Software certification is defined as the process of independently confirming that a system or component complies with its specified requirements and is acceptable for use. It consists of the following steps: (1) the software producer subjects her software to rigorous testing and submits for certification, among other documents, evidence that the software has been thoroughly verified, and (2) the certifier evaluates the completeness of the verification and confirms that the software meets its specifications. The certification process is typically a manual evaluation of thousands of pages of documents that the software producer submits. Moreover, most of the current certification techniques focus on certifying testing results, but there is an increase in using formal methods to verify software. Model checking is a formal verification method that systematically explores the entire execution state space of a software program to ensure that a property is satisfied in every program state. As the field of model checking matures, there is a growing interest in its use for verification. In fact, several industrial-sized software projects have used model checking for verification, and there has been an increased push for techniques, preferably automated, to certify model checking results. Motivated by these challenges in certification, we have developed a set of automated techniques to certify model-checking results. One technique, called search-carrying code (SCC), uses information collected by a model checker during the verification of a program to speed up the certification of that program. In SCC, the software producer's model checker performs an exhaustive search of a program's state space and creates a search script that acts as a certificate of verification. The certifier's model checker uses the search script to partition its search task into a number of smaller, roughly balanced tasks that can be distributed to parallel model checkers, thereby using parallelization to speed up certification. When memory resources are limited, the producer's model checker can reduce its memory requirements by caching only a subset of the model-checking-search results. Caching increases the likelihood that an SCC verification task runs to completion and produces a search script that represents the program's entire state space. The downside of caching is that it can result in an increase in search time. We introduce cost-based caching, that achieves an exhaustive search faster than existing caching techniques. Finally, for cases when an exhaustive search is not possible, we present a novel method for estimating the state-space coverage of a partial model checking run. The coverage estimation can help the certifier to determine whether the partial model-checking results are adequate for certification.

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The study focuses on the cognitive assessment of certification examination in medicine. The purpose was to investigate the relationship between the structure of the examination questions and the examinees' written responses. The responses from three groups of residents with undergraduate degrees from McGill (3), Toronto (2) and Manitoba (2) medical schools were used. A sample of one basic science and two clinical question in Endocrinology were selected. The responses were analyzed using cognitive methods which provided a qualitative assessment of subjects' knowledge structures relative to task. / The results showed that the responses did not always correspond to task requirements. There was a general tendency to focus on specific details that the subjects understood at the expense of the global aspect of the question. There was a greater variation in performance within groups than between groups. The results also suggest that undergraduate education may have less influence on the performance in certification examination than residency training. The importance of developing examination questions with high construct and criterion validity is discussed.

Certification and licensure have been sources of debate and controversy for many years in the counseling profession. Counseling psychology, in contrast, has developed uniform standards for licensure across most of North America. Virtually no literature, though, has examined whether these phenomena have any impact on a client's perceptions of a counselor. This dissertation reports on a study designed to examine this issue. University student and university counseling center client perceptions of helper credential status and educational achievement were studied. Subjects reviewed written vignettes of a helper that included the person's credential status and level of educational achievement. Credential status was presented in one of three ways: not certified or licensed; certified but not licensed; certified and licensed. Educational achievement was presented in one of two ways: a master's degree in counseling or a doctoral degree in counseling psychology. Subjects then completed the Counselor Rating Form - Short (CRF-S) (Corrigan & Schmidt, 1983) and the 15 Personal Problems Inventory (15 PPI) (Cash, Begley, McCown, & Weise, 1975). Data from the CRF-S and the 15 PPI were analyzed using multivariate analyses of variance (MANOVAs). The data were analyzed in terms of three samples: a combined student-client sample (N = 127), a student sample (N = 96), and a client sample (N = 31). The results of the analysis of the CRF-S data showed a significant main effect for credential status in the combined and student samples (p < .01), but not in the client sample. A significant main effect was also found for educational achievement in the combined sample (p < .01) and student sample (p < .05), but not the client sample. Follow-up analyses showed that helpers with more credentials were generally rated better than helpers with fewer credentials, and that helpers with a master's degree were generally rated better than helpers with a doctoral degree. The results of the 15 PPI analyses also found a significant main effect for credential status in the combined student-client sample (p < .01) but no other significant main effects. The study's results are discussed in terms of their implications for the field of counseling psychology. / Department of Secondary, Higher, and Foundations of Education

