survey

Drawing on Norton Peirce's (1995) theory of investment and Darvin and Norton's (2015) expanded the model of investment, the present study aims to research investment in second language (L2) learning among Iranian English language learners. The participants included 852 male and female English language learners belonging to different age groups and English language proficiency levels. A 42-item questionnaire, developed and validated by the present authors (forthcoming), was administered online and by hand. The results showed that Iranian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners moderately invested to learn English language and that there were significant differences in the extent of investment between male and female participants and different language proficiency levels (low- and high-proficiency learners). Moreover, the results of the study demonstrated that there was no significant difference in the extent of investment between different age groups (teenage and adult ones). The study concludes with suggestions for future research on investment in L2 learning and a discussion of how such research can impact language education policy in EFL contexts.

This work serves to propose a national electronic health system based on the Big Data approach. First of all, we assessed the practice of health information systems (HIS) in Morocco and their obstacles. We performed a survey that was founded on 24 questions to specify the necessary details on this topic. This study shows that there is a primary need for the establishment of an HIS that facilitates the control, analysis, and management of health data in Morocco. For this reason, we have proposed the implementation of the Moroccan Health Data Bank (MHDB). This system will be based on powerful big data technologies that save, manage, and process health data with greater efficiency. The information present in this proposed system can provide the necessary resources for several actors to exploit this wealth, which is embodied in this massive data. We have developed a general description of the MHDB, its components, its conceptual architecture, and an example of a use case.

It is generally perceived that serious games are more interesting to people who are more educated. But is this perception really true? This paper tries to answer this question and some other related questions to provide a clearer picture of who plays strategic games in the US. Data were taken from a large dataset of one of the PEWs surveys. The American Trends Panel is a probability-based online panel which is carried out nationally using a sample of adults in the United States living in households. This survey was fielded for the Pew Research Center by Abt Associates from April 4 to April 18, 2017. Overall, 4,168 participants completed the Wave 26 survey. The results found that in comparison with non-strategic gamers, strategic gamers are more likely to be men, more educated and wealthier, though the differences are small. It seems the old stereotypes about Sgamers and NSgamers should be re-evaluated, if we want to know how to use serious games for educational purposes. 

While Iran was never formally colonized by Western powers, it’s governing regimes before the Islamic revolution were loyal to both the East and the West;  the country was therefore more or less a de facto colony of Russia, Great Britain, and the United States. One of the most pernicious consequences of such presences can be described as the "colonization of the mind," which has subtle and lasting manifestations. Using Edward Said's four major characteristics of Orientalism (i.e., binary opposition, over-generalization, fear and control, and depicting the Orient as stuck in past primitiveness), the present paper attempts to analyze the self-perception of the Iranians toward themselves to see whether the way they perceive themselves is similar to the Western discourse of the "Orient." In the first step, a number of interviews with a representative sampling of the population under investigation were conducted to develop a questionnaire. The questionnaires were then distributed and 650 responses were collected. The survey was meant to assess the four components of Orientalism as proposed by Said, among the respondents. It also contained questions about the respondents' lifestyle, their perceptions toward nationalism, and media consumption. The results reveal evidence of Orientalist self-perception among the Iranians when they compare themselves with the West.