Author: chris

Assignment 2: Expected Value and Consumer Choices

Consumers’ choices are prey to subtle discrepancies that arise in cognitive accounting. Learning how and when you are prey to these discrepancies is an important step in improving your decision making.

As the readings for this module demonstrate, people value gains and losses differently under different scenarios. For example, contestants in a game show might choose a guaranteed $10 prize over a 50 percent chance of winning $20 despite the fact that the expected values are the same.

Using the readings for this module, the Argosy University online library resources, and the Internet, address the following:

• What is mental accounting and how does it impact consumer decision making?
• How might a company take advantage of consumers’ mental accounting? Give examples.
• As a marketer, how might you frame certain decisions to benefit from the disparities that arise in one’s cognitive accounting?
• As a consumer, how would you avoid the pitfalls posed by the inequalities of one’s cognitive accounting?

Write a 3–5-page paper in Word format. Apply APA standards to citation of sources. Use the following file naming convention: LastnameFirstInitial_M4_A2.doc.

Module 2 Discussions

Who Are Customers

Module 3 Discussions

Business Process Perspective

Module 4 Discussions

Learning and Growth Perspective

Research and select an industry that you have not used previously in this course. Within this industry, you should be able to identify a new entrant or product that brings new competition to the market because of emerging trends or changing trends.

Discussion

Trends, changes, regulatory mandates, and shifts that occur in the market are likely to have big impact on an organization. It is important to be proactively aware of the threats and opportunities such events present.

Use the industry you selected in the context of the following scenario:

Assume you are the leader of an organization that is being threatened by new competition. Describe how the new entrant or product provides increased competition and how you as a leader might develop and implement sustaining strategies and possible opportunities.

Your discussion post should be a minimum of 250 words and incorporate at least one scholarly reference along with citations from one of the required readings.

In the Working Ahead section in Modules 1, 2, and 3, you were informed to collect items to be recycled and log a journal of these items. You were also instructed to select either Module 2 or Module 3 to collect these items.

Your assignment in this module is to submit your weeklong Recycling Journal, along with an analysis of your recycling efforts and an examination of the recycling process.

Be sure to examine what you have recycled in your chosen week and estimate how many grocery sacks of material you recycled—try to estimate the size. Results showing who recycled the most material will be posted by your facilitator in Module 5.

For this assignment, complete the following:

Part 1

Review your Recycling Journal for the week you selected. Write a report that covers the next two parts of this assignment.

Part 2

Based on what you identified as recyclable in one week and using this data, estimate how much garbage your entire locality or city could prevent sending to the landfill. Include the following:

What is the total population of your community? You may use reliable Internet resources to identify this information.
If everyone in your community recycled as much trash as you did for one week, how much garbage could your area recycle? To calculate this number, you can use your number and multiply it by the number of people in your community.
How much trash could your community save in a year? To calculate this number, multiply the weekly estimate for your community by the number of weeks in a year.
Do you think your community recycles enough? How can the US Government place more importance on recycling?

Part 3

Examine the process of recycling. Include the following:

Explain how recycled material is reused.
Describe what happens to recycled cans, bottles, and newspapers after they go to the recycling bin.
Examine the impact you have on creating renewed resources from these recycled items.

In this essay, you will write about diversity. The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate how you have met the diversity outcome through your past coursework or work experiences. The outcome states: Students will be able to identify and characterize their own cultural background and experiences in comparison to those of others and evaluate pathways to equitable solutions that recognize the strengths inherent in a diverse and multicultural understanding of world issues.
Here are your instructions for this essay:
Identify how you learned what diversity means from other courses or experiences (you cannot use prior papers to fulfill this assignment).
Analyze your definition and explain its significance in terms of understanding the world around you.
Write a 1250-1500-word essay that demonstrates your understanding of the fundamental importance of diversity.
Be as specific as possible.
Proofread your paper before submitting.
Use scholarly resources.

In this essay, you will write about diversity. The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate how you have met the diversity outcome through your past coursework or work experiences. The outcome states: Students will be able to identify and characterize their own cultural background and experiences in comparison to those of others and evaluate pathways to equitable solutions that recognize the strengths inherent in a diverse and multicultural understanding of world issues.

