As the popularity of building automation system (BAS) increases, there is an increasing need to understand/analyze the HVAC system behavior with the monitoring data. However, the current constraints prevent FDD technology from being widely accepted, which include: 1)Difficult to understand the diagnostic results; 2)FDD methods have strong system dependency and low adaptability; 3)The performance of FDD methods is still not satisfactory; 4)Lack of information. This thesis aims at removing the constraints, with a specific focus on air handling unit (AHU), which is one of the most common HVAC components in commercial buildings. To achieve the target, following work has been done in the thesis. On understanding the diagnostic results, a standard information structure including probability, criticality and risk is proposed. On improving method's adaptability, a low system dependency FDD method: rule augmented CUSUM method is developed and tested, another highly adaptable method: principal component analysis (PCA) method is implemented and tested. On improving the overall FDD performance (detection sensitivity and diagnostic accuracy), a hypothesis that using integrated approach to combine different FDD methods could improve the FDD performance is proposed, both deterministic and probabilistic integration approaches are implemented to verify this hypothesis. On understanding the value of information, the FDD results for a testing system under different information availability scenarios are compared. The results show that rule augmented CUSUM method is able to detect the abrupt faults and most incipient faults, therefore is a reliable method to use. The results also show that overall improvement of FDD method is possible using Bayesian integration approach, given accurate parameters (sensitivity and specificity), but not guaranteed with deterministic integration approach, although which is simpler to use. The study of information availability reveals that most of the faults can be detected in low and medium information availability scenario, moving further to high information availability scenario only slightly improves the diagnostic performance. The key message from this thesis to the community is that: using Bayesian approach to integrate high adaptable FDD methods and delivering the results in a probability context is an optimal solution to remove the current constraints and push FDD technology to a new position.

<p> </p><p>Most software today is concurrent and are used in everything from cell-</p><p>phones, washing machines, cars to aircraft control systems. The reliability</p><p>of the concurrent software may be more or less critical, depending on which</p><p>a.o. domain it is functioning in. Irrespective of domain, the concurrent</p><p>software must be sufficiently reliable.</p><p>It is therefore interesting to study how adaptable test methods for sequential</p><p>software are to test concurrent software. Novel test methods for concurrent</p><p>software can be developed by adapting test methods for sequential software.</p><p>In this dissertation, adaptability factors have been identified by conducting</p><p>a literature survey over state-of-the-art test methods. Directions taken in</p><p>the research of concurrent software testing is described by the survey. The</p><p>survey also demonstrates differences and similarities between test methods.</p><p>Three research contributions has been achieved by this dissertation. First,</p><p>this dissertation presents a survey over state-of-the-art-test methods. The</p><p>second contribution is the identified adaptability factors that should be</p><p>added to a test method for sequential software, that will be adapted to test</p><p>concurrent software. Finally, the third contribution to the field of concurrent</p><p>software testing is the identified future work in areas where test methods for</p><p>concurrent software has not been researched much or at all.</p><p> </p>

