Publicaties

Successful online publishers like BuzzFeed and the Huffington Post have mastered the art of making news go viral. In order for this to happen, it needs to be shared by a large number of online media users. Understanding what makes a piece of content worth sharing with others then becomes a key element in understanding current news flows. User-oriented studies about what incites people to share news are limited. Content characteristics, personal ...

This study investigates the motives for teacher attrition of newly qualified teachers who never started a teaching career and those dropping out after a short period. A survey was conducted among teachers with (N ¼ 154) and without (N ¼ 81) teaching experience. Five reasons for attrition were discerned: job satisfaction, school policies, workload, future prospects and relations with parents. The results demonstrated that a lack of future ...

Objectives This study sought to answer two questions: (1) what are the characteristics of young Kenyans aged 18-24 who use contraception obtained at pharmacies, and (2) why are pharmacies appealing sources of contraception? Design and setting This was a mixed-methods study in one peri-urban part of Kwale County, Kenya. Methods included cross-sectional survey (n=740), six focus group discussions, 18 in-depth interviews and 25 key-informant ...

Historians face many difficulties when plumbing the depths of the very dynamic and heterogenic population structures of pre-modern towns, especially because very few sources encompass the various layers of the urban population. In this paper I argue that it is necessary to collect and unlock larger amounts of data in databases, which in turn allow to compose multi-facetted biographies of townspeople and finally pave the way for urban ...

Age -related heterogeneity in a host population, whether due to how individuals mix and contact each other, the nature of host-pathogen interactions defining epidemiological parameters, or demographics, is crucial in studying infectious disease dynamics. Compartmental models represent a popular approach to address the problem, dividing the population of interest into a discrete and finite number of states depending on, for example, individuals' ...

Various research has been directed towards investigating the behaviour of political parties engaging in attacks. However, this topic has predominantly been studied in campaigning venues while focusing only on the attacker (parties that are attacking). This study contributes to the existing literature by (i) studying attack behaviour in the parliamentary venue, and (ii) analysing the interactions between both the attacker and the target. To this ...

Background: For long, a wait-and-see approach was implemented for preschool age children who started to stutter. The last two decades, however, research indicated more and more that this is not the most appropriate action. Speech pathologists specialised in stuttering have gained much knowledge about stuttering near onset the past few years. A previous exploratory study showed that primary care professionals have not yet gained all this ...

Recently, in many countries, the use of mobile messaging applications for news has risen while the use of Facebook for news has declined. The purpose of this study is to identify who shares news on messaging applications, why and in what ways. Findings from a survey and focus groups in the US, the UK, Germany, and Brazil show that (a) the main motivation for news users to share news in these spaces is context collapse; their aversion to news ...