Here are your instructions for this essay:

Identify how you learned what diversity means from other courses or experiences (you cannot use prior papers to fulfill this assignment).
Analyze your definition and explain its significance in terms of understanding the world around you.
Write a 1250-1500-word essay that demonstrates your understanding of the fundamental importance of diversity.
Be as specific as possible.
Proofread your paper before submitting.
Use scholarly resources.

1.  Should the United States allow the Keystone Pipeline to be built? (connecting oil sands in Canada with refineries in the United States–that’s the global business connection)

2. Should Turkey be allowed to join the European Union?

3.  Should the United States be part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)?

4.  Should the United States end sugar subsidies/tariffs?  These are the country’s very oldest tariffs, dating back to the 18th Century.  They protect sugar growers (mainly in Florida)and corn growers (Midwest), keep US sugar prices artificially high, drive jobs out of the US, and keep sugar-growing nations in the developing world and Caribbean trapped in poverty since they can’t export to America.  DO NOT DEFEND SUBSIDIES USING THE HEALTH ISSUE.  You can find other reasons, but these tariffs very definitely weren’t put into place to protect our bodies from cheap sugar.

5.  Should a new, larger Caribbean-Pacific canal be built through Nicaragua?  (You will need to consider environmental issues in this one)

6.  In the long run, will allowing more migrants into the country help or hurt the German economy?

 Follow the APA formatting instructions, please.  Use the sample paper as a template. Use SpellCheck and proofread your work.

Use the other resources as necessary.  There is also a folder in COURSE CONTENT that contains the same resources.

Once you choose the topic, your assignment is  write an essay stating an informed position and a clear stand.

The paper MUST be written in the third-person.  Do not use “I’ or “me.”  (The words are, of course, acceptable in direct quotations–but those quotes should not be from you.)  Use the voice of authority.  “The facts show, ”  “Research makes it clear, ”  “Experience dictates.,”  “It is obvious that,”–all are clearly going to be your opinion, but they are much stronger as third-person statements than “I think that…”

Format:  APA, 12 pt, Times New Roman, double-spaced, one-inch margins on all sides.

Minimum length:  3-5 pages NOT including mandatory title page and  SEPARATE works cited/reference page.

Per APA formatting, please use in-text citations, NOT footnotes, for any direct quotations or paraphrasing.  See the Purdue Owl and sample paper for format.

Minimum of three outside sources, none dated prior to September 2014.   You may NOT use the textbook.

 Please make sure every word is there for a reason and helps convey your meaning.  This is business writing, not creative writing.  When in doubt, cut it out.

Your papers should start with a brief summary of the issue’s main points followed by your own position on the subject and why you chose it. You will not earn any credits by simply restating the topic and rewording it.

Please note that this assignment is analysis.  It is not sufficient to state that you just agree or disagree with one of the sides in the case.    You must demonstrate what you believe the proper position is and WHY—in other words, TAKE A STAND.

Spelling and grammar count!

And for everyone—the possessive of the pronoun “it” is “its”—NO APOSTROPHE

Potential Sources:  The Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Houston Business Journal, The Economist, The New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, Fortune and their  respective online Web content are all recommended sources, but there are many others–The Times of India, the Straits Times, the Independent, the Australian, the Guardian and other overseas publications can provide information not found in American sources.

(1)Define larceny and embezzlement. Are both of these crimes considered theft? Why or why not? What are the differences between larceny and embezzlement? Why are the differences important?

Your essay response must be a minimum of 200 words, not counting references listed at the end or repeating of the question, and cited per APA guidelines. You are required to use your textbook and may use any outside (library) resources to support your response. All sources used, including the textbook, must be referenced; paraphrased and quoted material must have accompanying citations.

(2) What is computer crime? What are examples of this type of crime? Provide a short description of one of the early cases of computer crime. Explain at least two federal statutes which are relevant to crimes committed with or against computer equipment. Describe the four elements of computer tampering.

Your essay response must be a minimum of 500 words, not counting references listed at the end or repeating of the question, and cited per APA guidelines. You are required to use your textbook and may use any outside (library) resources to support your response. All sources used, including the textbook, must be referenced; paraphrased and quoted material must have accompanying citations.

