pros and cons of groupthink. Theory reflections in literature In accordance with Cottam, Dietz-Uhler, Mastors, and Preston (2004) it should be noted that groupthink does not belong to critical thinking based on a detailed discussion of the given problem or relevant issues. There is no process of group argumentation analysis and there is no proper analysis and evaluation of ideas validity testing. One of the main drawbacks of group thinking is the absence of an individual contribution to critical thinking. People think together and very often their ideas are mixed, some of the group members can feel frustrated, confused or even misconceive their initial ideas. Therefore, it is relevant to fight for individuality of thinking. This kind of thinking can be considered in case of solidarity of thinking among group thinkers (Cottam, Dietz-Uhler, Mastors, and Pr eston, 2004). Cohesiveness is the required condition for proper functioning of group thinking in an effective and efficient manner. It should be also noted that effective groupthink is based on two other conditions, such as ideal group structure and a favorable environment for groupthink. The group structure can be endangered in case of a lack of access to information or inability to reflect various opinions. In case there is a self-concentrated leader in the group, he can hardly establish favorable conditions for a sound development of ideas among other members. Groupthink occurs, when the members of the group are sure that their common decision is right and do not listen to any other ideas or consider them wrong (Ahlfinger & Esser, 2001). In the result of such a reservation of thinking, the members of the group become close-minded and they are not focused on their risky actions. Moreover, in case a group feels external pressure in order to reach conformity, they cannot confirm the unity and soundness of their thinking as well. Therefore, it is evident that groupthink is a challenging matter and a complex stage of decision-making process. In accordance with Ahlfinger & Esser (2001) Janis identified other important facts of groupthink. The first fact is that group members do not accept any alternatives; the second fact is that there are no clearly set goals of decision-making. They are not focused on potential risks of their decisions or cannot identify their preferred choice. A lack of information or inability to process information correctly or develop future contingency plans are also intimidating factors for a proper groupthink (Park 1990, Rogelberg, 1999). In case these facts are evident, there will be a poor outcome of decision-making process. These researchers underline that there are many other factors undermining effective groupthink, which should be studied properly (Shmidt, Zapalski, and Toole, 2005). In case a biased leader is present in the group, he may lead to imbalanced groupthink, because this leader will produce the main decisions and ideas. In accordance with another suggestion, a lack of conformity among group members will cause a poor decision making process. There are two main kinds of leaders, such as nonpromotional leaders and promotional leaders (Kim, 2001). In the former case, the leader did not exert much influence on the members of the group and did not foster his ideas. In the second case, the leader

Saturday, July 27, 2019

Health Care Reform Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Health Care Reform - Essay Example There is no denying the fact that in the United States of America, the issue of healthcare reforms has grown beyond a national issue to a political issue and it keeps becoming more and more controversial because of the political dimension it has taken. Despite the political perspective with which the issue of healthcare reform in the United States takes, it is still possible to discuss the policy from a purely objective viewpoint without any political sentiments and that is exactly what is going to be done in this essay. The present controversy has to do with whether the Obama proposed healthcare reform is feasible and necessary for the United States. Without any reservation, I would say that my position is in the affirmative. Major arguments with the Health Care Reform The health care plan proposed by Mr. Obama during the 2008 campaign season and which has continued to be his ambitious legacy has several important components and issues that continue to spark controversy and argument s. Some of the major components are discussed with my side of the argument clearly stated. Attainability of Universal Health Care The first argument held by Mr. Obama is the attainment of universal health care. Health PAC (2011) explains that â€Å"universal health care is the belief that all citizens should have access to affordable, high-quality medical care.† Politically, this argument is highly valid and that is where I belong. Logically, all citizens are a representation of the nation and government. They also constitute the political kingmakers. Any national policy that seeks to improve the wellbeing of the citizenry must therefore be universal and not discriminatory. Among some other technical reasons why universal health care is prudent and needs to be embarked is the fact that the cost of healthcare continues to be very expensive and that not all people are able to afford. Statistics has it that â€Å"the number of uninsured U.S. residents has grown to over 45 milli on† (Balanced Politics, 2011). This calls for the need of reaching very far with healthcare as there is evidence of discrimination with healthcare benefits. Having quoted the number of uninsured Americans, it becomes justifiable for opponents to argue that universal health care would be a huge economic burden unto the United States and can destroy the economic amidst global economic down-turn. However, it is important to consider the proverb that says that if you think education is expensive, try ignorance. If anyone thinks universal health care is expensive, the fellow should think about the amount of revenue that the nation will loss as a result of non-productive human resource because of ill-health. Guaranteed eligibility for affordable health care for all Americans Another component of the Obama led health care policy is the guaranteed eligibility for affordable health care for all Americans. This component of the health care plan seems to answer critics who argue that uni versal health care is unattainable. Critics believe that the population of America is too large to think of a single health care policy that will cater for the health needs of all citizens. These critics believe that such statutory interventions should come in only when the situation is highly critical. However, under the guaranteed el

Friday, July 26, 2019

Marketing Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

Marketing Management - Essay Example Management is the process of performing activities by using the help of other people. Managers use the management elements, which include planning, organizing, staffing, directing and controlling. Chwala highlights that marketing management is a business process, which involves â€Å"analyzing market opportunities, researching on the target markets, developing strategies for them, planning market tactics, implementing, and controlling the marketing initiatives. Further, Kotler describes marketing management as the process of achieving desired outcomes from a target market (13). It is therefore, a business process, which involves applying marketing techniques, and managing resources and activities related to marketing. Kotler highlights that marketing management process involves analyzing market opportunities, developing marketing strategies, planning marketing activities, managing, and controlling the marketing efforts (33). In the first step of analyzing market opportunities, the l eader identifies potential opportunities in the market while considering the organizations competences. This should be done by analyzing both the micro and macro environments in order to identify the best opportunities. In this step, the company can research and select market opportunities that are available. This can be done by defining the market, segmenting the market, market targeting and positioning in the market. The next step is the development of strategies for marketing whereby the marketer positions the organization strategically in the market. This step involves deciding on the brand, product lines, designs and the market. This is performed using the four P s marketing mix tools. Planning of marketing programs is the other step, and it involves making decisions on the expenditures, marketing mix and market allocation and budgets. One should set the level marketing budget that they intend to spend. Then, they allocate the budget among the various activities and the marketi ng mix tools. Lastly, they should allocate the budget to the various marketing programs in the target market (Kotler 34). The last step is management and control of the marketing programs. This step involves executing the plans, collecting feedback from the market and starting again in the planning step. Resources should be mobilized to implement and control the marketing programs of the organization Entrepreneurship is defined by the activities done by Entrepreneurs. Akrani highlights that Entrepreneur was derived from the French word Entrepredre meaning performing of activities. Entrepreneurs are the people who engage in the risky business activities of creating new businesses using their personal resources, through innovation of ideas, which are focused to satisfy the market needs (Akrani). Therefore, Entrepreneurship is the process of establishing opportunities in the market, and taking advantage of them to make a profit. There are ways in which responsible Entrepreneurial quali ties become essential for marketing management. Firstly, the Entrepreneurial qualities enable the leader to develop plans that meet their marketing goals. This can be applied in finance, production, sales, promotions, and personnel areas of marketing management. Secondly, responsible Entrepreneurial qualities enhance communication skills in marketing managem

Processing the Crime Scene and Establishing Identity Essay - 3

Processing the Crime Scene and Establishing Identity - Essay Example However, when using this method the investigator must be careful not to overdevelop the finger prints. 2. There are many types of evidence in crime investigation that should be documented, collected and preserve. The impressions such as finger prints and forensic biology such blood, and body fluid must also be collected. The trace evidences and firearms evidences which include gun powder patterns are needed. Lastly, the question documents must be kept safe. When documenting, collecting and preserving evidence of the crime scene we must make sure that we follow local, state and federal laws for collection and admissibility. The evidences such as drugs, paraphernalia or personal property shall be recorded, collected, and safeguarded in presence of a witness. The investigator shall also participate in the scene debriefing to make sure that responsibilities are well communicated especially those that are post-scene. There should also be markings of the detectives because this will be used in trial and this is the way to prevent any contamination of the evidences and assure that the evidences presented are

Thursday, July 25, 2019

Interest Groups and their Influence on the Making of Public Policy Research Paper

Interest Groups and their Influence on the Making of Public Policy - Research Paper Example The composition of interest groups depends on the issues that the groups are concerned with. Examples of the interest groups are business organizations, labor unions, gender, professional associations, religious and public interest groups, and occupational groups. The impact of the interest groups depends on two factors: if the elected officials and bureaucratic agents are, championing public policies considered by the interest groups. Secondly, it depends on if the interest groups can be able to form organized groups through which they can lobby and influence public policies that are consistent with their mission and vision statements (Asare, 2009). Interest groups tend to thrive in a pluralistic environment and conflict ensuing from this environment translates to compromise and bargaining among the interest groups with the policymakers and the politicians. A review of literature evidence that these groups have been given names ranging from iron triangles, epistemic communities, advocacy coalition frameworks, and policy subsystem, issue, and policy networks. Though they are diverse groups, they all sought to influence the public policy in the areas they were envisioned to represent (Asare, 2009). The American government has classified the types of interest groups into three main classes based on their mission and composition: economic, public, and single use. Economic groups are aimed at providing economic benefit to their members. Examples are professional associations, business, and labor organizations. Business interest group examples are United States Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers. An example of labor interest groups is The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), the Teamster, the United Auto Workers (UAW). Professional groups in this category include the American Bar Association (ABA), American Medical Association (AMA), and the Screen Actors Guild (SAS) (American Government).

