Browsing by Author "Nuchada Dumrongsiri"
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    An analysis of support goals: a perspective from support providers
    ( 2009) Nuchada Dumrongsiri
    People need support from family and friends to cope with everyday stresses and crises. However, people do not always perceive support as helpful or appropriate. Whether support is viewed as helpful or hurtful may depend on the approach and goals preferred differently by people from different cultures. Giving advice is problematic and difficult for advice providers in the Western cultures because they encounter conflicting goals (Goldsmith, 1992). One goal is to provide helpful advice, whereas another goal is not to threaten advice recipients' self-esteem and autonomy. However, advice may be less threatening in other cultures such as Asian cultures in which high involvement in group or others' lives is valued (Goldsmith & Fitch, 1997). This research project was aimed to answer three questions: (a) what are primary and secondary support goals among Thais?, (b) do Thais tend to use active or passive goals for initiating and providing support?, and (c) are support approach and goals comparable to past research in Western culture?
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    Exploring bloggers' motivation and behavior in Thailand
    ( 2009-06) Nuchada Dumrongsiri ; Vikanda Pornsakulvanich
    Blogs have evolved exponentially as a global phenomenon where scholars have attempted to answer why and how people use blogs. An active weblog requires a long-term commitment and much effort from a host to frequently update the contents as well as from users to regularly interact with the webblog. Thus, an investigation on what motivate people to blog interactively may help us develop and promote blog usage to fulfill various needs of the users better. This study serves two purposes: (a) to discover the reasons why people blog and (b) to investigate the relationships of how motives influenced blog usage. Different from previous research, this study used both qualitative and quantitative approaches to explore blog motivations directly from users. The findings revealed five blog motives: new friendship, relationship maintenance, passing time, social influence, and self-expression. Relationship maintenance, new friendship, and passing time were significant predictors of length and duration of blogging. Gender differences were significant in relationship maintenance motive and time spent on blogs.
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    Personality traits and demographic profile predicting social networking site usage in Thailand
    ( 2012) Vikanda Pornsakulvanich ; Nuchada Dumrongsiri
    The present study examined the influence of the Big Five personality traits (i.e., Emotional Stability, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness) on the amount of social networking sites (SNSs) usage, and the differences in time spent on SNSs among people who were in different age and gender groups in Thailand. This study employed a cross-sectional design using the purposive sampling to collect the data. Participants (N = 397) who have used social networking websites: Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube were participated. Three hypotheses and three research questions were posed. Overall, personality traits predicted time spent on SNSs. The findings showed a positive relationship between Extroversion and a negative relationship between Emotional Stability and Conscientiousness and the overall time spent on social networking sites. People who scored high on Extroversion and low on Emotional Stability and Conscientiousness tended more to spend time using SNSs. In addition, the main predictors of time spent using SNSs and Facebook were Extroversion and Emotional Stability. Moreover, there were significant differences in demographic characteristics and time spent on SNSs. Females would spend more time than males using Youtube. Younger people were more likely to spend time on SNSs, Facebook, and Youtube than were older people. The investigation of the present study extended our understanding of personality and SNSs usage in Thailand and supported the Big Five framework and past research on the associations among personality, demographic characteristics, and time spent on social networking sites.
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    A review of emotional intelligence: Is it a trait or ability?
    ( 2009) Nuchada Dumrongsiri
    Since the 1990s, emotional intelligence has gained enormous attention as a new construct that supplements cognitive intelligence in predicting life success. Cognitive intelligence has long been a traditional predictor of academic and business success. However, general intelligence explains about 20% of the factors that determine success in life (Golemen, 1995; Mayer & Salovey, 1997). Then, approximately 80% of life success is variously distributed among other factors such as personality traits, social skills, and environment. Emotional intelligence has been studied as a prominent factor among other success predictors. However, the conceptualization of emotional intelligence is still controversial. A major argument is whether emotional intelligence is a personality trait or ability. The major purpose of this paper is to provide a synthesis of previous studies for further discussion of three questions: (a) is emotional intelligence ability, (b) is emotional intelligence similar to personality traits, and (c) is emotional intelligence independent of cognitive intelligence.