This assignment will help you to achieve the following Course Objectives:

– describe the role of culture in health, illness, and healing and medical anthropology’s contributions to individual and public health in domestic and international contexts

– describe the local and global political, social, and economic factors that influence individual and public health to shape programs and policies

– apply the perspectives and methods of anthropology to promote individual and public health in domestic and international contexts

Like the Literature Review and Research Paper, the ETHNOGRAPHIC PROJECT is an “authentic assessment.” And like the previous two assignments, whenever necessary please follow proper APA citation formatting. The ETHNOGRAPHIC PROJECT asks you to complete tasks (albeit in a much abbreviated format) that anthropologists actually perform. The point of the project is to make it very clear to students how everyone’s beliefs and behaviors are culturally constructed and how the historical, social, political, and economic contexts in which people live or visit shape/influence who stays well/healthy, who gets sick, what they suffer, what their experience of illness is, how they are treated, who gets better/heals, and who does not.

The ETHNOGRAPHIC PROJECT is worth a total of 45% of your overall grade. Each of the THREE (3) STAGES of this project will count for 15% of your overall grade: See the Course Schedule for Due Dates.

1)   Ethnographic Assessment

• Intervention Development
• Intervention Evaluation Plan

*The ETHNOGRAPHIC PROJECT (all 3 stages) should total around 10-15 pages*

I will award points based on my assessment of how well you followed the instructions and met the specified requirements for each assignment, your mastery of the material, and the quality of your writing.  (Spelling and grammar count in the final project).

*PRIVACY CONCERNS* for Ethnographic Project

The Ethnographic Project asks you to discuss health-related issues you are interested in or concerned about and your own and your household members’ personal health and illness related ideas, behaviors, and concerns as well as the personal environments in which you live.  You should not, however, disclose or discuss any information that you wish to keep private. This project is for the instructor’s eyes only –   it is not to be submitted in any public classroom areas – and it will not be used for any other purpose other than to assess your mastery of the material in this course.  You are in control of the information you include.  If anyone objects to this assignment, however, please email me at: joonhyunmichael.choi@faculty.umuc.edu

The Ethnographic Project will help students achieve the following:

(1) Describe the history, scope, primary interests and research methods of medical anthropology (2) Identify various theoretical approaches anthropologists have used to study health, illness, and the body (3) Explain how culture influences health and healing practices, and views on disease, life and death, and (4) Describe how applied medical anthropology contributes to human wellness in the United States and globally.

In this project, students will conduct a (Stage 1) Rapid Ethnographic Assessment of the “production of health” in the student’s own household, create a (Stage 2) Health/Wellness-related Intervention that addresses some issue uncovered in the ethnographic assessment, and (Stage 3) develop an Intervention Evaluation Plan.

*NOTE* The intervention part of this project is not “for real” (unless you want it to be) and it can be as creative as you like. For example, if someone in your household suffers from chronic pain, from your reading about how people from different cultural worlds cope with chronic pain, you might design an intervention that incorporates heat and ice, pain medications, acupuncture, meditation, psychotherapy, and shamanic healing.

**START THINKING ABOUT THIS PROJECT AS SOON AS THE CLASS BEGINS**

The project must include: (Again, only include information you’re comfortable discussing)

STAGE 1

1. An inventory of health/illness related products in the household (e.g., prescription medications, over the counter medications, medical devices, any foods or supplements eaten for health reasons, books, – anything you consider “health or illness related”). This inventory should not be focused on one illness/disorder/health issue. It should be all-inclusive.
2. A record of health-seeking behavior exhibited by household Again, this should not relate to one problem – it should be all-inclusive.
3. A record of health/illness-related conversations with others as close to verbatim as Start to notice and record conversations as soon as they happen.
4. A list of resources that have an impact on your household’s heath/illness-related ideas and behaviors and household health status (e.g., time, health insurance, social support). Again, this should not focus on only one illness/problem, such as the illness episode.  The list should be comprehensive.  What do you have available to you (or not) that affects your household’s health in any way?
5. Features of your community, state, national, and global environments that you think have an impact on your household’s heath/illness-related ideas and behaviors and household health status (e.g., national health insurance, industrial pollution, infectious agents, policies). Again, do not focus on one This should be comprehensive. I want to see that you understand how health, illness, and healing are related to people’s total environments.
6. A comprehensive description of at least ONE (1) illness episode occurring in the household currently or during the previous six months (it can be very ordinary, like a cold or a headache), including information about the decisions that were made, how decisions were made, who made the decisions, what decision-making says about the power relationships within your household,
7. Your own and any other relevant person’s explanatory models of the illness