Wednesday, July 24, 2019

Quantitative Method in Economics Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Quantitative Method in Economics - Assignment Example This is the rate which the government has to charge firms involved in polluting the environment to compensate for the impacts of their operations to the environment. 16. The total tax revenue collected will be arrived at by taking the product of this tax rate and the estimated units likely to be produced. Assuming the units produced are Q*; the tax revenue will be 3.3698Q*. 18. Price elasticity of demand is the change in price relative to demand and it is a measure of the degree or extent at which price changes relative to the demand. It is worked out as the Change in demand divided by Change in price; 20. Depending on how elastic demand is will dictate the potion for the producers and that for the consumers. With inelastic demand as witnessed in our case, the producer will bear a smaller weight of the tax as compared with the consumers who will feel a greater pinch of the

Tuesday, July 23, 2019

Imagine that you are living in colonial America. Write a LETTER either Essay

Imagine that you are living in colonial America. Write a LETTER either supporting or condemning the activities - Essay Example The price of tobacco has declined due to constant wars and we are facing cutthroat commercial competition from Maryland and the Carolinas. Moreover the English manufactured products are high priced and so we can’t afford to buy them. All these cause serious problems that our very basic existence will be difficult if the situation continues. Mr. Bacon’s hostile attitude has taken the lives of our so many of our colleagues. In his expedition to our villages he ruthlessly plunders our homes and destroys our cultivated lands. Mr. Bacon knows that it is not we who are behind the slashing of the prices of tobacco products. We too do suffer terribly from this and still made scapegoats of this ill-fated incident. Our only request to the Queen is to call back Mr. Bacon and provide us the opportunity to live peacefully in our own

Monday, July 22, 2019

Eulogy Case Essay Example for Free

Eulogy Case Essay The obituary is a section that most newspapers have and despite being buried in the back of the newspaper, is a section of the paper that most people read, at least in passing. Older people read it to see if they can find anyone that they know. Younger people might read it to see how old somebody was when they died or if they are aware of history, to see what famous person might have died. There are also people who are fascinated by others and wish to read what one has accomplished in their life. It is amazing that an entire life can be summed up in a few paragraphs. What else is amazing is exactly who receives an obituary in the paper at all. The small town papers will memorialize anyone whose information they receive from a family member or other source. That person would pass unnoticed except for the kind remembrance of their family members still living. This is not the case in the larger newspapers. The Chicago Tribune, with a readership estimated at just fewer than three million, has limited space and therefore, can only print the obituaries of people who have distinguished themselves in a way that society deems worthy. For the week of February 18th to February 23rd, the obituaries were studied to see exactly who was receiving the posthumous honor of having their name in one of the largest newspapers in the country. The first eulogy is that of Jack Kipp. (1923-2007) (Kates, 2007) The man had humble beginnings in Chicago. His mental and physical deficiencies left him out of service for WWII but yet he found his way onto the Midwest Stock Exchange in Chicago, second only to the New York Stock Exchange in size and influence. Mr. Kipp was a man who straddled both financial classes. Since he worked for the Chicago Stock Exchange, he would accurately be considered among the upper class. This would continue as he helped form another financial firm in the 1970’s and made a good deal of money at this venture. But when he retired, he remembered the people who were not given a chance to reach the heights that he had attained and spend the last 16 years of his life tutoring individuals into earning their GEDs. His son said that he had a desire to help his fellow man and saw this as his chance to do so. So his social status helps him get into the Tribune? He lived a long life 84 years, all of them in Chicago. This is a helpful contributing factor and the fact that he formed his own investment firm was probably the factor which helped to secure his place in the Tribune. Only in the byline does it talk about his volunteer work. This would lead the reader to believe that if he were just a volunteer and did rise to the financial levels that he had, his obituary would not have been found in the Chicago Tribune but perhaps a local newspaper since the Chicago land area is able to support dozens of smaller though, significant newspapers. Another notable obituary is that of Dr. Joan Swift. (1919-2007) Dr. Swift was hired as the coordinator of the child development program at Wilson Junior College. In only three short years, she was promoted to the Dean of Directors in 1968 which is a position that she held until 1983. She grew up in New York but spent the last 55 years in Hyde Park, a suburb of Chicago. Here are two examples where an individual has lived a long life, most of it in and around Chicago and rose to a moderate level of success to which that success was met by a notable duration. The article did not specify her financial background and even though she did rise to a high level within the teaching profession. The headline and byline of the obituary makes the reader believe that simply a teacher would not have been given so many inches of column space unless the duration of his/her tenure was to the length that it was noteworthy. The third and last obituary is of Dr. Kenneth Rehage. (1910-2007) (Jensen, 2007) He was from the area as a professor at the University of Chicago in the 1960’s. This fact alone, on a slow news day would ensure his placement within the obituary section of The Chicago Tribune along with his long life. But what made his life even more noteworthy was the fact that he spent the last half of his life setting up secondary schools in Pakistan. Not only did he set up schools there but traveled there hundreds of times in order to help train the instructors there. Dr. Rehange spoke the language and left his home open to students from Pakistan to stay and consider his home and place away from home. He is remembered fondly by his former students even though he stopped teaching in the 1970’s. Dr. Rehange was not a man of great wealth and the headline of his obituary talks only about his development of schools in Pakistan. In this respect, his social class was a contributing factor but if he was just another rich man who had died, it does not seem probable that his life would have made the obituary section. He was a humanitarian to a degree that is not seen in a day to day basis and that is why he made the Tribune. The Chicago Tribune, reaching a population of millions, has a great deal of space restraint that they have to follow. There has to be a selection process in order to place the obituaries of people who have established their life as one whose death will serve as an impediment to some aspect of Chicago and its surrounding area. The kindly neighbor down the street will not be a likely selection to make the Tribune but would rather be a better fit in any of the local papers in the area. Each of the three obituaries that were described had a 1 inch by 2 inch picture along with roughly 300-400 words used to describe their life. It is impossible for the obituary section to follow this format for every person who dies in Chicago on a given day. So unfortunately, a father who is extremely important to his family as well as his co workers and wife of 50 years, will not be seen as â€Å"important enough† to make the Tribune. He has no great wealth, made no special discovery or contribution to science nor did he hit 500 home runs. But if his family wants him to be remembered in print, most towns will have the space available to detail their loved ones life in print in a way that would honor their humble, though important, achievements. LITERATURE CITED Kates, Joan. Longtime Securities Trader. Chicago Tribune February 19, 2007 Section 3 p. 9 Jensen, Trevor. Helped Develop Schools in Pakistan. Chicago Tribune February 21, 2007 Section 3 p. 11

Sunday, July 21, 2019

Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW)

Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) Abstract- In the Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) domain, researchers have always wondered about which principles and models to adopt for the development of collaborative applications capable to really meet the needs of their users. However, these users requirements are unpredictable and depend on several task or environment-related factors. Integrated collaborative environments are rarely open, extensible and reconfigurable enough so as to meet these requirements. This paper presents an environment, called LEICA (Loosely-coupled Environment for Integrating Collaborative Applications), allowing the integration of existing cooperative applications. LEICA adopts a loosely-coupled integration approach which is based on Web services Services technology, an event notification system, and the definition of Collaboration Policies to control the interactions among integrated applications. LEICA allows different functionalities of existing applications to be dynamically combined and controlled, enhancing therefore the flexibility. Through a case study we show how LEICA was successfully used to integrate three collaborative applications: a co-browsing tool, an instant messaging tool and a VoIP conference controller. Index Terms-Collaborative work, integrated collaborative environments, web services. INTRODUCTION Advances in networking and computing technologies, combined with the fact that companies and work teams are becoming geographically distributed, have created increased a need for communication technologies to ease distance collaboration among distributed individuals (virtual work teams). This leads to the appearing of the so-called Integrated Collaboration Environments (ICEs), having as main goal to integrate different collaborative applications together into a single easy-to-use operational environment [1]. Users needs are very frequently unpredictable and depending on several emerging factors, including the size of the workgroup, the collaborative activities to be accomplished, the intensiveness of the required communications, the coordination policy and the communication needs of the workgroup. Therefore, the possibility of dynamically integrating new functionalities to the environment appears as an important characteristic for collaborative applications [3]. Supporting the integration of new collaborative functionalities reflects how flexible the environment is while responding to unpredictable users needs. We can define this characteristic as integration flexibility that denotes the ease with which an ICE can be its functionalities in response to the users needs. Nowadays one of the main problems of ICEs is that their lack of integration flexibility and as consequence various users decide to set-up their own environments composing different collaborative applications executed independently. In this case, each application is completely isolated from others, without any possibility of coordination among them. This lack of integration can lead to a loss of control from the part of the user, since the operation environment is particularly artificial. Promoting the integration flexibility of ICEs could bring significant benefits to users, allowing different functionalities of existing applications to be dynamically combined and controlled (enhancing therefore the flexibility itself). For instance, a whiteboard application can be integrated with an instant messaging application in such a way that whenever a user joins an instant messaging room, he is automatically logged into the same whiteboard session, instead of been forced to manually login into a session of each one of these collaborative tools. Another case could be the integration of a distributed game and an audio conference application. Whenever a user avatar enters a level/place into the game, his is logged into the audio conference session associated to that level/place, so that the users can online discuss with each other. In order to achieve the integration of existing collaborative applications without having to deal with their low-level features, this work presents LEICA, a Loosely-coupled Environment for Integrating Collaborative Applications. Relying on Web services Services (WS) technologies and an event notification system, different collaborative applications can interoperate by exchanging information within the context of a global collaborative session. The loosely-coupled approach proposed by LEICA overcomes a key problem usually related to integration environments it does not require a true semantic integration of applications. Accordingly, it supports further integration possibilities, such as the integration of third party applications, enhancing, thus, flexibility. LEICA also offers flexibility in the level of the integration semantics. Based on Collaboration Policies to control the interactions between integrated applications, LEICA provides means to define how the collaboration activity supported by one collaborative application will be affected by information received from other collaborative applications. In practice, these collaborative applications interact through the notification of events which may lead to performing specific action(s) in some of these applications themselves. As we will explain later in detail, we think that once a collaborative session has been configured, the use of LEICA can improve users productivity by reducing the application-related administrative tasks, focusing precisely on the collaboration activity itself, and all that by just by interpreting the rules stated for a particular session, all this in function of some pre-established policy rules (also to be explained in detail later). In this way users will find a more natural collaboration environment from the users point of view. In order to illustrate the usability of LEICA in real-world conditions, this paper presents a case study that demonstrates the capability of LEICA to integrate collaborative applications. In this case study, LEICA was successfully used to integrate three collaborative applications: a co-browsing tool, instant messaging tool and a VoIP conference controller. The paper is structured as follows. Section II presents related work regarding the integration of CSCW systems. Section III overviews the general integration approach proposed by LEICA. Section IV explains how to specify Collaboration Policies. Section V presents the LEICAs architecture, detailing how to integrate applications in practice. Some implementation issues are considered in section VI. Section VII describes a case study illustrating the use of LEICA. Finally, in section VIII we draw some conclusions and presents directions of future work. RELATED WORK There are several works oriented to improving integration flexibility of collaborative environments. In this context, four main approaches can be identified: user-tailorable solutions; CSCW toolkits; middleware based solutions; and platforms for integration of heterogeneous collaborative systems. User-Tailorable Solutions As stated in [2], different definitions of tailorability can be found in the literature. Most of them focus on user tailorability ([3], [4], [5] [6]) defining that a tailorable application can be adapted and modified by its own users in order to meet their different requirements. In CSCW, tailorability must focus on the requirements of the group task and of the organization, in which the CSCW system is used [5]. Actually, tailorability is one of the main concerns of groupware development methods. For example, application of participatory design methods ([7] [8]) has been proposed in order to approach the user involvement during groupware development, augmenting thus the opportunities for tailoring. According to [6], tailoring can be supported in three different levels: customization, selecting among a set of predefined configuration options; integration, linking together predefined components within or between applications; extension, improving the implementation by adding new program code. Most of user-tailorable groupware tools support only the customization or integration level (e.g. [2] [9]). Note that the integration level supposes that the functionality to be integrated has been pre-developed and is available somewhere [6]. Only at the extension level users would be able to integrate new functionalities, even if they have not been anticipated by developers at design time. A method frequently used for supporting tailoring at the extension level is the component-based tailoring. For example, in [10], components are implemented using Flexibeans (an extension of the Java Beans model) and end-users tailor the system using a composition language. In [11], end-users may assemble components into larger composite components using the visual representation rather than writing lines of code. However, even at the extension level the integration flexibility is partial as the integration of existing collaborative systems or groupware would require them to be redesigned according to the system architecture. CSCW Toolkits CSCW toolkits ease the implementation of CSCW systems by providing reusable components and behaviors designed to be applicable in a range of circumstances [12]. The need for flexibility and tailorability in CSCW toolkits is well acknowledged. The Neem Platform [13] offers a generic (application-neutral) evolvable framework upon which socially and culturally aware applications are developed. Flexibility and extensibility in Neem result from its foundation on a core architectural coordination model [13]: decoupled components interact indirectly through message exchanges. Intermezzo [14] is a collaboration support environment supporting the coordination information sharing, offering fluid interactions, user awareness, session management and policy control. It addresses dynamic flexibility [12] by allowing applications to adapt not just their own behavior, but also the behavior of the toolkit in reacting to the changing dynamics of the world they run into. The Groupware Toolkit/Shared Dictionary (or GT/SD) toolkit [15][16] has been developed to support rapid development of groupware, focusing mainly on networking and data sharing aspects. GT/SDs extensibility is based on its modular design, which allows adding or modifying behavior by replacing or wrapping different components. Toolkits may represent an interesting solution for helping the development of CSCW systems, as they promote the reuse of components. But in general, CSCW toolkits offer a limited set of functionalities or they are target for some specific kind of domain. Besides, to reuse components of the toolkit, developers often need to implement very specific details of the toolkit in order to adapt it to the application needs [16][17]. Middleware based solutions The integration of heterogeneous applications has been a widely investigated subject, mainly in distributed systems area. General integration solutions based on middleware, like CCM (CORBA Component Model), .NET and Enterprise JavaBeans have been developed. Moreover, integration solutions associated with specific domains have also been proposed, such as Enterprise Application Integration systems [17][18]. The emergence of Web services WS has also led to the development of general solutions for integration of distributed applications, due mainly to the use of open standards. In the CSCW domain, some middleware-based solutions have been proposed. Dustdar et al. [18][19] discuss the importance of using Web services WS in order to provide collaborative application interoperability. But in order to be integrated, collaborative applications must originally support Web servicesWS. Even if Web servicesWS represent an emerging software trend, only a limited set of collaborative applications are currently supporting these technologies. As an enhancement to traditional middleware, some SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) solutions have also been proposed. For example, WGWSOA [19][20] uses Web ServicesWS as an access interface in order to support the reuse and the interoperability of different collaborative services. But an important drawback of WGWSOA is that collaborative services must be developed following the respective middleware architecture. It is also important to note that like WGWSOA, most middleware based solutions present technical responses to the so called syntactic interoperability [20][21]. They provide mechanisms allowing applications to communicate and interact through information exchange. But according to [21][22], the integration concept goes beyond the possibility of sharing and exchanging