During the past few years an increased attention has been paid to environmental issues in the construction and property sector in Sweden. In order to simplify the work with these issues a Swedish environmental certification system for buildings called Miljöbyggnad has been developed. This thesis aims to investigate the opinion of a selected number of selected property owners of Miljöbyggnad. From that basis recommendations and actions for the future work with the system will be presented. The investigation has been conducted through personal interviews with five property owners. The main issues that the interviews have been based on are their purpose, experiences, perceived complications and future prospects in terms of certification using Miljöbyggnad. The system intends to be cost-effective, simple and to offer a relevant environmental assessment of buildings and the result from the report indicates that this is largely fulfilled. All respondents believe that Miljöbyggnad offers a relevant environmental assessment. All of them also believe that the system is simple except for some complications and 80 % believe that the system is cost-effective. In terms of the future, all interviewed property owners will most likely certify buildings under Miljöbyggnad, some to a greater extent than others. The conclusion from this investigation is that the system needs to be dynamic. Adaption to the social, environmental, technical, economical and legal conditions that prevail is vital. However, it is recommended that Miljöbyggnad retains its simplicity and avoid growing to become too comprehensive.

During the past two decades, there has been an explosive volume of software applied in the field of heath care. As medical software becomes pervasive in all facets of health care services, the risk of software related patient injuries and patient deaths is also on the rise. To assure the quality of medical software, rigorous validation and verification methods must be employed to analyze all phases of development and final products. In this thesis, a systematic review was conducted to examine and summarize research in the area of medical software certification, which is the primary quality assurance approach taken by regulatory bodies. Key findings indicate that research in the field of medical software certification is sparse, with a limited range of focus and research methodologies. Greater effort using empirical research approaches is necessary for the improvement of current research in medical software certification. / Graduate

The aim with this study was to gain an understanding for teaching as an profession, and get a bigger knowledge about the certification of teaching and what it means for the teaching occupations status. To get an answer for this study two methods were used. The first method was a survey with questions that were sent out to working high school teachers in the North of Sweden. The second method was a document analysis of articales from three Swedish dailynewspapers. To analyse the results from this study a theory about professions is used troughout the whole paper. This studies resluts shows that profession as an definition is hard to undestand. On some level working teachers recognise there occupation as an profession, an analyis between one definition of profession and the results from this survey shows that teachers sees them selfves beeing in an semiprofession. The fakt that teaching is aknowledged as an profession from those outside the occupations could not be answered from this study, when the analyse from newspaperarticals shows that profession together with teaching occupation is something that is unusual. Furthermore, the results from the survey shows that working teachers feel that the certification of teachers had not had the expected effects on the teachers status. From the analysis of the newspaper articales it is hard to say if the certification has had any effect whatsoever, when the results points to both a positive change in status and no change at all in status. But the certification of a teacher is still a new process and is not expected to be completed until 1 july 2015, that means that there is still a chance that it will have an effect.

With the growth ecotourism and of nature-based tourism, ecolodges are becoming more popular as an accommodation choice by tourists. There is currently no universal certification program ensuring service quality or environmental sustainability for ecolodges. Costa Rica is one of the few countries with a certification program in place that allows ecolodges to join by meeting certain standards. Visitors from three different certified ecolodges in Costa Rica were asked to fill out a questionnaire asking for demographic and trip characteristic information, with a section pertaining to their perception of importance and performance of 42 ecolodge attributes. The information was then applied to an Importance-Performance Analysis to gain a better understanding of how ecolodges are operating based on visitor feedback. The results from this thesis are then compared to the results of a similar study done by Kwan (2008) in Belize, where no certification exists for ecolodges. It is found that certified ecolodges received higher performance scores from their guests than uncertified ecolodges. It was also found that visitors place higher importance on more attributes when visiting a certified ecolodge, compared to uncertified ecolodges. This study also found that certified ecolodges are meeting the expectations of their clientele, by having higher performance scores than importance scores on 41 of 42 attributes. This thesis indicates that the presence of certification programs for ecolodges influences higher performance scores and can help ensure a successful future for this type of accommodation.

This study was conducted to examine the perceived development of the Wilderness Education Association's (WEA) 18-point curriculum by National Standards Program (NSP) course graduates. Nationally, there are no mandatory requirements to meet to become an outdoor leader or guide. Successful completion of the WEA NSP certifies the graduate as an Outdoor Leader through the WEA. Participants for this study were administered a survey requesting demographic information. The survey also consisted of a Lickert scale asking participants to what degree they perceived development of the WEA 18-point curriculum during the NSP course in which they participated. Results indicate that overall the curriculum was rated between "greatly developed" and "somewhat developed". The results also indicated that course structure might play a significant role in the development of the 18-point curriculum. While females ranked overall development the highest, there was not a statistical significant difference in the development of the WEA 18-point curriculum between males and females in this study.

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