This qualitative study is an attempt to explore the adaptive experiences of elderly Chinese caregivers who have to take care of their spousal partners who are suffering from Alzheimer’s disease (AD). As the illness is known to be chronic and degenerative in nature, caregivers are thus faced with many stressful situations and adjustments are necessary. The purpose of this study is to examine how these caregivers in AD situations are interpreting the factors that might have influenced their adjustments. The sample consists of 26 participants aged 60 and above that have been a primary caregiver for not less than a year. Three in-depth interviews were conducted with each participant during the study period, which lasted for about two years. Findings show that most of them had to adjust to stressful situations in various aspects of life. They also developed many strategies for life adaption, which can be summarized in the following six adjustment themes. First, after hearing the AD diagnosis, they initially experienced a series of shocks and false hopes, and subsequent adjustments include eliminating uncertainty, establishing reasonable expectations toward both the disease and treatment, learning to take on the caregiver role, and finally, separating the disease from their partner’s personality. Second, these elderly caregivers gradually learned to attain inner peace through converting to various religions, searching for meanings within their stressful situations, and reconstructing rational explanations for their negative emotions. Third, in the area of spousal interaction, adaptive strategies included staying connected with their sick partners, reinforcing their caregiving motivations, completing the “familiar-strange-familiar” cycle, and re-establishing daily routines. Fourth, in situations involving other family members, such as adult children, the adjustment strategies included sharing economic burdens, re-allocating housework chores, delegating care responsibilities, and emotionally supporting one another. Fifth, in terms of social network, the main support that caregivers received usually came from informal sources; formal support is extremely limited. Findings further show a connection between the input and output of social support and personal capacity. Sixth, elderly spousal caregivers often possessed the ability to re-position and re-construct their self-confidence while adjusting to their new life rhythm. They were also able to achieve a balance between their private lives and their care responsibilities, which helps to maintain their well-being and neutralize their distresses. In summary, participants of the study often utilized more than one strategy in adjusting to their situations. The six aspects of adjustments are thus put together in this study as an integrated model of life adaptation and survival tactics adopted by elderly Chinese AD spousal caregivers. Also, whether these caregivers are successful in adapting depends on their abilities to accept changes in themselves and their environment, and achieve a compromise between the two. Based on the above findings, a culturally sensitive perspective is thus put forward to enhance the understanding of studied phenomenon within the contemporary Chinese context. Recommendations are also made regarding the needed policy changes and the revisions of social work practices in support of the elderly suffering from AD and their caregiving spouses. / published_or_final_version / Social Work and Social Administration / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Traumatic events such as natural disasters and violence are still happening around the world. While most of the studies on traumatic events focus more on the pathological end of the continuum, research related to their impact on more generic aspects, such as the psychological well-being of individuals, is comparatively less. Furthermore, flexibility has been posited to play a crucial role in the development of psychological well-being in adolescents but its significance has seldom been examined in the context of traumatic events. In addition, the construct and characteristics of flexibility have never been discussed before and no self-report measurement of emotional flexibility exists. Therefore, this thesis attempts to fill these gaps and extend our understanding of both the knowledge of flexibility and its role in the psychological well-being of Chinese adolescents. The nature of study 1 represents the ground work of this research, with the purpose of developing and validating a qualified self-report measurement of emotional flexibility in order to lay the foundation for answering the main research question of this study. A panel meeting was used at the very beginning to generate an item pool consisting of an inventory of emotional flexibility subscales: Exploratory Factor Analysis and Confirmatory Factor Analysis were employed to test the subscale structures as well as for the total scale of emotional flexibility. A three-factor model for match, the subscale of emotional flexibility and the total model comprising one higher-order factor of emotional flexibility derived from the 5 first-order factors, with 10 and 30 items respectively, have all been confirmed. The purpose of study 2 is to clarify the construct of flexibility by investigating the relationships connected to flexibility in cognitive, behavioral and emotional aspects, as well as the relation between flexibility in these three aspects and coping flexibility. The participants in study 2 were 941 adolescents recruited from three middle schools with different levels of earthquake exposure in Sichuan. The results show that cognitive flexibility mediates the relationship between emotional flexibility and behavioral flexibility. Moreover, coping flexibility was found to be related to flexibility in three aspects in different manners. Study 3 has been designed to answer the main research question of this study: what role does flexibility play in the psychological well-being of adolescents with earthquake experiences. A cross-sectional survey was performed to test the effect of flexibility in cognitive, behavioral and emotional aspects on the relationship between earthquake exposure and psychological well-being. The data in this study was the same as for those in study two. The results show that emotional flexibility and cognitive flexibility had moderating effects between earthquake exposure and psychological well-being. The thesis has developed a measurement tool, clarified the construct and summarized the characteristics of flexibility as well as explored the role of flexibility in the psychological well-being of adolescents. The implications and limitations as well as future directions are proposed as well. / published_or_final_version / Social Work and Social Administration / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

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This document investigates the relationship between the usage of relational forms of governance and the completeness of contractual documents. It further examines howthis relationship is presided by the development of social norms between contracting parties. A case study was conducted within Company X, a top European company in the Energy Sector, where interviews to managers and contractual documents were inspected for aqualitative analysis of the aforementioned relationship. The results indicate that the employment of relational governance mechanisms does affect contractual completeness on one of its two dimensions: contingency adaptability. This aspect is enhanced as relational norms are interwoven in the exchange agreement. A clear connection with the second dimension, term specificity, could not be identified, and is instead attributed to contextual idiosyncrasies such as industry type andgovernance structure design. A theoretical model depicting this phenomenon was developed, including mediating effects by situational variables.

Tyrimo tikslas – nustatyti mokinių iš nepilnų ir išsiskyrusių šeimų prisitaikymo mokykloje ypatumus ir socialinio pedagogo veiklos galimybes. Tyrime dalyvavo 208 mokiniai, iš jų – 96 berniukai (vaikinai) ir 112 mergaičių (merginų). Po tyrimo atlikta kiekybinė ir kokybinė duomenų analizė. Duomenys buvo lyginami priklausomai nuo lyties ir pagal amžiaus grupes (jaunesni 11 – 15 metų ir vyresni 16 – 19 metų mokiniai).Tyrimo rezultatai parodė, kad: 1. Mokiniai, kurie auga nepilnose ir išsiskyrusiose šeimose savo prisitaikymą mokykloje vertina panašiai kaip ir tie, kurie auga pilnose šeimose. 2. Berniukai, kurie auga nepilnose ir išsiskyrusiose šeimose, turi žemesnius mokymosi pasiekimus nei tie, kurie auga pilnose šeimose. Išsiskyrusiose šeimose augančios mergaitės turi aukštesnius pusmečio įvertinimus nei pilnose šeimose augančios mergaitės. 3. Tėvų skyrybų poveikis yra didesnis berniukams nei mergaitėms. / The aim of this research was to identify the adaptability peculiarities at school of the schoolchildren from partial or divorced families and the opportunities of the social worker’s activity. 208 schoolchildren participated in the research, 96 of them were boys and 112 of them were girls. After the research a quantity and quality data analysis was performed. The data was compared according to the sex and the age group (schoolchildren younger than 11 – 15 years old and elder than 16 – 19 years old). Research results have shown that: 1. The schoolchildren, who are treated in partial or divorced families, assess their adaptability at school like the ones, who are treated in full families. 2. The boys, who are treated in partial or divorced families, have lower learning achievements than the ones, who are treated in full families. The girls from divorced families have higher term grades than the ones, who are from full families. 3. The influence of parents’ divorce is more noticeable for the boys than for the girls.