specific information. Applications must agree upon the meaning (or the semantics) of these exchanges. In other words, integration solutions should provide means for defining integration semantics. Thus, interoperability can be seen as a requirement for integration. The EcoSpace Project [22][23] proposes an environment that, besides being based on SOA and Web servicesWS, relies on Semantic Web technologies (WSDL-S with services ontologies) to support semantic description of collaborative services. Besides a semantic description of each service, it would be necessary a semantic description of the composition of services so as to coordinate their orchestration. However, this part of the project remains as design aspect. Moreover, using Web serviceWSs as integration technology may imply some performance loss, particularly associated to the use of SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) [23][24]. Luo et al. [24][25] claim that Web ServicesWS should be only used in situations which are really heterogeneous. They propose a service-oriented solution for the integration of collaborative applications that, instead of using SOAP, adopts a unified service bus (implemented through an open source Enterprise Service Bus). Platforms for integrating heterogeneous collaborative systems The latter latest approach to improve the integration flexibility of collaborative environments is to create platforms aiming specifically at the integration of collaborative applications. They focus on the integration of collaborative functionalities provided by these applications while trying to define any semantics behind integration. Iqbal et al. [25][26] propose an integrative framework based on the three-level model presented by [26][27]: the Ontological Model specifies shared objects, their relations and taxonomies; the Coordination Model specifies how interactions take place during system execution; and the User Interface Model specifies how the system is presented to the final user. Integration process consists firstly in identifying, for each collaborative application, the elements associated with these three models. Then, on each level the elements from different applications are grouped and merged when equivalent. As a result, common ontological, coordination and user interface models are generated. In spite of enabling a multi-level integration, this approach requires an internal knowledge of the collaborative applications so that their functionalities can be mapped into the three-level model. Accordingly, the integration of third party applications becomes a complex task. In order to avoid considering application internals during the integration process (facilitating the integration of existing applications), some integration solutions propose the so called loosely-coupled approach. This approach presents two main features: (i) once integrated to the environment, collaborative applications preserve their autonomy, i.e., they can still be used as standalone application; (ii) the integration environment remains independent of integrated applications, and accordingly, applications can be integrated and detached from the environment without compromising its behavior. This last feature is particularly important considering the integration flexibility aspect. In fact, in a loosely-coupled environment, the set of integrated applications must be easily modified according to users needs. Systems like AREA [27][28] and NESSIE [28][29] have proposed a loosely-coupled integration for supporting cross-application awareness. Both systems represent a collaborative environment where independent applications can share a common information space, implemented through an event notification system. Users can receive notifications of activity relevant events from different applications (executed by other users). An important aspect of these systems is the use of open Internet technologies (such as HTTP and CGI) to enable the integration of third party collaborative applications. However, the main drawback of both systems is that the integration semantics is statically defined collaborative applications are integrated so as to offer a common awareness of the whole collaboration activity. Another proposal also based on a loosely-coupled approach is the framework XGSP [29][30]. XGSP proposes the integration of audio and videoconferencing tools based on SIP and H.323 standards, as well as the integration of Access Grid applications [30][31]. In this framework, XGSP manager servers are in charge of controlling collaborative sessions. A different gateway is defined for each application type (i.e. SIP, H.323 and Access Grid applications). Using a signaling protocol based on Web servicesWS, these gateways are employed to mediate the communication between applications and XGSP servers. An important disadvantage of XGSP is the fact that, originally, it only allows the integration of application based on SIP, H.323 and Access Grid. Loosely-coupling is also inherent to the Web servicesWS based solutions presented in the previous section. Similarly to those solutions, LEICA represents an integration environment that proposes a loosely-coupled approach based on Web servicesWS technologies. Regarding the performance implications of SOAP, Alonso et al. [31][32] suggest that Web ServicesWS technologies should be used only to implement coarse-gained interactions, where the impact of the overhead associated to SOAP would be less important. Following the recommendations of [31][32], Web servicesWS are employed by LEICA for coarse-grained operations only. As it will be detailed in the following sections, LEICA defines a hybrid architecture where Web ServicesWS are applied as an initial mechanism for registering newly integrated applications, as well as for setting and starting up collaborative sessions. Then, during the execution of integrated collaborative sessions a different infrastructure is used to interconnect collaborative applications. Another important aspect concerns integration semantics. Unlike the previous solutions, LEICA provides users with the possibility to define the desired integration semantics for each collaborative session. The Integration Environment: LEICA LEICA aims at the integration of different collaborative applications, where integration semantics is to be defined according to user requirements. Before explaining the general integration approach and the behavior of LEICA, a possible scenario is presented to better illustrate the advantages of such integration. Integration Scenario An important domain where collaborative environments have been largely used is e-Learning. In particular, a CVE (Collaborative Virtual Environment) can be used to implement a 3D shared world representing a school building divided into: one entrance hall, classrooms, and teachers rooms. Different collaborative applications could be associated to each room: (i) a chat room associated to the entrance hall; (ii) a collaborative web browsing (it would enable teachers to guide students through lecture notes) and an audio conference tool associated to the classrooms; and (iii) a shared whiteboard associated to each of the teachers room. Un paragraphe pour montrer la situation: Utilisation des outils non integrà ©es, et lintà ©gration avec LEICA. With this integration semantics, whenever an avatar enters into a room, the respective user is automatically connected to the associated collaborative application(s). Besides, only authorized users should enter into private rooms (e.g. the teachers rooms with its whiteboard could be restricted to teachers). Another possible behavior specified by this integration semantics is some kind of floor coupling between the two applications used as a support for virtual class sessions. This way, it would be possible to assure that the user holding the Web browsing floor (i.e. the one guiding the lecture notes browsing) is the only one to have the right to speak to the class attendees. General Integration Approach As previously mentioned, and illustrated in Fig. 1, LEICA follows a hybrid architecture where Web ServicesWS are applied at the collaborative sessions start up, and an event notification system allows collaborative applications to interact through the exchange of event notifications. Two other basic components of LEICA are the Wrappers and the Session Configuration Service (SCS). The integration of a collaborative application to LEICA is achieved by attaching a Wrapper to it. Three main cases may be considered: a) open source applications, b) API-based applications, and c) applications without any available API. Integration of open source applications can achieve the tightest interaction degree, since any internal event/action can be exported/performed; it might however imply great development efforts. API-based integration is straightforward, and interaction is limited to the provided API. Applications without API are the most limitating ones, constraining to interact only through application start and stop actions. LEICAs integration approach is mainly driven by case (b), believing that developers are certainly interested in creating specific and performable collaboration tools that can be used either stand-alone or integrated with other applications (through a flexible API, being able to get a great share of the market). This is for instance the case of Skypeâ„ ¢, a successful example of communication tool that has released its API since some time ago. Fig. 2 summarizes LEICAs general integration framework. The first step of the LEICAs integration framework is the Collaborative Application Integration. For instance, in the illustrative scenario presented in III.A, the first step to integrate the CVE with the instant messenger (supporting the chat room associated to the entrance hall), the collaborative Web browser and the audio conference applications, it is necessary to create a Wrapper for each one of these applications. As detailed in Section V, these wrappers can be automatically generated by LEICAs API Factory, based on the API description of each collaborative application. The Wrappers comprise a Web services Services WS interface allowing the collaborative application to register itself with LEICA. As illustrated by Fig. 1, through the Wrappers Web servicesWS ports, the integrated application can interact with the Session Configuration Service (SCS). The SCS is a Web service Service WS used for (i) configuring new global SuperSessions and (ii) starting up SuperSessions. A SuperSession is an integrated collaborative session holding the whole collaboration activity. Within the context of a global SuperSession, different specificSessions can exist. A specificSession is a conventional collaborative session defined within the context of a collaborative application (e.g. a videoconference session, a whiteboard session, etc.). The SCS dynamically contacts each integrated application, during the SuperSession configuration process, in order to request: (i) which specific data is required to create specificSessions for this respective application (e.g. a videoconference tool could require an IP multicast address); and (ii) which kind of events it can notify, and action requests it can handle. The interaction degree among the integrated applications depends essentially on the nature of the events they are able to exchange, and actions they are able to perform. In order to create a SuperSession, a user must define its integration semantics. It is accomplished by configuring the Collaboration Policy. A Collaboration Policy is a set of rules under a condition/action model. These rules define how collaborative applications must react when receiving information (events) notified by other integrated applications. In other words, the specification of Collaboration Policies allows defining specific integration semantics (i.e. how to coordinate integrated applications) to each SuperSession, according to the different users requirements. Once a SuperSessions has been created (and its associated configuration file is generated), it can finally be started up. The SCS firstly contacts each integrated collaborative application requesting them to create the specificSessions defined in the SuperSession. Then, during the execution of collaborative sessions the integrated application can interact through the exchange of event using the Event Notification System. According to predefined Collaboration Policies, these notifications may lead specific actions to be performed. Wrappers are in charge of managing the SuperSessions Collaboration Policy. When the Wrapper of a collaborative application receives event notifications, it verifies if the notified events enable any