STAGE 2

1. An intervention that addresses at least one health-related issue in your household that you identified in your ethnographic (An intervention is some kind of action plan to eliminate or alleviate a problem.) This issue DOES NOT have to be the same issue discussed in component “f” above. Now is the time to focus on one issue. Try to find articles about your issue in the anthropology journals listed in the description of the Literature Review above or use any of our course readings that might deal with your issue to get ideas or to better understand how this issue may be experienced and dealt with in different cultural contexts.
2. Ideas about the body, the person, health, illness, treatment, that underlie your intervention. These ideas should explain why  you think your intervention will work.  Think about your understandings and beliefs about how the body works, why “trouble” starts, what’s needed to fix it and why, etc.  Again, if you can find articles about your issue in anthropology journals or if your issue has been discussed in any of our course readings, compare your ideas with those of others.
3. Features of the social, political, and economic environment and available/unavailable resources that will either support or impede implementing your  The point of this is to help you understand how “no man is an island” – your health and well-being are intricately connected to the context in which you live, to your immediate and larger social worlds.
4. Possible unintended consequences (either positive or negative) of your Most interventions have unintended consequences.  For example, if you institute an exercise regimen for one person in the household, s/he may injure him/herself or, on the other hand, an intervention introduced to help one person in your household may spill over to other members of the household and their health may improve though they were not the “target” of the intervention.

STAGE 3

1. A plan for evaluating your How will you know if it is successful (including your definition of “success”). Make this plan detailed. What are your long-term goals and shorter-term objectives of your intervention? What is your time frame? How will you measure whether you have achieved these goals and objectives?
2. Finally, choose a setting other than your own that we have read about in one of our readings (e.g., Haiti, Botswana, Japan, Jamaica, ). How do you think the specific problem and intervention you have discussed/designed in this project and your experience of the problem and intervention would differ if you lived in this other setting instead of the setting in which you actually live? How would the resources you would have available to you affect this, assuming you were a member of the same economic “class” you are actually a member of?

**Students must also explain the ideas (theories) about the body, wellness, illness, healing, and illness that underlie the  intervention(s) they have chosen and the features of the physical, political, social, and economic environment that will either facilitate or impede the implementation of the intervention (e.g., health insurance does not cover psychotherapy, the physical labor required by the person’s job is the source of the pain, or (happily) a shaman lives next door and refuses payment for his services).**

Simply go down the list of all the required components in order and do what each tells you to do.  Please include a heading for each component to make it easier for me to determine which component you’re addressing.

Your project is already organized for you – you don’t have to add any additional sections such as an Introduction.  Just give me what I ask for and don’t make this more complicated than it is. This is not rocket science. But it does require close reading and following of instructions and attention to detail.

Your completed project should fully address all required components and demonstrate to me that you understand all the course concepts. It should be around 10-15 double-spaced pages.

The GRADING RUBRIC for the ethnographic project is posted below. You should pay close attention to the grading rubric because it explains what is expected for each grade. Use it as a checklist to make sure you have included all the required components of the project and do them in order.  You can use a list format for some components and a narrative format for others, whichever is appropriate.

Again, *do not make this more complicated than it is.* If I ask you for a list, give me a list. If I ask you to record a conversation, tell me the speaker and what he or she said as close to verbatim as you can. If you have questions please email me at: joonhyunmichael.choi@faculty.umuc.edu

Please also post questions that you think are of general interest in the “Cyber Café” conference thread. If I do not hear from you, I will assume that all of the instructions are clear and that you understand them.

We have discussed the level of NHE in the United States and looked to some degree at how much money is being spent for care by various service categories such as hospitals and physicians.

Click here to view and study the NHE data for selected calendar years between 1970 and 2003 and for selected service categories (with the exception of the catch-all category of “other”) (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services [CMS], n.d.).

Answer the following questions in a 2- to 3-page Microsoft Word document:

Examine the trends in expenditures for the service categories presented in the table. What is the magnitude and direction of spending changes within and across each of these categories: the percentage of GDP spent on NHE and the NHE per capita.
What can you say about how the price of medical care services changes? As you think about what you might say, realize that the figures have been adjusted for inflation. Also, assume that not all increases in healthcare costs are caused by increases in utilization.
Examine the rates of growth in the service categories (except the category “other”). What trends do you see in the mix of healthcare services used by the US public? What factors might contribute to these trends?

Support your responses with examples.

Cite any sources in APA format.