The purpose of this study was to test Lazarus and Folkman's (1984) theoretical framework of stress and coping as it applied to daughters who have parents living in care facilities. Specifically, the effects of personal and environmental influences, cognitive appraisals, and coping on positive affect and depression were examined in two subsamples of daughters: daughters with parents with dementia (n=100) and daughters with parents with other health difficulties (n=89). The data were collected from a volunteer sample of 189 daughters (M age 51.3) in the Greater Vancouver region. Daughters completed three parts of a questionnaire over a six-week period. Specific variables of interest included prior communal behaviors, support satisfaction, care satisfaction, appraisals (perceived control and perceived stress), coping strategies (relationship-focused, problem-focused, emotionfocused), positive affect, and depression. Negative affectivity (NA) was examined as a confounding variable. Path analysis using LISREL VIII (Joreskog & Sorbom, 1993) was undertaken to examine the hypothesized relationships between antecedent, mediating, and outcome variables that are central to Lazarus and Folkman's (1984) theoretical framework. Initial results revealed a poor fitting model for both the dementia and other health groups. However, a revised model, taking into account theoretical and empirical support for a direct relationship between support satisfaction and emotion-focused coping, provided an acceptable fit for both groups. The overall pattern of relationships for the variables in the model offer some support for the hypothesized model and for Lazarus and Folkman's theoretical assumptions. For both groups, greater control over the stressful aspect of facility care was related to more problem-focused coping, which in turn was related to more positive affect. For the other health group, greater appraised stress was related to more emotion-focused coping, which was in turn was related to greater depression. Among daughters with parents with dementia, low levels of care satisfaction and high communal behaviors were associated with greater perceived control. The hypothesized mediational role of appraisals and coping was not supported. The results point to the importance of understanding caregiving in the context of chronic stress and the unique contribution of personality, health type, and positive aspects of caregiving to a daughter's stress process.

In many of today’s work setting, workers are required to spend a considerable part of their day engaged in social interactions and managing social relationships with customers (Schneider, 1994), and with teams (Kozlowski & Ilgen, 2006). Furthermore, increases in globalization (Javidan, Dorfman, de Luque, & House, 2006), boundaryless organizational structures (Macy & Izumi, 1993), and workplace diversity (Mahoney, 2005) have increased the ambiguity and complexity of workplace interpersonal interactions. As a result, in today’s workplace there is a great need for employees to be interpersonally adaptable (Klein, DeRouin, & Salas, 2006). Though many assessment practices and measures intended to assess individual effectiveness in social situations exist, many of these measures and practices do not assess the situationally-specific and goal-oriented aspects of interpersonal adaptability. There were two primary purposes for the dissertation. First, this dissertation introduces a framework of interpersonal adaptability. In doing so, this framework was meant to highlight three opportunities to improve the assessment of interpersonal adaptability. Specifically, in order to conduct construct-valid ratings of interpersonal adaptability there is a need to design more contextualized assessments, improve the match between construct and method, and incorporate dynamic aspects. The second key purpose was to apply some of these opportunities to current assessment practices. Two empirical studies were included in this dissertation. For the first empirical study, role play assessment exercises were revised to account for context created by role players’ portrayed disposition. It was found that the portrayed disposition of the role player accounted for a significant amount of the between-exercise variance in participants’ demonstrated interpersonal behaviors and performance. For the second empirical paper, a validation study was conducted with measures from a multi-mini interview (MMI), which is a multi-stationed interview used to assess non-cognitive skills of applicants to health professional schools. An analysis of the MMI measures’ convergent and discriminant validity suggested that it continues to be unclear whether MMI measures assess participants’ interpersonal behaviors or interpersonal processing. Implications for future research and practice are discussed. / My dissertation is comprised of three separate, but conceptually related, manuscripts. The first manuscript is a conceptual paper that draws upon sections of my introduction from my proposal. It is targeted to be included as a chapter in an upcoming book. The second and third manuscripts are empirical studies that draw upon some of the findings from my dissertation research. A general discussion was also prepared in order to highlight the key conceptual, empirical, and practical implications from my dissertation research.