policy rule concerning this collaborative application. If so, the Wrapper sends action requests to the respective application. Note that LEICA is not intended to support low-level physical events (e.g. mouse click/scrolling) or high frequency synchronization events (e.g. current position of moving objects). It aims at supporting activity relevant events that carry some semantics. SuperSession Concept As previously mentioned, LEICA controls the whole collaboration activity within the context of a global SuperSession. A SuperSession model has been defined in order to precisely identify and describe its components. Based on this model, LEICA maintains concise and coherent SuperSession state information. Furthermore, a well-defined taxonomy of the components and their attributes are also implied from the model. General models for describing collaborative applications have already been proposed in the literature. Some of them [26][27] [32][33] represent a conceptual or ontological model describing the entities and relationships of individual CSCW systems. Few models aim at describing integrated CSCW systems, like OOActSM [33][34] and the conceptual model presented in [34][35]. However, these models are based on the notion of a general activity as the central abstraction, which was considered rather abstract for a detailed specification of the SuperSession. Nevertheless, these models have inspired several concepts adopted in the defined SuperSession model. The SuperSession represents a collaboration activity involving different integrated applications, a group of users and general roles associated to these users. Formally, a CIE Session CS is a tuple: SS = (SSid, CA , NA , Rl , U , SSat) where: SSid is a unique identifier; CA = {CAi } | i ÃŽ [1,I]} is a finite set of collaborative applications where CAi = (CAidi, spSi, CAati) a specific collaborative application running a set of specificSessions (sSi). CAati is a list of attributes characterizing the collaborative application. These attributes provide information about the application description, including name, type, whether it is a role-based application, its distribution architecture (client/server, multi-servers, peer-to-peer) and the type of user applications (stand-alone or webWeb-based).); NA is a finite set of non-collaborative applications (data converters, databases, web applications, etc.); Rl = {Rlk } | k ÃŽ [1,K]} is a finite set of general roles. The concept of general role refers to a group of users owning the same set of responsibilities and privileges inside LEICA; Rlk = (Rlidk , Rlatk). Rlidk is a unique role identifier; and Rlatk is a list of attributes characterizing this general role. This list provides details like roles description, membership and administration rights. Regarding the membership, it defines how the role is associated with users: it may be either (i) a static association (there is a membership list), (ii) an automatic association (there is a predicate function based on users parameters and SuperSession state) or (iii) a users choice (password protected or not).); U = {Ul } | l ÃŽ [1,L]} is a finite set of connected users; Ul = (Uidl, URlidl, Mbl, Uatl) represent a user, where Uidl is a unique identifier; URlidl is one general role associated with the user; Mbl is a finite set of membership relations; Uatl is a list of attributes (name, email, IP address, network connection, device type, etc.); Mbl.n = (mCAidl.n , mSidl.n , msRlidl.n) is a membership relation, where mCAidl.n is an application identifier; mSidl.n is a specificSession identifier; msRlidl.n is a finite set of specific roles identifiers. Thus, each membership relation indicates the participation of a connected user to a specificSession of a collaborative application (once connected to the SuperSession, a user can concurrently take part in none, one or more specificSessions of different collaborative applications); SSat is a list of attributes characterizing the SuperSession. These attributes describe information like session context (name, purpose, etc.), scheduling (if scheduled or not, duration, etc.), accessibility type (open or closed), role association type (how users are associated to a general role) and maximum number of connected users. A specificSession regards a conventional collaborative session of a collaborative application. The role of the specificSession entity (spSi.m), wich is formally represented by the tuple: spSi.m = (Sidi.m, sRli.m, pUidi.m, Rsi.m, spSati.m) is not to precisely describe each aspect of a collaborative task. Instead, it captures relevant elements like the specific roles defined for this session (sRli.m), the users participating to this session (pUidi.m.) and the shared resources accessed by these users (Rsi.m). A specific role is a tuple, sRli.m.o = (sRlidi.m.o, sRlati.m.o), where sRlidi.m.o is a specific role identifier and sRlati.m.o is a list of attributes characterizing the specific role (description and maximum number of simultaneous users). A resource is also a tuple Rsi.m.p= (urli.m.p, Rsati.m.p ), where urli.m.p is a resource locator and Rsati.m.p is a list of attributes characterizing the resource. The purpose of the resource element is simply to allow the implementation of an inter-application access control mechanism. LEICA will not need to keep the state of each resource. Thus, resources attributes just describe its type (file, device, virtual object, interface widget, etc.) and the read/write access type (exclusive or concurrent). SuperSession Configuration In order to create a SuperSession, a two step configuration process is carried out: (i) Session Management configuration and (ii) Collaboration Policy configuration. In the first configuration step, two groups of information should be specified: General Session Management information (GSMinfo): It carries management information such as scheduling, membership and general user roles.; Integrated Applications information (IAinfo): It defines the list of integrated applications to be used during this SuperSession; for each collaborative application, a list of specificSessions is defined, where specific data required by this application for creating sessions is provided (e.g. a videoconference application will be provided with an IP multicast address). Once Session Management configuration is completed, the Collaboration Polic Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) Abstract- In the Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) domain, researchers have always wondered about which principles and models to adopt for the development of collaborative applications capable to really meet the needs of their users. However, these users requirements are unpredictable and depend on several task or environment-related factors. Integrated collaborative environments are rarely open, extensible and reconfigurable enough so as to meet these requirements. This paper presents an environment, called LEICA (Loosely-coupled Environment for Integrating Collaborative Applications), allowing the integration of existing cooperative applications. LEICA adopts a loosely-coupled integration approach which is based on Web services Services technology, an event notification system, and the definition of Collaboration Policies to control the interactions among integrated applications. LEICA allows different functionalities of existing applications to be dynamically combined and controlled, enhancing therefore the flexibility. Through a case study we show how LEICA was successfully used to integrate three collaborative applications: a co-browsing tool, an instant messaging tool and a VoIP conference controller. Index Terms-Collaborative work, integrated collaborative environments, web services. INTRODUCTION Advances in networking and computing technologies, combined with the fact that companies and work teams are becoming geographically distributed, have created increased a need for communication technologies to ease distance collaboration among distributed individuals (virtual work teams). This leads to the appearing of the so-called Integrated Collaboration Environments (ICEs), having as main goal to integrate different collaborative applications together into a single easy-to-use operational environment [1]. Users needs are very frequently unpredictable and depending on several emerging factors, including the size of the workgroup, the collaborative activities to be accomplished, the intensiveness of the required communications, the coordination policy and the communication needs of the workgroup. Therefore, the possibility of dynamically integrating new functionalities to the environment appears as an important characteristic for collaborative applications [3]. Supporting the integration of new collaborative functionalities reflects how flexible the environment is while responding to unpredictable users needs. We can define this characteristic as integration flexibility that denotes the ease with which an ICE can be its functionalities in response to the users needs. Nowadays one of the main problems of ICEs is that their lack of integration flexibility and as consequence various users decide to set-up their own environments composing different collaborative applications executed independently. In this case, each application is completely isolated from others, without any possibility of coordination among them. This lack of integration can lead to a loss of control from the part of the user, since the operation environment is particularly artificial. Promoting the integration flexibility of ICEs could bring significant benefits to users, allowing different functionalities of existing applications to be dynamically combined and controlled (enhancing therefore the flexibility itself). For instance, a whiteboard application can be integrated with an instant messaging application in such a way that whenever a user joins an instant messaging room, he is automatically logged into the same whiteboard session, instead of been forced to manually login into a session of each one of these collaborative tools. Another case could be the integration of a distributed game and an audio conference application. Whenever a user avatar enters a level/place into the game, his is logged into the audio conference session associated to that level/place, so that the users can online discuss with each other. In order to achieve the integration of existing collaborative applications without having to deal with their low-level features, this work presents LEICA, a Loosely-coupled Environment for Integrating Collaborative Applications. Relying on Web services Services (WS) technologies and an event notification system, different collaborative applications can interoperate by exchanging information within the context of a global collaborative session. The loosely-coupled approach proposed by LEICA overcomes a key problem usually related to integration environments it does not require a true semantic integration of applications. Accordingly, it supports further integration possibilities, such as the integration of third party applications, enhancing, thus, flexibility. LEICA also offers flexibility in the level of the integration semantics. Based on Collaboration Policies to control the interactions between integrated applications, LEICA provides means to define how the collaboration activity supported by one collaborative application will be affected by information received from other collaborative applications. In practice, these collaborative applications interact through the notification of events which may lead to performing specific action(s) in some of these applications themselves. As we will explain later in detail, we think that once a collaborative session has been configured, the use of LEICA can improve users productivity by reducing the application-related administrative tasks, focusing precisely on the collaboration activity itself, and all that by just by interpreting the rules stated for a particular session, all this in function of some pre-established policy rules (also to be explained in detail later). In this way users will find a more natural collaboration environment from the users point of view. In order to illustrate the usability of LEICA in real-world conditions, this paper presents a case study that demonstrates the capability of LEICA to integrate collaborative applications. In this case study, LEICA was successfully used to integrate three collaborative applications: a co-browsing tool, instant messaging tool and a VoIP conference controller. The paper is structured as follows. Section II presents related work regarding the integration of CSCW systems. Section III overviews the general integration