The Effects of Sociometric Location on the Adoption of an Innovation within a University Faculty

The home energy audit program: its effect on conservation behavior

“…The greater the degree of connectedness, the more likely the individual is to adopt an innovation, assuming the innovation is compatible with the norms of the social system. This proposition is supported by previous research, including studies on the adoption of an educational innovation at a major university (Stern et al, 1976); on the diffusion of two health innovations among health department administrators (Becker, 1970); and on the adoption of family planning innovations in a Korean village (Rogers and Kincaid, 1981). In fact, individual connectedness was found to be more highly related to innovativeness than a variety of sociodemographic variables in the study by Stern et al (1976).…”

Background characteristics of industrial and academic users and nonusers of online bibliographic search services

“…Hence, these results tend to confirm the earlier findings of both Curtis [3] and Sterner al. [5] regarding generally negligible differences between users and nonusers of computer-readable bibliographic databases, either online or batch.…”

“…However, some prior research would suggest that we might expect little relationship between these types of factors and subsequent use. In a recent study of science and engineering faculty members in 10 university departments, for example, demographic and professional background characteristics, value orientations, and past scholarly productivity were found to be unrelated to use of a newly introduced batchprocessed current-awareness service [5]. Similarly, a recent study of searchers and nonsearchers with an online system found little or no correlation with knowledge that searches can be made, availability of search services, areas of research, age of individuals, and money needed to pay for searches [2].…”