Michael Grimsley

Social capital, community trust, and E-government services

This paper analyses data from two large-scale community surveys to explore the relationship between community trust relations, as an expression of social capital, and perceptions of the quality of locally available government services. The analysis leads to a model of trust propagation within communities. The factors which connect different forms of trust suggest information and communication technologies for the public sector have an important role to play in mediating trust relations in the community. We indicate some implications for designers, managers and developers of these technologies.

Variation in prescribing for anxiety and depression: a reflection of health inequalities, cultural differences or variations in access to care?

BackgroundThere are large variations in mental health prescribing in UK populations. However the underlying reasons for these differences, which may be related to differences in prevalence, cultural expectations or practical difficulties in access to treatment, remain uncertain.MethodsLinear modelling was used to investigate whether population characteristics or access to primary care account for variations in mental health prescribing across 39 deprived neighbourhoods.ResultsThe proportion of sampled respondents whose first language was not English and the ratio of general practitioners to population explained 61% of variation. Deprivation and mental health status were not significant predictors of prescribing in these relatively deprived communities.ConclusionThese findings suggest that mental health prescribing, within deprived areas, as well as reflecting cultural and social differences in prescribing, may also be a proxy measure of access to care.

Managing Internet-Mediated Community Trust Relations

This paper advances a framework for analysing and managing community trust relations. The framework is based upon an analysis of the evidence for different forms of trust in community relations and of the experiential dimensions of community relations that promote trust levels. It features a community trust cycle, a trust compact and an experience management matrix which collectively support managers in addressing the relational dynamics of community trust relations. We show that this framework can be used to analyse relations that are mediated by ICT and that the framework supports the identification of opportunities to better promote ICT-mediated trust development and promulgation.

Designing for Social Inclusion: Computer Mediation of Trust Relations Between Citizens and Public Service Providers

Trust has a direct impact on the extent to which citizens engage with public and community services. This paper advances a framework which seeks to support HCI designers and managers in promoting ICT-mediated citizen engagement with public services through a strategy of trust promotion. The framework is based upon an analysis of evidence from large-scale community surveys which demonstrate a significant relationship between levels of user trust and users’ experience of public services and reveals experiential factors that promote users’ trust.

Measuring Behaviour-Based Trust between Negotiating Agents

We describe a metric to assess agent trustworthiness from the earliest stages of a dialogue between two web agents. There is no assumption of a transaction history between the agents nor is there a requirement for the agents to fully share the semantics of the set of alternatives over which negotiation occurs. The metric is designed to recognise a form of co-operative negotiation behaviour, so-called logrolling, which is known to induce trust between human negotiators. The metric requires an agent to be able to infer the issue priorities of the other party over a series of proposals and to correlate these with its own priorities. An example is used to illustrate how this may be achieved.

Dynamic inference of perceptual categories in negotiating agents

In this paper, we describe an approach by which one agent may infer the categorical preference structure of another agent in relation to a set of alternative proposals made in negotiation. The categorical preferences are inferred over a sequence of proposals, as preferences are disclosed one at a time. We seek to avoid strong ontological commitment between the agents, making only minimal assumptions about shared representations of the set of alternatives. We adopt a multidimensional representation that avoids the common, but rarely plausible, assumption of issue independence. An illustration of the approach is included and possible applications are discussed.

A Web-Based Selling Agent That Maintains Customer Loyalty through Integrative Negotiation

In many transactions, the sellers objective includes promoting customer loyalty in order to increase the likelihood of further transactions. Integrative bargaining styles foster positive relationships between parties. This short paper describes a protocol for a web-based selling agent that adopts an integrative selling style to identify alternative sales contracts that match customer priorities and hence promote customer satisfaction.