approach proposed by LEICA. Section IV explains how to specify Collaboration Policies. Section V presents the LEICAs architecture, detailing how to integrate applications in practice. Some implementation issues are considered in section VI. Section VII describes a case study illustrating the use of LEICA. Finally, in section VIII we draw some conclusions and presents directions of future work. RELATED WORK There are several works oriented to improving integration flexibility of collaborative environments. In this context, four main approaches can be identified: user-tailorable solutions; CSCW toolkits; middleware based solutions; and platforms for integration of heterogeneous collaborative systems. User-Tailorable Solutions As stated in [2], different definitions of tailorability can be found in the literature. Most of them focus on user tailorability ([3], [4], [5] [6]) defining that a tailorable application can be adapted and modified by its own users in order to meet their different requirements. In CSCW, tailorability must focus on the requirements of the group task and of the organization, in which the CSCW system is used [5]. Actually, tailorability is one of the main concerns of groupware development methods. For example, application of participatory design methods ([7] [8]) has been proposed in order to approach the user involvement during groupware development, augmenting thus the opportunities for tailoring. According to [6], tailoring can be supported in three different levels: customization, selecting among a set of predefined configuration options; integration, linking together predefined components within or between applications; extension, improving the implementation by adding new program code. Most of user-tailorable groupware tools support only the customization or integration level (e.g. [2] [9]). Note that the integration level supposes that the functionality to be integrated has been pre-developed and is available somewhere [6]. Only at the extension level users would be able to integrate new functionalities, even if they have not been anticipated by developers at design time. A method frequently used for supporting tailoring at the extension level is the component-based tailoring. For example, in [10], components are implemented using Flexibeans (an extension of the Java Beans model) and end-users tailor the system using a composition language. In [11], end-users may assemble components into larger composite components using the visual representation rather than writing lines of code. However, even at the extension level the integration flexibility is partial as the integration of existing collaborative systems or groupware would require them to be redesigned according to the system architecture. CSCW Toolkits CSCW toolkits ease the implementation of CSCW systems by providing reusable components and behaviors designed to be applicable in a range of circumstances [12]. The need for flexibility and tailorability in CSCW toolkits is well acknowledged. The Neem Platform [13] offers a generic (application-neutral) evolvable framework upon which socially and culturally aware applications are developed. Flexibility and extensibility in Neem result from its foundation on a core architectural coordination model [13]: decoupled components interact indirectly through message exchanges. Intermezzo [14] is a collaboration support environment supporting the coordination information sharing, offering fluid interactions, user awareness, session management and policy control. It addresses dynamic flexibility [12] by allowing applications to adapt not just their own behavior, but also the behavior of the toolkit in reacting to the changing dynamics of the world they run into. The Groupware Toolkit/Shared Dictionary (or GT/SD) toolkit [15][16] has been developed to support rapid development of groupware, focusing mainly on networking and data sharing aspects. GT/SDs extensibility is based on its modular design, which allows adding or modifying behavior by replacing or wrapping different components. Toolkits may represent an interesting solution for helping the development of CSCW systems, as they promote the reuse of components. But in general, CSCW toolkits offer a limited set of functionalities or they are target for some specific kind of domain. Besides, to reuse components of the toolkit, developers often need to implement very specific details of the toolkit in order to adapt it to the application needs [16][17]. Middleware based solutions The integration of heterogeneous applications has been a widely investigated subject, mainly in distributed systems area. General integration solutions based on middleware, like CCM (CORBA Component Model), .NET and Enterprise JavaBeans have been developed. Moreover, integration solutions associated with specific domains have also been proposed, such as Enterprise Application Integration systems [17][18]. The emergence of Web services WS has also led to the development of general solutions for integration of distributed applications, due mainly to the use of open standards. In the CSCW domain, some middleware-based solutions have been proposed. Dustdar et al. [18][19] discuss the importance of using Web services WS in order to provide collaborative application interoperability. But in order to be integrated, collaborative applications must originally support Web servicesWS. Even if Web servicesWS represent an emerging software trend, only a limited set of collaborative applications are currently supporting these technologies. As an enhancement to traditional middleware, some SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) solutions have also been proposed. For example, WGWSOA [19][20] uses Web ServicesWS as an access interface in order to support the reuse and the interoperability of different collaborative services. But an important drawback of WGWSOA is that collaborative services must be developed following the respective middleware architecture. It is also important to note that like WGWSOA, most middleware based solutions present technical responses to the so called syntactic interoperability [20][21]. They provide mechanisms allowing applications to communicate and interact through information exchange. But according to [21][22], the integration concept goes beyond the possibility of sharing and exchanging specific information. Applications must agree upon the meaning (or the semantics) of these exchanges. In other words, integration solutions should provide means for defining integration semantics. Thus, interoperability can be seen as a requirement for integration. The EcoSpace Project [22][23] proposes an environment that, besides being based on SOA and Web servicesWS, relies on Semantic Web technologies (WSDL-S with services ontologies) to support semantic description of collaborative services. Besides a semantic description of each service, it would be necessary a semantic description of the composition of services so as to coordinate their orchestration. However, this part of the project remains as design aspect. Moreover, using Web serviceWSs as integration technology may imply some performance loss, particularly associated to the use of SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) [23][24]. Luo et al. [24][25] claim that Web ServicesWS should be only used in situations which are really heterogeneous. They propose a service-oriented solution for the integration of collaborative applications that, instead of using SOAP, adopts a unified service bus (implemented through an open source Enterprise Service Bus). Platforms for integrating heterogeneous collaborative systems The latter latest approach to improve the integration flexibility of collaborative environments is to create platforms aiming specifically at the integration of collaborative applications. They focus on the integration of collaborative functionalities provided by these applications while trying to define any semantics behind integration. Iqbal et al. [25][26] propose an integrative framework based on the three-level model presented by [26][27]: the Ontological Model specifies shared objects, their relations and taxonomies; the Coordination Model specifies how interactions take place during system execution; and the User Interface Model specifies how the system is presented to the final user. Integration process consists firstly in identifying, for each collaborative application, the elements associated with these three models. Then, on each level the elements from different applications are grouped and merged when equivalent. As a result, common ontological, coordination and user interface models are generated. In spite of enabling a multi-level integration, this approach requires an internal knowledge of the collaborative applications so that their functionalities can be mapped into the three-level model. Accordingly, the integration of third party applications becomes a complex task. In order to avoid considering application internals during the integration process (facilitating the integration of existing applications), some integration solutions propose the so called loosely-coupled approach. This approach presents two main features: (i) once integrated to the environment, collaborative applications preserve their autonomy, i.e., they can still be used as standalone application; (ii) the integration environment remains independent of integrated applications, and accordingly, applications can be integrated and detached from the environment without compromising its behavior. This last feature is particularly important considering the integration flexibility aspect. In fact, in a loosely-coupled environment, the set of integrated applications must be easily modified according to users needs. Systems like AREA [27][28] and NESSIE [28][29] have proposed a loosely-coupled integration for supporting cross-application awareness. Both systems represent a collaborative environment where independent applications can share a common information space, implemented through an event notification system. Users can receive notifications of activity relevant events from different applications (executed by other users). An important aspect of these systems is the use of open Internet technologies (such as HTTP and CGI) to enable the integration of third party collaborative applications. However, the main drawback of both systems is that the integration semantics is statically defined collaborative applications are integrated so as to offer a common awareness of the whole collaboration activity. Another proposal also based on a loosely-coupled approach is the framework XGSP [29][30]. XGSP proposes the integration of audio and videoconferencing tools based on SIP and H.323 standards, as well as the integration of Access Grid applications [30][31]. In this framework, XGSP manager servers are in charge of controlling collaborative sessions. A different gateway is defined for each application type (i.e. SIP, H.323 and Access Grid applications). Using a signaling protocol based on Web servicesWS, these gateways are employed to mediate the communication between applications and XGSP servers. An important disadvantage of XGSP is the fact that, originally, it only allows the integration of application based on SIP, H.323 and Access Grid. Loosely-coupling is also inherent to the Web servicesWS based solutions presented in the previous section. Similarly to those solutions, LEICA represents an integration environment that proposes a loosely-coupled approach based on Web servicesWS technologies. Regarding the performance implications of SOAP, Alonso et al. [31][32] suggest that Web ServicesWS technologies should be used only to implement coarse-gained interactions, where the impact of the overhead associated to SOAP would be less important. Following the recommendations of [31][32], Web servicesWS are employed by LEICA for coarse-grained operations only. As it will be detailed in the following sections, LEICA defines a hybrid architecture where Web ServicesWS are applied as an initial mechanism for registering newly integrated applications, as well as for setting and starting up collaborative sessions. Then, during the execution of integrated collaborative sessions a different infrastructure is used to interconnect collaborative applications. Another important aspect concerns integration semantics. Unlike the previous solutions, LEICA provides users with the possibility to define the desired integration semantics for each collaborative session. The Integration Environment: LEICA LEICA aims at the integration of different collaborative applications, where integration semantics is to be defined according to user requirements. Before explaining the general integration approach and the behavior of LEICA, a possible scenario is presented to better illustrate the advantages of such integration. Integration Scenario An important domain where collaborative environments have been largely used is e-Learning. In particular, a CVE (Collaborative Virtual Environment) can be used to implement a 3D shared world representing a school building divided into: one entrance hall, classrooms, and teachers rooms. Different collaborative applications could be associated to each room: (i) a chat room associated to the entrance hall; (ii) a collaborative web browsing (it would enable teachers to guide students through lecture notes) and an audio conference tool associated to the classrooms; and (iii) a shared whiteboard associated to each of the teachers room. Un paragraphe pour montrer la situation: Utilisation des outils non integrà ©es, et lintà ©gration avec LEICA. With this integration semantics, whenever an avatar enters into a room, the respective user is automatically connected to the associated collaborative application(s). Besides, only authorized users should enter into private rooms (e.g. the teachers rooms with its whiteboard could be restricted to teachers). Another possible behavior specified by this integration semantics is some kind of floor coupling between the two applications used as a support for virtual class sessions. This way, it would be possible to assure that the user holding the Web browsing floor (i.e. the one guiding the lecture notes browsing) is the only one to have the right to speak to the class attendees. General Integration Approach As previously mentioned, and illustrated in Fig. 1, LEICA follows a hybrid architecture where Web ServicesWS are applied at the collaborative sessions start up, and an event notification system allows collaborative applications to interact through the exchange of event notifications. Two other basic components of LEICA are the Wrappers and the Session Configuration Service (SCS). The integration of a collaborative application to LEICA is achieved by attaching a Wrapper to it. Three main cases may be considered: a) open source applications, b) API-based applications, and c) applications without any available API. Integration of open source applications can achieve the tightest interaction degree, since any internal event/action can be exported/performed; it might however imply great development efforts. API-based integration is straightforward, and interaction is limited to the provided API. Applications without API are the most limitating ones, constraining to interact only through application start and stop actions. LEICAs integration approach is mainly driven by case (b), believing that developers are certainly interested in creating specific and performable collaboration tools that can be used either stand-alone or integrated with other applications (through a flexible API, being able to get a great share of the market). This is for instance the case of Skypeâ„ ¢, a successful example of communication tool that has released its API since some time ago. Fig. 2 summarizes LEICAs general integration framework. The first step of the LEICAs integration framework is the Collaborative Application Integration. For instance, in the illustrative scenario presented in III.A, the first step to integrate the CVE with the instant messenger (supporting the chat room associated to the entrance hall), the collaborative Web browser and the audio conference applications, it is necessary to create a Wrapper for each one of these applications. As detailed in Section V, these wrappers can be automatically generated by LEICAs API Factory, based on the API description of each collaborative application. The Wrappers comprise a Web services Services WS interface allowing the collaborative application to register itself with LEICA. As illustrated by Fig. 1, through the Wrappers Web servicesWS ports, the integrated application can interact with the Session Configuration Service (SCS). The SCS is a Web service Service WS used for (i) configuring new global SuperSessions and (ii) starting up SuperSessions. A SuperSession is an integrated collaborative session holding the whole collaboration activity. Within the context of a global SuperSession, different specificSessions can exist. A specificSession is a conventional collaborative session defined within the context of a collaborative application (e.g. a videoconference session, a whiteboard session, etc.). The SCS dynamically contacts each integrated application, during the SuperSession configuration process, in order to request: (i) which specific data is required to create specificSessions for this respective application (e.g. a videoconference tool could require an IP multicast address); and (ii) which kind of events it can notify, and action requests it can handle. The interaction degree among the integrated applications depends essentially on the nature of the events they are able to exchange, and actions they are able to perform. In order to create a SuperSession, a user must define its integration semantics. It is accomplished by configuring the Collaboration Policy. A Collaboration Policy is a set of rules under a condition/action model. These rules define how collaborative applications must react when receiving information (events) notified by other integrated applications. In other words, the specification of Collaboration Policies allows defining specific integration semantics (i.e. how to coordinate integrated applications) to each SuperSession, according to the different users requirements. Once a SuperSessions has been created (and its associated configuration file is generated), it can finally be started up. The SCS firstly contacts each integrated collaborative application requesting them to create the specificSessions defined in the SuperSession. Then, during the execution of collaborative sessions the integrated application can interact through the exchange of event using the Event Notification System. According to predefined Collaboration Policies, these notifications may lead specific actions to be performed. Wrappers are in charge of managing the SuperSessions Collaboration Policy. When the Wrapper of a collaborative application receives event notifications, it verifies if the notified events enable any policy rule concerning this collaborative application. If so, the Wrapper sends action requests to the respective application. Note that LEICA is not intended to support low-level physical events (e.g. mouse click/scrolling) or high frequency synchronization events (e.g. current position of moving objects). It aims at supporting activity relevant events that carry some semantics. SuperSession Concept As previously mentioned, LEICA controls the whole collaboration activity within the context of a global SuperSession. A SuperSession model has been defined in order to precisely identify and describe its components. Based on this model, LEICA maintains concise and coherent SuperSession state information. Furthermore, a well-defined taxonomy of the components and their attributes are also implied from the model. General models for describing collaborative applications have already been proposed in the literature. Some of them [26][27] [32][33] represent a conceptual or ontological model describing the entities and relationships of individual CSCW systems. Few models aim at describing integrated CSCW systems, like OOActSM [33][34] and the conceptual model presented in [34][35]. However, these models are based on the notion of a general activity as the central abstraction, which was considered rather abstract for a detailed specification of the SuperSession. Nevertheless, these models have inspired several concepts adopted in the defined SuperSession model. The SuperSession represents a collaboration activity involving different integrated applications, a group of users and general roles associated to these users. Formally, a CIE Session CS is a tuple: SS = (SSid, CA , NA , Rl , U , SSat) where: SSid is a unique identifier; CA = {CAi } | i ÃŽ [1,I]} is a finite set of collaborative applications where CAi = (CAidi, spSi, CAati) a specific collaborative application running a set of specificSessions (sSi). CAati is a list of attributes characterizing the collaborative application. These attributes provide information about the application description, including name, type, whether it is a role-based application, its distribution architecture (client/server, multi-servers, peer-to-peer) and the type of user applications (stand-alone or webWeb-based).); NA is a finite set of non-collaborative applications (data converters, databases, web applications, etc.); Rl = {Rlk } | k ÃŽ [1,K]} is a finite set of general roles. The concept of general role refers to a group of users owning the same set of responsibilities and privileges inside LEICA; Rlk = (Rlidk , Rlatk). Rlidk is a unique role identifier; and Rlatk is a list of attributes characterizing this general role. This list provides details like roles description, membership and administration rights. Regarding the membership, it defines how the role is associated with users: it may be either (i) a static association (there is a membership list), (ii) an automatic association (there is a predicate function based on users parameters and SuperSession state) or (iii) a users choice (password protected or not).); U = {Ul } | l ÃŽ [1,L]} is a finite set of connected users; Ul = (Uidl, URlidl, Mbl, Uatl) represent a user, where Uidl is a unique identifier; URlidl is one general role associated with the user; Mbl is a finite set of membership relations; Uatl is a list of attributes (name, email, IP address, network connection, device type, etc.); Mbl.n = (mCAidl.n , mSidl.n , msRlidl.n) is a membership relation, where mCAidl.n is an application identifier; mSidl.n is a specificSession identifier; msRlidl.n is a finite set of specific roles identifiers. Thus, each membership relation indicates the participation of a connected user to a specificSession of a collaborative application (once connected to the SuperSession, a user can concurrently take part in none, one or more specificSessions of different collaborative applications); SSat is a list of attributes characterizing the SuperSession. These attributes describe information like session context (name, purpose, etc.), scheduling (if scheduled or not, duration, etc.), accessibility type (open or closed), role association type (how users are associated to a general role) and maximum number of connected users. A specificSession regards a conventional collaborative session of a collaborative application. The role of the specificSession entity (spSi.m), wich is formally represented by the tuple: spSi.m = (Sidi.m, sRli.m, pUidi.m, Rsi.m, spSati.m) is not to precisely describe each aspect of a collaborative task. Instead, it captures relevant elements like the specific roles defined for this session (sRli.m), the users participating to this session (pUidi.m.) and the shared resources accessed by these users (Rsi.m). A specific role is a tuple, sRli.m.o = (sRlidi.m.o, sRlati.m.o), where sRlidi.m.o is a specific role identifier and sRlati.m.o is a list of attributes characterizing the specific role (description and maximum number of simultaneous users). A resource is also a tuple Rsi.m.p= (urli.m.p, Rsati.m.p ), where urli.m.p is a resource locator and Rsati.m.p is a list of attributes characterizing the resource. The purpose of the resource element is simply to allow the implementation of an inter-application access control mechanism. LEICA will not need to keep the state of each resource. Thus, resources attributes just describe its type (file, device, virtual object, interface widget, etc.) and the read/write access type (exclusive or concurrent). SuperSession Configuration In order to create a SuperSession, a two step configuration process is carried out: (i) Session Management configuration and (ii) Collaboration Policy configuration. In the first configuration step, two groups of information should be specified: General Session Management information (GSMinfo): It carries management information such as scheduling, membership and general user roles.; Integrated Applications information (IAinfo): It defines the list of integrated applications to be used during this SuperSession; for each collaborative application, a list of specificSessions is defined, where specific data required by this application for creating sessions is provided (e.g. a videoconference application will be provided with an IP multicast address). Once Session Management configuration is completed, the Collaboration Polic

Can the physical attractiveness of a defendant lead to differing sentences

Can the physical attractiveness of a defendant lead to differing sentences Abstract The purpose of the investigation was to see if the physical attractiveness of a defendant has an influence of the severity of prison sentences given for a crime of fraud. An opportunity sample consisting of 10 males and 10 females taken from sixth form students at school aged 16-18 was used. A crime vignette was given to participants with a photo of the physically attractive defendant or physically un attractive defendant attached. Participants had to state whether they thought the defendant was guilty or not guilty. Participants were then told that the defendants were found guilty and were asked to assign a prison term that they felt the defendant deserved. The Chi-Square and T-Test were used to analyse the results. Observed Value of T= 30.88: Critical value at p Project Brief PB1: The aim is to see if Sigall Ostroves (1975) findings that the physical attractiveness of a defendant and the nature of the crime can lead to differing sentences are applicable to this current time period. Alternative hypothesis: The more attractive defendant will receive a lower sentence for burglary than the less attractive defendant. Null Hypothesis: There will be no difference in length of sentences given to the attractive defendant and the non attractive defendant. PB2: A directional hypothesis is being used as past research by Sigall Ostroves (1975) has shown that physical attractiveness does have an effect on the length of a sentence giving to the defendant. PB3: The chosen research method will be experimental using an independent measures design. So each group will be tested in a different condition one group will be shown a picture with a physically attractive defendant and the other group will see a picture with a non attractive defendant. PB4: Advantages Confounding variables minimised Study is in a controlled environment so the variables can be manipulated Disadvantages No control of participant variables as due to individuals differences the participants may not find the pictures attractive. There maybe a social desirability bias as participants may put what they think is the norm or socially desirable rather than what they actually think. There maybe investigator and participant effects. PB5: Demand Characteristics Participants may respond in accordance to experimenters desired response i.e. the experimenter may influence the participant in the way in which he states the scenario of the crime or by subconscious gestures. Age Group Bias All participants are between the age of 16-18 so results may not be external valid as other age groups may have different results and respond differently. Participant Bias Participants may give into social norms and may no give there true opinion when rating. They may rate pictures higher or lower than they really feel. PB6: Single Blind The participants and the experimenter will be told that the study is on studying something other than what there doing so the participants and the experimenter wont be able to guess the aim of the study. Standardise Instructions All conditions of the study are given the same standardised instructions so investigator bias is eliminated. Social Desirability Bias The results will be anonymous and confidential, giving the chance for the participants a option to withdraw at any time so the participants may not feel the need to put what the experimenter may see as the norm. PB7: 5% level of significance PB8: Deception Not telling the participants the true nature of the study by using a single blind technique. This will be overcome by debriefing the participants at the end of the study to ensure that the participants are happy. Privacy The pictures will be taking from websites which are on public domains so anyone can access them. Informed Consent Participants will be asked if they want to participate and told the basic procedures as well i.e. giving the right to withdraw etc. Withdrawal Participants will be able to withdraw at any time during the study and will be told this throughout the study. Debrief The participants will be fully debriefed as to the true aims of the study has been completed after the study. Observation The participants will not be observed. Confidentially None of the participants names will be taken and they will not be observed during the study so the results will remain anonymous. Introduction The Halo effect (Dion Walster, 1972) is the tendency of a characteristic such as physical attractiveness to influence an individuals perception of persons qualities such as intelligence, social status and personal traits. Research has found that attractive people are attributed with more positive characteristics due to the Halo Effect. Dion Walster (1972) conducted an experiment called What is Beautiful is Good and found that individuals who are seen as physically attractive are assumed by particpants to have more socially desirable personalities than those who are less attractive, and it is also assumed that attractive individuals lives will be more successful and enjoyable than individuals who are less attractive. So attractive individuals are assumed to be more sociably desired. Dion et als (1972) findings indicate that stereotyping due to individuals physical attractiveness does occur as physical attractive individuals were regarded to have more socially desired qualities and p ersonalities, and were expected to have greater personal success in there life. These results have also been supported by Griddin Langlois (2006) and Feingold (1992) who found that unattractive people are perceived to hold more negative attributes. The Halo effect has been applied in research into other areas of society. For example in school or workplaces. As a study on attractiveness in school found by Clifford Walster (1973) and Landy Sigall (1974) found that two essays which had exactly the same content were marked differently. This was belived to be due to them having pictures of the students on the essays and the more attractive person received a higher grade even though the essays were the same. This shows that physical attractiveness does affect peoples way of thinking in real life settings. Another study has shown that the halo effect has an effect in job interviews as it has been found by Dipboye, Arvey, Terpstra, (1977) and Landy Sigall, (1974) that the more attractive individuals where more likely to get the jobs offered than the unattractive individuals even though they did the same on the tasks to get the interviews. Baron and Byrne (1997) found that attractive defendants are more likely to receive lighter sentences and gain the sympathy of the jurors rather than unattractive individuals. This is believed to be due to the Halo Effect What is beautiful is good. Sigall Ostrove (1975) also found that participants who were shown an attractive photo of a defendant charged with burglary recommend almost half the average sentence of those show no photo or an unattractive photo. Stewart (1980) also found that attractive defendants tended to receive lighter sentences and were less likely to receive prison sentences than unattractive individuals. These results were further supported by Efrans (1974) study as Efran (1974) found that juries were not as certain about the guilt of attractive defendants, and therefore gave them lighter sentences/ punishments. However it has been found that there were different factors which influence the sentence giving to an attractive individual. For example the attractivene ss of an individual didnt have much of an effect on sentences when the crime was seen as very serious. Sigall Ostrove (1975) also found that attractive defendants were charged with a higher average sentences when fraud was the crime rather than the unattractive individuals or defendant with no photo. Their results showed that when the crime committed wasnt related to physical attractiveness (e.g. burglary) the participants would give lighter sentences to the attractive defendant rather than to the unattractive defendant. In contrast when the crime was related to attractiveness (e.g. swindle), the physically attractive defendant would receive a worse sentence. The Halo Effect explains these findings in that when crimes are not related to attractiveness, the attractive participants may be seen as good due to the Halo Effect and positive stereotyping. For the physically attractive crimes the juror may feel that the attractive individuals used there attractiveness as a natural advantag e to further promote themselves in society. Fraud is regarded as deceitful and is related to attractiveness thus more attractive defendants would be punished more severely. Aim: This study will replicate Sigall Ostroves (1975) study to provide further support for previous findings see if the physical attractiveness of a defendant and the nature of the crime can lead to differing sentences in this current time period. Alternative hypothesis: The more attractive defendant will receive a lower sentence for burglary than the less attractive defendant. Null Hypothesis: There will be no difference in length of sentences given to the attractive defendant and the non attractive defendant. Method: Method and design In the experiment the IV is the physical attractiveness of the defendants and the DV was the judgement that the participants gave the photos of the physically attractive defendant and unattractive defendant i.e. guilty or not guilty. An independent group design is being used so one group of participants will be tested with the physically attractive photo of the defendant and the other group will be tested with the unattractive photo of the defendant. A questionnaire was given to the male participants so ratings of the photographs of the females could be collected and so the best voted picture would be used as the physically attractive defendant and the worse would be used for the unattractive defendant. Researchers One A level student collected data. Target population and sample An opportunity sample consisting of 10 males and 10 females taken from sixth form students at school. The students who were available at the time were asked to participate in the study. All participants took part in the study and none of them declined. Apparatus/materials Pilot Study Ten photographs were selected from the websites Hot or Not and RatePeople.com labelling them 1 10. All photographs were put on to A4 pieces of paper (one per page of paper). All photos were of passport shots so the defendants were looking straight at the camera and the defendants were between the ages of 20-40. This was controlled so the participants view of the defendants didnt change due to the pose the defendant was doing or because they thought the defendant was to old and frail to go to jail or to young etc. There was as little jewellery or clothing in the pictures as possible so it wouldnt distort the participants view on the pictures as it may make the participant think the defendants were more or less attractive in the photos creating extraneous variable so this was done so it was only the defendants attractiveness being taken into account. Main Study In the main study a scenario was given to participants (see Appendix 1) and the participants had to state whether they thought the defendant was guilty or not on the participant response sheet (see Appendix 2). Two photos were used in the main study from the pilot study (the best rated photo and the worst rated photo) which were used as defendants. The best voted picture was used as the physically attractive defendant and the worse was used for the unattractive defendant. An example of one of the photographs use is shown in Appendix 3. Standardised procedures Pilot Study The participants were taken into different rooms when completing the task so they werent distracted from other students. The standardised instructions (see Appendix 4) were read to participants and consent was given. Male participants were shown the photographs of the females, and the females were shown the photographs of the men. The participants were asked to rate each of the photographs on a scale of 1 10, with 10 being most attractive and 1 being not very attractive. The participants wrote their ratings on some paper with spaces for the ratings for the 10 photographs No names were asked for. An example of a participant response is shown in Appendix 5. Main Study The best rated photo and the worst rated photo were than used as defendants. The best voted picture was used as the physically attractive defendant and the worse was used for the unattractive defendant. A different set of participants where given scenarios and asked if they would give a sentence to the defendant given to them and told to right down there answer on the participant response sheet. One group was given the physically attractive photo whereas the other group was given the unattractive photo. Participants after the task were thanked and debriefed (see Appendix 6). Controls Investigator bias was minimised by using standardised instructions. The Single blind technique was used so researcher bias, participant bias and demand characteristic were avoided by asking someone else to observe the participants during the task and telling the observer not to look at the participants while theyre doing the task to avoid participant reactivity. Participant bias was avoided by telling the participants to rate members of a opposite sex because the males may find it more difficult men in terms of physical attractiveness. Ethics Informed consent was gained as participants were given standardised instructions and told that they had the right to withdraw at any time and that their answers would remain anonymous. There was minor deception as the participants werent told the aim of the study but this was dealt with as the participants were debriefed at the end of the study. The ethical issue of using photos of people without there consent was dealt with as the photos used were put on websites where the people want there photos to be rated thus are available to the public. Results: Descriptive Statistics Summary table of the data to show the total number of guilty verdicts given to physically attractive and physically non-attractive defendants. Participants had to state whether they found the defendant given to them guilty or not guilty. A bar chart was drawn to display the results visually. The raw data given is in Appendix 7. The Sentences Given To The Defendants Physically Attractive Physically Non-Attractive Guilty 7 8 Not Guilty 3 2 Bar chart to show the difference between the number of guilty verdicts given to attractive and non-attractive defendants in getting sentences or not. Summary table of the data to show mean prison sentences in months awarded to the attractive and non-attractive defendants by the participants. A bar chart was drawn to display the results visually. The raw data given is in Appendix 7. The Mean Length Of The Sentences Given To The Defendants Physically Attractive Physically Non-Attractive Average 21.9 Months = 1.8 Years 63.6 Months = 5.3 Years Bar chart to show the difference in the length of sentences given to the attractive and physically non-attractive defendants. Results: Inferential Statistics The Chi-Square Test and T-Test were used to analyse the results. The Chi-Square Test was appropriate for the data at a nominal level of measurement in a from of categories and the data collected from independent measures. Chi Square = 0.26 Degrees of freedom = 1 Critical value at p As the observed value of chi-square was smaller than the critical value at a 5% level of significance, we cannot reject the null hypothesis and so it must be retained. The T-Test was appropriate for the data that was at a interval level of measurement in the form of numerical data as the data collected was from independent measures. Observed value of T = 30.88 Degrees of freedom = 1 Critical value at p As the observed value of T is higher than the critical value of T at a 5% level of significance the null hypothesis can be rejected. Discussion Explanation of findings The findings of this investigation found that the physical attractiveness of a defendant can lead to differing sentences. Overall the physically attractive defendant received a lighter sentence than the physically unattractive defendant. The T-Test was significant at the 0.05 level of significance supporting the assumption that the Halo effect will effect peoples views on whether a defendant is guilty or innocent. Relationship to background research There has been lots of research into whether the physical attractiveness can influence an individuals perception of persons qualities. Early research such as Stewart (1980) found that attractive defendants tended to receive lighter sentences and were less likely to receive prison sentences than unattractive individuals. Baron and Byrne (1997) also found that attractive defendants are more likely to receive lighter sentences and gain the sympathy of the jurors rather than unattractive individuals. This study supports these earlier findings and in addition shows that this bias can lead to differing prison sentences being awarded to defendants even when the crime committed is the same. This could be due to the halo effect which gives the tendency of a characteristic such as physical attractiveness to influence an individuals perception of persons qualities such as intelligence, social status and personal traits. This creates beautiful stereotypes which doesnt fit with the criminal stereotype such as scars, looking dirty etc. Although the results could be because the participants generally believed that the physically attractive defendant was guilty and the physically unattractive defendant wasnt. Limitations and modifications The study lacks ecological validity as in real life the participants would be in a jury and so there would be a discussion between 12 people of varying ages on what the punishment the defendant should receive. In this experiment 6th form students were used aged between 16-18 and they made the decisions on there own rather than discussing the defendants punishment. To improve this a simulated jury could be used where the experimenter asks 12 participants to act as a jury and discuss the sentence. Due to the participant sample used there was an sample bias as the study was on an opportunity sample of 6th form students. So the results can not be generalised to the whole population. There may have also been a problem due to demand characteristics as participants may have guessed the aims of the study and may have known what results were expected and answered accordingly. Another limitation of the study was that the experimenter knew the participants, so this may have lead the participants to write down what they thought the normal answer would be and not what they actually thought. So there may have been an social desirability bias. This could be dealt with by using a different target population and sample. Another limitation of this study is that some participants didnt find the unattractive defendant guilty as they didnt believe that she would be able to get people into bed and so voted her not guilty. Some participants also stated that they didnt believe that there as enough evidence to charge the defendants. Another limitation of the study was individual differences as the study used independent measure design and some participants said they found the unattractive defendant guilty as they didnt like her whereas some participants said they found the attractive defendant guilty as she was attractive whereas some said it was because she looked more promiscuous. Another way to make future results more reliable is to do the study again but make the participants be in groups of 12 like a real jury and see if the same results are found. This will be more reliable as in a real life juries would discuss the punishment before given defendants sentences. Implications and ideas for future research To make the results more reliable a larger sample size could be used as this would mean that more data could be analysed and this may leads to different results. Also a different age range may also lead to different results as the older people may take it more seriously. The important implications of this research shows that there is a bias in sentences given to defendants and to get rid of this bias juries may have to make there decisions by just looking at the research and maybe not be able to see the defendant in court as theres a screen in front of them and there voice is changed.